Socotra’s Nogat Coast

Socotra, Yemen

The southern terrain of Socotra is gentler than the north with wide swathes of sandy beaches. The fishing villages along the shoreline have palm-frond huts for shelter and shade, but even here as in the cooler mountainous interior, their houses are substantial stone-built cubes.  In the village of Zahek, a tiny fishing village that sees very few tourists, children playing on the shore ran away when I emerged from the car. This was slightly disconcerting given that in 1881 two German scientists conducting research on the island reported the people were friendly and “neither women nor children took flight at our approach”. What had happened in the intervening years, or was I so frightening? One of them timidly crept back asking me if I was “Sahibi?” Sahibi is a variation of the word used during the Indian Raj for white people. He was asking me if I was white.......

This little boy wondering if I was white is playing with broken coral and shells in the background.