The Lost Paradise of Socotra

Like many Socotrans, Sadiya Eissa lost count of her age after she turned 50. Her beach camp can be found on top of a small hill overlooking the Detwah lagoon - one of the most impressive and naturally preserved parts of the island’s coastline.

The home she shares with her family is a primitive shack with only two small rooms. There is also a storage area, a field and a barn for the goats.

Inside the majlis she proudly displays professional photos that tourists took of her - jumping in the sea to catch fish, posing at the lagoon with her traditional clothes and face-veil.

“I have goats and I catch fish from the sea. I dive, I fish, I hunt, I do everything,” she explains proudly. “My children help me as well. I have three daughters and four sons. Tourists used to come to swim, and I cooked for them, they ate lunch and spent the night. But we have been cut off from visitors since the war started.”

“The entire land and hill is mine,” she says as she shows off her property to us, her grandchildren following in her footsteps wherever she goes. She explains how they have to travel for two hours on foot to get drinking water, and how a car would make her life easier.

“There is a lot of underground water that can be utilised, but we need help digging the wells.” The following day she is given a car by the UAE humanitarian team. Mrs Eissa is one of many Socotrans who speak fondly of the days when “Socotra used to be alive”.

But despite being cut off from outsiders, adults and children alike are always willing to accept visitors. Whether they live in primitive houses, in caves or under a tree in a wadi that took a two-hour off-road drive to get down to - they will serve you a cup of tea mixed with fresh milk straight from the goat.

The children will always offer to sell a small nylon bag of dried red fluid from the “Dam Al Akhawayn” (brothers’ blood) tree, which they say stops bleeding and protects the skin from wrinkles and ageing.

Known to the world as the dragon blood tree, it got its name in Arabic from a local myth - that when Adam’s son Cain killed his brother Abel, the tree started to bleed.

(I can’t vouch for the power of “brothers’ blood” but it did help my separate quest to find a rare species of chameleon on Socotra. We were searching for hours in vain, until I offered to buy a bag from one of the children if he would help us with our hunt. The children immediately split into search teams, and just as we had lost hope of finding the species and started to drive back, the same boy came running to us, said chameleon in tow.)

The free spirit of the island is also evident while driving on its roads. It is common to stop for pedestrians catching a free ride to their nearest stop. Even if the driver doesn’t offer, just by stopping to give directions a bunch of 11 teenage boys took that as an invitation to hop on board with us. Women also have no qualms about hopping on the back of a truck with strangers. The locals explain that everyone honours unknown women as if they were their own.

The crime rate is close to zero with no murders or major thefts reported in the past couple of years. 

Major Gen Salem Al Socatri, governor of Socotra, says: “The last time a man was killed was four years ago and it was by accident at a construction site. I also used to be the police chief in Socotra, and there were no crimes. Maybe only rare petty thefts that are not worth reporting.”

For instance, goats are widely available in the streets, and people can simply mark their fleece to claim them as their property. No need to steal, then. 

“There are sometimes disputes over land, not because someone stole another’s, but because of dual ownership.”

Traditionally, inhabitants claimed ownership of land as they did with goats - by getting there first and marking it as their own, which would then be inherited by future generations. Any disputes were often resolved between the residents themselves, although a few made their way to court. However, things will not continue in such a random manner.  

“As part of Socotra’s 20-year master plan, we will put in place housing project limitations, and define environmentally protected zones,” says the governor.

Since Socotra was named a UNESCO world heritage site in 2008, “preserving its environmental qualities has been a top concern for everyone”.

Since the governor came to office in 2016, the island has been trying to recover from the effects of cyclones Chapala and Megh, which killed 18 people and destroyed many of the dragon blood trees that are exclusive to Socotra. There were more than 80,000 of them before the winds came. 

“The situation was already difficult in Yemen because of the war, and the island became isolated from the rest of the world. It was left without any maritime access: Al Qaeda was in control of the main ports in Hadramout, whereas Houthis and [Ali Abdullah] Saleh took over Aden.”

And people were left with no source of income after the Houthis stopped paying them their wages. “It was hard to bring life back to the people, like providing electricity and access points in and out of the island.”

In order to deliver anything from Hadramaut to Socotra, the governor had to send an official letter to Al Qaeda’s emir, “so this was totally awkward for us”.

There was a partial shift after the cyclones hit the island in November 2015. 

“International organisations came to provide aid, and with that access to the island started to become easier.”

Power was brought back, roads started to open and relief teams managed to reach and distribute aid to the people.

The Emirates Red Crescent assisted with building houses and rehabilitating schools in villages that were completely destroyed by the winds. Other projects included building mosques and setting up a lighting system at the airport with a fence built around it.

“And there are other projects like providing poor families with a source of income and sponsoring orphans through humanitarian organisations,” he adds.