Free "But I Digress ..." by Darrel Bristow-Bovey

laughed at. We had dinner with the family. Now that was a solemn assembly. “The problem with the world today,” said Alex as he buttered both sides of his bread, “is that women get married when they’re 20 and change their minds when they’re 30. They change men like diapers.” Which made you fear a little for the personal hygiene of the little ’uns. They must be looking forward to turning 10, so they can change those diapers already.
    Alex’s plan to eliminate the problem of the changeability of women involved marrying his most recent wife when she was 15 and he was 53. She had been signed over as his bride when she was nine years old. The only thing Alex’s wives change like diapers is their diapers.
    And yet they all seemed content enough. Whatever the disadvantages of plural marriages – I can imagine, for instance, that one would be reluctant to take the family on a cruise ship with a “women and children first” policy – Alex wasn’t complaining and the ladies weren’t contemplating a change. And who am I to criticise? I can scarcely get a date on a Saturday night, and this nutter in Utah lands eight uncomplaining wives. He should be a hero to us all. But he isn’t.

TV in Yemen
    SUNDAY INDEPENDENT, 13 MAY 2001
    S ALAAM ALEIKUM , my friends. You will notice that I begin this column with a common Arabic expression. That is because I have just returned from Yemen (or, as some would have it, the Yemen), where common Arabic expressions are even more common than they are elsewhere.
    That particular expression either means “Peace be upon you”, or is a way of ordering extra salami and cucumber on your pizza. I am rather inclined to the first interpretation, because I frequently said salaam aleikum in my travels through the wadis and highlands of southern Arabia, and not once did anyone point me in the direction of the nearest Italian trattoria.
    Of course, when you are in the Yemen, the nearest Italian trattoria is a continent away. There is a Pizza Hut in Aden, mind you, but no one really knows what its purpose might be. Locals stand outside and giggle at its architecture. The only customers are CIA investigators probing the sinking of USS Cole last year.
    You can tell the CIA investigators a mile away. They have tattoos of mountain lions and biceps the size of a Yemeni waist and are always eating pizza out of cardboard Pizza Hut boxes. I shared a lift with one in an Aden hotel, and as the doors closed I asked how the investigation was going. He raised his head from the Pizza Hut box and adjusted his black plastic earpiece. “How do you know who I am?” he demanded. I smiled cryptically and tapped the side of my nose. He had to restrain himself visibly from throwing me in a headlock.
    Western foods haven’t made much impact in Yemen. I ate a camel-meat kebab somewhere in the Hadhramawt, the lush, palm-filled valley on the fringes of the endless sandy wastes of the desert the locals call Rub al-Khali , the Empty Quarter. It was tasty. It tasted like chicken. No, it didn’t – it tasted like beef, but leaner. I suppose you might say it tasted like ostrich. Most of the time I ate chicken. That, I am pleased to say, did taste like chicken.
    Yemen has shunned most of the eyesores of Western consumerism, but I have yet to visit the country that doesn’t boast more satellite dishes than a man on horseback can count in a hundred days of galloping, as the old Yemeni saying goes. In Al-Hudaydah, on the Red Sea coast, I lay back under a spinning ceiling fan, draped myself in a swatch of muslin and settled in for an evening of television.
    The greatest hazard to anyone thus approaching the intriguing and often opaque Arabian culture is the ubiquitous Arabic music video, in which, without exception, a portly fellow wearing loose shirts and immodestly snug-fitting trousers dances around a foxy lass with handmade eyebrows. He tries