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1 Introduction Since the Zandes’ interests are primarily practical rather than theoretical , the logic of their beliefs can only be made apparent in the context of their application; “they only appear inconsistent when ranged like lifeless museum objects.” —Edward Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande This book is based on my ethnographic interest in Aden, Yemen, during the period spanning the years from 1988 to 2001.1 This era in Adeni history witnessed the final years of what was the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY), the only Marxist regime in the Middle East ever to be followed by unification , in this case of the two Yemens in 1990. The difficult period of the Republic of Yemen’s early years that culminated in a civil war in 1994 was followed by years of rebuilding after the war. No particular event occurred in Adeni history in 2001, but that year represents a personal point in time in which I wrapped up my experiences in Aden. My interest in Yemen started a little earlier than 1988. In the summer of 1982, as a young student, I headed to Aden to participate in an international student camp in the countryside of Abyan, some thirteen miles northeast of Aden. The camp was organized by the Yemeni youth organization ASHEED in the spirit of “international solidarity” after the devastating floods earlier that spring that had affected the countryside outside Aden. Upon my arrival, I became aware that the camp was an all-male affair and that the “youth organization” was little more than a boys’ organization. This period, however, was one in which the South Yemeni government was making a sincere attempt to introduce to the remotest 1. I spent in Aden some two years altogether, October 1988–November 1989, June–December 1991, March–June 1992, October–December 1998, and January–February 2001. 2 | Contesting Realities countryside a policy called tahrir al-mar’a, women’s emancipation. The organizers were happy to see me arriving, the only girl in the twenty or so foreign participants and about a hundred Yemeni boys. My presence provided them with an excuse to invite local young women to the camp, an impossibility had the camp been all male. This area was untouched either by the modernizing politics of British colonialism or by the government that had taken over with independence some fifteen years earlier, in 1967. In gatherings organized locally and in Aden to celebrate the international camp, I was asked to make speeches on “women’s role in society.” One of these gatherings was organized in an open-air cinema in Zingibar, the center of the Abyan governorate. After a Yemeni bagpipe orchestra played popular march melodies, I had the most peculiar experience as a woman speaking to an audience of some five hundred people, all of whom, as I could see when I looked down from the stage, were men. My experiences in South Yemen in 1982 inspired me to return to this country that I found so fascinating yet so little studied. In the autumn of 1988, I arrived in Aden with the intention of carrying out anthropological fieldwork. I was given the chance to do so in the capacity of coordinator for a small Finnish health project carried out in the al-Mahra governorate, some six hundred miles east of Aden. I was on my own in Aden and had to take care of everything that the project required. My work consisted mainly of hanging around in government offices, waiting for people to arrive to work and trying to persuade them to work for me. I had a flat in a block of flats in Khormaksar, an area built by the British for the cantonment in the middle of the twentieth century. My neighbors were people with government jobs, both Yemeni and non-Western expatriates. From my balcony, I could see both comfortable British-built villas and huts butting up against them, erected by people without any proper place to live. Many of the families who lived in these huts were newcomers from the countryside, in particular from Abyan. My neighborhood provided me with some of the first contacts to Yemeni homes, whereas my work allowed me to meet men and women who held different positions in the administration. For my anthropological work, I decided that I wanted to obtain the cooperation of the General Union of Yemeni Women. It was the official women’s association that at the end of...

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