Opening the Door to Sheba’s Secret

“So you’re finally coming to fairyland!”

Fairyland? In Arabia? Those words, at the top of a message from our contact in Yemen, took us by surprise.

We--my wife, Mary, and I--had read extensively about Yemen in preparation for our two-week visit last November to add it to our library of photo stock. Any number of metaphors could fit this austere country at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula; “fairyland” wasn’t one we’d have chosen.

Once, this land was the prosperous domain of the legendary Queen of Sheba. For more than 1,000 years, caravans of frankincense, spices and other luxuries moved from here to capitals throughout the Mediterranean, enriching every city and outpost along the way. By the 4th century, its heyday was over, and it passed the centuries in tribal warfare, foreign subjugation and feudalism. Until 1990, modern Yemen was at war with itself, the formerly British colonial half of the territory being a republic, the rest a Marxist state.

Its historic isolation has made Yemen a living museum, its dress and customs little changed over the centuries. Their traditional architecture has put two of Yemen’s cities, Sana (the capital) and Shibam, on UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites.

We expected to find only hints of past glories: dusty ruins and a few Bedouin communities. Instead, we discovered a sleeping beauty.

We flew into Sana’s no-frills airport, where the local travel agent who’d made our arrangements whisked us away. A 10-minute ride in his new 4x4 took us back centuries, and we were immediately seduced.

Behind ancient walls, old Sana’s twisting cobbled alleys and spice-scented markets were straight out of “Arabian Nights.” Brickwork in elaborate geometric patterns decorated the multistoried “tower houses.” Intricate brush strokes of white paint outlined the houses’ stained-glass windows.

But first, the desert beckoned--a 250-mile trip, much of it across unmarked dunes, to the ancient trade center of Shibam. The travel agent had booked a Bedouin as our driver, partly as insurance against kidnapping.

While crime against tourists is rare here, in recent years there have been some kidnappings by tribesmen seeking economic concessions from the government. Paradoxically, that has not deterred tourism. In fact, one local travel agent told Associated Press last year, some prospective visitors, intrigued by rumors of Bedouin hospitality, had asked if a kidnapping could be arranged.

“You are safe with me in the desert,” our wild-eyed driver, Abdul Karim, assured us.

Karim was a walking arsenal, with his pistol, cartridge belts, AK-47 assault rifle and djambiya, a ceremonial curved dagger worn by most Yemeni men. Without the djambiya, he would have been (according to a local saying) like “an Oxford man without his tie.”

Karim’s 1980s-vintage 4x4, outfitted with spare gas tanks and oversized tires, was the modern substitute for a camel. Racing up the face of a steep dune and side-slipping down the other side, Karim maneuvered like a skier hot-dogging over moguls.

We spent our first night in Marib, a half-day drive east of Sana, so that we could start the nine-hour drive to Shibam as early as possible. On the route from Sana to Marib, we were one of a caravan of hired cars accompanied by a guard of soldiers in a pickup truck. After Marib, we were pretty much on our own.

It was sunrise when we left Marib, and the sea of dunes around us shimmered pink and gold. Gradually the terrain flattened to an endless expanse of scrub and acacia trees. Large mesas on the horizon were the only landmarks in this otherworldly region; the only sign of human presence was the occasional Bedouin tent.

By the time we were out of the desert and back on a paved road, we were dusty and exhausted; a race on camels, we decided, would have been as easy. We had a new appreciation for bottled water, which, even in Yemen, is readily available, safe and inexpensive. We made sure to carry plenty in our day packs.

As we drove into Saywun, the largest town of the Hadramawt valley, Karim offered us a pick-me-up. “Want to chew khat?” he asked, his cheek bulging with a wad of the leaves.

Khat is a mild narcotic, banned in most Arab countries. But in Yemen, afternoon khat-chewing socials are a national pastime, particularly among men. We sampled it and decided that the odd, bittersweet flavor must be an acquired taste.

We made Saywun our headquarters for three days of exploring the Hadramawt, which lies in a sandy plain beneath limestone cliffs. Along the ancient caravan route, hamlets dotted with date palms clung to the base of the cliffs like mud-dauber nests. Here and there, a white minaret broke the mud-brick roof lines.

We passed women herding goats or driving horse-drawn carts. Most of them wore the traditional Yemeni sharsaf, a long black skirt with matching scarf and face veil. Shaded by tall, pointed straw hats, they resembled fairy-tale witches.

The city of Shibam rose from the valley floor like a cartoon of the New York skyline, a dense cluster of 500 narrow, tilting tower houses in an area of less than half a square mile. Inside the walls, the alleys were shady and the people moved about quietly.

Although other towns and villages in the Hadramawt were exotic, Shibam haunted us. It must have been the ghosts of the ancient traders that twice caused us to retrace our steps, first to bargain for an intricately carved wooden book stand (designed to hold the Koran, Islam’s sacred book), then for a small hand-woven basket.

We returned to Sana by air (about a one-hour flight) and immediately plunged into the old city’s medina, a collection of markets, each with its own specialty--spices and aromatics like frankincense, vegetables, dates, textiles, silver, djambiyas, water pipes, tools and, of course, khat.

The late afternoon sunlight dappled the lanes crowded with vendors and shoppers. The fragrance of charcoal fires mixed with the market aromas, changing as we walked along. Men wearing the zanna, an ankle-length robe that buttons like a shirt, crouched in doorways, talking and chewing khat. Veiled women in colorfully printed shawls moved from shop to shop, eyeing gold jewelry but buying only household items.

We bargained for an antique silver belt, then checked into Taj Talha, a funduq, or traditional hotel, for the night.

Inside, we felt dwarfed. An enormous stone staircase led to our third-floor room; each step was at least a foot high. The teakwood door was thick and heavy; it took two hands to turn the giant key in the lock and two hands to pull back on the oversize door ring. We plopped like kids onto the floor mattresses and looked up at a 12-foot ceiling. The windows came right down to the floor, making it easy to look outside from the bed. Everything seemed out of proportion. Then it dawned on us--like Alice, we were in Wonderland!

Dinner that night was fresh fish--Red Sea snapper baked in a clay oven, a welcome break from the typical fare of grilled meat, stewed vegetables and beans and rice. (In Saywun, we once dined on camel, a stringy and musty meat.)

At dawn, the muezzins’ prayer calls woke us, and after the usual breakfast of black tea, eggs, flat bread and thin bean soup, a new driver sped us north to Yemen’s highlands, “the rooftop of Arabia.”

Although we traveled many primitive roads in Yemen, nothing prepared us for our ascent to the fortress village of Shaharah. After transferring from the car to a pickup truck, we had the four-wheel-drive trip of a lifetime. The rutted road was narrow, with one hairpin turn after another, steep drop-offs and no guardrails. Throughout the two-hour ordeal we consoled ourselves with the notion that if the brakes failed, our last view of Earth would be spectacular.

It was a relief finally to stop and walk through the village. The dwellings were primitive, the atmosphere ethereal--an Arab Shangri-La.

Shaharah’s landmark is its dramatic 17th century arched bridge spanning a deep gorge. Beyond the bridge, green terraces cascaded down slopes as far as we could see, and rows of purple mountains receded into the haze. As Chris Bradley, author of a travel guide to Yemen, says of Shaharah, “It’s Nepal, Morocco and Jordan rolled into one amazing panorama.”

We explored other highland villages that are popular with European trekkers. Especially beautiful is Al-Hajjarah, a 12th century mountaintop village about 60 miles southeast of Sana. Wrapped in late afternoon clouds, it seemed like a fairy-tale setting. Wide stone steps led to a narrow entranceway in the fortress wall; inside, a maze of steep paths connected dwellings, shops and livestock enclosures that were on a scale smaller than usual.

Although Yemen began exporting oil in the 1980s, it is poor by world standards.

One night, we talked with a villager about Yemen’s uncertain prospects. “We will never be as wealthy as the Saudis,” he said. To make matters worse, he added, water shortages in the highlands are threatening to drive people down to the plains, where tribal conflicts could increase.

On our return to Sana, we passed the Rock Palace at Wadi Dhar, just outside the city. Built of stone blocks atop a towering granite spur, it was the summer palace of one of Yemen’s last imams, the spiritual leaders who ruled until recent years. The most photographed of all Yemen’s architectural treasures, the palace has become a national icon. From a distance, it looked like a whimsical frosted cake. But then we did a double take. Now it was a gingerbread dollhouse balanced on a mushroom stem. Only in fairyland.

Love and his wife, Mary, are writer-photographers based in Charlotte, N.C., and West Palm Beach, Fla.

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GUIDEBOOK

Charting Yemen

Getting there: Lufthansa offers service from LAX with one change of planes (in Frankfurt, Germany) for $2,022 round trip.

Where to stay: Sheraton Sana, telephone 011-967- 1-237500, fax 011-967-1- 251521, e-mail Sheraton4 @y.net.ye. Double rooms start at $170.

Taj Sheba Hotel, tel. 011-967-1-272372, fax 011-967-1-274129, e-mail TSHACC@y.net.ye. Doubles, $175-$230. .

Our arrangements, including lodging at traditional funduqs, were made by Ashtal Travel and Tourism, P.O. Box 1501, 94 Hadda St., Sana, Republic of Yemen; tel. 011-967-1-266412, fax 011-967-1-244976, e-mail Ashtal@y .net.ye.

Information: Embassy of the Republic of Yemen, 2600 Virginia Ave. NW, Suite 705, Washington, DC 20037; tel. (202) 965-4760, fax (202) 337-2017, Internet https://www.y.net.ye.