The Walls of Sana'a (Le mura di Sana'a)

THE WALLS OF SANA

AN APPEAL TO UNESCO IN THE FORM OF A DOCUMENTARY

DEDICATED TO THIS YEMENI SCARECROW

This plaque, signed by the Vice-president of the Government

and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China,

remembers the construction of the highway, that was built by Chinese,

between the Red Sea and the desert valley of central Yemen...

where Sana is located.

Until 10 years ago, Yemen was a medieval country, unchanged

during the centuries of its history.

The civil war between monarchists and republicans...

ended with the victory for those

who wanted to change the history, but have decimated the youth.

Soldiers and labourers are just boys.

It is unknown exactly what is the true will of these people.

At this moment, at least in Sana, the capital...

there is an extreme desire for modernity and progress...

such as we have in the West.

But this desire has been imported, it wasn't born here.

A small group of revolutionaries brought democracy to this medieval country,

which wholeheartedly accepted it,

but is defenseless, as always, against that what comes from above.

The republican revolution has also been socialist,

as it often happens in the Third World

First came the Chinese, to clear this..

to construct highways from the sea to Sana and, later, from Sana to the North.

Their presence is charismatic...

and their bodies very natural.

The highways made by Chinese brought to Sana...

the first consumer goods from the industrial culture,

regardless if it is capitalist or socialist.

"Good-doers" that came to Yemen from both East and West...

have put in motion irreversible changes.

As Yemen is a poor country, it buys consumer goods of low quality.

Their desire for progress is still naive...

and full of enthusiasm of a victorious postwar period.

They are content with little.

Nasser was the first to come to aid to Yemeni resistance...

with an unfortunate military expedition that was unpopular in Yemen itself.

Still, after the death of Nasser black flags of national mourning were hoisted.

Thanks to Nasser's aid Yemen opened to the future.

A new, though shoddy,structure of a modern city is being born:

the Parliament...

the Ministry of the Interior...

the National Bank...

the Ministry of Information...

the Ministry of Defense...

the residence of the President of the Republic...

The old city, within the walls, remains completely intact.

Sana is a great medieval city,

as big as Spoleto,

and perfectly conserved through centuries...

a perhaps unique case in the world.

It never suffered any contamination from the outside world...

and even less so from the modern, radically different world...

its beauty is surrealy perfect,

exciting and almost excessive.

Even on a more rustic and popular level

it is beautiful like Venice, Urbino, Prague, Amsterdam.

Yemeni rulling class is ashamed of her,

because she is poor and dirty...