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the city in two, comes to an abrupt end when it reaches some walls
of dried mud which, at that point, have no opening.
San'a, like all cities in the Orient, is divided into two areas: the
area in which the people live, mysterious and deserted, whose hennetic
atmosphere expresses the well-known cryptomania of the Moslems with
their medieval concept of family life; and the area in which they do
business, a tumultuous crowded place that is almost too insolent and
aggressive in its bustle and trade. Here in the streets swarming with
passers-by whose activities and destinations are difficult to determine, the
shops are the size of closets; inside these square low-ceilinged rooms,
the shopkeepers sit on crossed legs in front of a pile of seeds or a
bowl full of farina: it is difficult to imagine a poorer and more symbolic
type of commerce. And in these streets where everybody looks at things
but few buy anything, perhaps less money circulates than in one large
Western department store or supermarket. Even the vivacity of the
crowd has nothing modern about it. It is the vivacity of the Middle
Ages, composed of rags and of colors, of mean dealing and subtle
trickery, of shouting and gesticulation, of ingenuousness and cunning;
that vivacity that sparkles in the pages of Boccaccio's minor works
and in those of the more realistic stories in
A Thousand And One
Nights.
Everything that would be impossible in a modern city today
here at San'a happens frequently: to be interrogated on the street by
curious bystanders of every type ; to be followed by a train of men
armed to the teeth but intimidated by a camera; to see the crowd
surround you, attentive, in suspense, as though expecting some miracle,
or at least something extravagant, to happen. Yemen was opened to
foreigners only three months or so ago, after the expulsion of the
Imam, and so because of the obscurantism of a prince, conditions of
isolation and segregation that were normal everywhere in the Middle
Ages were created in this country. But there is no xenophobia in the
crowd at San'a.
If
anything, there is that trusting and ingenuous
familiarity with which, on certain deserted islands, the native birds
approach the men.
At the end of my walk on what must be the main street of San'a,
after having examined one by one the shops in which the artisans make
things under the very eyes of the buyer, a sign printed in English and
in Arabic indicating the Bank of the Yemen State reminds me that
I must change some money. I enter a small courtyard, between white
walls without windows; squatting on the ground near a pool of clear
water, two men in black turbans and green robes are counting a great
