Free Yemen: Dancing on the Heads of Snakes by Victoria Clark Page B

NINE
CAN THE CENTRE HOLD?
     

THE DANCER
    An essence of that ‘what we have now’ had been memorably captured in a larger than life-size oil painting adorning the atrium hallway of the GPC’s central office in Sanaa. It was a portrait of President Salih, but unlike any I had seen before.
    Framed portraits of Yemen’s short but reasonably good-looking leader grace almost every home and public building in the country but are especially visible on the sides and roofs of public buildings in Aden, which favour an image of him head down, writing, hard at work. Others depict him in a variety of costumes: in tribal head-dress, thowb and jambiyah , in a western-style dark suit, pale blue shirt and plain tie, in military uniform, or even - by 2009 - bespectacled, tweed-jacketed and smiling in an approachably avuncular fashion. Although, as on a giant billboard on the road from Sanaa into Hodeidah, he is as gamely grinning as if he were advertising toothpaste, his expression is usually sombre, his brow knitted in visionary thought and his jaw firmly tilted resolutely forward. In this particular oil painting, however, he is dressed in a lounge suit and unsmiling but seated astride a richly caparisoned chestnut steed against a pitch black background enlivened by arcs of colourfully exploding fireworks. His shop mannequin stiffness and an outsize pair of dark glasses suggest both wilful blindness and a sinister power. I guessed the artist was obliquely criticising a leader who had deliberately blinded himself to his people’s sufferings but, if I was right, the critique was too subtle to have hit its mark; the masterful satire was hanging there in pride of place where every GPC functionary who worked in the building would pass by it every day. It was hard to blame the artist for erring on the side of caution, however. Jokes at the expense of President Salih have been known to have serious consequences.
    Salih’s entourage had targeted Yemen’s funniest satirist, Fahd al-Qarni, a young actor from Taiz, as a particularly dangerous snake. An active member of Islah, al-Qarni was hurled in jail for the third time in as many years for allegedly insulting the president and fanning the fires of southern separatism with his jokes. A cassette recording of his song ‘Fed Up’ first landed him behind bars during the presidential elections of 2006. In the summer of 2008, shortly before he went on trial again, a convoy of a hundred cars filled with al-Qarni’s fans journeyed from Hadhramaut to Taiz for a protest sit-in outside the courthouse, only to endure beatings by the police. The next day, treated by the prosecution to a recording of a skit featuring a clueless but reckless taxi driver with a voice identical to that of the president, the courtroom dissolved in helpless laughter, but al-Qarni was sentenced to eighteen months in jail and a large fine. Unrepentant but amnestied by the president in September, he was briefly rearrested in February 2009 for the same crime, before being released again.
    Although Yemen has rejoiced in a press that is freer than that of any of her neighbours since 1990, there are subjects better left untouched by journalists who value their skins. They have learned by trial and error not to delve into four key topics: the president’s family and especially the question of whether his eldest son Ahmad will succeed him; the country’s sovereignty with reference to secessionism in the south and the rebellion in the north-west; religion; and the military. In 2005 the correspondent for the London-based Al-Quds al-Arab ’ s uncovering of a corrupt trade in fighter-plane spare parts that had accounted for a number of MiG-29 crashes cost him two days’ detention by air force high command and a night of interrogation, until President Salih himself ordered his release. The case of Khaled al-Khaiwani, a newspaper editor trying to report on subjects like Yemen’s jails and the Saada war, was eventually taken up by