Ramadan mornings are strangely muted. When I left Yemen last Friday at 8am, the streets were deserted. Even at midday, the shops are quiet and government ministries are running on empty.
The normal swing of things doesn’t really get going til afternoon when workers in the juice bars and restaurants pull back the shutters, string up their bunches of mangoes and start setting out tables and chairs in preparation for the evening meal.
Around 4pm, a scrum forms outside the shops selling fresh samosas (see left). Samosas cost three for 50 riyals (25 cents) – but you got five for the same price last year. Dates and samosas are the first morsels that Yemenis eat at dusk.
The normal swing of things doesn’t really get going til afternoon when workers in the juice bars and restaurants pull back the shutters, string up their bunches of mangoes and start setting out tables and chairs in preparation for the evening meal.
Around 4pm, a scrum forms outside the shops selling fresh samosas (see left). Samosas cost three for 50 riyals (25 cents) – but you got five for the same price last year. Dates and samosas are the first morsels that Yemenis eat at dusk.
