The Day Job

I'm quite pleased with how this rewritten intro to Yemen turned out. Basic; but reads OK. Not the simplest national history in the world.

Yemen - General Introduction

The modern history of Yemen is a complex and troubled one. The 20th century witnessed the withdrawal of colonial powers, foreign-backed war and financial dependency; Yemen was a Cold War battleground and went through reunification and civil war. At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, Yemen has been described as a ‘failing state’ (Colton 2010, Barron 2008) with a severely damaged economy, resentment of the ruling Northern powers and sections of the country in open armed revolt. Yemen has both the largest and poorest population on the Arabian peninsula, with over 20 million people in an area similar to that of Ireland (MEDEA 2008) – among whom the unemployment rate is estimated to be as high as 40 per cent (Colton 2010).
Yet this is the region of Arabia known to Ptolemy as Eudaimon Arabia – Fortunate Arabia, a term adopted by the Romans as Arabia Felix; Herodotus described the region as ‘…scented with [the spices of Arabia], and exhales an odor marvellously sweet.’ (in Ovendale 1998). This fanciful description reflects the importance of Yemen at that time in the trade in incense and spices. The Incense Route along the Western part of the Arab peninsula was the predecessor of the Indian Spice Route (Artzy 1994), and the origin of much of the frankincense, one of the most important and valuable items of trade, was Wadi Hadramaut in what is now the eastern part of Yemen (Shackley 2002). This ancient wealth is remembered in tales of the queen known to Arab scholars as Bilqis and in the Bible as the Queen of Sheba (Saba). The people of Yemen were also very successful in their exploitation of rain water by developing an ingenious irrigation system, including the famous Marib dam, whose purpose, according to one account, was not to retain water but to deflect the runoff from the occasional rains into irrigation canals which helped agriculture and made that region the only area of the peninsula to be self sufficient in agriculture (Baynard et al 1980, pp. 7-9).
The interior of Yemen would go into a long decline as trade shifted from the overland routes to maritime routes along the Red Sea, although the port of Aden remains important. Yemen was early to accept Islam, and this would shape the development of the region over the next centuries. Following on from Abassid rule from Baghdad, the Zaydi imamate developed in North Yemen and, initially, Rasulid rule of the south, based in Aden (Long, Reich and Gasiorowski 2011, p.207).
In the early 19th century, after further political upheavals, Yemen was divided between occupation of the North by the Ottoman Empire and the seizure of Aden by Britain in 1839. British occupation did little for the non-strategic rural areas of the South Yemen interior, where traditional tribal leadership was maintained.
The rest of this chapter will discuss how this historic background has led to the current, troubled political and economic context of Yemen. I will then look at theories of leadership and strategy in modern Yemen, at the tradition of entrepreneurial leadership, at new challenges, especially those arising from the crisis of the Gulf War and Yemeni civil war of 1994; and at the special case of women in modern Yemen. This will be investigated in more depth through case studies, and I will close by looking at the severe economic and social development challenges facing Yemen in the future.

Gods & Monsters

Gods & Monsters
The Book Club

If your book club has no magic in its realism, no science in its fiction and no fantasy in its sad and boring life… if you’ve tried to recommend a book you love and been given that look… like a teacher just caught you reading porno in class… then try Gods & Monsters, for people who read the books that other book clubs don’t read. A new genre-bending book club in Heswall. One that picks books based on raw emotion, not the bestseller lists. If you have the passion to convince us to read the book that changed your life: if you will read anything, once: then mail us...

Lament

This may be a literary blog but this is an entry about music and I’m not going to apologise for that. I don’t see a fixed line between music and language, except that music is more fundamental, is deeper and can move us in ways that simple language can’t – but the best poetry, and some prose, can, because it dips into that wellspring of meaning that is beyond words or any language in particular; that is the natural home of music. Every time I write I try to write with music – not a soundtrack but a counterpoint, music that inhabits and informs the language – not always in a way that would be apparent or even helpful to the reader. It’s just there.

I didn’t grow up in a musical household. For a long time my parents owned only one LP – and no record player. We only got a player for that record when my granddad died, in 1975. I was 9 years old. The album was Hello, I’m Johnny Cash.

We weren’t completely without music before that. We had a big old wireless that sat on a shelf in the living room, and on a Sunday we’d wait for the charts to come on, on the FM frequency that Radio 1 shared with Radio 2. Medium wave reception was pretty much non-existent, up in the Dales. Dad always wanted to know what was top of the ‘hit parade’, and if he was home on a Thursday we’d tune in to Top of the Pops. There’s nothing like your Dad liking something to make it seem uncool.

But listening to records was different – listening to them over and over, hearing them properly, learning the words, letting them become part of you.

There were other records around the house – singles mostly: Herman’s Hermits, other bands I’ve forgotten, an Action Man record and we had a Rolf Harris album… but the Johnny Cash album was the only proper, grown up record we had and the songs were about things we didn’t hear about in the charts, Jesus and the devil and trains and poverty. Things that meant something to a boy who’s life was a cramped cottage and no money and trains and chapel. Maybe it didn’t so much become part of me, it had always been a part of me.

I've been in and out of love with a lot of other music between that time and rediscovering Cash’s music with the American Recordings. In between, I remember the surreal experience of being in a country and western bar in Wilhelmshaven on Germany’s North Sea coast with the owner unlocking the jukebox and putting on every Johnny Cash single and B-side, from Boy Named Sue to Chicken in Black. And Rosanne carries on the legacy, especially with The List: I’ve come to think, when it comes to American song writing, that if one of the Cash family hasn’t recorded it… it probably isn’t any good.

Johnny could make the Atlantic seem very small, make Langcliffe, West Riding of Yorkshire, seem very close to Tennessee, or to Dyess, Arkansas. He died shortly after I returned to England in 2003, but still his music is one of the few things all of my family can share, can agree about. That’s something. And the music’s always there, playing now, but inside of me at any time. So this is not a lament for Johnny Cash. It’s a lament for vinyl, for long playing records, for a time when music was hard to get hold of, was precious and enduring, and for a time and place I can’t return to.