'Losing Old Sanaa': Historic city reels from Yemen war

Doaa Al Waseai spent many happy years working as a tour guide in the Old City of Yemen's capital Sanaa, showing foreigners its hidden hammams and markets teeming with silver and spices.

After nearly a decade of war, that life feels like a distant memory. The Old City itself — Waseai's childhood home -- feels cut off from the world, its warrens of thousand-year-old rammed-earth buildings falling into disrepair.

"Tourism opened my eyes to my own culture," Waseai, 40, told AFP, reflecting on how she had gained a deeper appreciation for Yemeni clothing and food by explaining them to outsiders.

She once comfortably spoke English and German, but now her foreign language skills are wasting away, though she reckons it's just as well.

"There are no words to express our catastrophe -- in English or German or even French."

As she waits impatiently for the war to end, Waseai has kept painstaking records of the Old City's decline, her spreadsheets listing collapsed homes and battered hotels.

Determined to make use of her downtime, she is pursuing a master's degree in tourism at Sanaa University in hopes she can one day aid the Old City's recovery — which can't come soon enough.

"We're losing Old Sanaa," she said. "I'm so sad to say that."

The Old City's houses, with their distinctive white gypsum trim, "are very fragile and require constant maintenance", said Unesco associate project officer Mohammed Al Jaberi.

But that has proved impossible for many families during a wartime economic crisis marked by unpaid salaries and rising food prices.

"Traditionally the homeowners would carry out the maintenance," Jaberi said.

"People are making a hard choice between putting food on the table and maintaining the roof over their heads."

Drainage infrastructure has also suffered from neglect, making Old City buildings vulnerable to collapse during flash floods.

Fighting has dropped off considerably in much of Yemen since a truce took effect in April 2022, even though it expired last October.

A man works a field next to Unesco-listed buildings in the old city of the Yemeni capital Sanaa on July 12, 2023. — AFP

The absence of a lasting ceasefire, however, has left many of the country's institutions at a standstill, including the public preservation body tasked with saving historic sites.

Like other government bodies, it is starved of funds.

The growing desperation was on grim display in April when more than 80 people were killed in a crush at a cash handout for the holy month of Ramadan at an Old City school.

The handout amount was 5,000 rials, or about $8.

These hardships aside, Old City residents hold out hope its past glories can be revived.

"This farm was once like a heaven... you couldn't even walk through it because of the grass, it was all green before the war," said 28-year-old Abdullah Asaba, gesturing towards his rows of tomatoes, leeks, shallots and basil.

Near the Old City's historic Yemen Gate, in the shop where he sells traditional healing oils, Salah Aldeen labours underneath a picture of then French president Francois Mitterrand visiting the Old City in the 1990s -- a time when foreigners were a common sight.

He said he was confident those days would return, and compared the Old City to a hospital patient.

"Sooner or later, it will recover, you know. War is a disease, but we will recover."

• World
• MENA