Currently, traveling to Yemen is not advised. The State Department has issued a travel warning and even Lonely Planet prefaces its delightful travelogue about Yemen with a warning.
But I had an opportunity to visit this fascinating country before all these warnings surfaced. The minute I set foot in Sana'a, I knew I was in a magical place.
My companion and I spent four days in Sana'a. We stayed at the Taj Sheba Hotel where the concierge found us a driver for two glorious days. We started our tour with a palace built atop a solitary rock. Seeing the mud architecture of Yemen is worth the journey alone. Mud bricks come from the wadi floors. The mud is mixed with straw and water and then baked under the sun. It provides excellent insulation and keeps the houses cool. They are decorated with beautiful white arabesque designs.
"Jeddah used to look like this," a man from Saudi Arabia told us. "But now we have modernized." He sounded sad and nostalgic.
In Yemen, when these buildings are replaced or demolished, they re-use the earth and build again.
On the second day, our driver took us to three mountainous villages: Shibam, Kaukaban and Thula. Shibam is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is a walled town of 500 houses which rise up nearly ten stories from the wadi floor. All of these towns seemed so medieval with their tall stone walls and tiny hole-in-the-wall shops. We were followed by children wherever we went. Our driver stopped often and always seemed a little irritated when he got back into the car.
"Is everything all right?" we finally asked.
He shrugged. "No one will sell me qat for a good price because I have rich Americans in the car."
I miss the Middle East. I miss the call to prayer. I miss the food. I miss the gold souks and the spice markets and the haggling for everything from rugs to a small bag of cumin. Although I wore an abaya back then, today I would take more western clothes with me. Mimi wears an appropriate outfit to be worn again when Yemen re-opens its doors.
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