Finally Sana'a, so long dreamed of, with its houses of a thousand wonders offering all their splendor to our eyes. We remain enchanted by the charm emanating from this city founded by Shem, to whom it owes its name. Even today almost the entire city preserves its original architecture, its beauty willed by its inhabitants: the aestheticism of the perfect lines of the tower houses competing with the minarets to secure victory by touching the sky first... Everywhere brushstrokes of color, almost an Impressionist painting where blue dominates for the sky, white for the windows, sand color for the houses and green for the vegetable gardens glimpsed when the gates open.
Crowds, heat, smells, humidity, shouts of the crowd, lowing of the animals on display, jostling, shoving, laughter, bargaining, closed faces that reflect, a sea of white robes as far as the eye can see, here is the domain of men in immaculate traditional clothing: we are at the great market of Bay El Fahid. Here everything is bought and sold: ropes, bridles for animals, livestock and foodstuffs; here since dawn people come from everywhere for that great day, hoping to do good business. The air saturated with smells and humidity makes your head spin, we feel so absorbed by that crush that we no longer understand whether we are tourists or Yemenis...
Light sand, palm groves, wooden boats, deserted beaches, sultry nights, rope huts, it is the kingdom of Ahmed, manager of a tiny guest house along the Red Sea, and Ahmed always waits, sitting on a rickety straw bench, for the traveler who got lost along the coast. A swim in the warm sea at dusk, the taste of grilled fish and Al Rora becomes for us the most beautiful beach in the world... The journey continues to Marib where the mystery of the Queen of Sheba still hovers and the encounter with Ali, our driver, is a gift from her; he didn't want to take tourists so he could return early to Rada to embrace his latest son whom he hadn't met yet. Our itinerary included a stop in that city to admire the old alabaster windows, so he accepted us as travel companions and we were even invited to his home for a few days.
Ali knew everything, and besides the best places, he introduced us to interesting people and helped us understand Yemeni culture and traditions, and with him we discovered Shibam... At the exit of the arid Rub Al Kali, after twelve hours of crossing accompanied by the Bedouins, their Kalashnikovs, and the sharing of tea in the desert, Shibam, the Manhattan of the desert, appears like a mirage in a casket of palms. The same vision the caravaneers had on the spice route... Shibam, with its skyscrapers of more than eight floors protected by UNESCO, echoes in its alleyways with the laughter of children, the hoofbeats of goats searching for food, the chatter of women, black shadows moving about carefully so as not to fall on the uneven sidewalks...
Shibam, where painters seated on ephemeral and fragile swings more than ten meters above the ground decorate the windows with snow-colored lime, singing... Shibam, where at night the play of lights through the colored glass windows murmurs fantastic tales to us and the fleeing shadows of the last latecomers turn into odalisques and sultans... Shibam, which from the nearby jebel flames at dusk, reluctantly giving way to the moon, making the shadows of the palms eerie, and Shibam falls into silence, carrying with it our dreams and memories forever impressed in our hearts... And the day rises over Bokur, this isolated village on a plateau seems to await its prince like Sleeping Beauty.
Illusion or reality, these houses that play hide-and-seek with the mountain, allowing the pinkish sand-colored stones to reflect the sun's rays so as to blend better into the landscape and not be discovered? Yemen is like this: it hides in order to be better discovered, its proud men are always ready to defend honor, and only an attentive and patient traveler will be able to encounter the deep soul of Arabia Felix...
Graziella angy8@bluewin.ch
N.B: the driver can be contacted at:
E-mail: ali-zamil@hotmail.com (English, Arabic) or at the reception of the hotel: Arabia-Felix in the heart of the old city of Sana'a N.B: Ali speaks Italian very well
practical information on my pages at:
1 reader comments
Ottime info, splendide foto