Life in the Medina Qadima (Old City)

Sana'a, Yemen

Sana’a is a very dusty place and the tower house I had rented had not been lived in for three months. The house is about 350 years old and few of the windows fit their frames, so dust and sand had seeped in through every crack, with the result that several millimeters of the stuff coated the entire abode. From the outside, the house clearly lists at one corner, and as I conducted my “walk through” I came upon one tiny room at the top of the house which is at some point going to disengage from the rest of the building. Knowing my luck it will happen at the first hint of the summer monsoon when I am on the roof with no other way of getting down. The owner is remarkably sanguine about the imminent destruction of his property, as when I suggested he should fix the large crack that runs across the ceiling and down the wall, as well as the roof beam that is split in two, before it fell to bits he said not to worry.......

Garden near my house

The house is located opposite a mosque without a minaret, and as if to compensate for this omission, three microphones have been strategically placed on the roof. All of them are directed towards my house. I will probably have to invest in a defibrillator because unsuspecting guests unused to and unfamilar with calls to prayer who make it up the many flights of stairs without succumbing to a stroke, will go into complete cardiac arrest with the dawn prayer at about 4:00 am.

Such minor details aside, the house is wonderful and is exactly what I wanted, with several storeys of steep and uneven steps and no doorbell or answering system. This will remain the case, since dashing up and down to let people in and out will constitute the only form of exercise I get. It is my fervent wish never to have to step into a gym again, but neither am I quite ready to dissolve into a mass of unrefined blubber. Climbing up and down steps and trying to do something with the garden, which at the moment is a wizened husk of grimy weeds and one gamely-struggling tamarind tree, should do the trick in the keep-fit department. Sana’a already sits at 7200 feet, so merely walking should keep me hale and hearty for a few more decades after which I will be grateful if body parts are moving, let alone jiggling.

Qamariyya in the mafraj

There will be a few more tales from Sana'a before I pick up Ibn Battuta's trail again. East Africa is next....... Inspiration in my office