Uploads from lauren*o, tagged صنعاء

the view

nobody@flickr.com (lauren*o) — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 13:43:41 -0800

lauren*o posted a photo:

the view out my bedroom window, up the road to school

naksh

nobody@flickr.com (lauren*o) — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 13:23:58 -0800

lauren*o posted a photo:

These are my hands and feet in these photos. Naksh is called "the black henna" (or just naksh, obviously) in Yemen and is applied to women on special occasions. I haven't been able to find a lot of information about it online, but here's one article.

A woman that was a friend of a friend did my naksh. She ground up a black rock in a mortar and pestle that smelled like charcoal and tar. I have no idea what it was, but apparently lots of people have really bad reactions to it. (Watch out if you google naksh for that reason - there are a lot of photos online of people's bad reactions, and they're gross.) She dissolved the ground up rock in perfume and painted it on me with a nailpolish brush. When she was done I had to wait for it to dry a little, then she covered them with vaseline and wrapped my hands and feet in plastic wrap and towels, and I had to keep those on for as long as I could stand it. It got pretty hot and itchy, and after a few hours I washed the vaseline off. It looked great, and it didn't really bother my hands, but the skin on the top of my feet didn't deal with this too well. After a couple days I couldn't handle the itching and had to head to the city's nicer supermarket to buy a pumice stone (try explaining that in Arabic. I got some laughs.) and rubbed as much of the skin off the top of my feet as I could stand - this helped quite a bit, although you could still see the dye had sunk through many more layers of skin.

The pattern lasted for a few weeks after I came back to the US, and I watched one particular spot on one of my fingernails gradually fade. When I noticed it was finally gone it was a pretty emotional moment - mostly because I missed Yemen and my friends there and it seemed that much more far away when there wasn't a physical imprint of the place left on my body anymore.

I've considered getting this design tattooed on my feet, but I understand feet are one of the most painful places you can tattoo and in most cases artists won't do this anyway because the upkeep at first is so difficult (getting them air but keeping them so clean can be a problem). I'm probably better off not spending massive amounts of money on impractical tattoos anyway.

naksh

nobody@flickr.com (lauren*o) — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 13:23:40 -0800

lauren*o posted a photo:

the roof

nobody@flickr.com (lauren*o) — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 13:44:27 -0800

lauren*o posted a photo:

I took this picture on the roof of the women's dorm.

the house across the street

nobody@flickr.com (lauren*o) — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 13:44:09 -0800

lauren*o posted a photo:

I'm not sure how many people lived in this place across the street, but there were seemingly innumerable children around there at all hours of the day and night. The black Yemenis, al-akhdam or al-muhamasheen, are perceived comparably to India's untouchables. Googling "al-akhdam" or "al-muhamasheen" will bring up plenty of articles on the human rights issues of this class, including this New York Times article. I only saw the parents of these children (or some of the children - certainly there was plenty of extended family around the house) a couple times when I was up at very odd hours. The father wore the orange jumpsuit of the capital's garbage collectors, most of whom were of al-akhdam, and rode a motorcycle.

walking in to old Sanaa

nobody@flickr.com (lauren*o) — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 13:02:45 -0800

lauren*o posted a photo:

coming into the old city on a trip back from the grocery store, my second day there - all the architecture in the old city looks like this

Hind

nobody@flickr.com (lauren*o) — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 13:03:53 -0800

lauren*o posted a photo:

This is Hind, the cat that lived in the women's dorm. Here she's perched on the window sill next to my bed, where I spent the majority of the last week of my trip, suffering from some unidentifiable illness that may or may not have been giardia.

walking in to old Sanaa

nobody@flickr.com (lauren*o) — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 13:03:02 -0800

lauren*o posted a photo:

coming into the old city on a trip back from the grocery store, my second day there - all the architecture in the old city looks like this

old Sanaa

nobody@flickr.com (lauren*o) — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 13:03:21 -0800

lauren*o posted a photo:

The street/ditch in the foregroun is called the Saila, and it's pretty much that - a street/ditch. It's a major road through the city of Sanaa, but whenever it rains it is flooded with dirty water from the city and the surrounding villages, and it reeks of raw sewage. People still drive through it when the water is up to the bottom of the car or so. (I'm sorry to say the only decent pictures I have of the Saila when it is flooded were taken by other people.) I know it's hard to believe, but the flooded street is a really beautiful sight, even if it does smell awful.

bayt al-talibat

nobody@flickr.com (lauren*o) — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 13:03:37 -0800

lauren*o posted a photo:

This is the women's dorm for the school I attended.