Motoring with Mohammed: Journeys to Yemen and the Red Sea | 
 enlarge | Author: Eric Hansen
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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Rating:  29 reviews
Sales Rank: 45137
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st Vintage Departures Ed
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.8
ISBN: 067973855X
Dewey Decimal Number: 915.33204
EAN: 9780679738558
ASIN: 067973855X
Publication Date: February 4, 1992
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Product Description
In 1978 Eric Hansen found himself shipwrecked on a desert island in the Red Sea. When goat smugglers offered him safe passage to Yemen, he buried seven years' worth of travel journals deep in the sand and took his place alongside the animals on a leaky boat bound for a country that he'd never planned to visit.
As he tells of the turbulent seas that stranded him on the island and of his efforts to retrieve his buried journals when he returned to Yemen ten years later, Hansen enthralls us with a portrait -- uncannily sympathetic and wildly offbeat -- of this forgotten corner of the Middle East. With a host of extraordinary characters from his guide, Mohammed, ever on the lookout for one more sheep to squeeze into the back seat of his car, to madcap expatriates and Eritrean gun runners- and with landscapes that include cities of dreamlike architectural splendor, endless sand dunes, and terrifying mountain passes, Hansen reveals the indelible allure of a land steeped in custom, conflicts old and new, and uncommon beauty.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 24 more reviews...
A story in a story January 3, 2008
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.
Retrieving the Lost Dutchman's gold would've been easier December 17, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
"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.
My Favorite Book November 9, 2007
I have read many books that fall within the "travel literature" genre; Motoring With Mohammed is hands down my favorite. I rarely read books twice, but I read this book once every few years and never tire of the way Eric Hansen describes his experiences in Yemen during his quest to recover his lost journals. His eclectic combination of anecdotes are simple but beautifully written. Upon reading this book, you are left with the essence of Yemen, her people, and Mr. Hansen himself. A warning: If you lend this book to a friend, you will never get it back. I am on my seventh or eighth replacement copy!
 An Entertaining and Educational Read September 26, 2007
This is a fascinating (and educational!) travelogue about the geography, environs, people, culture and customs from a part of the world that too few people are familiar with. In an odd coincidence - while I was reading this book - a veritable storm-in-a-teacup whipped up, as US DEA cracked down on qaat (khat) chewing across the country.
"a compelling search for buried meaning" May 1, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
It is truly a gifted writer who sets you down in a strange and foreign land such that the boundry between the narrative and your personal grasp of the story is effectively blurred. Eric Hansen is such a writer.
Hansen is pursuing the grail of his buried notebooks in a off-limits military zone on the Red Sea coast of Yemen. His story, and it is a great one, is about the cultural adventures he experiences in his hope to retrieve a lost part of himself, the journals he had buried 10 years previously.
"So intent was I on uncovering the traces of my past that no object or thought seemed too insignificant. Even the litter spoke to me that first morning. I wandered aimlessly, searching for deeper meanings."
His depictions of Yemeni culture are riveting & compelling, a culture that is still holding on to its ancient orientations. Hansen becomes captivated by the Yemeni people & their customs. His search for the buried notebooks moves to the background as his visa is extended and he settles into the daily round of an ancient way of life.
"That morning, for the first time, I was willing to admit that the search was not going well, and that maybe it wasn't important anymore. Accepting this fact, I caught a glimpse of my own fate. Regardless of what the notebooks contained, it was clearly my need to wander to remote places and lose myself in strange situations that had drawn me back to Yemen . . ."
Narrative entertainment doesn't get any better than this - most highly recommended.
Extracts: A Field Guide for Iconoclasts
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