Tea Time

The boy not much younger doesn’t smile, gives me a look of curiosity.

مسلم؟

“Are you Muslim?” Look, I’m just trying to buy some smokes. He had answered that yes, he has them, but he made no move for them.

No.

Why not? he asks.

أنا ولدت في أسرة مسيحية.

“I was born into a Christian family.”

Satisfied with my answer, he cracks a smile and notices the money I had laid on the counter. I was no longer to blame for my apparent ignorance. The passive word “I was born” relinquished me from all responsibility. I didn’t choose Christianity over Islam any more than I chose to be an American rather than a Yemeni. I decided I’ll give this answer from now on.

“Do you want to convert?”

“I study Arabic. I live in that house.” I point up the street.

“Do you want to convert to Islam?”

I reach for my change, but he wants an answer. “I hope after studying lots I can read the Qur’an in Arabic.” This seems good enough. I tell him thanks as I shove the bill into my pocket and pass the the mosque my district of the city is named after. There are hundreds in this city alone, and as Yemen’s population explodes, the growth of mosques is outpacing the growth of schools. The people are responsible for building mosques, the state responsible for schools. It’s no wonder the people don’t trust their state, but rely more on their families, their tribes, and their religion to provide for them.

This afternoon I’m treating myself. I’m getting sweet milk tea at the little shop at the end of my street. My brain’s aswirl and I want something nice and warm to cool it down.

The Old City of Sana’a, inhabited for thousands of years, its buildings and streets a testament to the perseverance of tradition, a strong identification with the legacy of the past, is almost neatly bordered by a modern gully avenue. At places, the boundary of the Old City slopes down at thirty degrees, the alleys and thoroughfares dumping its residents and their cars, wheelbarrows, and carts into this busier race track encircling the ancient. I’ve heard that during the rainy month, this street becomes a river, swelling to carry the torrents away from the aging mud brick stone center of town to the outskirts, sometimes taking unfortunate taxis or joy-riding children along with them.

My friend Jessica calls this tea place “Café Exquisite.” There’s no sign out front indicating this isn’t the case, but I’m pretty sure the old man inside doesn’t use this name to describe his hole in the wall from which he serves his tea. Usually this place is bustling, but today I’m the only one. As I enter, I notice the owner is wearing the same green army-issue sweater I’ve seen on him every time I’ve come for tea. The neck hem is unraveling and where loose sleeves once hung his wrists are exposed, the ends charred to a halt. His wrinkled brown skin hangs from his face as well as a cigarette from his lips, and ashes fall to the cracked cement floor as he mutters to himself. A cat yawns and arches its back on a smoothed-over oily bench to the right, and another sits atop a case of condensed unsweetened canned milk. I wonder if the owner is too old or to gone to care about these pests lazing about, or if he’s come to consider them friends.

I shout peace upon him. If his makeshift stove weren’t on, I wonder, with its butane tank at my feet and its foot-high flames warming my face, if he would have heard me anyway. He grunts a response back to me, his incomprehensible words whistling as they flow through the stubby remains of his teeth. One Tea Milk Please, I literally say, and he’s quick to work. Before him are three buckets and a dented metal tray holding exhausted clear glasses, the last centimeter of sludge still at the bottom, a mix of tea grounds and sugary white liquid. He grabs one, dunks it into the first bucket, swipes his hand through the interior, dunks it into the second, the third. From a crimped can with a happy cow printed on the front he fills half my glass with milk, stretching the stream with a bob of his hand like a bartender would with a shot of whiskey. He dips his hands into the bucket of water and grabs a metal pitcher from atop the flames, fills my glass with tea, grabs a different pitcher, and empties my glass into it.

A cat atop a wobbling bucket loses its balance and empties onto the floor. It crawls out of the bucket with a chicken head in tow, and happily gnaws on it right in the middle of the floor. The other cats are probably full, because they give no fuss.

My tea begins to bubble, and the man again sticks his hand into the bucket, uses his wet fingers to pour my tea from its flaming container. I step over the feasting cat as I walk out of the room to the edge of the dry riverbed of the stone road. I sit and sip my treat, daydreaming about what Thanksgiving would be like tomorrow, both for me in Yemen, and for my extending family back home, without me.

Straight ahead a car begins rolling backwards, unable to make it up the ramp from the ساءلة, the name of the road, which I was taught also means ‘flood’ or ‘big water after a rain’. My teacher started with ocean, went to sea, to river, to lake, to stream, to creek, to well. I asked him, What’s it called after a rain, you know, the water on the ground? Children like to jump in these? This is the word he gave me, and I realized why he was confused. Rain is never a pleasant drizzle here, it comes down constantly in torrents for a month, to clear up for another eleven. Instead of puddles, it causes floods and rivers where for a year there is only dust.

The car disrupts the flow, and the cars behind him honk and honk. He backs up a little more, revs his engine, throws it into gear. With a lurch, it makes it two thirds the way up the hill, but again he begins the slow descent backwards, slamming his hand on the horn to the let the oncoming traffic know that he’s not going to stop. Again a traffic problem, he revs, the tires screech, and he attacks the base of the hill, but only inches over the top. The car was old, sure, but this road is pretty new. I bet this car hasn’t been out of Sana’a in years. Anywhere you look you see a mountain. I live in a valley of sprawling population at 7,000 feet.

Before me passes a man wearing his traditional gown, his waist bordered by a decorative knife, and his head covered in a red and black checkered shawl. He’s carrying two large containers you might buy at a gas station to bring to your stalled coach, but these are uncapped, and the liquid splashes out on to the ground as he hurries by. Either this is filtered water for drinking, or his house lacks its own tap.

Today I’m not paying attention and realize I’m done with my tea when I feel its grit between my teeth. I’m not here to study or meet with a new friend, so I just hold the glass in my lap, content to look out at the old buildings highlighted by the fading light of sunset. As the sun slips behind the mountain, night falls quickly, and I squeeze the glass for the last of its warmth. I think a little in Arabic, trying to practice even when not talking. Every day I learn some new words, or another way for saying something I thought I had down pat, and feel like a physicist: answering one question opens up five more. I’m learning two languages. The Arabic of the books and media and government, and the Arabic spoken here in the streets of Sana’a. This spoken Arabic comes in many colors and varieties, influenced by the tribes and regions of Yemen, each with their own identity, history, and traditions, blending together in a city that was a tenth of its size twenty years ago.

My daydream is broken by the grunts of the old man. He wants his glass back. I look around and notice that the place is filling up quickly. The men are pouring out of the mosque next to the shop, and and many stop in for some tea after the sunset prayer.

“Do you chew?” He points to his cheek, slightly sunken for the lack of teeth that give mine shape. “Sometimes!” I shout. His eyes close as he pulls his lips towards his ears, giving me a smile I appreciated all the more for the effort it must have taken. I say no more to discourage this man from talking any further. Everything he does must hurt, his body tattered from the years of military service, or the incessant qat, or just living in this city, and besides, I couldn’t understand him anyway. His dialect was beyond me.

I head back to my house to take a shower. No studying tonight because there’s no class tomorrow, not because of Thanksgiving, but because it’s Thursday, the same as any other Saturday back home.