Bushra al-Maqtari on how Sana’a, Yemen, has changed. Translated by Sawad Hussain.

PEN Transmissions is English PEN’s magazine for international and translated voices. PEN’s members are the backbone of our work, helping us to support international literature, campaign for writers at risk, and advocate for the freedom to write and read. If you are able, please consider becoming an English PEN member and joining our community of over 1,000 readers and writers. Join now.

I walk through the streets of Sana’a like an old man in his twilight years, trudging through what remains of his life towards drawing his last breath, his senses gasping for old memories, mixing the life he once lived with the life he now endures. Like that cautious old man, my eyes dart between the tired faces of passers-by, the stone houses, the concrete houses, the shops, the stalls, the malls and the street intersections, penetrating the cracks of the city into its deepest, quietest, most turbulent layers. Then, once there, I follow the flow of life, that strange stream of smells and sounds and the diverse accents of the country that characterise life in the capital.

The cloudy day fortifies me with fresh energy to keep walking down from the intersection of Haile Street to the ring road, the wide street bustling with students, workers and street vendors who, like me, walk as if nothing awaits them. Forward! More metres to go, Bushra, I tell myself, staring at faces and places while my ears and the clamour insist another world of sound belongs to me, a parallel world of rackets. Then comes the sound of a sharp nail scraping inside my head, below my skull, rising with every step. But my feet take me, in one of their few moments of recklessness, toward Coffee Corner.

From afar, my eyes spot what used to be the entrance – or so I imagine from where I stand, separated by a street and the traffic, frustrated drivers honking their horns at pedestrians. I continue along the pavement, then finally stop at the end of South Ring Road. I watch the cars emerging from many streets: left from Haddah Street, which runs transversely; or from above Haddah Street; from al-Hadiqa Street; or from Algiers Street, lined with malls and large commercial concerns. This area was, once upon a time, the commercial heart of Sana’a. In the neighbourhoods branching off from these two streets stand the villas of the capital’s old money, with their high, flower-draped walls obscuring the view of those walking by. The pampered dogs you sometimes encounter on the pavements, and the enchanting tranquillity you feel, compel you to observe that the velvety life of times past has now vanished, not knowing what has become of its owners.

Standing at the end of South Ring Road – at the intersection with Algiers Street, where there is a large roundabout crowded with cars coming from all directions – I see on my right the building of the General Secretariat of the General People’s Congress, the former ruling party, whose façade was burned several times during the war years; a façade now festooned with Houthi flags and pictures of its fighters, while the Congress’s banner has been moved to the back, in comical mockery of the bloody conflicts and successive disasters that have befallen this country. To the left of the General Secretariat, on the opposite street, is Coffee Corner. You could once see, above its black iron door, a circular garland of flowers and a small sign with a picture of a cup of coffee that you would love to sip slowly. The front gate of the café, the young guard who wore a smart black suit, the life that thrived here: all have disappeared. I approach the café, passing by a flower nursery where Sadiq and I used to buy potted flowers and roses in the early years of our marriage, before the war. The nursery is still there, resisting the harshness of life, but as I look around at the place, at the façade and at my memories, I know that the war has done a lot of damage, not only to people but also to places, walls and buildings; to the appearance and identity of the city, the beauty that distinguished Sana’a; to its famous cafés, which were frequented by visitors from other cities; and to its social spaces for interaction, entertainment and contemplation. The cafés have become ruins, victims of widespread destruction, destruction that you can smell and touch, that you can relive with your own eyes as you sift through your memories. But can writing encapsulate the destruction of places, or document that sad blindness that has folded away beautiful memories and the flow of life, walling them in a permanent prison of darkness? My eyes have grown used to sudden changes in life, to the ugliness of the past, to landmarks being destroyed.

In the past, there was a front gate here overlooking Algiers Street, which you could see from afar, and which the tides of people flowing from the streets and alleys would rush to in the morning, evening or scorching afternoon. There would stand a cheerful guard, a young dark-skinned man who would greet you with a broad smile as he searched your bag, often with lukewarm enthusiasm, frowning if he saw something you tried to sneak into the café. As you walked through the door, you would encounter a half-metre-wide courtyard paved with small stones, after which you would be captivated by the café, the people and the place, the calm familiarity of it all. On the right and left sides, tables and chairs shaded by colourful umbrellas were arranged in geometric patterns that added charm to the place. Nearby sat small islands planted with flowers, roses, and grasses. Right in the middle stood a building constructed from old bricks, with marble steps leading you inside. You would see the coffee machines on a long black marble counter, various drinks lined up behind it. Your eyes would then trail the workers in their black uniforms and white napkins with the café’s logo emblazoned on them as they flitted around like bees. The aroma of coffee would flood your nostrils and transport you to older, happier times.

The side rooms spread throughout the building, their elegant décor reflecting the richness of that lost era. You would be amazed by the softness of the red sofas, which beckoned one to relax and contemplate. On the wall hung a Sana’ani sitara that would leave you impressed by its historical authenticity, its blue centre and red edges that hadn’t faded in spite of the vicissitudes of time. The end of the building’s staircase opened onto the back courtyard, where you would see the large iron gate through which would drive luxury cars dropping off or picking up the girls and boys of the upper class. To the right of that gate stood a small, independent building with a glass façade – the café’s library, its shelves lined with Arabic and foreign books, works in translation as well as novels by Yemeni authors. On the wall, a lavish painting by a Sudanese artist hung for sale; the paintings changed every week. In the library, you would be greeted by a young intellectual asking you what book you desired to read while you caught sight of another comfortable red sofa, a reader perched behind it, a book in his hand. The warmth of the place and the smell of books and coffee would transport you to happiness and peace.

In that bygone era, time would slip away from you; as you grew older you would leave the café library and spill into the back yard, where you would meet a man in his forties lovingly watering the flowers, shifting the watering can from one place to another. You would see the tables and chairs where young men and women used to congregate, people whose fate is now a question mark in the harsh light of war.

This was an epicentre of Sana’a’s pre-war cultural and political life. It now seems so distant, as if separated from us by a chasm several light-years wide; separated from the life that bustled in the café, in its spacious garden adorned with flowers and trimmed roses, where you could take in the vivid sky as you sat in your comfortable chair, behind a table for writing and meeting friends, while a bright umbrella sheltered you. Or, when the sky clouded over and it rained, where you would race to find a seat inside the café, and sat therein would be poets and journalists from across the capital, busy, hunched over their laptops, writing or reading. Over there, in his favourite corner, was journalist Jamal Jubran furiously typing away on his laptop. The writer Ahmed Qasim Damaj, with his slender stature and warm smile, would arrive every evening, his courteous son and young intellectuals in tow, and they’d take their places behind the large table. Foreign journalists and writers – French, American, everything – who clearly loved Sana’a would ask about the architecture of the Old City.

You would catch a glimpse of the journalist Tanya Holm, who moved to Sana’a and lived there for many years before the war. Or the director Khadija Al-Salamy, who had come from Paris, busy with ideas for a new film. Her warmth and affection radiated through this space. And there they invariably were, the men conducting business deals, in tune with the faint strains of a Bob Marley song playing in the background.

Here, in this café with its diverse clientele, you would be engulfed by the full spectrum of social classes and lifestyles that would be swept away by the coming flood of war. Here, in this café, at the table near the stairs and the flowers, I used to sit and write, watching the passers-by and friends who are now scattered across the world.

I open my eyes to now, to the concrete walls that have taken up more than half of the café, the void that has sucked away the familiar faces, friends and chatter. I notice an armed young man entering through the back door that has remained open since the front door has closed, followed by a man with a protruding belly, looking around anxiously. I think of another meaning for the ruin we are living in. I rest my head on the seat in the small concrete maze and smile at Sadiq, then I contemplate the worker’s half-heartedness as he places two cups of coffee on the table for us while we wait for our friends. The silence that envelops the place in the afternoon heat, as war rages on, pulls me inward, pulls me to travel back in time, to the war’s beginning.

My last visit to Coffee Corner was in April 2015, in the first year of the war. Air raids were the soundtrack of the skies above Sana’a. Cars stretched out as far as the eye could see, loaded with bags and furniture – a scene of displacement unprecedented in the city’s history. There was no electricity in the city, no electricity in the house. Sadiq and I were at Coffee Corner, settled on seats that are no longer there, and I began to write an article while the journalists and writers around us discussed their predictions for the course of the war, before most of them left for the capitals of the diaspora. At that time, life was but a little flickering flame about to go out.

What does war do to places and memories? In the fullness of time, it undermines, chips at, folds away this brief and fleeting history of Coffee Corner, a history that ultimately belongs to me, that is not an accurate documentary record of the transformations of the place. Did I mention that in the second year of the war, part of the façade of the café was destroyed after a coalition airstrike on the Popular Congress Party building opposite the café? Then, that in another month of the same year, I believe, shrapnel from a missile cut short the life of a young worker in the café’s library? Then, when fighting broke out between combatants in December 2017, that part of the café itself was destroyed? That another war destroyed what remained of life here in the cafés and coffee shops, as the new authorities closed them under the pretext of tackling gender mixing. Bustling hives including Café Ofelia, Moon Café and Bin Wa Qshar Café. These authorities expelled people from a space barely large enough to drink a cup of coffee to the battlefronts, or to their homes, to suffocate them behind wall after wall of prohibition, separation and sectarianism? What war does to places and memories!

Bushra al-Maqtari is a Yemeni writer and novelist. Her collection of war testimonies – What Have You Left Behind? – published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2022, was shortlisted for the 2023 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, and has been translated into four other languages. Among her other accolades are the 2013 Françoise Giroud Award for Defence of Freedom and Liberties, the 2020 Johann Philipp Palm Prize for Freedom of Speech and the Press and the 2024 Tucholsky Prize. Her novel* Behind in the Sun* (2012) in Sawad Hussain’s English translation will be published in 2026 by Tilted Axis Press. She resides in Yemen.

**Sawad Hussain **graduated with an MA in modern Arabic literature from the University of London. She has been the Co-chair of the Translators Association in the UK and is committed to mentoring emerging translators. Her accolades include being shortlisted by the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation and selected as a finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature. She was recently translator-in-residence at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, and now lives in Cambridge, England.