From 'Arabia felix' Yemen has become impoverished cul-de -sac

Letter from Sanaa: Only 20 people disembarked from the Syrian Airways flight at Sanaa and lined up to have their passports stamped by an immigration official in the booth below a huge sign advertising the services of a multinational accounting firm.

The airport was deserted but for the taxi driver who took me into town. Streets were empty, shops shuttered. From 4-6pm Yemenis take their ease and chew the stimulantqat, the mildly stimulating fresh leaf which dominates life in this ancient country.

For three centuries before and six centuries after Christ, Yemen, dubbed "Arabia felix" or "happy Arabia" by the Romans, was the hub of the spice trade between India and east Africa. With the advent of Islam in the seventh century, Yemen continued to prosper from trade. But under the imams and the Ottomans it became isolated and forgotten.

Today Yemen is an impoverished cul-de-sac. I felt I had come to the end of the earth as the car sped along the dusty highway into the bowl of Sanaa surrounded by rugged barren brown mountains.

A cluster of typical Yemeni houses shimmered in the heat haze. Tall, narrow buildings, three or four storeys tall, with stone or brick foundations and mud-plastered mud brick exteriors, pierced by arched windows and decorated with geometric designs in whitewash or pale stone. The Yemeni house is a marvel, cool in summer, warm in winter, always elegant, whether in the meanest village or the wealthiest city suburb. Yemenis are so committed to their distinctive architecture, that they construct modern buildings on the traditional pattern, using reinforced cement and fired clay bricks. Yemen is a country of monuments.

Outside my hotel a bent beggar woman enveloped entirely in black proffered an ultrasound photo to secure alms while a youth in white caftan and green blazer, with a curved dagger sheathed at his waist, whisked my bag through a beeping metal detector and deposited it at the front desk.

Yemenis embrace both old and new ways.

Sanaa is a shabby, down-at-heel Arab city of 2.5 million. At its heart lies the splendid walled town which has been beautifully restored and is kept reasonably clean and tidy. Plunging into the bustling souq from the arch of Yemen Gate, we passed shop after shop selling daggers in simple and elaborately decorated holders attached to wide tooled leather belts.

Few Yemeni men feel properly dressed unless a dagger is upright against the stomach just beneath the breastbone. There are baskets in all sizes, shapes and colours from Saba, the home of the queen of Sheba who wed King Solomon, tiny clay replicas of Yemeni houses, jewellery of silver, amber and coral, honey, freshly-ground coffee and mounds of powdered spice.

Up three flights of steps at Selma's cool traditional house, we ate charcoal grilled fish with paper thin rounds of Yemeni bread, yoghurt, and stuffed vegetables. Sanaa, located three or four hours' drive from the sea, is a great place for grilled and curried fish and prawns as well as mansaf, lamb filled with spicy rice and roasted slowly in an oven.

We took a car into the countryside and toured the magnificent palace of former rulers, the imams, constructed atop a huge rock.

We were pursued by touts selling daggers, jewellery and Indian materials around the picture-postcard medieval town of Thula. At grimy Shibam we found men squatting in circles on the ground and brandishing fist-fulls of riyals as they bid for qat. At the hilltop village of Kawkaban we discovered a tourist hotel with a view but no customers.

The season is in March and April; we missed the first of two annual monsoons. At Hababa, a beautiful 15th-century village with a deep reservoir, we watched a woman dip her green plastic bucket into the water, lift it to the top of her head, and carefully gather her billowing cloak about her before climbing steep steps to the road. Her brief performance was as graceful as any western ballet.

The people of Yemen have always lived in villages, towns and cities, rather than as nomads as do the other inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula.