A linguistic note: On the Horn of Africa people pronounce khat like our sleeping apparatus: Cot. Across the Gulf of Aden in Sana’a, Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula one pronounces a short ‘a’ with a hard ‘g’ in front: Gat.

On arriving in Yemen I enrolled at a language institute. Western students of Arabic mingled freely with local staff and I became friendly with one of the teachers. One day he invited me to dinner at his place among a group of foreigners I knew only slightly. Women of the household prepared food that evening, then served it surreptitiously on platters arranged on the bare floor of a dimly-lit room, where we visitors ate reclining on cushions. The cooks did not appear in person that evening, not even a token visit to receive our thanks. This is conventional behavior within the native culture; an unrelated man might spend an evening in a Yemeni home and not see a female — or hear a feminine voice — in a household teeming with women and girls.

Most people attending left right after the meal. Together with our host, one Englishman, and half a dozen late-arriving local men, I climbed stairs into an upper room and joined in a khat party. Nearly every man in the capital city chews gat at least once a week; a majority partakes every afternoon; indeed some spend more cash on the drug than they do on food. Each day men gather on sidewalks to examine bundles of gat for sale, a product consisting of leaves and tender stems in shades of yellow and purple harvested from an evergreen tree. The local men ferment a clump inside one cheek, grinding the cud slowly while the juice works like a tonic. I had stayed clear of the chemical except on one occasion when I partook in the passenger seat of a Sana’a taxi. A typical cabbie will maintain a pile of leaf on his lap while driving, and he will likely offer you a chaw.

After two hours I found myself in a high and loquacious state of being — atypical for me — as if I had been drinking strong coffee backed by servings of cocaine over that period of time. My Yemeni friend Ahmed (pictured above) arrived carrying under his arm a bulging package of khat. Exotic music started to play as I got up to leave. The sun had set — added social lubricant had arrived in abundance — and the men were entering the serious phase of a late-night chewing session. Every pressing decision facing the congregation would come under discussion, each gossipy tidbit masticated; they would deconstruct social, political and theological problems at wearisome lengths, likely reaching ad nauseam by early morning hours.