
Sana'a - dang
http://idlewords.com/2014/07/sana_a.htm
======
616c
I work with Yemeni dudes. It is pretty ballsy to travel into Yemen for the
last two years. This is coming from a dude who has travelled to some weird and
shitty places in the Middle East. When I first came here to work, said Yemeni
dudes withs lots of friendly tribal connects said "yeah, you can come visit
with me." As of two years ago, they dread going home. If it not the militias,
and inter-village tribal warfare (a constant), gas shortages are choking the
country to death.

I have always wanted to go. Yemen is the source of all Arabic languages
(Proto-Arabic) and Semitic dialects that only really receive mention in the
Bible. Whether or not Sana'a is the oldest inhabited city (people also compare
to Damascus in this race to proven the unprovable), it is a source of history
stemming back farther than any of us can image.

And the drug shrubs! What else could you ask for.

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chrissnell
What an awesome trip. I've wanted to go there ever since I read "Motoring with
Mohammed" [1]. It's an incredible book about an American who shipwrecked on a
remote desert island off of Yemen (not Socotra) and buried a bag of valuables.
The book is the story of his trip back there--many years later--to retrieve
his bag.

It's a damned shame that the Middle East is so ravaged by conflict. There are
so many places I'd love to visit. I want to drive the Khyber Pass in my old
Land Rover, I want to visit my family's roots in the Beqaa Valley of Lebanon
(apparently a Hezbollah stronghold these days). I want to chew qat in Yemen
and float the Euphrates in Iraq. Maybe someday...

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Motoring-Mohammed-Journeys-Yemen-
Red/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Motoring-Mohammed-Journeys-Yemen-
Red/dp/067973855X)

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jvandonsel
I love Maciej's writing. His piece on the Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel
([http://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda-
weehawken_burrito_t...](http://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda-
weehawken_burrito_tunnel.htm)) is one of the funniest things I've ever read.

~~~
tokenadult
I love his writing too. My all-time favorite is one of his best known
writings, "Argentina On Two Steaks A Day,"[1] which I first read in a print
best essays anthology and didn't realize had begun as a blog post until years
later.

[1]
[http://idlewords.com/2006/04/argentina_on_two_steaks_a_day.h...](http://idlewords.com/2006/04/argentina_on_two_steaks_a_day.htm)

~~~
kudos200
My favorite by far (or, well, the other one that comes to mind) is No Evidence
of Disease. I've recommended it to all my friends.

[http://idlewords.com/2012/09/no_evidence_of_disease.htm](http://idlewords.com/2012/09/no_evidence_of_disease.htm)

~~~
tokenadult
Wow. Thanks for the link.

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chetanahuja
This is the second time I ended up on Maciej's website through a hacker news
link and ended up spending far too much time happily browsing about. He's a
far better writer than one would expect a "blogger" to be. Let's call him an
essayist instead.

This was the essay that took me to his site the first time around:

[http://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm](http://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm)

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3pt14159
I studied Civil Engineering in University.

There is no way that that city disappears. The economic incentives are too
strong to pipe water in. 3km up some mountains is nothing. Humanity has built
pipelines a thousand of kilometres long and over or through much taller
mountains.

The city might be corrupt as hell, but when there is truly a water shortage
(right now, if they are using it for crops, there isn't in the economic sense)
some rich guy is just going to bribe everyone in the way and build that
pipeline then charge everyone in the city a dollar a cubic meter or something.
Certainly cheaper than rebuilding a stone city.

~~~
idlewords
We know what a water crisis in Sana'a will look like because the city already
runs low on water every time there is a shortage of fuel:

[http://mideastafrica.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/08/30/yeme...](http://mideastafrica.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/08/30/yemens_water_woes)

It doesn't matter what technology you use to bring in water. When the cost
gets high enough, people are going to leave the city, and the poorest will
have to leave first.

~~~
3pt14159
What is cheaper, building a city or building a pipe?

I find it hard to believe that the local economy has collapsed to the point
where they can't afford a pipe to a desalination plant.

~~~
idlewords
That's one of the easiest things there is to believe. You need to work on your
believing.

~~~
msandford
You might be right that the whole thing will fall apart.

But if this place is indeed the equivalent to Manhattan I can understand the
disbelief. Compared to the trillions tied up in real estate the cost of a
pipeline to NYC would be trivial. Yeah it might cost $50b (probably much, much
less but lets go crazy) but with at least 10mm people around to receive the
water it's $5k per person amortized over a decade it comes out to
$50/mo/person

I realize that the economics in Sana'a are probably hugely different than here
in the US. But if people earn less, labor is cheaper too, etc.

The difficulty here isn't that given the facts it could happen. It's that
getting to the point where you have all the facts has turned all the
assumptions that you normally take for granted completely upside down.
Speaking as an engineer I can understand the difficulty.

~~~
rmc
Sure, manual labour is cheap. But if you want to buy computers, electric
equipment or high quality machines then you have to buy the same stuff that us
rich westerns buy. I. E. You're paying western prices.

~~~
idlewords
Do you people realize you don't need to have this debate from first
principles? There's a LOT of interesting (and depressing) cost analysis on
providing Sana'a with water vs. trying to relocate.

Not everything has to be a Fermi thought experiment.

~~~
msandford
The point I was trying to make is that a civil engineer from the US might take
a lot of factors for granted. And given those factors it would completely make
sense to build a pipeline. But it sounds like those factors don't apply in
Sana'a.

It's not the OPs inability to believe that's the problem. Show him all of his
flawed assumption and he'd readily change his mind (I would hope anyhow). But
how do you disabuse him of those things which he takes for granted here in the
US? That's a difficult process.

------
rayiner
Yemen wasn't always so dangerous. My dad used do development work in Yemen in
the early 90s. At the time it wasn't an eventful place. He was there when the
civil war broke in 1994. He was stuck in Sana'a while it was being shelled.
Finally managed to catch a C130 out of town when the US military evacuated a
bunch of Americans.

~~~
colordrops
I don't know anything about Yemen, but my impression is that the country has a
bad rap even in the middle east, and it has for a while. My father, of
Lebanese descent, moved from Lebanon in the 50s. He had stories about Yemen
from way back when. One example was that an eye for an eye was still the norm
there - a boy smashed out the eye of a cow with a rock in a morbid attempt at
fun, and the owner of the cow did the same to the boy. This punishment was
accepted in the village where this occurred.

~~~
Kiro
Sounds like the boy got what he deserved. What kind of psychopath does that to
a cow?

~~~
jtheory
Ugh. You don't even know the age of the boy, or if he even _intended_ the
cow's eye to be hit (maybe he was just throwing a rock to see it jump?), and
you're ready to judge that punishment as well-deserved?

It's all hypothetical, of course -- and no one is removing eyes based on your
say-so -- but that's a shitty punishment for anything.

Generally a punishment for a wrong-doing should try to encourage/force the
guilty party to be a functional, non-destructive member of society if at all
possible (exceptions as needed to protect others).

Punishments that harm the person's ability to earn a living, or have normal
interactions with other people, are counterproductive (and can force the
person to resort to criminal behavior to survive in the future), so
punishments that inflict serious physical and/or psychological damage are
stupid. They give a few people their "vengeance", for whatever that's worth,
and otherwise they damage the society as a whole.

~~~
Kiro
> in a morbid attempt at fun

That's what I'm basing my comment on and what we're discussing. If the OP is
wrong is another discussion but I don't see any room for interpretation here.

> maybe he was just throwing a rock to see it jump?

Are you seriously saying it's OK to throw rocks at cows?

> should

According to who? My grandfather was a prison governor and a pioneer in
treating prisoners humane. Before his time the general thought was to "throw
them in a cell with only water and bread". So I definitely know this
discussion very well and I still believe the punishment itself could be an end
goal.

~~~
jtheory
> Are you seriously saying it's OK to throw rocks at cows?

There's a lot of space between "OK" and "take the boy's eye out with a rock",
which is what I'm arguing is the wrong punishment. (No, it's not OK to throw
rocks at cows.)

>> should > According to who?

According to me, of course, for the reasons I (briefly) gave. You're welcome
to continue the discussion with your own arguments, and your grandfather's
experiences sound interesting.

------
jpatokal
_Every rooftop has a low wall around it and has been capped off with a little
cone of rubble._

In case anybody was wondering, this is most likely because Yemen has the same
daft law as much of the Middle East: you only start paying property tax when
your house is complete, so if you leave the "last floor" (roof) notionally
incomplete (a row of bricks plus some construction detritus, as if you were
still working on it), you never pay tax.

~~~
idlewords
I have heard this with regard to Cairo, but as for Yemen... citation needed.
It sounds like reactor-grade bolonium.

~~~
jpatokal
Good luck digging up citations to Yemeni tax law, but I've seen it in Jordan
as well. Perhaps some shared vestige of Ottoman rule?

~~~
idlewords
People have reported similar stories from Turkey and Greece, for what it's
worth. No one seems to agree whether it's about tax stuff or leaving the
option to extend dwellings by another floor.

In Yemen the practice is to have the top floor of a dwelling be the mufraj
(room with views where men chew qat) which is what makes me skeptical about
the tax idea there. The buildings certainly don't look unfinished from rooftop
level.

The thing that makes me most skeptical, though, is just that it's such a
wonderful, repeatable story.

------
dfryer
I was in Sana'a around this time last year, the article paints a strikingly
accurate picture of the experience. Yemenis as a whole are the friendliest
group of people I've had the pleasure to meet. On the other hand, the problems
of the nation seem to be incurable, unless someone has a recipe for turning
sand into water and oil.

~~~
guard-of-terra
It looks like they could employ something like this baby:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-350_reactor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-350_reactor)

Sadly it doesn't seem to be mainstream anymore.

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kimdouglasmason
Certainly a place to watch considering that they're going to run out of
ground-water sooner rather than later. I imagine the graph of population will
look pretty similar to that of reindeer on St Matthew Island:

[http://www.geo.arizona.edu/Antevs/nats104/00lect21crash2.gif](http://www.geo.arizona.edu/Antevs/nats104/00lect21crash2.gif)

~~~
aaron695
I call BS on the reindeer on St Matthew Island story.

There's evidence it was a natural disaster, which makes much more sense -

[http://www.weatherwise.org/Archives/Back%20Issues/2009/Nov-D...](http://www.weatherwise.org/Archives/Back%20Issues/2009/Nov-
Dec%202009/full-Reindeer.html)

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Tepix
Great story, excellent pictures. The colours and the dynamic range are sweet -
does anyone know what equipment he uses?

------
contingencies
Best middle eastern food in Bangkok is Yemeni, as rated by my family and two
random middle eastern dudes we met under our sitar teacher's apartment in
another part of the city who pointed us there as the best place to go. The
owner screams when you walk in... every customer is _Habibi!_

------
amass
It's interesting that a place that has such overwhelmingly friendly people
gives the impression of being a terribly dangerous place to visit to so many
Americans.

~~~
tptacek
It is in fact a dangerous place to visit. Having an incredibly friendly and
hospitable population is something it has in common with several other
dangerous places to visit.

~~~
amass
I definitely don't dispute that fact. But if you ask most people in America
what their opinion is of the Yemeni population, "friendly and welcoming" would
not be the most common response.

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baconhigh
this was fascinating, thanks for sharing

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aaronbrethorst
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8006678](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8006678)

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eLobato
How is this Hacker News worthy content? It's a great article, granted, but it
has nothing to do with hacking (unless I'm missing something).

If you downvote this comment, I think explaining in a reply why this article
belongs in Hacker News would be great.

~~~
dang
Hacker News is about more than hacking and startups. That has been in the site
prospectus for some 7 years and is kind of the whole idea.

I posted it because it's damn interesting, and secondarily because the site
could use a little more diversity.

~~~
Zancarius
I found it fascinating, because it's a place I'd never go to--and because I
admire those with the intestinal fortitude to visit places that could
potentially land them at the bottom of a 6' hole in the ground. One of the
reasons I read HN is because of the occasional morsel like this that is
simultaneously unexpected and rewarding.

The other side of the coin is that it was well written and humorous, which
helps, but the language itself brought to life incredible images. Writing is a
skill. Good writing is an art. Both can be appreciated but one is adored. I
always assumed that hacker-types generally had a wide array of eclectic tastes
and interests, and I'm pretty sure some of the more famous ones would agree
[1]. Besides, who _doesn 't_ like a good, lively story about a culture that's
alien to the majority of us Westerners?

I'm still puzzled though. I've never understood why some people have a
penchant for clicking links they know they'll hate, read them anyway, and then
post their misery and suffering. It would seem less of a cognitive load to
ignore the unwanted than to embrace and let it fester.

[1]
[http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/reading_habits.html](http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/reading_habits.html)

