Agricultural lands in Ibb here to? [Archives:2006/926/Opinion]

Nashwan Dammaj
“Time pulses in you

And you are as you are:

More gorgeous than the heart's mirth

But you ever persist to ashes be

-I want to know why-

And sink in the sunset sea.”

Thus does my friend commence his poem, sending forth his protests. He addresses Ibb as he fearfully sees the ogre of construction swallowing more and more of the green land every day. New neatly-built buildings now blatantly occupy once-green valleys with pastures endowed some 700 years ago by Queen Arwa of Al-Sulaihi state. It since has been known as the Salabat (area) of Queen Arwa.

Many newly-constructed buildings reflect a rich picture costing several years' expiration in different countries, spending that could have opened factories and other feasible investment projects. However, this sublime scene is no reflection on actual development reached via certain necessary stages culminating in commendable welfare, at least aesthetically. These buildings are mere concrete blocks with repulsively garish ornamentation.

Many people think that planning and construction of this new breed of Ibb buildings is characterized by much randomness that has transgressed horribly upon the fertile lands, putting to death hundreds of agricultural plots that formed the bulk of the city's memory. It is common that whenever the word “Ibb” is mentioned, buoyant and jubilant images are conjured: summer, rain, grass, clouds, greenery, etc.

But, as though there is some sort of discrepancy between the city's geography and its present dwellers' psychology, randomness adamantly continues emphasizing and embodying that dissonance through attrition of endowment lands and law-eluding stratagems manipulated to transfer ownership of those lands to influential individuals. It seems as if land is so scarce that there is no other resort than agricultural land. We see what appears to be a nationwide conspiracy against every tree and green land.

Then the objection is not to the construction's style and shape. It is, however, a cry over every killed piece of land, which was sacred and spared in the past. Yemenis used to regard encroachment on agricultural land as a crime no less than that against humans. At least, this is my own view.

Nashwan Dammaj is a Yemeni writer and a poet. He is Yemen Times correspondent in Ibb.
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