I got home last night and puttered around for a while. Then I listened to some music and ate the chocolate bar that I had bought. Afterwards, I was a little dry, so I reached for my bottle of water. It was empty. So were all my others. Hmmm… What time was it? 11:30 at night. That’s not good, everything was probably closed. Oh well, I figured that I’d wait until morning and buy some then.
Before too long, I got really dry and the headache started. I figured I better try to get some water, so out I went. Naturally, all of the shops near me were closed. I asked a guy in the street where I could get some water and he took me a ways into the old city to a ducann (a small shop) he knew. Well, it was closed. I wandered back and asked someone else. They gave me some vague directions deeper into the old city. I ran across some other guys and they took me deeper into the labyrinth. The place they were thinking of was closed, so one of them mentioned walking to Bab-al-Yemen… That’s on the other side of the souk from my house and I really didn’t feel like walking that far. Just then, I stumbled across a ducann that was restocking for the next day. “I want a bottle of water, no two, make it three!” I was parched, but I had my water…
I started to walk back along the ways I thought we came, but I quickly got turned around. Every street in the old city is similar, but nothing was familiar. I wandered and wandered. When I saw someone, I asked them how to get back to where I knew my way. He gave me some vague directions which I attempted to follow. That happened two more times before I ended up out at the Sialia near my house. I eventually got back to my place at 12:30!
The moral of the story, if you’re going to run out of water in Sana’a, make sure it’s before 11:00!