A Night in Old Sana'a

My first trip to Old Sana’a came only a few nights after arriving. We were after some late-night (~10:00pm) tea and hoped to go to the café atop Burj as-Salaam Hotel (Peace Tower Hotel). It is the tallest building in Old Sana’a and famous for the view from its rooftop café. To get to the Old City from where I live you walk straight down 26^th September St. and enter through Bab al-Sabah (Morning Gate. There is no longer a physical gate here, if there over was one). This late at night most shops were closed.

The Old City immediately distinguishes itself from the rest of Sana’a. Bab al-Sabah, more of a street than an actual gate, terminates at an intersection with the paved drainage canal that surrounds the Old City. The canal functions as a ring road around Old Sanaa during most of the year, but whenever it rains the canal fills with water and becomes a somewhat scenic moat guarding the tall brick buildings within. A bridge leads from Bab al-Sabah over the canal and into the Old City, and we were off to find Burj as-Salaam.

Aside from the canal separating it from the rest of Sanaa, the old city is also distinguished by its medieval urban planning. The city was obviously built before the existence of cars, as evidenced by the narrow streets paved in stone that can hardly support one-way traffic, and the even narrower alleys that are hardly wide enough for a motorcycle. Not much was open aside from a few small shops selling snacks and beverages and a handful of people selling jambiyahs and fabricated antiques. These last stores definitely fit the “old” theme, and their weathered wooden paneling reminded me of my grandparents’ basement.

We soon found our way to Burj as-Salaam but realized it was closed. It was then that a wiry young Yemeni found us and started tagging along with our group. He spoke English and German and offered us his not entirely needed help with finding a different café. A little sketchy at first in his forwardness, we grew to accept that his intentions were innocent and allowed him to lead the way.

He led us through streets and alleys, ourselves overshadowed by the tall square buildings as we wended our way between the light shadow of the narrower parts of Old Sanna. The maze of cobblestone alleys felt like a quaint European village. “This is where we kidnap the tourists” he joked in one particularly narrow alley that seemed to dead-end before revealing a small opening to the right.

Before long we arrived at the Malak Dawood (King David) Hotel, whose sign post was written in English, Arabic, and strangely, Japanese. This building really did look like a Hobbit hole. The doors were heavy, wooden, and rounded, and the jambs were so short that we all had to stoop to pass through them. There was zero activity inside the hotel, and Alex, our volunteer Yemeni guide, stirred the two workers lounging just to the left the reception desk to give us service. We walked up white asymmetrical stairs that seemed to be carved for people much taller than us, much less the statistically shorter Yemenis. Every so often a tiny set of smaller stair led halfway up the side of the wall to a tiny door, for what I do not know.

After several flights we reached the roof, where a number of plastic tables and chairs were set out surrounding the mafraj. I climbed to the roof of the mafraj and got my first look at the Old City skyline. It was dark for a city, but dark in way that was calm more so than eerie. To the west I could see the TeleYemen tower that stood above Midan Tahrir. To the south was President Salih’s mosque, one of the biggest in the world. To the east was a large black mass blotting out the stars, marking one of the large mountains that surround the city.

The Old City redeems the rest of Sana’a, which to me can seem rather devoid of character and charm. The new parts of the city have very few landmarks, and each district seems to bleed into the next with the same variety of stores selling the same varieties of things, seemingly regenerating as in a computer game until you reach the physical geographic boundaries that halt expansion. The streets are full of the blaring lawless traffic that I’ve come to associate with places like Cairo. The Old City, on the other hand, is mostly devoid of vehicle traffic and full of old, authentic architecture that owes no tribute to a colonial European tradition. A maze of charming alleys may open up to small city garden surrounded by “skyscrapers” hundreds of years old. Perhaps I am romanticizing the Old City a bit, but its hard not to. It’s unlike anything I have ever seen before, especially in comparison to the noisy bustle of the rest of Sana’a.