Internet cafes offer more to Yemen’s youth
by Teresa Gedi, Yemen Observer, April 3, 2010

Al-Mortazah internet cafe, located at the foot of the Friendship Bridge near Tahrir square, takes the meaning of internet café to another level. In addition to its 20 computer stations, it has a full service sheesha bar and cafe from which I enjoyed a glass of fresh mango juice courtesy of the soft-spoken poet and journalist Abdul Rahman Ghelan.

Mr. Ghelan, age 30, has frequented the café since his personal computer broke down some months ago. As the place is close to his home and affordable (1 riyal per minute), he takes his time exploring various literary and journalistic websites across the Arab world. Being a poet, Ghelan finds the web to be an effective means of spreading his work and developing it through feedback from the online literary community. Feeling I had stumbled on a budding international artist, I listened intently as he humbly explained his work which focuses largely on politics, women and children. “My poetry has benefited greatly from web exposure in both the Arab world and outside. Literary personalities in Europe for example have contacted me requesting to translate my work into other languages, specifically, French and Italian.” Ghelan is also currently working on a translation of a book into English entitled “Memoirs of the Victim,” the victim being women in Yemen. Another poem “hams al-abir” or “The Whisper of Perfume” has caused quite a stir in the online Arabic poetry community. “I am amazed by the support I receive online,” says Ghelan. “As long as you are appropriate and respectful, it feels like people are right next to you supporting you.”

Nevertheless, while Ghelan has been able to employ the internet to enhance his own professional and personal development, he admits that this is not the case for all his fellow web consumers. “There are three kinds of users” he says. “In the first case, the internet is like a drug. Used purely for pleasure, that is, video games and viewing women.” Essentially, it is used to engage those types of desires otherwise largely inaccessible in Yemeni society. The second type, he explains, is more productive. “Some people come here to learn and fulfill their intellectual and professional needs.” Third, is the social user, who spends up to four or five hours daily in chat rooms. “These people have no real lives,” he says, “but they also enjoy this alternate reality in which they can express themselves through user generated material.” This conversation graced with poetic musings on issues like the true nature of femininity, which Ghelan argues can be found in any woman from a queen to a sheppardess, stood in stark contrast to the next.

Ali and Muhammad, cousins, are customers in the same café. When approached they were watching a funny clip on YouTube. The boys, uncertain of their ages but approximately between fifteen and sixteen, are highschool drop-outs. They say they come to the café everyday for about an hour and sit listening to music or watching videos. Both are illiterate but learned the keys necessary to access the sites they frequent. They say that the reason they do not attend school is because they found the experience too violent. “It was impossible to learn anything when the teachers are beating you all the time. You either have to bribe them or act like a big-shot so that they will leave you alone. Some students would pay their teachers as little as 500 riyals just so they would pass them,” says Ali. Despite their hard run with the education system, neither seemed to be particularly satisfied with his personal state and Ali explained that coming to the cafes gives him some purpose to his otherwise mundane routine. “My day is basically this, I chew Qat then I come to the café. Afterwards I go to the mosque, I pray and then I go home at 6:00pm. Being at the café is an alternative to chewing Qat or being out on the streets. My parents don’t know about the time I spend here but they would be happy to know that I wasn’t doing those other activities.” While the two boys do not use the internet for the same self-enhancement purposes as Ghelan, they find justification for their time online. “If there was work I wouldn’t come here but since there is no work, what else am I to do?” asks Muhammad.

The final interview brought together these two perspectives. In Movenpick Café in Tahrir, I met 21 year old Al-Hamdi Gaid. Gaid, an aspiring writer, spends about 4-6 hours in the café daily as he does not have a computer at home. In this time he does a range of activities including, reading the news, chatting, applying and interviewing for jobs and, similar to Ghelan, exchanges his work with other writers. Like the younger boys, he chews Qat before he comes and then spends the evening in the café. In fact, he and many others were chewing at their stations when I arrived. While Gaid has a generally positive perspective of the internet café phenomenon, he stresses that the web is often abused by youth. “Young people,” he says, “come here to kill time because there is nothing else to do. Unfortunately, they often find themselves in this new world of unfiltered freedom that they cannot discern or control. For example, many young men come here looking for a way to connect with the opposite sex. Yemeni youth are very sexually immature since interaction with the other sex is so taboo. For this reason, some of them will repeat the same hug or kiss, over and over again online.” He explains further that because the society is so closed, this is the only way children have to understand relations with the opposite sex. “They see sex and marriage as an end, a purpose in life, but it’s more than that, it is an art that needs to be explored.” Qaid admits that x-rated sites are common among youth but he does not criticize the activity if people view them in the privacy of their own homes.

“We need to open up,” he Qaid. “People can’t go their whole lives looking for girls online, he said after describing two cases where friends had been swindled by online dating sites. “People also get hustled by advertisements that claim to be giving away love or money. They don’t understand how to use the internet but if they did, the society could really develop.” Qaid attributes the improvement of his writing skills to time spent on the computers. “When I read what I wrote three years ago, I can’t believe it, it’s like a child’s work. Now, after interacting with other writers online and developing my skills through online programs, I am a contender for the presidential writing award. Furthermore, the internet allows me to learn other perspectives on issues, especially when these views are blocked by the government or society.” When asked if his time spent in the cafes had an affect on him financially, he admitted that it did. “I have about 4 dollars to spend everyday and half of it I spend in the café.”

These perspectives suggest that the place of internet cafes and the use of the web in general present Yemeni society with Catch 22. While on the one hand the internet generates a curiosity in people such as Ghelan and Gaid, pushing them to discover what lies beyond their own national and cultural bounds, it also presents an unfiltered, imaginary realm difficult to contain. Artists and professionals can use it to further their careers and youth can stay connected with global trends and the opposite sex. However, underlying all this are the social, economical and psychological costs that, in reality, are unsustainable in a conservative and underprivileged society such as Yemen.