Book excerpt: Welcome to Yemen, where history comes alive. Its capital, Sana’a, is the oldest continually inhabited city in the world. The Queen of Sheba made her palace in the ruins of Marib, building a wealthy kingdom from the trade of native-grown frankincense and myrrh. The mysterious island of Socotra is home to plants that grow nowhere else in the world, like the exotic Dragon’s Blood tree. In this traditional Islamic country, women protect their modesty with the head-to-toe black abaya, while men wear a ceremonial dagger—the jambiya—at their belt. Isolated by jagged mountains atop the “Roof of Arabia,” Yemen’s tribal and traditional ways have stood the test of time. What happens when modern issues—oil, the dwindling water supply, women’s rights, Islamic terrorism—try to climb in?