Ahmed, the collage-artist/peacemaker

Ahmed runs a newsstand just inside Bab al-Yemen, the main gate to old Sana’a. Business, he said, has not been going so well. No one wants to buy the glossy magazines he has for sale.

On a lark, he started to carve the magazines up, carefully cutting out the faces of Nicolas Sarkozy, Barack Obama, and Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen’s autocratic leader.

To make himself laugh, he began pasting those heads onto picturesque backgrounds like the old city of Sana’a or the savannahs of Africa. He made a collage of what Barack Obama would look like as a Yemeni groom. Another features Angela Merkel, in traditional Yemeni dress, shaking hands with Mr. Saleh. His friends were amused.

So were the tourists who slowly began to discover Ahmed’s artwork. Soon they started to request collages featuring themselves holding guns aloft in front of famous Yemeni landmarks, or posing with Osama bin Laden.

Ahmed’s humorous handiwork has become the buzz of the expat community in Sana’a these days. Orders are pouring in for quirky collages to be sent far and wide as Christmas gifts and souvenirs of Sana’a.

Ahmed said he sees his work as a way of changing Yemen’s negative image among foreigners.

“My work makes tourists laugh,” he said. “They leave Yemen with a different impression than they had before.”