Manakah, Hajjarah, Hoteib and Lukamat Al Gadhi in the Harraz Mountains

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After putting off the trip for a long time, I finally took the opportunity to visit Yemen’s most famous mountainous district, the Harraz Mountains. I love the mountains, so I can’t believe it has taken me this long to make the trip. Just a two hour drive from my home in Sana’a, one would think that I would have taken the trip sooner. But I’m starting to put off traveling to places unless I have a reason to be there. It just makes it so much more fulfilling. So while in Yemen, I try to wait until I can travel with Yemeni friends. For this trip, I waited until the national holiday, Eid, when my good Yemeni friend, Maki, would have time off work to travel with me. We actually had wanted to go on a trip last year during the same holiday, but for various reasons it didn’t work out. This time we determined to make it happen!

And I’m so glad I waited.

This would be the first time for both Maki and I to visit Manakah, so everything was new for us both. We didn’t have any plans. We knew we wanted to hike, but that was all. Maki had heard of my adventures in the US this summer, and I think he was secretly determined to show me that he wasn’t afraid of a good, long hike. Time would tell…

After arriving in Manakah we had a meal in a famous hotel where all the tourists stay. After eating, we hiked to nearby Hajjarah because I had heard there was a better hotel there. When we arrived we instantly preferred the village to Manakah. It was quiet and sleepy. It was exactly what I wanted to get away from the hustle of life in Sana’a. Unfortunately the hotel wanted an astronomical price for the room—6,000 riyals! (Roughly $30.) We complained for a bit, and the reality hit me that I didn’t even bring the cash for us to stay in a place so expensive the whole time. So we eventually brought the price down a little. I decided it was worth it to stay just one night, and the price included supper and breakfast. The food was quite good!

The long hike

The next day we took off at 7:30am and meandered our way around the area villages. It was fun to see Maki feel as excited about seeing his own countryside as I was. It was even more fun to see people in the villages treat him like a foreigner just like me! He has a fair complexion and when dressed in western clothes, most folks think he’s a foreigner. We joked that we should pretend I’m the Yemeni and he’s the tourist when we met people on the trail. Maybe that would actually work in 100 years when I can finally speak Arabic well.

The views during our hike definitely fulfilled their reputation. The quiet, clean air made me want to move to the area permanently. We also saw several children on the way, each one calling out “Qalm! Qalm!” which means “Pen! Pen!” I was happy to see that foreigners had given them something more productive than candy. Unfortunately, the only thing I had to give was a backpack full of small cakes, but they were well received.

If Maki had determined to impress me with his hiking ability, he certainly succeeded! We did a bit of scrambling off the main trail and kept up a good pace. He never once complained. He was the perfect hiking companion.

Mixed feelings in Hoteib

We continued until the mid–day prayer when we arrived in Hoteib, both of us completely unprepared for the odd town. The whole place was quite surreal. Men and women dressed in non–Yemeni clothes. Everything was quite clean. Many people didn’t understand me when I spoke Arabic. I kept thinking, “This place is just like India.” Maki’s fast pace slowed to an amble as he stared around him, thinking he had left his own country. We climbed the steps to the white Masjid above the city, and took in the views.

It turns out, Hoteib is a pilgrimage site for Islmaili Muslims from all over the world, but particularly from India. I couldn’t get a straight answer about the history of the village with it’s mysterious shrine, so after returning home I did some internet searches. I couldn’t find anything except a brief snippet from a tourism website:

“Hoteib is a small village and pilgrimage site perched on the easternside of Jebal Messar. Ismaili pilgrims come to Al Hoteib to visit the tomb of the 6th century (H) Ismaili scholar Hattem bin Ibrahim bin al Hussein al Hamadi. Thousands of pilgrims visit every year from Pakistan, India, America, and other places. The Bukhara Ismailis of Bombay financed the paved road to the village of Hoteib where they make a yearly pilgrimage on the 16th of Moharram. The work of the scholar Ibrahim bin Hussein was disseminated widely by his son Hattem, who was well–known and well–respected in his own right. Hattem spread bin Hussein’s work to other Islamic peoples in Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. His writings developed the theology of the new sect. He started off in Kawkaban but soon faced problems from the Sultan in Sana’a (Ali bin Hattem Al Yami), who was threatened by Hattem’s widespread acclaim as a wise ruler. Hattem returned to the Harraz mountains, where the Sultan of Harraz Saba’ bin Yusuf al Yabari at first encouraged Hattem’s teaching. They allied to take over the fortress of Shibam Harraz (al Meassar). Once this was done, the Sultan, apprehensive about Hattem’s political power, pushed him and his followers to the peak of al Hoteib, where Hattem continued to preach in a cave. The Ismailis held an important position in the ruling of Harraz until the Zayedis conquered them in 914 (H).”

Our visit turned somewhat sour when we found there wasn’t a single restaurant in the village for weary hikers, and no one invited us to a meal. After living in Yemen for awhile, you almost expect a meal when you show up in a town. But I suppose everyone else in the village were also temporary guests, so they didn’t have the means to invite us to share in their meal. Still, I think someone should start a restaurant of some kind. Fortunately I had just a little food in my pack, but what if we had been hiking for 8 hours without a meal?

Worse still, I met a Yemeni man in the village that greeted me with an overly sweet smile. Asking me where I was from, I told him “America.”

“America?” “Are you an original American?”

(Me thinking: “What exactly do you mean by original?”)

“Well, I am of German descent.”

To which he proceeded to sing the praises of the Germans while contrasting their brilliance with the stupid Americans. I knew where this was headed, and wasn’t happy about it. He was like a few other Yemeni’s I have met that are euphoric in their praises of Hitler because of his hatred for the Jews. I was shocked at how angry I became. I wanted to yell at the guy, “YOU’RE THE STUPID FOOL! DON’T YOU REALIZE HITLER KILLED MUSLIMS TOO!? HE’D KILL YOU TOO!”

But instead we just walked away.

It really bothered me for awhile. In fact, I told Maki that it reminded me of a verse I had read just the same day:

“The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart: his words were softer than oil, yet were they drawn swords.”
—Psalm 55:21

We then looked at the passage where Jesus discusses the hypocrisy of the religious leaders in Matthew 23. There he condemns the leaders for their worthless religion based on tradition and not true submission…a religion that focused everything on “cleaning the outside of the dish” when the inside was “full of extortion and excess.”

I began to think to myself that modern Islam was so similar. Everyone is so concerned about looking good, but the attitude of being clean from the inside out is not the priority. However, upon more reflection, I realized that ALL PEOPLE act the same way. So many suffer from the same disease. Not only that, the thought struck me then (as it does now while I write this) that I am the same way. Have I determined to be clean from the inside? When no one is looking? I realized I was no better than that sick, old man whose hero was Hitler. I’m no better than that man when I love myself more than I love to honor God.

So we left Hoteib a little hungry. Hungry for physical food as well as true spiritual nourishment.

An old dying village, but still beautiful

We next stumbled upon a small village with a long name, “Lukamat Al Gadhi.” My teacher told me Lukamat means “a bite of food” or “morsel.” Madhi means “judge.” So the town means something like, “the morsel of the judge.” I found the name interesting because in reality the last morsel of anything handed down to this town has long since vanished. The town is a depressing, run–down image of faded glory. One of the local boys, Gassam, explained to me that only 10 houses remained, and that everyone else had left. The well was dry. It was as if the town was waiting to die.

Yet it was the most amazing little village I had ever seen. All around us were towering mudbrick houses and little passageways. Little children were in the street playing with firecrackers (an Eid tradition that is sure to horrify Americans) though I wasn’t able to take most of their pictures because the girls didn’t approve. But our visit was an eye–opener for both Maki and I. Maki even said, “We have everything we need, and yet we’re not satisfied.” I couldn’t agree more.

We left and arrived in Manakah where we spent the night, and I nursed a cold that had been slowly developing since the day before our trip began.

Surprise awakening on the road to Sana’a

The next day we returned to Sana’a in the back of a “HiLux” Toyota pickup truck. Normally Yemeni’s treat this form of transportation with distain. Only the poorest of the poor ride in the back of a pickup truck. Maki even told me that he heard some folks talking about us in one of the villages through which we passed.

“Look! Even the foreigners don’t have any money!”

I found it funny that I actually preferred this mode of transportation…I love the wind in my hair.

Not everyone in the back of the truck appreciated the ride as I did. Two little boys became quite sick from the twisting roads and threw up repeatedly. I felt sorry for the guy that was downwind from the first boy until the second boy on my side of the truck became sick himself!

But this gruesome thought was soon forgotten shortly thereafter when a barrage of rocks peppered us in the back of the truck and a large boulder smashed the front hood of the truck. Apparently a herd of goats had been grazing on the hill above us as we rounded a corner. They had dislodged some rocks and it caused a small rock slide. For sure, if we had been there a split–second earlier I may not have lived to tell about it.

Which reminds me, there are still so many in America that are so concerned about me getting killed with guns or bombs by a terrorist here. But the stark reality is that transportation is the major killer of people in these countries. During our trip to the mountains, we must have seen at least four overturned and battered vehicles on the side of the road. Local newspapers listed 87 accidents during the Eid holiday, putting the death toll at 48—of those, 27 were children.

So we arrived back in Sana’a pensive…feeling enriched and thankful. Thankful not only for life, but also for our blessings. We have so many opportunities that others do not have. Just the simple convenience of running water is a luxury for many who must carry heavy jugs of water great distances just for survival. So many struggle and scrape away at life, while I take hot showers…every day.

Submitted by paul on Wed, 10/08/2008 - 10:32am.