The Flower of Paradise: The Institutionalized Use of the Drug Qat in North Yemen

278 Pages·1987·7.605 MB·English

by  John G. Kennedy (auth.)

THE FLOWER OF PARADISE
CULTURE, ILLNESS, AND HEALING
Editors:
MARGARET LOCK
Departments ofA nthropology and Humanities and Social Studies
in Medicine, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
ALLAN YOUNG
Department of Anthropology, Case Western Reserve University,
Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A.
Editorial Board:
LIZA BERKMAN
Department of Epidemiology, Yale University,
New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.A.
ATWOOD D. GAINES
Departments ofA nthropology and Psychiatry, Case Western Reserve
University and Medical School, Cleveland, Ohio, u.s.A.
GILBERT LEWIS
Department ofA nthropology, University of Cambridge,
England
GANANATH OBEYESEKERE
Department of Anthropology, Princeton University,
Princeton, New Jersey, u.s.A.
ANDREAS ZEMPLENI
Laboratoire d'Ethnologie et de Sociologie Comparative,
Universite de Paris X, Nanterre, France
JOHN G. KENNEDY
Depts. of Psychiatry and Anthropology,
University of California, Los Angeles, U.S.A.
THE FLOWER OF
PARADISE
The Institutionalized Use a/the Drug Qat
in North Yemen
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kennedy, J.ohn G.
The flower of paradise.
(Culture, iIIness, and healing)
Bibliography: p.
IncIudes indexes.
1. Narcotic habit-Yemen. 2. Qat. 3. Yemen-Social life and customs.
1. Title. II. Series.
HV5840.Y4K46 1987 362.2'932'095332 87-4676
ISBN 978-1-55608-012-8 ISBN 978-94-015-6876-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-015-6876-0
AII Rights Reserved
© 1987 by Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
OriginaIly published by D. Reidel Publishing Company in 1987
and copyrightholders as specified on appropriate pages within.
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
incIuding photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner
Dedicated to my mother
Virginia Lee Poore -
Her never failing encouragement,
enthusiasm and faith
have made this
and all my work possible -
"Qat widens the mind
It makes you remember forgotten things!
It relaxes and allows you to breathe easily.
It is a paradise of the mind.
Qat makes people strong.
They can endure hardships and climb mountains!"
Yemeni farmer on Jabel Sabr
February 1975
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements x
I. Introduction 1
II. History and Social Structure of North Yemen 38
III. A Short History of Qat and Its Use 60
IV. A Social Institution 79
V. The Qat Experience 108
VI. The Agriculture and Economics of Qat 133
VII. The Botany, Chemistry and Pharmacology of Qat 176
VIII. Qat and the Question of Addiction 189
IX. Qat and Health 212
X. Conclusion 233
Bibliography 247
Name Index 263
Subject Index 266
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Everything in this book is the result of collaboration and cooperation. The
result is truly a joint effort produced by many individuals and it has only
been ordered into written form by me. The people who provided the
information for this study and assisted it in many ways are far too numerous
to mention individually here. The many unnamed informants who partici
pated in the study, and the many Yemeni companions who shared their good
will and ideas in qat sessions in all parts of Yemen also have my special
thanks. The following rendered especially important services.
During the 2 year research period in Yemen I had the good fortune
of employing Mohammed al-Shamy, now of the Yemen Foreign Ministry,
Abdo Ali Othman, now Professor at Sanaa University, and Fathy Salem Ali,
now Deputy Director of the Central Planning Organization. Each of these
competent friends agreed to serve as director of field research for a part of
the study. They not only organized our research activities in Yemen, and
acted as liasons between us and the Yemeni people, but each of them
performed as an important teacher of Yemeni customs and history to me and
to the non-Yemeni members of the research team. They each provided
creative input which shaped this study in important respects, and each took
initiative in solving many logistical problems.
Particular thanks go to my colleague James Teague, M.D., who designed
much of the medical portion of the research and especially assisted with the
analysis in Chapters 8 and 9. Together we spent many an hour puzzling over
these data, and many of the ideas here are joint products of those sessions.
Dr. G. J. Obermeyer introduced us to Yemen, provided initial stimulus for
the research and gave consistently useful advice. My wife, Wendy Utsuki,
made countless valuable contributions to the final product.
Other important members of that team at various times were Judith
Obermeyer, M.A., who directed our survey activities in Taiz and helped with
collection of medical data in Sanaa, Dr. Martha Mundy who assisted with
data gathering in Sanaa and Wadi Dahr, Kalthum Ali, who organized medical
data gathering on women in Hodeida, and Dr. Ahmad Makky M.D. who
directed research in Hodeida. The other M.D.s who made physical examina
tions of subjects in the three cities were Dr. Jamila, Dr. Stella, Dr. Azzam,
Dr. Abdul Kader Homani, Dr. Abdul Wahab Makky, Dr. Hassan, Dr.
Ghorbani and Dr. Ahmad Moayad.
Mohammad Abdel Wahid, who was director of the Institute of Yemeni
studies during the first half of our period of work, and Ahmad Marwani who
was director during the last half, were extremely helpful in providing facilities
and information for the study. Dr. Abdul Karim Iryani, who at the time of
ix
x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
the study was Director of the Central Planning Organization and later head
of Sanaa University, and Qadi Ismail al-Akwa, Director of Antiquities both
provided facilities and information at important junctures of the research
period. Abdullah al-Hibshi put his scholarly knowledge at our disposal and
assisted us with collecting and copying older Arabic texts pertinent to qat.
Other individuals who assisted in various ways with research tasks in Yemen
were Hussein al-Amri, Abdul Rahman al-Moayad, Mohammad al-Wazir, Ali
Agbari, Faisel Sharif, Ali Sharif and Fatma Zabarah.
Dr. Brinkley Messick, Dr. Charles Swagman and Dr. Herman Escher, each
of whom wrote PhD. dissertations on Yemen and Ms. Shelagh Weir of the
British Museum, were all kind enough to provide me with access to their
comments, notes, and written works on Yemen and qat use. lowe special
debt to Dr. Raman Revri, who worked closely with us on the agriculture of
qat and provided much of the data on that subject which appears in this
book. Dr. Haider Ghaibah was also helpful by providing access to his papers
on the economy of Yemen. Others who provided specialized assistance during
the field research were Professor John Neuhart, Marilyn Neuhart, Sylvia
Kennedy, Fernando Varanda, Dr. Robert Burrowes, and Carla Makhlouf.
At UCLA Dr. Jolyon West, director of the Neuropsychiatric Institute
encouraged the research from the beginning and recommended funds for
the initial pilot visit to Yemen. Mustapha Mebarkia, Hiam Slieman and
Dr. Sulayman Khalaf capably translated Arabic articles, poetry and other
documents pertaining to qat. Assisting with the quantitative analysis were
Elizabeth Cooney, William Rokaw and particularly Dr. Lynn Fairbanks.
I feel a profound gratitude towards the several secretaries who have
laboriously typed notes, articles and drafts of this book from my poor
handwriting. These were Gila Varis, Jean Samuelson, Priscilla Logue, and
Vicki Stringer.
This research was made possible by DHEW Grant 5 ROl 0097403 of
NIDA (National Institute of Drug Abuse) where it was supported partic
ularly' by the late Dr. Eleanor Carroll. It also received assistance from 2 small
faculty grants from the N.P.1. at U.C.L.A. and from a travel grant by the
Social Science Research Council. My gratitude to all the above is inexpress
able, and none of them bear any responsibility for what errors may appear
here.
Chapters 8 and 9 are derived from articles in Culture, Medicine and
Psychiatry and Social Science and Medicine. I thank these journals for
permission to reprint portions of those articles.
All photographs were taken by the author except where otherwise
specified.
Note: For ease in reading, simplified Anglicized phonetic transliteration of
Arabic words is used throughout, e.g., "Sanaa" instead of "San'a''', Sayyids
instead of Sada for the plural of Sayyid, etc., and I have dispensed with
diacritical markings. The first appearance of any non-English term is
italicized: the following occurrences are not.
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
This book concerns the use of the drug qat in North Yemen (Yemen Arab
Republic), a country lying on the southwestern corner of the Arabian
Peninsula. However, because this substance is so interwoven into the fabric
of society and culture, it is also necessarily about Yemen itself. The history
and culture of South Arabia are still relatively unknown to the rest of the
world, and the drug qat, so widely used there, is equally unknown. Thus, the
material we present here should be of interest to all of those concerned with
drug use, those who wish to understand more about Yemen and the Middle
East, and to the Yemenis themselves.
Another purpose is to develop some general understandings about sub
stance uses and their effects which are less clouded by the mass hysteria and
political considerations which often obscure drug issues in our own society.
Examination of drug-use patterns in a country where millions of people are
users on a regular basis, and where there has been familiarity with the drug
for several hundred years, offers an opportunity to achieve perspectives not
possible in countries with different attitudes and without such histories. I am
not sanguine about the prospects of our abilities to learn from others or from
the past, but I do not think we should abandon hope of doing so.
Drug use, however, is not the only interest here. The book should also
shed some light on the social life of North Yemen. It is my contention that
the cultures and societies of Yemen cannot be adequately comprehended
without a full understanding of the role of qat in social life. Many good books
and dissertations are now beginning to appear on hitherto neglected topics
of the politics, economics and society of Yemen. In all of them qat is
mentioned, but in none of them is it accorded the important place it
warrants. In virtually all of these works the subject of qat-use is described in
passing, and in most of them some disparaging remarks about it are made. It
is my hope that, if nothing else, this book will help to instill a more adequate
perspective. As will become evident, even in works focusing on history,
politics or social organization, qat and the institution of using it are not a
minor subject which can be adequately treated in a footnote, or in a few
pages. This drug has had a profound effect on the history of Yemen; it is
playing an increasingly important role in Yemeni economic and social life.
There is no individual Yemeni whose life is not affected in profound ways by
qat and its implications. An adequate understanding of its role should be part
of all future studies of the culture and society of Yemen.
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