February 8 -- Chewing qat in Yemen

While wandering in old Sana’a, we happened into what was called a hotel. Literally it was an ancient five-story building, very dark inside because it had no artificial lighting.

It had a center “lobby” or “atrium” that rose to the ceiling five stories up and the floors were built around that space. The owner, pictured here, explained that in the old days (and only God knows when that was!), the livestock stayed in the center space and the travelers took rooms on the floors above where they could sleep in the little cave-like rooms on each level. The top floor or roof is actually a space where Yemenis entertain on top of the city rooftops, as it were, and with a spectacular view of the mountains that surround it.

Our guide to the hotel was chewing qat, the ubiquitous woody branches of a plant that all Yemeni men chew each afternoon. The leaves and branches give off a drug that is both calming and slightly addictive. The chewers tend to drink lots of liquids and engage in what are at first lively, but later increasingly somnolent conversations. At the end of the afternoon, they slouch off to sleep it off.
And they return the next day to do it again.

It is said that 70 percent of all Yemeni men engage in qat chewing, which really means that they get nothing accomplished in the afternoon and evening. Then there is the cost – about 500 to 2000 riyals a day, which is about 1 to 10 dollars. That’s a lot of money in a country as poor as this. There is one entire souk or market in the old city devoted only to qat, and from what I saw, the bargaining is pretty fierce.
And then, there is what qat does to the economy. The chewing of qat is so popular that its production on farms has displaced virtually all food production in Yemen, a country that once supplied fruits, flowers and vegetables to the entire Gulf region. Moreover, qat growing requires enormous amounts of water. It is said to consume 40 percent of the available water in the Sana’a basin, and there are predictions that the Sana’a valley will run out of water enough for the growing population in about 15 years unless a solution is found. There is no solution in sight.

So, buy some qat leaves and start chewing.

Yes, it looks like you’ve got a mouthful of azalea branches and leaves.

In case you were wondering, no, I have not tried qat. One good reason is that it is classified as a class one drug in the U.S.