Castles in the Clouds

We’ve been having a lot of rain here, pretty dramatic stuff. The day will start out blue and beautiful and then the wind will pick up and we will get angry rain for about two hours. The other day it got so bad that they had to cut classes short and send the trainees home on busses due to the fact that the streets were quickly filling up with water. Tonight we are going to try to get to the Old City and take some pictures. There is a main road that runs through it that turns into a river during the rainy season.

Last night the power went off and we spent the first half hour doing class in the dark, or rather in the quickly fading twilight. The power popped back on right before it got too dark to read. I had gone home to rest before class, and it’s funny how much you rely on electricity without thinking about it. I walked to the kitchen in to make some oatmeal but the power on the water heater was out so I made a sandwich instead. After that, I walked into the TV room to eat while watching the news and pressed the "On" button about three times before I remembered that the power was out. I walked back into my room and decided to make coffee instead. I poured water into the coffee maker—you can see where this is going. After that failed I decided to listen to music and pressed the power button on the radio… well, you get the idea.

Yesterday morning we were waiting for our driver and I commented to the other teacher, Hutham, on the beauty of the day. She pointed to clouds that were comming over the mountains that surrounded Sanaa and said that that meant there would be rain later, and she was right. I noticed that there was small structures dotting the mountains. I asked Hatham about them and she told me that they were military installations. I asked her if they were currently operational and she said that they were. What did they protect against, I asked? She told me that they protected Sanaa. “From what?” Hutham just shrugged. I smiled and told her that hopefully they would never be used.

“They will be,” Huthham told me. “Someday.”

“I hope not,” I said.

“They will be,” Huthham repeated. I asked her what she meant and she just smiled cryptically. I couldn’t help but get the feeling that she knew something that I didn’t.