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Title: Motoring with Mohammed: Journeys to Yemen and the Red Sea
ISBN: 067973855X
Author:
Eric Hansen
Publicate Date: 1992-02-04
Publish: 1992-02-04
List Price: $14.95
Average Customer Rating: 5.0
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $8.43
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $2.47
Amazon Merchant Price: $10.17
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Excellent travel journal
This is a gem of a travel book. I didn't think a book set in Yemen would be this interesting or entertaining. I was pleasantly surprised by the author's adventures and his attention to detail on his journey. Highly recommended.
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2: Fun and engaging
I read this book 6 years ago. It made me laugh and really appreciate the author and his adventures.
I shall read it again. It's one I saved just for that purpose.
I really recommend this book for anyone interested in the Yemeni culture or just for the appreciation of this author's wit and writing skills.
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3: Interesting, informational & entertaining
Great book and a good insight into the culture in Yemen and surrounding areas. Really shows the differences between life and bureacracy there and here in the US. Loved the ending, don't want to spoil it for anybody, but it wasn't what I expected. Highly recommended read.
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4: A story in a story
This is a very interesting book that proves life is more interesting than fiction. The improbablity of searching for those notebooks....
I like the calm approach that Mr. Hansen took to the most unpredictable of circumstances he was in.
If you need a prod to get up and go on that trip you have been dreaming about for years, let this book fuel the fire.
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5: Retrieving the Lost Dutchman's gold would've been easier
"Khat ... also known as qat, gat, chat, and miraa ... is a flowering plant native to tropical East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula... Khat contains the alkaloid cathinone, an amphetamine-like stimulant which causes excitement and euphoria... Traditionally, khat has been used as a socializing drug, and this is still very much the case in Yemen where khat-chewing is predominantly, although not exclusively, a male habit... Khat consumption induces mild euphoria and excitement. Individuals become very talkative under the influence of the drug and may appear to be unrealistic and emotionally unstable. Khat can induce manic behaviors and hyperactivity... A recent British study found khat to be much less dangerous than tobacco or alcohol." - from Wikipedia
Peripatetic scribblers wander to such obvious destinations as Italy, France, Greece, China, India, Australia, the Amazon, or Alaska, then write a book to tell the rest of us vegetables all about it. Here in MOTORING WITH MOHAMMED, accomplished travel writer Eric Hansen immerses the reader in North Yemen. (Where, you say?) North Yemen squatted next to the Red Sea just to the south of southwest Saudi Arabia, and joined with South Yemen in 1990 to become the Republic of Yemen.
Hansen's narrative is served up in two parts. Well, three, actually. The first takes place in 1978 when, after a 7-year period of wandering in other backwaters, the author is shipwrecked in the yacht "Clea", on which he was part of a five-person crew, on the uninhabited North Yemen island of Uqban. The first four chapters describe this experience, during which, for safekeeping, he buried on the island the wrapped journals of his previous adventures. The trouble is, he forgot to take them along when he and his companions were eventually rescued after fourteen days.
The book's second part - thirteen chapters - takes place during a ten-week period a decade later when Hansen returns to North Yemen to retrieve his cached journals. Unbeknownst to him, however, is that Uqban Island lay in a security zone virtually inaccessible to foreigners. This fact becomes frustratingly clear as he unsuccessfully conspires with local help to cross the twenty miles of water separating the mainland from the island. Meanwhile, he cools his heels exploring, and falling in love with, much of the rest of the country. It's this developing love affair with North Yemen that's the basis for most of MOTORING WITH MOHAMMED.
Whether he's tiptoeing across a precarious slope in the interior mountains, or witnessing the execution of a murderer, or participating in a communal qat chew, or sweating in a bathhouse, or feasting on stewed sheep's heads, Eric has a talent for observing the details that enrich the subsequent tale:
"There is a trick to cracking open the skulls. You place the thumb of one hand in an eye socket (with the eyeball still intact), and span the skull and grip the roof of the mouth with the fingers. The other hand grasps the lower jaw. A sharp twisting motion is accompanied by a sickening snap and a popping sound. When done properly, the slippery skull and jawbone come away in two pieces. Then you prise open the cranium." (Happily, this passage refers to the feast, not the execution.)
As the eighteenth and last chapter reveals, the author made the fortuitous acquaintance of the Yemeni ambassador to the United States at a Washington, D.C. photo exhibit of his nation's architecture eight months after the former returned to America sans journals. In the Middle East especially, it's all about whom you know. Thus, five months after that, Eric, shovel in hand, is sloshing through the Yemeni surf to a "fishing boat that smelled of rancid shark oil and pureed dates", which, Allah willing, can convey him and an agent of the National Security Police across the sea to Uqban. Truly, as the title of this chapter implies, "It was written."
I shall most certainly never make it to Yemen. Yes, researching "San'a", the capital of Yemen, on the Web does almost compel me to visit on a whim. But, being married, my own happy-go-lucky journeying days are over. Besides, Yemen seems at times to be, um, a bit too raw. But, through Hansen's eyes and wonderfully evocative prose, I'm taken there in fine style, and that's what a five-star travel essay is all about.
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