Room with a View

Yemen

It was my second night in Sana’a and the first night of Ramadan. I couldn’t wait to get to the medina with its jumble of adobe and burnt brick tower houses, icing cake mosques, and sandcastle bastions. >> >>I manoeuvred my 4x4 down into the storm drain that doubled as the main drive into the old town and watched it loom before me in the setting sun, glittering and cracked like a broken, gingerbread jewelbox.

Yemen

Meeting an old friend in the mafraj at the top of the Daoud Hotel, we drank tea, ate Yemeni honey sandwiches and watched the neon city lights come on below us, illuminating the sugared minarets with pink and green.

As the call to prayer resonated and lightning flashed behind the encircling mountain ridges, the heavens opened above us with the last of the monsoon rains and threatened to wash it all away. Transfixed I suddenly remembered curfew and that my only exit was the storm drain for the flood rains.

Throwing myself down the stairs I ran through the labyrinth alleyways back to the truck and gritting my teeth pushed forwards into the flowing torrent. With a quarter mile to go to the next off-ramp and the water rising towards the windows, I pondered the irony of drowning on arrival in this beautiful dessert capital so close to running out of water.

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Portugal

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