So, too, do those preconceptions about Arab men and Islamic women . . . We are a thick stone wall away from the after-school hubbub of Old Sana'a, a walled mediaeval city barely touched by the modern world. A stone's throw off, in a dim, open-doored building, a blinkered camel shuffles in circles grinding sesame seeds. A few escapee sheep bound through a low wooden door at the rear of the mill - and are promptly shooed back out again. Streetcleaners with brooms comb roads paved only since the 1980s.
Small boys amuse themselves chucking stones at tins and dogs in a dusty labyrinth of alleys.
Women cloaked in hijab, black from head to toe, watch you with big brown eyes through horizontal slits, high heels the only give-away to the individuals underneath. Older women in sitara, a garment of rectangular cloth, move about like colorful tents. Here, male storeowners craft wares with hand tools as they've done for hundreds of years. Stand watching long enough and one of them will bring you a low stool and a glass of black, syrupy tea. Yemen, in ancient times fat from the profits of frankincense and myrrh, has missed out of the oil wealth of its Arab neighbors and is one of the world's poorest countries.