An American in Old Sana'a

Another vignette from Old Sana'a...I arrived at the Bab Al-Yaman gate and entered the old city, just have many others before me. The stones are worn smooth by the soles of many feet.

At the entrance, there was a young man dressed in traditional Yemen clothing and wearing a prominent "jambirra" or dagger in his ceremonial belt.

I indicated I wanted to take his picture, and he nodded. After I snapped it, he asked in perfect American English where I was from. "Washington," I replied. "And you?"

"New York," he said simply.

There are thousands of Yemeni-Americans -- maybe as many as 70,000 -- in Yemen today. No small number are people who were in prison in American and converted to Islam. After they were released or paroled, they came to Yemen to further their religious studies.

Obviously the concern is that some may have come under the influence of radical clerics or other recruiters.

The encounter, brief as it was, left me wondering...