An Island in Yemen

A while back I decided I would being a roughly weekly feature in which I would highlight the true Middle East divorced from the Western media cliches of war, oppression, religious fanaticism and strife.

socotra vegetation 2NpWh 19672

A Middle East that is rarely seen here in the West, especially in the United States.

There is a whole region, culture and faith which is unknown to Americans. Even though they think they know. But they do not know. They perception is entirely faulty.

And the Western prims has always been faulty. From the beginning it never sought to see and treat Arabs and Muslims just like all other people, but instead to see them through certain prims that confirm to Western stereotypes.

A prims may be that these people are violent, so the emphasis during Latin times was on the Saracen.

Or the prims may be the exotic: therefore you study the prostitute in Cairo or the prince who has several wives and concubines.

Instead of studying the whole, the study only that tiny bit - for good or ill - which confirms to the image of a people which they want to see as different. inhabiting a different and odd world, removed from them in their humanity, and simply at arms lenght to be studied not as fellow humans but a s a separate people to be viewed withint certain parameters: violent, too sexually, or what have you.

I will see to offer a comprehensive image of the region which includes its diversity. First Yemen. We hear a lot about Yemen and war, but the nation is also home to one of the most magnificent islands in the world:

MAROONED in pirate-infested waters off the Horn of Africa but tied to unruly Yemen 400km (250 miles) away, the archipelago of Socotra has a forbidding look. Scorching summer winds strand ships. So fierce is the constant gale that it has whipped beachfuls of blinding white sand into dunes hundreds of metres high that ride up the cliffs. Even in winter it is blisteringly hot. Rats, the sole occupants of one rocky islet, are so ravenous that seasonal fishermen sleep in their skiffs, afraid to languish ashore.

Yet Socotra, whose main island is the size of Majorca or Long Island, is one of the world’s last enchanted places. The 50,000 native Socotris, speaking four dialects of a singsong ancient language unintelligible to other Yemenis, subsist on fish, goats and not much else. But they inhabit a wildly varied landscape of surreal beauty. The sea teems with giant lobsters, turtles and leaping dolphins. A unique breed of civet cat roams the limestone plateaus that are seamed with gorges carved by rushing streams, and spiked by finger-like granite towers rising to 1,500 metres. The cats are just one among 700 native species of plants and animals found nowhere else on earth.

Most astonishing are the trees. The dragon’s blood species, oozing red sap and looking like a cross between a steroidal mushroom and a monster broccoli, towers to 15 metres and lives for up to 500 years. The bottle tree, plump and leathery at its base, tapers to a sprout of twisting, hand-like little branches clutching bouquets of pink flowers. But even the ordinary here seems odd. Socotri cows, a breed recorded in Egyptian reliefs dating to 1,400bc, could be Friesians or Jerseys, except that they are barely waist-high.

Despite the image they are often victim to in the West as submissive and silent, women even in conservative Arab societies play an active role. And increasingly they are becoming formidable figured in the region's growing art world:

This is Ladies Day at Art Dubai, the biggest contemporary art fair in the Middle East. Sheikha Manal has come to attend talks by Judith Greer, an American collector, and Venetia Porter, a curator of Islamic art for the British Museum. The fair itself hasn't yet opened, but a select group of women is always given a chance to preview and learn about the art on their own, without men. In a culture notoriously dismissive of women, one could easily assume Ladies Day to be a sideshow. But that would be wrong.

Connoisseurs from the west generally consider the art market in the Gulf underdeveloped. Compared to other emerging markets, such as India and China, there are few collectors, and museums, galleries and exhibitions are thin on the ground. But a cadre of women, both at the royal and grassroots levels, is leading the effort to bring the Arab art market into the mainstream.

Sheikha Manal and her sister, Sheikha Latifa, also at Ladies Day, are among a handful of royal women at the vanguard of this push. Working independently, the two have established artist studios, an exchange programme with foreign art fairs, and awards for young Emirati artists. Nearby in Abu Dhabi, the oil-soaked capital of the Emirates where both the Guggenheim and the Louvre are building affiliate museums, Sheikha Salama and her daughter, Sheikha Mariam, have created a series of seminars and activities to teach locals about art and culture. Sharjah, home of the region’s largest art exhibition (the Sharjah Biennial, which, incidentally, is directed by another princess, Sheikha Hoor) boasts similar projects, such as an arts management training programme for local Emiratis. In the four years this programme has been running, half of the 520 staff members are women, as well as 12 of the 14 curators.

The UAE is not, however, the foregone capital of art in the Middle East, or even of the Gulf states. It is also not the only country in the region where women are taking leading roles in the art world. Qatar’s Sheikha Al Mayassa, the daughter of the Emir, runs the Qatar Museums Authority. Her latest project is launching Qatar’s Museum of Modern Arab Art, a collection of more than 6,000 pieces. Kuwait’s Sheikha Lulu Al Sabah in February held her country’s first-ever contemporary art auction. “Especially in the Middle East, having a title can be very helpful,” says Libya’s Princess Alia al-Senussi, who sits on the board of Art Dubai, in a bit of an understatement.

One of the most talented Arab artists, Syrian Khaled al-Saai:

artwork images 424019567 475178 khaled al saai hDn

And, finally, I'll end appropriately with a piece on the central importance and love for Arabic:

Arabic is the essence of Arab identity. Arabs are inordinately proud of their linguistic heritage. Handed down by Allah, many believe the Koran must be read only in the classical mode in which it was written. Even non-Arabic speaking Muslims force themselves to learn enough of it to read it. Stumble though they may, Arabs from different countries are enabled by MSA to communicate.

The popularity of a recent television programme beamed from Abu Dhabi in which people competed to see who could best recite traditional Bedouin poetry suggests there is plenty of appetite for Arabic in all its forms. In the absence of an authentic Arabic word, people may instead use an English word like “zip”, as the writer in the National laments. But such changes and borrowings are inevitable and may be quite healthy. Arabic will evolve from the prescriptions of the grammar book, taking in new words and discarding obsolete ones. But as Mr Holes points out, this is a sign of dynamism rather than demise.

Another post soon.