Nothing symbolizes Yemen like the Jambiya. It’s a curved knife that the men wear, front and center, with their more traditional clothes. When someone thinks of a souvenir from here, the Jambiya is at the top of the list. There’s a wide range of prices, they start with the el-cheapo ones made in India for tourists and kids and go up to the ultra expensive Rhino horn ones. All of the value is in the handle, the blade is a total afterthought. They are for show only, not for being used. You can put an edge on them, but the blade isn’t up to my mother’s cutlery, and the handle is fastened to a really thin extension of the blade by two rivet things. Even the best ones feel like they could be broken in half with a little effort. Any $20 knife back home is more useful, and feels better than these things. What’s the best knife you can buy here? People sell the bayonets from their Kalishnakovs pretty cheap, and they make excellent knives…
The Jambiyas I thought about getting are from Tihama. They have silver handles and usually have quite a bit of work done to them. I have finally found some in the $90 range that I liked. The good ones are in the $200-$600 range and that’s out of my price range. I should have something from here, but the more I thought about it, the more I didn’t want a Jambiya. I just can’t bring myself to spend $90 on a useless knife. True, they have cultural significance, but I really don’t like the culture they represent. They are the epitome of the “You can tell what kind of man I am by who my father/uncle/grandfather is. Just look at this Jambiya!” The Jambiya shows what class you belong to, the nicer the one you have, the more respect you are given. The most esteemed are the ones with handles made from the horn of black rhino. Yeah, that rhino, the one that is almost extinct, it’s still in demand here. It’s much more important to have an ostentatious display of wealth and class than to preserve the animal… In a nutshell, it sums up what I don’t like about Yemen. The knife may look interesting, but it’s useless…
I have decided instead to buy something that reminds me of the culture here that is silent to me. I am getting a wedding dress. It’s about 80 or 90 years old, it’s from Sada’a, and it’s in amazing condition. There are many traditional wedding dresses available here, but this one is noticeably different. It’s a deep, cobalt blue and it has silver embroidery around the neck area and some more a little lower on the dress. The weddings usually go for 3 or 4 days, so the bride would have worn this on one of those days around the other women. The dress is actually pretty plain, it is customary to bury the bride in tons of jewelry, the dress isn’t really seen very much.
Anyway, I think that this is a much nicer souvenir than a useless knife. It also is a part of the culture that is fading away, the brides like newer dresses these days. The Jambiya has been around forever, and there’s tons being made now. These dresses won’t be around too much longer…