Social Issues in Popular Yemeni Culture (Qadaya ijtima'iyyatun fi l'adabi ssa'bi ilyamani).

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Social Issues in Popular Yemeni Culture (Qadaya ijtima'iyyatun fi l'adabi ssa'bi ilyamani). Translated, edited, and annotated by JANET C. E. WATSON. San'a: ASSABAHI PRESS. 2002. Pp. 217.

The author, who has published extensively on Yemeni Arabic, continues with the present volume to document her research efforts. It comes as a direct result of a British Embassy grant that enabled her to spend 2000-2001 in San'a. The goals of the work are superbly expressed in the preface by the British Ambassador to Yemen, Francis Guy, who writes that Watson collaborated with Abd al-Rahman Mutahhar, the Yemeni Radio San'a author of the popular series, Mus'id wa Mus'ida, and local artist Muhammad al-Shaibani (the cartoonist for the Yemeni daily, al-Thawra), who has illustrated each of the 50 texts in this most fascinating collection. Each San'ani Arabic essay is written in Arabic script, translated into idiomatic English, and aptly illustrated by a cartoon. I will comment first on the subject matter of the texts, and then on the English translations.

The texts deal with contemporary Yemeni society and culture; e.g., a girl's education (pp. 24-28). Mus'id and Mus'ida discuss their daughter's desire to attend university in light of Grandmother's (Mus'id's mother) insistence that she should not attend. This decision is reflective of Grandmother's ideas of traditional values and her view of the role of women in the society. The story ends with Father's acceptance of his daughter's future as a teacher and university graduate in education, invoking a saying of the Prophet: wa gad gal arrasul salla llahu 'alehi wa sallam 'alehi wa'ala'alihi wa sahbihi 'ajma'in: talab al'ilm farida 'ala kull muslim wa muslimih (p. 26) nicely translated (or rendered, since there are omissions from the original) as: "As the Prophet, peace be upon him, said, 'The search for knowledge is a duty for every Muslim man and woman!'" (p. 28).

Some of the themes in the book deal with popular subjects, whereas others treat controversial issues; e.g., women's literacy, cafes, concern over the emotional welfare of children, family planning, food during Ramadan, dangers of the waterpipe (al-mada'ih), co-wives (al-tubban, p. 128 = al-taba'in ~ al-tabayin, according to Hamdi A. Qafisheh's NTC's Yemeni Arabic-English Dictionary [Chicago: NTC Publishing Group, 2000], 382 = Modern Standard Arabic darrat ~ dara'ir), pollution, and perhaps the most Yemeni of all institutions...

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