A crowd of men singing ancient chants in unison heralded the grooms' arrival; through the rest of the night, guests took turns reciting poetry mixing expressions of merriment with musings on Yemeni politics. I'm pretty sure it was abundantly clear that I was enjoying myself, but the uncle of one of the grooms seated next to me couldn't seem to shake fears that I wasn't having a good time. It's hard to find anyone that takes hospitality as seriously as Yemeni tribesmen.
"What do you think? Honestly, we'll be glad when this is all over," Sheikh Abdullah Hamid, the older of the remarkably down-to-earth grooms, told me when I briefly checked in on my way out. "You're coming on Thursday, right?"
I couldn't help but laugh.
"Do I even have a choice?" I joked. "I'm pretty sure most of Yemen will be there."
Arriving at the gate of the wedding hall with some friends, it seemed like the truth. The most stunning success of the wedding was evident at the entrance -- a gun ban was enforced without any major difficulties. At weddings like this, a decent chunk of guests usually show up heavily armed -- sheikhs, particularly, tend to travel surrounded by an entourage of AK-47-toting companions.
But barring a handful of exceptions, guests left their weapons and guards at the door. Even the Ahmar brothers were limited to two guards with a single handgun each. One of their cousins, who refused to leave his guards, was forced to welcome guests outside.
The mammoth chamber in the Sanaa Convention Center that housed the reception was three times larger than any of the Yemeni capital's wedding halls, and it was still packed. There were 9,427 invited guests -- including all of parliament, all of the current cabinet, all senior military security officials, and 700 tribal leaders. In total, more than 10,000 people were estimated to have stopped by. The key thing -- especially in weddings this high profile -- is often just making the appearance.
Eager to get my own appearances made, I moved toward Sheikh Hamid who, despite being mobbed by guests and looking a bit fatigued, noticed me out of the corner of his eye and motioned to his guards to part the crowd. I quickly offered my regards before jumping into the line to congratulate the two grooms, the men of the hour. (Yemeni weddings are ultimately a rather painful ordeal for the grooms, who have to spend hours on their feet greeting an endless procession of well-wishers, the majority of whom they barely even know.)
The brides were absent, celebrating at a separate reception elsewhere. In conservative Yemen, the vast majority of weddings are gender-segregated events. That's not to say that the brides' identities were of no consequence -- both hailed from prominent tribal families. With the bulk of marriages still arranged in Yemen, they're often used as an opportunity to cement ties between elites.
Past political or military battles with the Ahmars were no obstacle to receiving a wedding invite. Sheikh Naji al-Shayf, the vociferously pro-Saleh head of the rival Bakil tribal confederation stopped by -- out of respect for his age and tribal status, he was one of two tribal leaders granted an exception to the gun ban. I bumped into an official who in a conversation last fall cast the Ahmars, his rivals for decades, as the epitome of everything that's wrong with Yemeni politics. A number of officers from military units that helped lay siege to the family's compound in the capital in 2011, during the Ahmars' clash with the government, made an appearance as well. Meanwhile, soldiers from the recently disbanded Republican Guard, a bulwark of support for Saleh, secured a nearby hilltop.
"Where else would you see this?" a friend asked after we left, pointing out a few of the more interesting guests. "These people talk shit about the guy constantly, and still, they all show up for his sons' wedding and wish him the best."
The retention of honor is, of course, a key aim of the traditions that govern Yemen's tribal system. But what the weddings of the children of prominent Yemenis show is that honor doesn't inevitably demand the vanquishing of one's rivals -- more often than not, it's just about being able to save face.
The decision to send invitations far and wide may not be driven solely by gracious intentions -- a part of me sees such invitations, and subsequent attendance, as a series of passive aggressive dares, with each side trying to come off the bigger man. But regardless of motivations, it's hard not to see such cordial gestures as a way to let off steam amidst the country's fraught politics.
"Say what you want about Yemenis," a sheikh from the rural environs of Sanaa once told me. "But even if we're fighting a war against someone, we'll still take a break to go to his son's wedding."
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