Kalashnikovs and Christmas in Yemen

It was probably a Greek sailor named Hippalus who in the first century BC discovered that in the Indian Ocean the monsoon winds blow east towards India in the summer and west toward Africa in the winter. Soon Roman ships were bypassing southern Arabia, carrying goods from east to west largely by water at far less cost than over land by camel through the tax-levying cities. Southern Arabia has been by-passed ever since, as the centre of civilisation moved ever further away to the west and north. The great movements of history surged back and forth on the other side of the Empty Quarter, as empires rose and fell without causing a ripple in the isolated pool of south Arabia’s history, a pool that grew smaller and smaller until it dried up like parched wadis that criss-cross the country. Time fell asleep here, and the husks of ancient civilisations were buried in deep sand, preserved like flowers between the leaves of a book.
Wendell Phillips, Qataban and Sheba

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