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32 2 From Colonialism to a Neocolonial State Aden, Mukalla, Mascate sont au nombre de ces “enfers” que mentionnent les dictons des marins. [Aden, Mukalla, and Muscat are among the “hells” mentioned in sailors’ tales.] —Elisée Reclus, The Earth and Its Inhabitants1 The arguments presented in this book need a contextualization of the society as a morphology of all kinds of interests, be they political, ethnic, economic, or ideational in nature, so in this chapter I give a short historical introduction to Aden as a concentration of movement of things, ideas, and people. By “social morphology,” I mean the structure of a town made up of interconnected or interdependent parts joined together in an urban community. This chapter discusses what these parts are. Throughout its history, Aden has seldom left a visitor indifferent. Such is the spell of this arid place, hot and humid most of the year. Descriptions of the harsh life of the people living here, with few natural resources, have filled literature on this Arabian port.2 A peninsula filled with rocky hills and flat sands, the place is said to shine satanic light in the full moon (Little 1968, 120). There is no arable land in Aden, which means that its food supply depends on the surrounding areas and on trade with foreign lands.3 Its appeal rarely comes with the first impression: at first glance, the dull colonial architecture makes the place seem somewhat unattractive to the eye of the visitor who is exhausted 1. Quoted and translated in Nizan 1987, 92. 2. Brian Doe, referring to the traveler and historian Ibn Al-Mujawir (1986), mentions that in ancient times there were 180 sweet wells in Aden (1965, 10–14). See also Hunter [1877] 1968, 10, and Shukry 1986, 329–42. 3. Ibn Battuta described Aden in the fourteenth century as a large city without seed, water, or trees (Doe 1965, 12; Hunter [1877] 1968, 7). From Colonialism to a Neocolonial State | 33 by the heat and ready to reboard the ship or plane to leave again right away. But once she learns the ways of Aden, she will find it difficult to leave. Aden is a place thick with contradictions, which, perhaps, is the very reason for its being so fascinating. Contradictions and how they organize everyday life are what this book is about. Two physical factors, climate and physical morphology, structure Aden as a town. They influence how daily life is organized, how houses are built, and how subcommunities are imagined. The position of the sun dictates where the openair market is erected and where food is served in street restaurants. Aden requires different rules of orientation in the daytime and evening. In actuality, it is not one place, but rather consists of several towns, making it a polynucleotide city, with mountains and the surrounding sea dividing it into separate and detached subtowns. The name “Aden” refers locally only to the oldest part of Aden, an area surrounded by extinct volcanic slopes and connected to other districts only through narrow openings in the cliffs. The British introduced the name “Crater” to this part of Aden during the time when the town extended to other areas in the congested peninsula, but even today the Arabic form of the new name (Kritr) has not replaced the old name “‘Adn.” From March to October each year, during the season that is understood as summer, Aden is very hot and humid, with suffocating winds called shimal, blowing, as the name says, from the north. The extreme heat has been a source of several stories throughout the years, and the one presented by the Indian Adeni historian Abdulla Yaqub Khan, who wrote in the late 1930s, is perhaps the most illuminating. In a humorous manner, he describes the heat as “just enough for Shams-e-Tabrez to roast his meat” (1938–39, 616). In November, the moist climate finally gives way to a milder temperature and moderate humidity. During the summer months, activities outside of ventilated and cooled indoor premises are reduced to a minimum. The pace of life slows down, and people adapt to the requirements of living in a harsh place, where every activity has to be measured by the given heat. The desolate hills made the British repeatedly talk of “the barren rocks of Aden.”4 Captain F. M. Hunter, in his famous 4. The “barren rocks” seemed to act as a metaphor to the British. It is the most common expression used to...

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