Tunis #2: Sexuality and music in the rain

There was a pleasant feeling of serenity in my morning-mind (uncommon when I wake up) as I opened my eyes in the darkened room to the blaring ring of a cell phone. The woman who answered, I., lay under a thick but airy comforter, beside me on the massive bed, as beautiful as iron is heavy and confident too. With the cliché sexiness of her scratchy morning voice, she responded slowly to the almost whiny-sounding American man's voice on the other end. "How aaaaaare you?" he said. "Exhausted." "Whyyyyy?" he worried back. More talk, and as her slender arms dropped the phone back beside her pillow, I pulled her in so that her head was resting in the crook of my neck, her stomach and red bellybutton ring rubbing up against my side, with one of her legs folded up over mine. Her body was firm and smooth, to a degree I almost couldn't bring myself to believe, her skin very lightly toasted in a way that made her look as though she hailed from north of the Mediterranean, not the south. She smelled like sweet and soft things, and though I knew it was the aroma of a rainbow of cremes and perfumes, I breathed it like someone drowning breathes sea air for the first time. Feeling complete (or as close as one can get to that), and fighting off darting thoughts of fear that this moment would not last, I fell back to the blackness where even insecurity cannot reach me.

How unusual this is, I think. This is not the first woman in this country with whom I've shared a bed, but this woman's comfort with herself and her surroundings was new. She didn't seem like she was trying to escape the world's troubles through sleep, as a previous partner had, nor did she seem to see in me her own gentle savior finally arrived, as another had. She was simply trying me out, but in a premeditated way, a way that had taken planning and preparation on her part. I had that to my credit. She had reached out to my roommate, Nicholas, on Facebook, the Tunisian make-friends-hook-up-find-a-spouse-seek-work-contacts all-in-one social network. Apparently it was while I had been away, in the US, and she boldly initiated with him, leading to a long back and forth Facebook chat conversation. Nick, himself no longer a bachelor, showed me their substantive conversation, including topics like photography and molecular biology, and told me I should connect with her, as it was obvious she was searching, as he put it. Not long into my flirt-filled Facebook chats with her she invited me to come see some live music and art at her university, which was supposedly related to my Master's research on local hip hop. Once I asked here where I would stay if and when I came down to visit, in the city of M., south of Tunis, and she said "Well we have our apartments ;-)" I gladly realized Nicholas had been right.

The night before had been a whirr of new. I had never visited M. before, though I had heard plenty of oft-repeated talk of its being the home of the family of a former Tunisian president. Yet, the rare rainfall over the small city, and the chipped and worn 1970's-looking campus that greeted me when I. dropped me off there, was underwhelming. A bunch of young men and women greeted me unsteadily, not sure what language to speak when I. introduced me in English but I greeted them in Tunisian Arabic. As it turned out, I had missed all the art, including a photography and graffiti expo, except for a final batch of bands. Sitting on a plastic folding table in the university's performance hall as the long equipment set-up went on, I chatted with a few young Rastafari-lookers who played in the bands, feeling thrilled by the body and calm presence of I. perched up against me on the table.

The music was good, mostly, prefaced by a one-man-show by a young guy in red face paint who imitated the Devil's voice, but who I couldn't understand at all because of the deafening chatter of the young audience. Three our four acts came to the stage, including a reggae band, some pre-teens and an old man singing "I'll Be There," and a badass rock group with a guitarist who had powerful chops on his instrument. It was all punctuated by I.'s touchiness, resting hands on my shoulder and thigh, and my wondering how to respond. The concert was drowned in covers of American--and Jamaican (Bob Marley)--songs.

When people finished dancing The Twist to Elvis Presley songs and the hall cleared out, we packed into cars and went to the city of M.'s reportedly only clean, almost-affordable, mixed-gender drinking spot. The menu was in French, they served BLTs, and the DJ played mostly really good hip hop, reggae, and local bands. Olives. Croutons. Tunisian beer in green bottles and rosé wine. I. disappeared and I remained seated next to a bunch of her rapidly chatting friends all sucking on cigarettes, me staring at bad Arab music videos on TV. Finally I found I. again at a different table and parked next to her, and her hands landed once more reassuringly on my thighs. Members of the bands--one a powerfully handsome guy with dark beard scruff and pony tail and another a fair-skinned fellow sporting a bowler cap--shot their opinions about good music at me, perforated with English phrases like "the blue note."

Head out, pack seven humans into a car that's only supposed to fit five, and we glode (past tense for glide) through the depressingly empty streets of the seaside city, slick with drizzle and lit here and there by the neon glow of local banks. After a few blocks one of the band members hopped out of the car and popped open the trunk, allowing the only other woman in the car aside from I. to step out and slip smilingly into the side street where she lived. I was nervous by then, not knowing where I would be spending the night, but hoping it would be with I..

"Sharp right here. Now go slowly. Now left. Great, this is me," I. said as the car headlights fell on a naked, bone-colored building with a small gate in the front. I pushed out of the car's back right door to let I. out of the pile of bodies in the back seat. "Whatever man, just take it as it comes. Don't get too attached," I told myself, trying to keep my hopes from climbing too high. The I heard I. say, "O Sam? He's coming with me," to the crew in Tunisian dialect. Excellent.

Mounting the smooth white steps on the front of the building, following I.'s leather jacket which glistened slightly in the rainlight. Into her pale white apartment, clean as a dentist's office, and holding my breath, I readied myself to meet the roommates. As it turned out, incredibly, there were none. I. had the whole fresh-smelling dentist's office to herself. This brings me to a few important points: Tunisian women, despite some appearances to the contrary, are significantly bound by a web of constraints on their personal and sexual freedom, mostly having to do with community and family pressures around ideas of honor and dishonor, womanhood, obedience, and membership in the community (I as an American non-Muslim am not fully part of "the community," a concept we can talk about later). Most young Tunisian women are not free to choose their sexual or romantic partners at will, and many, it seems, don't try overtly to create such relationships. As far as I can see, this is usually out of fear about how their family and the community in which they live will react to premarital sexual relations, which usually involves some degree of at least covert shaming through gossip, with community members subsequently interacting differently with the woman out of a feeling that she doesn't deserve their full respect.

However, Westerners like me, especially after having lived in "more conservative" Arab Muslim countries, are often surprised to observe a greater freedom of expression of physical affection among higher-class Tunisian women (the ones who we tend to spend the most time around) towards men. Further, because of the numerous burdens on women that are lightened the world over by greater financial and material resources, there are less intense pressures on upper-class Tunisian women to submit to societal norms by which their honor tends to be judged; thus having one's own private living space, in a middle-class neighborhood less beholden to conservative gender and sexual norms, and living in a neighborhood or city far removed from one's family (I.'s family lives in Tunis) are all factors which ease the constraints on a Tunisian woman's sexual behavior (by my general and humble estimation). These circumstances set the stage for the rainy night sleepover with a woman I had only met a few hours earlier.

My right hand between her back and the pad of a couch, my left hand under her lightly-toasted neck, I. says "I shouldn't be doing this," with a groan like somebody who was just woken from deep sleep. "Why not?" I ask. "Ughghgh, 'cuz I have a… boyfriend," she said, with eyes squeezed shut as though drawing back from a blow.

Streets Urban Festival Kasserine

From: Streets Urban Festival Kasserine

Tuesday’s update from the Streets team:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdmrlweMXqA

The frigid air crystalized the anticipation in the streets of Kasserine this Tuesday morning. As motorbikes coughed by, struggling past horse-drawn carts, most Kasserinis wouldn’t have dreamed that in a few hours the avenues and back alleys of their city would be home to giant graffiti murals; courtesy of world-class artists the likes of Zepha, Shuck 2, Sim, and Tire. Nor would anyone have expected the vibrant workshops in rap, photography, and breakdancing that animated the conference rooms and courtyards of the local youth complex, seated behind a low dusty wall on Kasserine’s outskirts.

But as locals and artists alike finished lunch and walked out of the dining hall at the youth complex, they were greeted by local youth contorting themselves in the middle of a circle

in an old-skool B-boy battle; onlookers cheering loudly at their best moves. Despite the chill, the battle was hot, and dancers pulled off their shirts before plunging back onto the mat while classic breaks played from the DJ booth behind them. The competition was fierce, but the B-boys kept the battle peaceful, throwing fake blows at each other and dodging them with laughs and backflips.

Just steps down the road from the youth center, graffeurs Tire and Shuck 2, both from the cités of Paris were putting their mark on a wall facing a municipal building. Both characters are as colourful as the calligraffiti murals they were creating. Tire, originally from France, has been living in Montréal for the last three years. He’s a former streetball player, and after leaving Tunisia will be moving to Yemen with his wife and children. Shuck 2 began his graffiti career in the late 1980s with his gang in the Parisian suburbs, and was one of the first to practice graffiti using Arabic script.

Even farther down the road, French street artist Zepha balances precariously on a motorized lift, dragging his spray can over the top edges of an apartment building with broad strokes, assembling a twisted formation of Arabic letters with shapes of natural objects. On a crumbing wall below him, Tunisian graffeur Slim fills in the outlines of his work in progress with bright pink paint. Local boys, who were practicing parkour nearby, or Free Running, stand at the street’s edge in rapt attention.

Haron Hesi, 16 years old, said, “The graffiti here encourages us to be creative. If someone has creativity, he can imagine, he can become someone else. Creativity gives us hope.”

Written by Sam Kimball. You can also follow Sam on Twitter @SamOnTheRoad

Wednesday’s update from the Streets team:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzpoQcYH7SI

As the chill of the morning wore off on Wednesday, young men from Kasserine warmed up on yellow and blue mats in the open Air beside the local youth center. The smallest children imitated the bigger kids on another mat just meters away. As time went on, renowned break dancer Selim, the founder of French dance crew Pokémon, began his workshop with the youth. With simple electro beats lording over the crowd, they youth all moved in unison following Selim’s lead. Still later, the rows of dancers turned into a circle with one-on-one battles exploding within, Selim serving as judge.

Walid Kafi, a filmmaker from Montréal, had his lens focused on the dancers before turning it to Seifeddine, a twenty year-old from Kasserine who is the focus of a documentary film about the Streets Festival. Kafi shot a scene with Seifeddine and American journalist Sam Kimball as they walked slowly along a path beside the youth center, as they spoke about Seif’s interest in graffiti and acting as forms of expression, and his hopes for the festival.

Later in the afternoon, up the hill from the municipal youth center at a private arts center called Al Rawabi (The Hills), children sat in rows before a local teacher of the oud, a traditional Arab stringed instrument. Following his notes in unison, their voices climbed climbed through traditional songs. But minutes later, as Canadian-Iraqi rapper The Narcicyst and French rapper Medine entered the courtyard of the center, the children poured from their classrooms and stood quietly before Medine as he spoke to them about the importance of positive creative outlets. Then with beats from producer Sandhill pounding, Narcicyst and Medine took turns freestyle wrapping in Arabic, French and English. In an interview outside the center, Medine said, “Our professors educate us. Our parents educate us too. But I think at this festival, the artists have educated us.”

When night fell and the deep cold returned, the local basketball stadium packed with the bodies of contorting their bodies before a stage where a local DJ spun old breaks. The final B-boy battle had begun. In round after round, dancers went in round after round, first one-on-one, then two-on-two, then crew versus crew. There was even a special round for children, 8 and 9 year-olds. After hours of round after round, Selim made his decision and one of the crews won the battle. The prize for the winners is an international show with Selim’s celebrated Pokémon dance crew.

Written by Sam Kimball. You can also follow Sam on Twitter @SamOnTheRoad

Thursday’s update from the Streets team:

For Kasserinis tuning into the radio this Thursday morning, they heard the program host introducing Montréal-based rapper The Narcicyst, and announcing his upcoming performance scheduled for that night. Next they heard The Narcicyst’s song Batal (Hero) produced by fellow visiting artist Sandhill. Following, festival founder Karim Jabbari jumped on the microphone and updated Kasserine on the festival’s progress.

As the sun began to lift into the midday sky, the day’s activities opened once-again at Dar Esh Shabab (Youth Center) on the edges of Kasserine. Imen, a young woman from Kasserine recently graduated from a fashion and design program at the local university, was demonstrating to children seated around a table how to make simple sculptures from various types of pasta. The children used fingers and rollers to shape dough into faces and stars. Girls, who hitherto hadn’t had a strong presence in many of the workshops, made up nearly half the group. Nadir Soultani, 15, who participated in the workshop, said, “Workshops like this are important because they allow us to be creative, they give knowledge to the local kids, and provide a model for how we can be.”

On the other side of the courtyard, producer and beatmaker Sandhill was assembling drums and guitar samples on a mixing console, while heads of curious local youth nodded with the rhythm. Sandhill encouraged some of the rappers in the crowd to pick up a microphone, and within minutes a crowd had formed, with a freestyle rap battle in full swing. The Narcicyst, who had seen the battle and come running, spit a few bars between some of the local talents.

And just as the sun fell that night, The Narcicyst appeared on stage at Kasserine’s indoor sports complex in a woolen bournous (cloak) and Tunisian skullcap with mic in hand and Sandhill at the sound booth behind him. While videos for Narcy’s various songs flitted across a projector screen beside him, the eager youth piled up in front of the stage rocked their fists in the air to the beat. After Narcy finished his mixed English/Arabic set and the audience settled down, Tunisia’s own MC Killa and the group Debo came to the stage for a freestyle battle, Kasserini youth filling the sports complex further in support of local talent.

Written by Sam Kimball. You can also follow Sam on Twitter @SamOnTheRoad

Friday’s update from the Streets team:

On the final day, the atmosphere was light. With a bright sun shining, the air of Kasserine’s dusty streets was warm. Renowned Chilean graffiti muralist Saile One was raised three stories above Kasserine’s downtown on a hydraulic lift. The mural, a collection of different collaged faces, began on Tuesday and is still in progress. Saile says he’ll stay in Kasserine as long as it takes to finish.

Filmmaker Walid Kafi continued filming his documentary on the festival, taking up-close footage of artists Tire and Shuck 2. Both had completed their expansive graffiti pieces on the wall facing a mosque and a municipal building, Tire’s composed of elaborate but bare Arabic letters, Shuck 2’s old-skool latin script with Kasserine written in neon green Arabic splashed in the middle. By today they had moved on to another wall closer to the center of town, Shuck 2’s rapidly assembled and simple Arabic mural covering a huge swath of the wall, while Tire’s giant tag was made up of a few latin letters adorned with crowns and paint drips. Kafi’s camera hovered below spray cans and behind ladders, capturing every movement.

Later on, Kafi, along with The Narcycist, Tamara Abdul Hadi, Sandhill, graffers Vajo and Kim, and Seifeddine, around whom Kafi’s documentary is oriented, all went to a Roman amphitheater just outside Kasserine. The Narcicyst gave an interview on his experience at Thursday evening’s concert and spoke about his hopes for the festival, but also about his understanding that it will not immediately change the economic and social situation most Kasserinis live in. Photographer Tamara Abdulhadi explained the techniques she used in her photography workshop, particularly allowing students to take their own photographs as a means of allowing them to choose how they are represented.

Kafi then turned his lens back on Seifeddine. In front of one if his Graffiti murals, Seif explained to journalist Sam Kimball the meaning behind his writing “My Country is My Responsibility.’” He painted this during a graffiti competition shortly after military operations against extremists, which left many locals angry and fearful. The piece was Seif’s attempt to give Kasserinis hope and strength in a period of uncertainty.

Streets Festival wrapped up with a three-on-three freestyle basketball competition, with local youth up against a French freestyle basketball team, along with Tire.

The local youth tried as best they could to catch up with the French team’s Harlem Globe Trotters-like moves. The Kasserini youth didn’t come out on top for this one, but the game ended with high-fives and pats on the back; a warm end to the festival as cold night fell once again.

Written by Sam Kimball. You can also follow Sam on Twitter @SamOnTheRoad

Yemen #2: NO HOME IN ABYAN, NO HOME IN ADEN

NO HOME IN ABYAN, NO HOME IN ADEN

The faaSuuliya, as usual, was mud on my tongue, and the bread I shoveled it off the pan with was not crispy the way they make it at the little joint I go to almost every day in Sana'a. But the red tea was just right, and I was getting my breakfast fill as the young, tired looking guy in purple ma3wūz, the fine cloth skirt wrapped around the waist which men wear in areas on both sides of the Red Sea, brought me a second pan of bubbling hot faaSuuliya. I continued scribbling questions into my little journal, ones I hoped to pose to IDPs (Internally Displaced People) from Abyan, the far southern province just to the right of the city of Aden on any map of Yemen. I had no idea what their situation was, how many of them there were, but I'd spoken to the high-energy Laura Kasinof, reporting for the NY Times, on the phone yesterday, she said there were new IDPs fleeing the renewed fighting between the Yemeni military and al Qaeda in Abyan, and that they were easy to find, so damn it, I was going to see them.


Dropping some Yemeni Ryal on the counter of the well-ventilated little joint and grabbing a toothpick from the tray, I just gave it a try: "3afwan shebēb, ta3rifū wein fi lēji'īn min Abyan?" (Pardon guys, do you all know where there are refugees from Abyan?). They scratched their heads for a moment as though I had just asked them where I could buy a pack of smokes, and then recommended I go to a particular school down the road. "You sure?" I asked. "Yea yea, everybody knows this," they replied.


Out I went across the broad parking lot in front of the little restaurant, which sat in a building that looked like any tumble-down strip mall on the edge of a small Midwestern city. In other words, it was a dull, soulless-feeling place, perpetually filled with Somalis, mostly young men black as arctic night who sat around and waited for a car to wash for the price of pennies, and a few beautiful women who guided their children around as they begged for money from anyone who would give it. I stuck my hand out on the street, a van came to a rolling halt, I pulled myself up, and we rode towards krītr, the center of old Aden, built in the crater of a collapsed volcano, which gives onto the sea.


..........


It took some riding back and forth between schools, marching through the red dust of courtyards with friendly soldiers at my side, asking where, if they did in fact exist, could I find recently arrived refugees from Jaar, a city in Abyan province under Al Qaeda control. I battled the humidity, and the growing weight of the seaside sun, and finally made it to a provincial military post right next to my hotel. The big guy with beret and sweat pouring off his pale brow, the chief, told me I needed armed guys to escort me to the refugee camp. Told me to wait a while he had a meeting. I stood around under a terrace, took pictures of submissive Somali men washing army trucks, which I was promptly ordered to erase, and chatted a bit with tired guys in skirts, sporting Kalishnakovs. An hour or so passed, the chief finally emerged from his meeting, and I found I didn't need escorts at all.


..........


The bus raced along a causeway throughout one of the many sea inlets perforating this city like potholes, then through a quarter called Skeikh Uthman, filled with industrial space and shattered apartments, half-buildings everywhere, bleached bone white by the sun and fine dust. BOOM. "Hey young guy! This is it. This is the school," yelled the driver.


I loped from the bus' sliding door, and skipped up to the gate. An old black woman, face uncovered and draped in maroon cloth, seemed undisturbed by my presence--wisely calm, in fact. Two men in conversation, also looking like they'd been plucked straight from the depths of Ethiopia, responded reverently when I greeted them gravely: "esselēmu 3aleikum." "wa 3aleikum selēm." I told the guys, and the old wise-woman, my mission in my stammering Arabic which I strain to conform to the rhythms of Yemeni speech, and they guided me by the hand to the dirt courtyard within.


A small man, composed, and also of the color that suggests the highlands of Ethiopia, half wrapped in a ma3wūz, approached me like a statesman. I told him I was here to speak to people who'd fled from Jaar, from the recently ratcheted-up bombing campaign of the American-backed Yemeni military. He affirmed, slowly, that all the people crammed into rooms in the school-turned-shelter behind him were from Jaar. I was so psyched to have found my target, I never thought through what he uttered then: "Yes, we're all from Jaar. We fled last summer during the military's offensive." Looking back, I wince a bit thinking that I was looking for IDPs from Jaar, at the behest of Laura Kasinof of the NY Times, because they'd arrived the most recently. Thought I could write a news piece. But they'd also arrived in waves over the last 9 or 10 months. These people were those who had arrived long ago, not recently. Not news, sadly.


I stood around talking to the little man, whose speech, though controlled, often evaded my comprehension, under the high metal roof, like a plane hangar, that gave shade to a slice of the courtyard. Young men, and the old woman who seemed curious now, built upon around me as coral does over a rock foundation while I spoke with the little man . Another man sauntered up, body moving more with passion and nervous thought, darker still in color and squinting eyes like a leopard's.


The man with the leopard eyes, named Abdulqadir, lead me into the yawning opening to the school-shelter behind the dirt courtyard and the strange hangar-roof above the courtyard. In we went, the crowd which had formed around me having dispersed minutes before. Through the wide passage, into the courtyard of the school, and sights which excited my eye and made my heart swell and soften. Children running at me like soldiers in a charge, many of them dark brown like burned grassland, some olive in color, all of them smiling, some with little bullet holes in the teeth formed by the lethal too-much-flouride gun. Women walked around in heavy covering, but brightly colored and flowing, unlike the black khimmār covering that has become the fashion for many urban Yemeni women. The women, many of whom were lightly colored, carried bright green ħenna designs on their faces. A beautiful sight.


I don't know what made these people have such dark, Ethiopic features other than the fact large pockets of the southern coast must have been settled by people from the Horn of Africa. Whether in the time of Ethiopian empire rule over the rich lands of Yemen in millennia past, or from more recent migrations of aħbēsh (people from ħebesh, or Abyssinia, the fertile highlands of Ethiopia and Eritrea), I don't know. But it was clear they are not from the akhdēm ("servants") class, black Yemenis of distant Ethiopian origin, who live in devastating poverty, and have virtually no rights in Yemen, and who never mix with non-black Yemenis. 


They did not come from crushing poverty, though this is what they find in the camps here in Aden and elsewhere in Yemen's south. They tell me that Jaar, their town, is fertile, and one can easily find a livelihood in agriculture. They lived well in their town before the crisis, they say. And they mix. White and black Abyani children playing and bleeding in and out of crowds of white and brown Abyani women attest to this. All of the light-colored women were linked in marriages, or some other relation, to the black members of the group.


I stepped through the open courtyard of the school, and towels and dirty laundry hung from the railing of the second floor. A light-skinned man with epic rock-star hair in ma3wūz brought me up the stairs to the upper level. With an excited outrage, as though happy to show off the deplorable conditions they lived in, he spat at me hasty Arabic in his rough native accent, motioning hurriedly for me to enter one of the little classrooms now bedrooms. I stepped in, confronted with bunks that looked too small for human occupation crammed together in the middle of the room. A tiny child layer on the bare floor, sleeping. When I went to photograph the baby, a mass of little kids rushed to stand in the frame of the photo, with flat smiles. It's nice to be in a country where most (men, at least) like to have their picture taken, but it gets maddeningly old and pointless seeming when people call out to you, beseech you, to take their picture, make some boring pose, and then walk away without caring to see the photo, satisfied that their image has been recorded.

The Abyanis kept the rooms in nice order, but 15-20 humans were not meant to inhabit 20x20 foot classrooms. The man with rock-star hair spoke to me with incredulity, condemning the NGOs and local Adeni government for forcing them into such humiliating conditions. The man rushed me into another room, where a shirtless guy lay under a blanket against the wall, his arm over his face, blocking out the sun. My rock-star friend told me the guy on the floor was sick, waiting for treatment. I went to the other side of the bunks, trying to snap pictures that conveyed the miniature conditions they lead their lives in. A few young Abyani women stood against the wall, smooth-skinned and black and beautiful. They pulled bright fabric over their faces when the shutter flapped. 


Back downstairs, I went out to the back of the building where women cooked a single small fish over a throw-together grill made of tires and old tin. They tried to make poses that looked natural, as I captured the poverty with my eyes and camera. 

Somewhere along the line, I reconnected with the leopard-eyed Abdulqadir. He took me to an ancient-looking outbuilding of the school, all cube-ish and grey concrete. He tapped the clingy metal door, and yelled a greeting (or warning) to the ghosts inside. Enter. A dim room, vast and open and naked, windows mostly covered, divided only by a small partition of laundry hanging on wires. In the far corner behind it, a woman built of cloth folds crouches by a little stove, preparing some of the inadequate and irregular supply of rice and flour that UNHCR and other org's provide them, looking over her shoulder at the pale intruder with a face that says, "Alright, but I'm busy now." I step under clothes lines, around stacks of foodstuffs, and greet the two women. A coffee-skinned man with smāTa (light scarf/head-wrap) with big belly saunters up, and talks lighting Arabic about his deplorable conditions. Deplorable indeed, though I wonder how he and his family got this whole building to themselves. He has about nine children, he said, and the two quiet women behind him are both his wives.

The sun continued to cook there little refuge for these limbo people, and my energy bled from my steadily like water might from a boiling teapot with a hole in the bottom. I ended my hours with my one-day Abyan friends with fast, frustration-and-spittle filled interview with Abdelqadir. As his leopard-eyes squinted and he painted pictures of bombs and bullets of the Yemeni army finding a home in his hometown, where Al Qaeda had settled in, I asked him if he thought of returning to Jaar. Selim, a tubby friend of his, jumped in between us before he could respond, shouting: “If there was security and stability, we would return even to a camp.”