This is the first film from North Yemen, a land which stretches from the Red Sea up over the mountainous central plateau and slides away into the endless dunes of the Empty Quarter Desert where the ruins of Marib, capital of the Kingdom of Sheba, still stand.

For 300 years, under its feudal rulers, the Imams, Yemen was a forbidden medieval kingdom almost totally closed to all outsiders.

Then revolution, and in 1969 the establishment of a new republic. Earlier this year a World About Us team was allowed in. This film is a picture of the once-secret Arabia seen through the eyes of two of the people who live and work there: Ali Sabry, champion of the new Arabia, a newsreader for Yemen TV, and Selma Al Radi, archaeologist and guardian of the old Arabia.