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National Geographic : 1964 Mar
Contents
Ataya, an important man in town who looked the part. He was tall and large-boned, but his delicate hands had not known the harsh toil of a farmer. A beard, dyed bright red with henna, blazed under his chin. Muhsin Ataya was the muqassim ad-dayri, the divider of the water, for the gardens of Wadi Dahr. "We have water but it is precious," he ex plained to me. "My job is to see that not a drop iswasted and that it is fairly shared." Muhsin and I walked a mile or so down stream, stopping finally at one of many wood en gates in the long mud wall that lined the river bed. A few yards above the gate a dam of dirt was diverting the stream under the wall and into a farmer's vineyard. Inside the garden Muhsin introduced me to his apprentice, who presided over a strange device: a water clock for timing the farmer's share of the stream's flow. It was simply a copper bowl, about the size of a large coffee cup, that floated in a water-filled copper ket tle (page 423). As I watched, I saw that the smaller bowl actually was filling with water through a tiny KVUUA(.HKUMt b U NAIIUNAL -t - IrU l -u -Il r Spattered smile of a Ta'izz whitewasher brightens the scene as much as his paint. Nimble fingers snapping disks into cor ner pockets, a knot of §an'a' boys gathers around a caroms board. The game, popu lar throughout Yemen, resembles billiards. Young kibitzer at the right wears a pair of toy spectacles. Few Yemeni males ever go bareheaded. Most boys favor bright skullcaps; their fathers usually add bulky turbans. 427
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