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When author Peter Mortimer was commissioned to write a play about the little-known 'Arab Riot' between Yemeni and British seamen at the Mill Dam, South Shields, in 1930, he decided to take the long trip to Yemen itself in search of inspiration. Undeterred by post-11 September government warnings that Westerners should not visit this 'highly dangerous' country, Mortimer set off and found an extraordinary and surprisingly anglophile country. Cool for Qat documents this remarkable journey, during which Mortimer pieces together how the riots of 1930 arose and considers their relevance to the Western attitude towards Muslims today. He visits the ex-British protectorate of Aden - through which many of the seamen passed en route to Britain - and travels to the cities of Sana'a, the Yemeni capital, and Tai'iz, whose mountainous environs many of the young Yemeni seamen left all those years ago to seek a new life in the UK. While undertaking a hazardous journey through these mountains, Mortimer meets men who worked as seamen in South Shields some 50 years ago and reveals how he received a marriage proposal from another man, was feted by a mountain village sheik, who made him a present of his ceremonial sword, and how he immersed himself in the national custom of chewing the narcotic qat leaf. Back in the UK, Mortimer's investigations into the 1930 riot revealed a society with many striking similarities to current times. Then, as now, Muslim immigrants were treated as scapegoats for all manner of ills, tabloid newspapers drummed up prejudice and hatred and the powers-that-be often used fear and racial mistrust to disguise their own economic failings. And, in South Shields itself, he found many of the present Arab population worried about the negative effect that his play might have. Cool for Qat controversially questions just how 'civilised' the Western world - and Britain in particular - is in comparison to Yemen. It is a touching, thought-provoking and at times humorous document of one man's travels through a country about which little is known by Western civilisation.
About the Author
Peter Mortimer is a poet, playright and travel writer. His is also the author of Broke Through Britain (1999) and 100 Days on Holy Island (2002).
When author Peter Mortimer was commissioned to write a play about the little-known 'Arab Riot' between Yemeni and British seamen at the Mill Dam, South Shields, in 1930, he decided to take the long trip to Yemen itself in search of inspiration. Undeterred by post-11 September government warnings that Westerners should not visit this 'highly dangerous' country, Mortimer set off and found an extraordinary and surprisingly anglophile country. Cool for Qat documents this remarkable journey, during which Mortimer pieces together how the riots of 1930 arose and considers their relevance to the Western attitude towards Muslims today. He visits the ex-British protectorate of Aden - through which many of the seamen passed en route to Britain - and travels to the cities of Sana'a, the Yemeni capital, and Tai'iz, whose mountainous environs many of the young Yemeni seamen left all those years ago to seek a new life in the UK. While undertaking a hazardous journey through these mountains, Mortimer meets men who worked as seamen in South Shields some 50 years ago and reveals how he received a marriage proposal from another man, was feted by a mountain village sheik, who made him a present of his ceremonial sword, and how he immersed himself in the national custom of chewing the narcotic qat leaf. Back in the UK, Mortimer's investigations into the 1930 riot revealed a society with many striking similarities to current times. Then, as now, Muslim immigrants were treated as scapegoats for all manner of ills, tabloid newspapers drummed up prejudice and hatred and the powers-that-be often used fear and racial mistrust to disguise their own economic failings. And, in South Shields itself, he found many of the present Arab population worried about the negative effect that his play might have. Cool for Qat controversially questions just how 'civilised' the Western world - and Britain in particular - is in comparison to Yemen. It is a touching, thought-provoking and at times humorous document of one man's travels through a country about which little is known by Western civilisation.
About the Author
Peter Mortimer is a poet, playright and travel writer. His is also the author of Broke Through Britain (1999) and 100 Days on Holy Island (2002).
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52% buy the item featured on this page: Cool for Qat: A Yemeni Journey 1930-2004 £6.99 |
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8% buy Travels with a Tangerine: A Journey in the Footnotes of Ibn Battutah £6.99 |
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