For a few months when I first arrived in my village Al-Khawkah, I lived in a small dwelling that had once been the gatekeeper's house beside the palace of a powerful Imam. The palace had long since crumbled, and the gatekeeper had been dead for fifty years when I arrived. The house was in a small compound with an outdoor privy (a hole in the ground with a concrete pad above it with two footholds). The building was about twenty feet by ten feet, with one room and a staircase leading to the roof. The "realtor" neglected to tell me the gatekeeper was buried in a crypt beneath the staircase when we first looked at the place. It had its ambiance though: There were a few date palms in the courtyard, the eerie remains of the palace forming the south wall of the enclosure, a beautiful view of the Red Sea, and 363 of the clearest, star-filled nights anywhere on earth. It rained once in my village in two years, for four days.
The only furniture in the house was a "Tihama Bed" named after the coastal region on the Red Sea. The bed was a tall frame with woven twine and a small foam cushion for the westerner. The four legs of the bed sat in coffee cans, a measure against scorpions and other nastier things. I hung a mosquito net from the ceiling over the bed. Directly behind me was a recess for the one window, and on it sat most of my precious possessions. Everything else sat in my footlocker/safety deposit box/coffee table. It had dirt floor, and the women of the refugee camp soon wove me grass rugs. I had an old hurricane lantern for light. It really was a sarcophagus in more ways then one, but it was mine for awhile.
Sometimes, I would go up on the roof and listen to the Call to Prayer and watch the sunset. I had to be careful though, as the Yemeni did not approve of people on roofs, I suppose it was a privacy issue. I was at the far end of the village, and had 3/4 electricity for a few hours a day. I tried to listen to music, but my two favorite artists at the time, Joan Armatrading and Tracy Chapman, were already slow and deep. 3/4 of 3/4 is, well, you get the idea.
It was very hot in the area, and I had no ventilation in the room. I pulled up the mosquito net as it inhibited whatever scant breeze came my way. There weren't many vegetables in the market that time of year, and I was eating a lot of onions and tomatoes. One morning, I awoke and discovered my fingertip was bleeding. I went to school and was talking to the teachers. I told them about my mysterious malady, and one of the Yemeni teachers told me to show me the finger. He looked and moved close to smell it. He said in Arabic "Yes, onion, rats." My hand had dropped over the edge of the bed and a rat had sat up on its haunches and taken a bite out of my finger. I know this definitively because I saw it happen a week later. I was sick with a fever, and barely awake. Throughout the night I swore I saw rats everywhere, even playing on my mosquito net. Eventually, I took it all for a hallucination and turned over and reached down to the mats to pick up my sandals. I saw a rat approach slowly, rise up, and bite me. The stinging pinch let me know this particular apparition was real. I sat up on my bed and turned my lantern up as high as it would go. In that instance I saw four rats scamper back to the small hole I never noticed in the corner of the gatekeeper's crypt. I could even hear their tiny feet rustling over the grass mats. I was not pleased.
In the morning, after my fever broke, I formulated a plan. I would go to the market and buy every trap imaginable and dispose of my housemates. I would even use onions as bait. Ten dollars (100 Riyals) and a week later, I had no dead rats but three fresh wounds. Undaunted, a new plan, born partly of the general sense of ennui I lived with, came to me. I gave it about a 5% chance of success, but 100% of high entertainment, at least as entertainment goes in a small village in Yemen. The new plan only cost me two dollars, the price of big hammer in Al-Khawkah.
That evening, I came into the house and placed a cut onion in the corner of the room opposite of the hole my adversaries emerged from. My bed was in the adjacent corner. I took a short nap and woke up at around 2am. I turned my lantern down as low as it would go and sat in bed, hammer in hand, very quietly. I waited until I heard the familiar rustling on the mats. In one swift and terrible move, I flipped the lantern light up, jumped out of bed, and placed myself between the rats and their refuge. They were very confused and darted in different directions. In an instant, I chose one fleeing vermin and hurled the hammer at him. I missed, but not by much. This theatre went on for about thirty days without fail. At the end of the month, I had killed 8 rats. My fingertips bled no more.
I often wondered what the Yemeni, or anyone for that matter, would have thought if they had any idea what was happening in that small house by the sea every night. Looking back, I couldn't swear I would understand the grand adventure if I hadn't lived it myself. I think I hoped the game would go on, but I guess the remaining rats had had enough. They left and I went back to a very sluggish "Fast Car."
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