Sanaa is a living fairytale city

We had rested in the former royal guesthouse in Taiz, the only place we could sleep and eat in. A small and ramshackle army had just revolted against the imam (that is, monarch-cum- religious leader) at the time.

Taiz was a small town not far from Aden. Nowadays, with improved roads, Taiz is two to three hours by car. I was one of a group of foreign journalists who wished to reach Sanaa, so we made use of a propeller aircraft, which was not jet-owned by an oil company drilling in Yemen, although at the time, they had yet to find their oil reserves.

Today, Yemen produces about a half million barrels and has high hopes of raising the figure to one million in the next few years if the country is pacified. We flew to Sanaa within an hour and landed in its then very primitive airport, which was built as a gift by the Soviet Union.

China was building roads from Sanaa to the Red Sea coast. Sanaa was a glorious surprise, at least to me, since it was my first visit to the city. It was like entering into a fairytale, the kind I had read about in primary and secondary schools. Sanaa is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, easily being 3,000 years old.

It had remained largely undeveloped until the revolution of 1962 because it had been ruled by ancient dynasties and struggled for so long against foreign influences. It was a storybook city with no roads, as there were few cars anyways at the time. There were only two schools and no power connections like other cities abroad.

The first time Yemenis experienced schools, cinemas and newspapers was upon arrival to the British colony where I was born. The concept of hotels was foreign at the time, so we were put up in the only guesthouse available with the permission of the new government. The guesthouse was staffed by some of the young officers who had staged the coup d'état.

The guesthouse where we stayed was comfortable, given the circumstances. The city was situated 2,300 meters above sea level, so we did not suffer much from heat, as the atmosphere was cool and embracing, making Sanaa one of the most comfortable cities in the Arab world. It has since become a lovely and modern city, with five-star hotels in abundance. Its fairytale-like old city, nevertheless, is magnificent and imposing and is a stone's throw from its modern boulevards and hotels.

I have visited the city several times since then, as it remains the capital of the Yemen Republic to which I belong. Amenities are available, although water is scarce and electricity supplies are erratic because of frequent subversion by rebellious tribes, who use their clout to blackmail the government into regularly paying them to keep power supplies running.

The modern section is well planned and has stations to continue onto the main cities uninterrupted. The fact that the government and the people almost always have to depend on diesel generators for power, which is costly, remains a matter of continuous agony and struggle.

There has been no solution to the problem so far and the government will have to double or treble its armed forces in order to ensure control of the tribes. However, five-star hotels have enough generators and can afford the cost of diesel around the clock. Sanaa was a popular tourist attraction for foreigners and locals from other areas alike prior to the spurt of violence.

Nevertheless, access to resources remains a continuous struggle with greedy and unruly tribes who demand more incentive every time. British writer Jonathan Raban visited the capital in the 1970s and described the city as "fortress-like, its architecture and layout resembling a labyrinth." He said it was like stepping out into the middle of a vast picture book. Away from the scene, the entire city turns into a maze of another kind, a dense, jumbled alphabet of signs and symbols.

I did not have to go far to describe the city when I decided to write a book about it. In fact, the cover of the book has a picture of the palace of the imam perched on a huge rock, which had no elevators in the nearby Wadi Zahr.
How the imam managed to climb it is a mystery given his advancing age and those of his equally old guests. The palace still stands proudly as one of the most attractive houses in the world.

The new quarter is fairly modern, being only 50 years old, and is comparable to any other Arab city.
This is unlike the old city, which has been chosen by Unesco as a World Heritage Site for its distinctive visual character thanks to its architectural features expressed in multi-story buildings with impressive facades and clean insides that vie with each other to create one of the distinctive cities in the world.

The city has a long history, which dates back to Shem, son of Noah, and has remained well-inhabited and nearly self-sufficient with the exception of a few products, which are imported by camel and donkey from other parts of the country.

The city, however, was so badly neglected by the imams and rulers of the time that it remained one of the most backward capitals for centuries.

Even the long Ottoman-Turkish occupation, which lasted until the end of the First World War in 1918, did little to alleviate the suffering of the people who lived at very basic levels of subsistence.
The country was embroiled in a bloody civil war following the revolution of 1962, which took hundreds of thousands of lives and lasted seven years. By the time peace was restored in 1970, the people were armed to the teeth, with no ban on guns and no way to control the circulation of arms, from rifles to bazookas.
This phenomenon has worsened the security situation with the rise of civil disturbances and the constant sabotage of public utilities and politically motivated assassinations, which the government is sadly unable to stem effectively.
The present targets comprise the armed forces and members of the security and intelligence services, which have considerably reduced the flow of tourists and the development of the country's tourist industry.
Only the increasing flow of foreign exchange from the large émigré population, in addition to substantial foreign aid given by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, are presently keeping the country in fairly good shape.
Tourism, unfortunately, still has a marginal effect on economic development.

• Farouk Luqman is an eminent journalist based in Jeddah.

Email: luqman@srpc.com

Source: ARAB NEWS