No guns for Nater

Today is Friday or "Jumuah", the day of prayer. At 4am sharp the usual "allahhu akbar" woke us up, or rather just startled us from our light sleep (we went to sleep around 6pm last night). At around 7am we went on a little journey around the Old City by the National Museum. The streets were still wet from last night’s rain, and in the suq (outdoor market) men were disassembling the huge tent from last night’s wedding, which it seemed that everyone from Yemen was invited to as the streets were teeming with men wearing their finest jambias and women with their sharpest, blackest burkas. Later there were fireworks and music until at least 11:30. After the shops opened this morning I bought some water and bread. The shops here are not unlike the little tiendas in Mexico, except the only English spoken is “allo”. The bread here is amazing, and cheap; it seems as though nearly everything is done by artisans. Across from the store that sells bread is a mill that mills grains for the bread, there are shoe repair shops everywhere, and tailors also. I really enjoyed speaking with the shop people although I’m sure they were confused by my minimal utterances. I’ve found that even women will speak to me, which is way different than my expectations. One other thing that is both a disappointment and probably a blessing at the same time is that there are no fully automatic weapons allowed in Sana’a; National Geographic from 2000 exalted the beauties of buying weapons in the suq, but alas since then they have become illegal. However, outside of Sana’a they are perfectly legal and indeed part of the uniform of the normal Yemeni.