When author Peter Mortimer was commissioned to write a play about the little-known “Arab Riot” between Yemeni and British seamen at the Mill Dam, South Shields, in 1930, he decided to take the long trip to Yemen itself in search of inspiration. Undeterred by post-11 September government warnings, Mortimer set off and found an extraordinary and surprisingly Anglophile country. Cool for Qat documents this journey, during which Mortimer pieces together how the riots of 1930 arose and considers their relevance to the Western attitude towards Muslims today. Back in the UK, Mortimer’s investigations into the 1930 riot reveal a society with many striking similarities to current times. Then, as now, Muslim immigrants were treated as scapegoats for all manner of ills, tabloid newspapers drummed up prejudice, and the powers that be often used fear to disguise their own economic failings. Cool for Qat is a thought-provoking, controversial, and often humorous document of one man’s travels through a country about which little is known in the West.
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