This week's dream: Yemen’s secret world

Few American tourists dare to travel to Yemen, said Tom Downey in The New York Times. A virtually unreported civil war in the north, terrorist attacks, a history of tourist kidnappings, and “stern State Department travel warnings” frighten away most would-be sightseers. Those willing to accept such risks, however, will discover an “ancient way of life that is still largely intact.” This legendary country offers exquisite architecture, a deep-rooted traditional culture, extraordinary vistas, and even a “passable tourist infrastructure.”

The Old City of Sana, the capital, “is a remarkably well-preserved medieval metropolis.” Nonbelievers are not allowed to enter any of the country’s mosques—but these are, in any case, “spare and serious compared with the architectural excess of the homes.” Many brick or stone houses here, often up to six-stories high, date back to the 11th century. When Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini visited Sana in 1970 to shoot his version of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, he worried that modernization would ravage Sana. Soon after, UNESCO granted the old quarter World Heritage status. Parts of the city’s ancient wall still stand, surrounding the central souk, or main marketplace. Elsewhere they enclose livestock corrals

and lush gardens. A stroll through the Old City leads past stalls filled with “mounds of pungent powders and leaves” and communal trays of syrupy preserved persimmons.

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In the Haraz Mountains, outside Sana, is “the gloriously intact 11th-century village” of Al-Hajjara. The lush green fields on the outskirts are filled with khat, a leafy green drug that virtually everyone “from taxi drivers to sheikhs” chews daily. Yemen’s other spectacular draw is the eastern oasis of Wadi Hadhramaut, the longest fertile valley in the Arabian Peninsula, whose “crown jewel” is the village of Shibam. “Its tall, narrow mud-brick town houses are packed together so densely inside the city walls” that Shibam has been nicknamed “the Manhattan of the desert.” In the square, men play dominoes and sip hot, sweet tea; vendors sell sticky desserts; and visitors can “dart around a corner and leap back centuries.”

Contact: Utcyemen.com