23 Dec Yemen: In the Land of the Queen of Sheba

Today I'm going to tell you about a journey through time that I made some years ago, because I didn't want another year to go by without telling you about that story based, as usual for me, on real events. And also, I would like to remind Justi, a friend of mine who is repairing his car, that very soon we will be making a trip to Africa. Inshaala.

I remember that night, the last one after several months in those lands. We were in BeirutThe old heart is confused and doesn't know whether to die of grief at saying goodbye to the friends he is leaving behind or to burst with joy at the thought of finally returning home to his family.

We had just left my favourite bar, the Pacifico, on Monot Street and began the procession from bar to bar in search of one that best suited our refined taste. In short, anything was good as long as they didn't make us dance the dabke, that traditional Lebanese dance with notorious hip hop influences, impossible to dance, and which I dance with the same flair that a Norwegian recently landed from Trondheim at the Feria would embroider the sevillanas.

Well, that's where we were, saying goodbye, with the perraje, remembering the nights in the Dana with the "hard core" and those little battles typical of broken and damaged soldiers, when Justi, because I'm sure it was him, because these ideas can't be mine, had the idea of saying that: No hay h... de irnos a Yemenand why do we want more...

All I remember of what followed is that, after repeatedly beating my chest as if to swear an oath and draining my glass in one gulp, we got into that old '66 Delorean, which the Back to the Future people had left us, and the time machine teleported us to the city of Sanaa, 13th century AD.

Appearing at night in SanaaThe fact that we were without accommodation and with a huge headache (which I say would be due to the "ges" suffered when crossing the space-time barrier...) has its share of regrets. After a lot of running around, we managed to find a hotel, which, for the irresistible price of one dollar a day (and let it be said that for the services it offered, it seemed a bit expensive) gave us accommodation. And I say accommodation, not rest, because some disturbing stains on the sheets invited us to sleep with one eye open. Strangely, the stairs and the corridor were full of people sleeping, as if a sleep bomb had dropped and the residents had not had time to get to their rooms. What mystery could this hotel be hiding...?

But to wake up in the oldest inhabited city in the world, with the muezzins of more than 100 mosques calling for morning prayer, to look out of the window and see this, is one of those moments that cannot be forgotten.

This is Sanaa, the city founded 2500 years ago by Shem the son of Noah, Sanaa, cradle of Islam, or Sanaa the Venice of dust, (as he would aptly rename it). Alberto Moravia), in short, a marvel. The most beautiful capital in the world, no exaggeration, although I think I've already said that about other places...

And there I was, fulfilling another one of my dreams, although I don't know why I also had in my head to get to Adenand the island of SocotraI had to leave that for another occasion, because it was a bit far away from me.

By the way, I'm amazed that despite the years that have passed since I was in Sanaa, I still look the same as I did then, it looks like the photo was taken just yesterday, isn't it? It's going to look like I made a pact with the devil, I know.

You get the impression that the city has remained like me, unshaken by the passage of time, and when you walk through its streets you think that at any moment, just around the corner, you might come face to face with the Queen of Sheba walking hand in hand with King Solomon.

As I said before, the city is the cradle of Islam, as its great mosque was built during the lifetime of the Prophet. And they will have some other heritage from earlier religions, because when the Pathfinder probe landed on Mars in 1997, two men, I imagine out of qat, denounced NASA in a Sanaa court for having entered Mars illegally, since, according to them, the planet was the heritage of their ancestors.

Speaking of Mars, a Zambian primary school teacher who called himself the director of the "Zambian space agency" also wanted to go there. In 1964 he planned to send a dozen men to Mars, with a 17-year-old girl (poor thing...), two cats (I'm lost here, why would they be...) and a missionary to try to convert the local Martians. The idea was to launch the rocket with a catapult from the stadium in Lusaka and the financing was to be obtained from UNESCO, from whom he asked for a few million dollars... But well, I'll write about Zambia another day, time for time (I'm still thinking about the cats).

There, the men, from their earliest childhood, wear this dagger or Jambija on their belts, an ornamental weapon with which they can use to clean their nails or to send their neighbour away for a problem with their car. qatThe hallucinogenic plant that they keep in their mouths for hours and that day after day, at dinnertime, paralyses Yemen. The after-dinner meal is a very important social event, where all the day's business is discussed, sometimes local matters are settled, sometimes Mars is talked about...

So much qat is consumed that there is hardly any left in the country. The roads to the cities of Al Husn and Al Khutayb used to run through huge qat plantations but are now history. Now it is brought in from Kenya and Somalia, or wherever it is needed, because it can never be in short supply. This plant makes them forget for a few hours all the problems that affect them on a daily basis. I am thinking of bringing it here, although I have already tried it and it hardly affects me.

Every corner of Yemen hides a surprise and I am going to leave you with one of them. In the village of HababaI found this bike, and no matter how many times I looked at it, I'm still not sure if I was looking at the original prototype of that famous Derbi Coyote, or the bike of Chewaka himself, the one from Star Wars.

And here I say goodbye. It was a short, intense, unrepeatable trip, like this entry. I hope you liked this country as much as I did. I wish you a Merry Christmas and that the coming year will allow us all to continue travelling around the world and fulfilling dreams, whatever they may be.

And if they are not fulfilled, don't worry, we will always have the qat....