NEAL CONAN, host: Clashes continue in Yemen as the future of that nation becomes more and more uncertain. After months of unrest, thousands cheered the departure of President Ali Abdullah Saleh who left for medical treatment in Saudi Arabia after he was wounded in a rocket attack on his compound. Some say he's severely hurt and will never return; others, that he will be back in Sanaa within a few days. Amidst all that, it's hard to imagine Yemen as a tourist destination. Two months ago, though, Patrick Symmes, a contributing editor for Outside magazine arrived there to write about the culture, the food, the dolphins and white sand beaches, and he found protests, checkpoints and police searches.
If you've been to Yemen as a tourist, what was your experience? 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation at our website. That's at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION. Patrick Symmes joins us now from our bureau in New York City. He's a contributing editor for Outside magazine. His piece about his experience in Yemen is in the latest issue. And nice to have you with us today.
PATRICK SYMMES: Good to be here, Neal.
CONAN: And you were kicked out of the country just a couple of days before the real shooting began in Change Square there in Sanaa. Did you know you were walking into a country on the brink of revolution?
SYMMES: It was always my intention to write about Yemen in normal quiet days, which is merely chaotic and merely troubled by violence. Yemen even, you know, last year, was already a place where you had problems with al-Qaida, kidnapping, yet there is a tourism industry. There are some amazing natural resources there, incredible culture and ancient history, gorgeous island off the coast, which even in the midst of this total revolution in the streets, tourists are flying in, camping out on the beaches, doing stuff. So even in the midst of this, I was kind of - I was fascinated why would people risk going to Yemen? What was so great about Yemen that you would actually risk Yemen itself to see it?
CONAN: And one of the reasons you speculate is that people will do almost anything to avoid having to give back or give up a cash contribution in advance.
SYMMES: I think that's right. Reservations cannot be canceled at any cost.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SYMMES: But there is another aspect to it, which to my own surprise I was totally seduced by it, which is this is the rarest kind of travel, which is time travel into a culture that has not modernized, where the ancient city at the heart of Sanaa is just incredible. It's biblical. You know, mudstone towers with courts decoration. It looks like this whole city of gingerbread, and people are living there in these narrow lanes. Everything about it reeks of sort of the 14th century, and it's very rare in this jaded world full of, you know, intermixed global cultures that you find a place that is, you know, the most romantic version of the old Arab world, but, of course, it comes with some downsides.
CONAN: You described it as having one foot in the medieval world and the other foot in antiquity.
SYMMES: Yeah. A lot of the - if you look at the history of Yemen, you know, a lot of the entries are pretty old, so, you know, the Romans were there. They invaded it because they wanted to get better prices for frankincense and myrrh.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SYMMES: This is where frankincense and myrrh come from. It's - even Arabs call it, you know, (foreign language spoken), beyond the beyond. It's, you know, obscure even to them, yet, you know, they're in the process of this, you know, Marco Polo was there. He passed through. So they're hoping to kind of develop tourism and exploit these, you know, this fascinating ancient culture, this incredible architecture that's everywhere. But it's a hard sell.
CONAN: It's a hard sell. The one place you went to, the center for tourism, is an island that used to have an old Soviet naval base on it many years ago, Socotra.
SYMMES: Yeah. And it - on first glance, it's sort of, you know, it's way out in the middle of the - really the Gulf of Aden, directly across from the piracy capital of Somalia. So how fun is that? But it turned out to be an amazing and wonderful place with this beautiful sort of culture that mixed the Arab world with the Indian influences on the trade winds there. You know, the last time they were big and wealthy, you know, Alexander the Great sent a colony to live there because it controlled the trade to India.
So you see this incredible history all around you, and then, the ocean was just amazing, you know, fantastic scuba diving, intact coral reefs. So it's one of these places that hasn't had the pressures of modernization and is very rewarding, but then, you got to be watching the horizon all the time.
CONAN: You described one place, though, as the Valley of the Italians.
SYMMES: Yeah, yeah. We did run into - you know, most people sort of chickened out on tourism to Yemen if it meant, you know, the going trekking in the mountains. We left the mountains where people go trekking. There's nobody there. But when we got to this island, the Italians love it. It's a warm beach for them, and they were there. Hundreds of them spread out in these valleys, sort of car caravans, you know, with big tour companies and tents and barbecues and volleyball and itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny bikinis.
And it's, you know, it's a world where al-Qaida is operating in Yemen. And they are - I talked to the woman who runs the tourism board. Her job is to sell tourism in Yemen and she was very practical. She said, you know, we can have certain kinds of beach resorts but they have to be pretty Islamic or they're going to get attacked by terrorists. So you really have to be careful about, sort of, what activity you're going to pursue in a fascinating country like this.
CONAN: So in a place like Socotra, they will serve you beer but non-alcoholic beer. And the Italian tourists may wear itsy-bitsies, but the Yemeni women wear, well, the full veil.
SYMMES: Yeah. It is one of these countries where it's quite surprising. You can feel quite safe. Socotra felt safe. It is safe - so far. But at the same time, you know, I'm - I think Americans are very, very loath to even consider being in a place that's unstable. And you notice that, generally, Europeans are much more familiar with that.
So you did have, you know, some people used to consider the kind of risk of going to Yemen as part of the draw. There was this thing called hospitality kidnapping, where, especially in the '90s, like you'd go out to some rural area and a local tribe would allegedly kidnap you and they'd give you tea and cushions and you'd sit there and be - you'd be held for two days while they negotiated over the cell phone over some obscure political dispute they're in, it'd all be resolved with handshakes. And that was actually appealing to some people. They kind of built a little tourism model out of it. But then it started to go bad. And I don't know why I'm laughing, because it's tragedy.
CONAN: Because some Korean tourists were blown up by al-Qaida.
SYMMES: Yeah. Four Korean tourists were specifically targeted at a place where you go to take pictures. Tourism is both - their only economic resource, a country with no water and beaches. They have no oil. They have no oil money. They have no water. They can't grow crops. And yet, they have large portion of the Red Sea, which is used by Egypt and Israel as a big tourism base. So they can dream about developing that resource. But I found that myself, I'm a pretty jaded and hardened traveler and I shuddered at some of the risks that were involved.
CONAN: We want to hear from those of you who've been tourists in Yemen. Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email: talk@npr.org. And Neil is on the line, calling from San Francisco.
NEIL (Caller): Yeah. Hello?
CONAN: Hi.
NEIL: Yeah. I was in Yemen, but this was in the mid-1970s, so, you know, things may have changed. There are a couple of things. It was a very green country in places near Taizz and Sana'a. That's the reason why there's a big population there, because they do get rain. So it's just very unusual for the Arabian Peninsula. On the other hand, there's the Marib Dam, which is 3,000 years old, partly in ruins, but a major construction project for that time of antiquity, you know, anywhere in the world really.
The one thing I was disturbed at was the fact that they all - well, the men seem to sit around chewing khat or qat, Q-A-T. And it has a kind of narcotic effect and they all seemed to be kind of - they didn't seem to have much initiative. They were all just chewing this darn stuff all the time.
CONAN: Well, the way Patrick Symmes describes it, not a lot of has changed since the 1370s, much less the 1970s. But, Patrick, I'll let you speak for yourself.
SYMMES: Well, the khat diagnosis is correct. It's still the number one preoccupation of the Yemeni male, is to go shopping at lunch time to get some freshly harvested khat. And you can't really avoid the stuff. Like taxi drivers were handing it to me as a sign of greeting. So you start chewing as you ride along. And I chewed it a couple of time and no two Yemenis can really agree on its effect. They describe it as sort of mellow, but they're talkative. They're calm, but they're excited. They're visionary, but they're tired. I found the same mixed bag. I chewed it the first time, I was crawling the walls of my hotel room. It's like a - supposedly a very mild form of an amphetamine. And the second time, I was out in the streets and I just, you know, it was like having a cup of tea or something, just kind of relaxing.
So it's not a super potent drug. It is a huge suck on the amount of money and water in the country, because they will pay anything to get it. It is addictive and it takes a lot of water to grow it. So it's where all the money in Yemen goes. It's where all the water goes.
CONAN: What does a khat crop look like?
SYMMES: It's a leafy, dark green bush, maybe about the height of a man, sort of a shrub. And they'll plant it anywhere. You'll see it in the steepest mountains. And the caller is right. It's worth noting. This is the most mountainous part of the Arab world. It's routine you have 10,000-foot mountains there. Even the capital, Sana'a, is at 7,000 feet. So you do get a little rain. You do get a little greenery. And these densely cultivated terraced slopes of mountains and these ancient fortified towns up on top. And what they're growing mostly is khat. And then, they'll race down to the big city in a pickup truck at lunchtime and everybody starts buying everywhere. And the rest of the day is shot.
And the joke among the Yemenis, well, the revolution is going to go nowhere because everyone stops at lunchtime to chew khat.
NEIL: A couple of other points, if I might.
CONAN: Go.
NEIL: Yeah. I went to the north of Yemen, near the Arabian border, and there was a lot of old tanks and guns battered, lying around on the roads because Nasser of Egypt had waged a war there in the '60s. And this was just left over. Another point, I missed - what I miss seeing was Hadhramaut and Aden, because they were off-bounds. It wasn't - it was not a unified country at that time. And Hadhramaut is famous for its so-called skyscraper cities, again, quite ancient, in the southeast portion. And I would have really liked to seen those. Aden itself - by the way, did you - the correspondent, did you go to Aden?
SYMMES: No. Again, I found it was off-limits. There was a violent shooting going on there. At the same time as I was in Sana'a, there was very little violence. There were mass demonstrations.
NEIL: Yeah. It was - Aden is always difficult to get to. At that time, too. It was just off limits. One other point, there's a fair number of Yemenis here in San Francisco - a lot of people here don't even know that - and most of them work as janitors in office buildings.
CONAN: Hmm. Interesting. Thanks, Neil. We're talking with Patrick Symmes, a contributing editor for Outside magazine. His piece "Sand Storm" appears in the June issue of the magazine. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
And let's talk with Abdulleh(ph), Abdulleh with us from Minneapolis.
ABDULLEH (Caller): Yes. Hi, Neal. How are you?
CONAN: Very well. Thanks.
ABDULLEH: Well, actually, I've been in Yemen for the past three or four years, and I am now going back within it. I do have a wife and a child there who's - my wife is a Yemeni citizen. But the thing is that what's not being portrayed on the media and what the facts are sometimes way too different. And the other thing that's going on there is that the government, as the guest said, that they don't have that - anything coming from the country, but they're getting all the resources in terms of funding from the other countries, including the U.S.
But the government is run by specific people that are - that could be called a family, and it runs for that specific people. The government is just failing the people, but the people are not failed people. And how it's been described with the khat situation, I can agree with that as well.
CONAN: Well, that people chew it or that it's bad for them?
ABDULLEH: Well, it's absolutely bad. And that people - those people at the same time chew it, and they spent a lot of money and then water is also very scarce in that country. I mean, they - almost all the water that goes to planting and...
CONAN: OK. Well, thanks very much. And good luck on your trip back. And we wish you and your family well.
ABDULLEH: Well, I was kind of scared, but I don't have anything to lose, I guess, by getting my family out of there.
CONAN: Getting them out might be a good idea. Patrick Symmes, you have, well, very little to say positive about the government in Yemen.
SYMMES: Well, the, you know, the government, as the caller mentioned - this is a family operation. The president, who just left the country, has a son running the most important armed forces unit and four nephews running the other four most important military or state security operations. What little money there is in the country - they do actually have a small amount of oil, just enough for the money to disappear and be used in a patronage system. Thirty-two years under one president who has played every side of every conflict.
He started out as a defender of Saddam Hussein and actually invited al-Qaida into the country in the '90s. Now, he's a close ally of the U.S. who is bitterly fighting al-Qaida and bragging about it in order to defend his position as president of the United States. He wants to keep the U.S. doing a little tango with him as he claims to be, you know, the counterterrorism friend of America. But I think most of the protesters I interviewed blamed him for that chaos and think he just makes everything so crazy in the country that it's therefore weak.
CONAN: Let's see if we go to Kenson(ph), Kenson with us from Little Rock.
KENSON (Caller): Hi, let me turn my air-conditioning down. I was a U.S. tourist in Yemen in 1995, traveling with my family and a French adventure travel group led by a personal friend. I chewed khat every day and enjoyed it. And I love the highlands and the beautiful architecture and the medieval social feeling of Yemen. People walked around with bundles of paper money and, you know, in their front pockets. Strangers stopped and spoke to each other in the street. Another stranger would stop over, listen to the conversation, and make their little comment and move on. I found it a pre-modern social public space, and it was beautiful. The only problem was there are no women in it - in that space.
CONAN: In that space. The women excluded from public life pretty much. Except, it was interesting, Patrick Symmes, you said there was one area amidst the protests there in Change Square, where amongst tens of thousands of protesters, you found about a few score women roped off in their own area?
SYMMES: Yeah. There was maybe about 80, which was, you know, less than 1 percent of the crowd, but by Yemeni standards it was still a lot and they were sort of corralled off with a, you know, sort of honor guard. And I got permission and went in and interviewed women. And I was very struck, you know, that I guess the second woman I spoke to was - had a doctorate from Sana'a University. She was veiled. All but her eyes were veiled. She was wearing gloves. And women in Yemen are very traditional and very modest in this way. And the first thing she said to me is, just because my face is veiled doesn't mean my brain is veiled.
And so she had that sense that I think, you know, women can play a strong role in this conflict, that they have a part - they need to participate in this, that it is partly about the status of women in society or opportunities for them, or having a voice in their own government. Not that it's necessarily a gender issue. What they're talking about is democracy. But it was - I did go out of my way to make sure that I heard from a couple of women, including the tourism promoter from the Board of Tourism.
CONAN: And in the meantime we have, as you mentioned, the demographic bulge. You have an ecological crisis developing. Water is going to run out in the capital pretty soon. Very little oil, that's running out too. Hard to tell the future for this place.
SYMMES: Yeah. I found it actually very encouraging to talk to people at the sort of high water mark in the demonstrations before the violence all tore it up a bit. I think there is an impulse there towards nation building, towards what they called a modern society, but it's going to be a very difficult year or two ahead.
CONAN: Patrick Symmes, thanks for your time.
SYMMES: Thank you.
CONAN: Patrick Symmes, a contributing editor to Outside magazine. You could find a link to his piece "Sand Storm" on our website. Go to npr.org, click on TALK OF THE NATION. Tomorrow, should you buy, sell, rent, own — NPR's Chris Arnold joins us to wade through the housing morass. That's the next TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
