"As hundreds of thousands of migrant Yemeni workers in Saudi Arabia and neighbouring Gulf countries were expelled in retaliation, many of them settled in Sanaa. A small capital city in an impoverished country, already ill equipped to serve its citizens, it cracked under the pressure. Streets teemed with the unemployed, particularly young men, many of whom succumbed to the Wahabi brand of Islam that the exiled workers had picked up in Saudi Arabia and brought back. At the co-ed Sanaa University, female students began to complain about harassment from repatriated Yemenis who blamed women's education for the fast-rising unemployment. I don't recall seeing a single beggar in Sanaa during the early 1980s. Now, they stood at virtually every street corner. That medieval but safe city was now gritty – and still medieval. I paid a visit to my family in the spring of 1992, my first in almost six years, and was shocked to see how just a few years changed us both so dramatically. There was a defeatist quality to their lives, while mine had hopes of a better future. My sisters seemed especially dispirited. Four of them worked for a living, but although their jobs gave them some economic independence, their lives remained limited. Beyond their commute to work, they rarely ventured anywhere other than grocery or clothing stores...Under his watch, Yemen has gone from a poor country to the most destitute in the Arab world. He fortified his stronghold on the country's larger cities in the north (Sanaa, Taiz, Houdeida), but lost control of the vast tribal terrains outside them. The result is a political culture where the cities are riddled with government red tape, while everywhere else is virtually lawless. " - bob

"One photograph from April, 2006, particularly infuriates me. My family's penchant for group photos never wavers, but this time my eldest brother voices his concern about my sisters being photographed in their “indoor” clothes. “What if the men who work at the photo-developing shop get to see your sisters in short sleeves or without a head scarf?” he asks, as if it's something I should have thought about myself. This is the same brother who is standing behind me in that 1975 picture I love so much. My sisters immediately see his point. I'm stunned. We reach a compromise. I can pose with my sisters and mother if they wear the hijab , or at least long sleeves and skirts. I fake a smile as my heart breaks. The last thing I want is an argument on my last night in Sanaa. " - bob

Sounds familiar: "Collectively they have become television addicts. Satellite TV, featuring hundreds of channels from the Arab world and beyond, has taken over from reading and socializing as the main form of entertainment. Why? Because among the many channels you can watch are the more Islamist ones (Hezbollah's Manar TV, for example) that promote a rigid version of the faith. By the time I visited Sanaa again in 2006, anti-Western and pro-Islamist sympathies intruded on virtually every conversation with friends, neighbours and family. The presence of al-Qaeda is never spoken of as positive, but it's not challenged or condemned either. The real danger is the tacit acceptance – an acceptance that has been building slowly for more than two decades and has claimed even progressive families like mine." - Paul Buchheit