The
Islamic world’s mystery and riches once attracted droves of western
holidaymakers. But terrorism has devastated the industry in Egypt and
Tunisia – and even countries untouched by conflict. Is there any way
back?
It was a wild night in the Yemeni port of Aden. At the first nightclub, we met a group of musicians who had finished their set and were drinking local beer – made in Arabia’s only brewery. They said we should all go to the Mövenpick hotel club. They promised a sensational evening.
When we arrived, a full Egyptian orchestra in tuxedos was already whipping up a storm of wailing and crashing for a Syrian bellydancer who was gyrating across the tables. The songs were all classics from the 1930s and 40s by singers such as Umm Kulthum, Sayed Darwish and Mohamed Fawzy, an urgent storm of melancholy and longing. I felt we had entered an orientalist’s paradise: the world of classic Egyptian cinema and Flaubert’s Cairo. No one mentioned the explosion in the car park a few weeks before. None of us noticed that we were witnessing the end of an era in the Arab world.
That was early 1993 and the bomb in the Mövenpick car park had been put there on 29 December 1992 by an obscure Afghan war veteran called Osama bin Laden. It was his first terror operation.
He had wanted to murder some US marines, targeting the Mövenpick and the nearby Gold Mohur hotel, but the two bombs instead killed one Austrian tourist and one local. At the time, the incident barely made the press and Bin Laden’s role was not known until much later, but you could say that, right from the start, western tourism and jihadist terrorism were fatally linked.
With Yemen in the midst of war, there are no tourists in Aden now, nor in Sana’a, the mountain city to the north whose ancient centre used to be on many people’s wishlists, along with other currently inaccessible World Heritage sites such as Libya’s Leptis Magna, Syria’s Palmyra (or what’s left of it) and the Afghan buddhas of Bamiyan. And if Sana’a, supposedly founded by Noah’s son Shem, is still largely intact, in terms of visitors it is dead. The hotels of the Old City, grand merchants’ tower houses converted in the 1990s, lie empty as do the astonishing samasir, the vast labyrinthine caravanserai, some of which had been converted to tourist-oriented craft workshops and markets. There are no visitors, not even the sort of occasional intrepid adventurer that used to come in the 18th century. Anyone who once depended on tourists for a living has moved on. There are stories of younger men heading off on the long road to Europe. No doubt others are feeling the lure of jihadist causes, particularly as that path brings weaponry, money and respect. The country is in the grip of a civil war that offers little likelihood of ending soon. An entire generation of travellers may never experience Yemen, missing out on a unique civilisation. Nor will the country gain what it deserves, and needs: friends and admirers in the outside world.
It was a wild night in the Yemeni port of Aden. At the first nightclub, we met a group of musicians who had finished their set and were drinking local beer – made in Arabia’s only brewery. They said we should all go to the Mövenpick hotel club. They promised a sensational evening.
When we arrived, a full Egyptian orchestra in tuxedos was already whipping up a storm of wailing and crashing for a Syrian bellydancer who was gyrating across the tables. The songs were all classics from the 1930s and 40s by singers such as Umm Kulthum, Sayed Darwish and Mohamed Fawzy, an urgent storm of melancholy and longing. I felt we had entered an orientalist’s paradise: the world of classic Egyptian cinema and Flaubert’s Cairo. No one mentioned the explosion in the car park a few weeks before. None of us noticed that we were witnessing the end of an era in the Arab world.
That was early 1993 and the bomb in the Mövenpick car park had been put there on 29 December 1992 by an obscure Afghan war veteran called Osama bin Laden. It was his first terror operation.
He had wanted to murder some US marines, targeting the Mövenpick and the nearby Gold Mohur hotel, but the two bombs instead killed one Austrian tourist and one local. At the time, the incident barely made the press and Bin Laden’s role was not known until much later, but you could say that, right from the start, western tourism and jihadist terrorism were fatally linked.
With Yemen in the midst of war, there are no tourists in Aden now, nor in Sana’a, the mountain city to the north whose ancient centre used to be on many people’s wishlists, along with other currently inaccessible World Heritage sites such as Libya’s Leptis Magna, Syria’s Palmyra (or what’s left of it) and the Afghan buddhas of Bamiyan. And if Sana’a, supposedly founded by Noah’s son Shem, is still largely intact, in terms of visitors it is dead. The hotels of the Old City, grand merchants’ tower houses converted in the 1990s, lie empty as do the astonishing samasir, the vast labyrinthine caravanserai, some of which had been converted to tourist-oriented craft workshops and markets. There are no visitors, not even the sort of occasional intrepid adventurer that used to come in the 18th century. Anyone who once depended on tourists for a living has moved on. There are stories of younger men heading off on the long road to Europe. No doubt others are feeling the lure of jihadist causes, particularly as that path brings weaponry, money and respect. The country is in the grip of a civil war that offers little likelihood of ending soon. An entire generation of travellers may never experience Yemen, missing out on a unique civilisation. Nor will the country gain what it deserves, and needs: friends and admirers in the outside world.
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