Corner View - Evening Sky

Salalah Beach, Oman

Koutoubia Mosque, Marrakesh, Morocco

Sana'a, Yemen

Yemeni Portraits

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Senegalese Portraits

Iranian Portraits

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Indian Portraits

Corner View - Wisdom from an Elder

The theme of this week's Corner View is Wisdom from an Elder. The wisest elders, like Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, preach a doctrine of non-violence, but we never learn, do we?

Please visit the other Corner View bloggers for their take on this theme:

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Photos of Yemen

I took these photos when I was working in Yemen in 2007. The top one is of the fortified town of Hababah in the Haraz Mountains. It is built around a huge cistern, which not only supplies the town's water, but also serves as an impromptu public swimming pool at weekends. Here you will see youths with rifles slung over their backs watching scores of children swimming with the town's pet duck, which I felt sorry for as it wanted to get out of the water, but they wouldn't let it. The second photo is of an old man on his way to buy qat in the souq of the old city of Sanaa. Most of agricultural land is given over to qat production and Yemeni women told me that they are not happy about it.

Two things you see everywhere in Yemen are guns and qat. I got asked to try both. The effect of qat is like a combination of marijuana and alcohol. You chew the leaves and then after a while, you get a high, find that you are getting giggly and talking much faster than usual. Then you enter a sleepy, mellow phase. Finally, you get a sore throat, red eyes and a hangover.

Pictures of Thula

In 2007 I worked in Yemen, a ruggedly beautiful country, and one of the few places left in the world where you actually feel you are going back in time to the Middle Ages and can see scenes straight out of the Tales of the Arabian Nights.

One of my favourite places there was the fortified town of Thula in the Haraz Mountains, where there is some magnificent, traditional architecture. Thula is an ancient city, named after Thula bin Lubakha Al-Hemiari, who lived here two thousand years ago.

There is a fortress on top of Al-Ghurab Mountain and a wall around the city, so you will enter it through one of the seven city gates. Its strong fortifications enabled it to repel the invading Ottoman Turks for more than three centuries. The houses of Thula are mostly 5 to 7 storeys high and have beautiful carved exteriors and colourful windows, known as qamereya