presenting the family

O, Honey Lam’! dem sparklin’ eyes, / Dat offen laffs an’ selem cries, / Is sho a God gib natchel prize, / Mah ’ittle Touzle Head.
Ray G. Dandridge, ’Ittle Touzle Head

“Our parents were poor,” Amir tells me, “and so we became poor too.” And then he cracks into a grin of half teeth, laughing at his own dark humour, stark against a lone stone house on a bare mountain slope. Their story starts with poverty. They were not originally Shawawi, the mountain tribe, but Al Abri, residents of Misfat al Abriyeen, owners of a house and land. For reasons lost in translation, they lost their money and, to support themselves, sold their property, turned to goats and walked up the mountain. Misfat was too full of people and closed plots to keep livestock – you’d have to buy them fodder, and they wouldn’t be able to roam free through the cultivation. On the mountain slopes the 30 goats have everything they need, for free. They also have three donkeys, a collection of chickens and two dogs, who dutifully barked at us as we walked up the slope.

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