Tim, wearing a white collared shirt and a blue futa (Yemeni man-skirt) welcomed me into his home and we hiked up five flights of stairs to his cozy mafraj, a floor that he’d added himself with the assistance of several Sana’ani laborers. Sunlight glowed through his translucent alabaster windows, made by his friend the master craftsman Abdulwahhab, and spilled through stained glass sending rays of red, purple, and blue dancing along the white plaster walls. I looked out over the old city and admired the spectacular architecture. The external décor of each house is distinctive yet subtle, and whole quarters of the city blend together in aesthetic waves of brown.

Tim was cross. As he served me “posh tea” that he’d been given on a recent trip to rural China, he explained that earlier that morning, he’d just sat down at his computer to write when the electricity had gone out. It was clear that he didn’t appreciate having his daily schedule interrupted, and with a devilish grin, he told me that he’d called the electric company and given them an earful. He then excused himself to make another call. “Saaabreeee. Saaabreee. Kaef ant, ya Saaabree?” In flawless Arabic, he placed an order with his qat dealer. He hung up and I complimented his mastery of Sana’ani dialect (a dialect as distinctive as the city’s architecture) and described my own frustrations in learning it. “Well, keep at it, it took me a quarter century to learn” he said with an encouraging smile.

A 21 year old fresh out of Oxford, Tim first came to Yemen in 1982 to further his Arabic study and to work for the British Council. He chose Sana’a instead of other Arab capitals because he was “captivated by images of the country.” He says that the travel essays and photography of famed British explorer Freya Stark had an impact on him. In particular, he recalled one of her photos depicting an old Hadhrami tribesman with a weathered face and a massive lizard clinging to his chest. These images, combined with a day spent at a reproduction of a Sana’ani souk at the World of Islam Festival in the UK, ultimately summoned him away from a life in London.

On his first day in Sana’a, Tim wandered through the old city and says a voice inside him said “I’m here” as if he’d finally arrived in a place he had unconciously been searching for. Indeed, Tim and Yemen were perhaps meant to be. In his first book, Yemen: Travels in Dictionary Land (published in the United States as Yemen: The Unknown Arabia), he describes a day in the old city where he stumbled upon a Yemeni child wearing his old English prep school jacket. I inquired about the experience, and he pointed into the streets below to show me where it had happened years before.

Winner of the1998 Thomas Cook / Daily Telegraph Travel Book Award, Yemen: Travels in Dictionary Land chronicles Tim’s adventures through Yemen- from being insulted at a qat market in Sana’a, nearly vomited upon in a grimy pub in Aden, visiting the Tomb of the Prophet Hud east of Hadhramaut, and traveling by sambook (boat) from Mukulla to Socotra. Throughout, he compliments his highly entertaining experiences with the impressions of previous travelers and his own intimate knowledge of Yemeni culture and vast knowledge of the country’s history. The result is a humorous, interesting, and informative portrayal of Yemen that is arguably the best travel book ever written on the country. Indeed, it is rare to read a new book on Yemen in which the author does not include a foreword by Tim Mackintosh-Smith or at least thank him for his review of the script.

Tim’s second literary project was even more ambitious. He set out to follow in the footsteps of the world’s greatest traveler, Ibn Battutah, who in 1325, departed from his native Tangier, Morocco on a journey through African and Asia and back that would take him 75,000 miles and 29 years to complete. Tim has already dedicated nearly a decade of his life to research and travel for this project, and has thus far completed two books of his Ibn Battutah trilogy in addition to a documentary. The best-selling Travels with a Tangerine: A Journey in the Footnotes of the Battutah is the first book in the trilogy and was named a New York Times Notable Book. His documentary of the same name took three months and over fifty commercial flights to shoot, and began airing on BBC Four last year. In the second book of the trilogy, The Hall of a Thousand Columns: Hindustan to Malabar with Ibn Battutah, also a best seller, he follows Ibn Battutah though India.

These days, Tim is preparing for a lecture tour in America, is traveling to west Africa for research, and is working on the final book of the Ibn Battutah trilogy which is due to be published in 2009. In order to balance his multiple projects, Tim keeps a strict daily schedule. He writes in the mornings until lunchtime. Then, he heads to one of his favorite Yemeni restaurants in the old city, procures his qat from Sabree (Tim generally chews Hamdani), and then begins his daily qat chew. When not chewing with Yemeni friends, he sits in his mafraj chewing and reading. Tim’s home boasts an impressive library filled with works in both English and Arabic, and is his second favorite room. Currently, he is reading Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350 by Janet Abu-Lughod. At around six o’clock in the evening, engrossed in qat, Tim returns to writing.

Tim writes that qat enhances (not alters) one’s perception and calls it “the nail in the butt” because it roots the chewer in place. thus “eliminating the necessity for travel.” I found it odd that a travel writer would enjoy such a substance, but he clarified that he considers himself an “Arabist and writer” and not a traveler. “I couldn’t do what Ibn Batuta did. I couldn’t just take off and go. I need a place, this place [his house in Sana’a] to return to.” He said he’d recently found himself on an island off Tanzania, and described to me the sweet smell of African ground after a rain. He was chatting with a witch doctor that had recently taking up smoking a pipe to assemble the djinn. Tim said this was an example of the ultimate reward for a traveler, to “discover yourself in a place and time, immersed in a moment, when you wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world.” However, he says even then, in those moments, he’d still swap all of these experiences to be back in his mafraj in old Sana’a, his favorite room in the world.

He then brought my attention to several lines of poetry that he’d had molded in plaster near the mafraj ceiling. It is a poem written by an Iraqi in the early 1900s, and it reads:

“Sana’a, home of lofty civilization,

Dwelling of every brave and generous lord,

Paris, London, and all the great cities

Of the Romans and Americans do not match

you in beauty.

May you never cease Oh Sana’a

To be the goal of those who seek you.

And may health and happiness never leave your people.”

As I looked at Tim Mackintosh-Smith sitting comfortably in his mafraj, dressed in a Yemeni futa, and ordering qat in fluent Sana’ani dialect, it occurred to me that I’d made a mistake in selecting him for a feature labeled “foreigner in Yemen.” He agreed saying he didn’t think of himself as a foreigner. Apparently, his neighbors didn’t either. It has been over twenty-five years since that voice inside his head told him he’d arrived somewhere special, and he has no plans to leave. He told me that he wishes to be buried in Yemen. Perhaps many years from now, a tombstone in Yemen will read: Here lies the body of Tim Mackintosh-Smith. Writer. Arabist. Sana’ni.