Ellai was born in this cave, just like his mother before him. Unusually in Socotra, where men are traditionally the providers, Ellai’s mother took on the role of fisherwoman for the family. “I still feel his presence inside the cave,” he told me. She taught him how to survive, where to find dates, potatoes and tomatoes, some of the only edible foods on the island, as well as which plants to use for medicine and where to find fresh water in the mountains. Ellai says her life hasn’t changed much in the past 60 years, except that she now proudly owns an “old-fashioned” mobile phone and has the luxury of bottled water.
In 2015, Cyclone Chapala ravaged by Yemen and the Horn of Africa. Most of nearby Qalansiyah was torn to pieces. However, Ellai followed her instincts and led her family into the cave from Qalinsiyah, seeking refuge in its deepest caverns. The ensuing storm, he described, sounded like “the gods fighting with all the elements of the Earth,” and after a few days he emerged thinking he might have been the only man left on Socotra. “My cave was our savior and withstood more than man-made buildings.”
He explained that there is a network of deep tunnels and caverns connected to his cave. In the early 2000s, a Belgian archaeological team, the Socotra Karst Project, approached Ellai in his cave, asking if they could dig some of these deeper tunnels. An 8-meter-long tunnel, which was so small that Ellai could barely fit through it, opened into a huge chamber where the team found cave paintings that archaeologist Julian Jansen van Rensburg believed could have 2,000 years, as well as human skulls and ancient pottery.
“The history of Socotra does not belong in the books,” said Ellai. “It belongs to memories and art and objects, and this cave has been a living record for longer than I can imagine.”
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