Qat

Yum

In the name of research I've been chewing a bit of qat every now and then.  Qat is a hard drug - not because it's class A but in the sense that it's pretty hard to do it right.  You need to store an allotment's worth of chewed up leaves and stalks in your cheek, something a hamster would do with aplomb but that I find rather difficult.  It can also be hard to tell the effect - the plant contains a mild amphetamine and it does deliver a bit of a light-headed buzz but probably no more than can be achieved by sitting with your head between your legs and then standing up quickly.

Apart from delivering spectacular insomnia, qat's main property is that it loosens the tongue.  Arabs are never short of an opinion on politics, but leave three or four Yemenis in a room with a pile of qat and they'll solve the Israel problem, explain how George W Bush got elected, eradicate global inequality and find a use for Nick Clegg.

A friend took me to a chew with a bunch of politicians, sheikhs and so on at the house of a prominent businessman.  In the mafraj (a room that exists solely for chewing) I counted thirteen bags of qat, two shisha pipes, eleven packs of cigarettes, nine white robes, one white fez-like hat, eight moustaches, five ipads and ten smartphones.  The Prime Minister is usually in attendance at this particular chew, but he is out of the country - I was happy to be told that he wouldn't take kindly to me as I was sitting in his usual seat in the corner.  The conversation was varied and much of it passed over my head, but I can inform you that many of Yemen's most prestigious men LOVE facebook.  My role was mostly limited to looking interested and listening, especially when the conversation was in arabic as my speaking is improving but I didn't think any of them would be interested to learn that I live in a nice flat with a kitchen and two bathrooms.

I bored you already about how much of a threat to Yemen's future qat is, but it is amazingly ubiquitous.  I met a guy at a party who told me is the head of a campaign against qat;  I asked him if he was very lonely but he either didn't get it or didn't think it was funny.