WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH A DRUNKEN SAILOR?

First impressions failed to challenge the generally held traveller’s opinion that Aden was a complete shit hole. Driving into Crater Aden, one of three distinct segments which constitute the sprawling city, I looked at its foundation of giant volcanic black rock towering out of bubbling sea and revised my pipe dream of a colonial outpost of swaying palm trees. Relieving my weeks of parched interior landscapes Aden’s causeway at least offered an enticing view of tropical blue water. Such romance was neatly offset by endless mounds of rough hewn boulders, oil stained sand and stacks of rubbish. It was pure Yemen.

Crater itself was unbelievably run down. A grid-work of narrow streets which in turn harboured filthy half built, half decayed dwellings was distinctly reminiscent of the outskirts of Delhi. Gone was the majesty of Sana’a. Similarly absent were the colonial influences which earned Aden the ‘Jewel of Arabia’ tag it enjoyed up until the mid Sixties. The once bustling sea port was on an indefinite sabbatical, leaving in its wake a sleepy skeletal city, devoid of character and rendered lethargic in the fearsome heat.

Making me feel right at home the Al-Medina Hotel had an entirely new scam. There were no singles or doubles available, only triples. It was either that, or for 300 rials I could sleep on the roof where, believe it or not, the family goat lived. I declined both offers.

To my immense surprise conditions at the nearby Al-Wafa Hotel were even worse. Here for a costly 1000 rials I found myself in a shoe-box sized double room, no carpet, cracked tiles all over the walls, no window and an upside down decommissioned air conditioning unit which had been installed into a rough cut hole in the wall. When I lay on my bed and turned on the overhead propeller fan in compensation it made a deep mechanical graunching sound like a knackered cement mixer. With my choices spoilt I resolved to return to the Al-Medina where at least I could be squalid in spacious triple birth surroundings for a similar price to the Al-Wafa, goat or no goat.

Inspiration to leave my unexciting, sweaty louver windowed room and venture into the somnambulant streets below was hardly forthcoming. I wrote instead until midday came around and I decided to try and make the best of a bad situation. I would attempt to discover Aden on foot. Being in need of a little cultural enlightenment the museum seemed like a sensible place to start. Here I could get a feel of the place, root around for a little colonial splendour, then on my schlep around the city I could recreate an atmosphere of the past and reconcile it with the sad dilapidation of the present.

Once outside I had Aden almost entirely to myself. Humid equatorial climes rendered the location uninhabitable to all but the most foolhardy. Even mad dog shunned my company, preferring to languish in shady porches. I sucked down on a juice from an adjacent stall, wrapped up in my turban, donned my shades and set off looking like the mad mullah of middle England that I am.
At first I could see no evidence of the past in the rotting skyline, filth encrusted streets and stinking alleys. Everything was new, yet at the same time wasted. Then, as I looked, certain features became apparent. Little reminders, not quite obliterated by the white out of post colonial blight, betrayed a past governed by others. A doorway here, a clapped out old building there, sometimes a sense of colour, even, very occasionally, the give-away clue that somebody had bothered to plant a tree. I marvelled at these dusty, green, defiant relics and wondered how they had managed to survive without being chewed to bits in times of qat shortage.

Spluttering Indian buses rattled past me, aside from them the roads were mercifully free of the over subscribed Toyota turmoil evident in other cities. Alone and un-hassled I scratched about looking for pearls in the detritus.

Amidst a vast flattened building site of dusty neglected land, no doubt earmarked for low investment modernisation of the Chinese variety, stood the museum in distressed pastel green colonial splendour. Georgian in style, it still boasted a bygone opulence at odds with it’s lonely setting. Grand porches, large bay windows with lattice work frames holding together shards of broken glass made for a facade which was formerly ornate, battling against inevitable decline. The museum was an anachronism, some forgotten architects dream of a little piece of England grafted onto the harsh realities of Southern Arabia. A romantic gesture now obsolete.

It was also closed. Even here access to the past was denied.

Colonialism always stirs conflicting emotions inside me, usually propelling my spirits into a state of quite delicious melancholy. Firstly I go through a token internal chest beating session to atone for my country’s past. This revolves around what a despicable bunch of greedy pedants my ancestors have been, inflicting untold miseries for hundreds of years on countless indigenous peoples. Without mercy my elders and betters callously exploited the mineral and financial resources of lands they cared little about. Anyone who showed any respect for the indigenous population was usually shunned by their peers and accused of ‘going native’.

My particular problem is that I have to reconcile these feelings of revulsion with the welling pride I can feel when I look at the genteel, often superbly styled, infrastructures they left behind. From some deeply suppressed alcove in my being politically incorrect notions of civilisation and paternalism bubble to the surface. Rose tints warm my vision and I see the English as unwitting benefactors bringing a better way of life to foreign climes. A way of life I romanticise.
There is something terribly evocative about standing on a desolate rock in the midst of the Arabian sea, a rock which has been subject to millenniums of inhospitable wind-blasted and sun-baked conditions, and imagine a life of tea dances, social clubs and refined etiquette. In forgotten corners of the old Empire like Aden I feel more ‘English’ than I ever do on the streets of London. Arcadia is more tangible. The traces of Englishness still left behind allow an overview of bygone times which are denied at home due to the all encompassing developments of the present. In Aden I can see the remnants of a proud, powerful and brutal empire trapped in amber, an empire which, in reality, had gone to seed years before I was born. There is a faint whiff of Ealing Comedies in the air and an echo of a perfectly intoned, reassuringly familiar voice saying;
“This is the BBC World Service”.

Of course it is debatable if this mythical society of my wandering imagination has any basis in history, yet to me the truth is immaterial. In Aden I can manipulate what I see to create a own brand of truth to suit my personal vision.

Time stopped for the English in Arabia in 1967. Perversely if they had stuck around and survived the revolution Aden today would undoubtedly be a holiday resort stuffed with Indian restaurants, chip shops, video arcades, tawdry hotels and all the chintz and American tat which makes contemporary Britain ‘Great’. Instead of this shabby brand of progression Aden has been left with a faded, almost invisible, gentility, untouched by the developments of the late 20th century. It is a slum without real identity, the proprietor of a few irrelevant old stories which lie squirreled away in its closet. A place where the echoes of the past are clearly audible in the desolate chambers of the here and now.

In a suitably contemplative frame of mind I set out on a retrospective pilgrimage. Opposite the closed museum was a sight which threw my mood severely out of kilter. On the promenade before me was the most bizarre building in the entirety of Yemen. I had to rub my eyes to check they were not deceiving me. Never had I seen a structure so misplaced. There, nestling amidst an apocalyptic landscape of barren seas and distant oil refineries was a brand, spanking new branch of ‘Pizza Hut’. Every detail was perfect. The squat Yankee bungalow design with oversized red roof, the gleaming black tiled walls with expansive smoked glass windows. For 20 foot around the perimeter were perfectly manicured lush green lawns. Sprinklers spun in the afternoon sunshine sending out rainbows of refracted light.

Convinced it was a mirage before me I crossed the road so I could view the hut from different angles. Was I the butt of some alternative 90’s consumerist joke? It was as if someone had cut out a segment of Venice Beach in California and beamed it straight into Crater Aden as a scientific experiment. There was certainly no more logical explanation. The idea of it being some kind of business venture was so obviously insane that I discounted it immediately. To plan such a project in Sana’a would be nuts, yet one could see how it might serve as a public relations exercise or a tax scam. But Aden was another matter. Who could possibly think that there may be a call for pizzas at a price of three times the average daily wage? As for a passing trade in foreigners the corporation was sadly deluded. I was the only westerner in town, and as luck would have it for Pizza Hut, I didn’t eat anything with cheese in it.

Contrary to Aden style the Hut was open.

I walked down its crazy paved path and peered in through the door. All the familiar hokey interior features were spot on right down to the menu design. Only the ‘Hawaiian’ was absent, out of favour due to its unclean ham content. Apart from this one small oversight I could have been in Texas or Tunbridge Wells. There was a salad bar, ranch style eating bays and the standard red and white gingham table top laminates. Three attendants stood at the ready wearing de-rigor brown uniform, proudly resplendent in Pizza Hut caps.

There was not a customer in sight.

Feeling sorry for such a valiant, all be it misguided venture I went inside and ordered a supportive Pepsi. Mollified by an ostentatious display of Americana I couldn’t take my eyes off the fixtures and fittings. The wholesome pictures of wholesome food, the stainless steel napkin dispenser, the salt and pepper pots and layer upon layer of immaculately cleaned and disinfected surfaces. For ten minutes I stepped out of Yemen until it dawned on me that loath these corporate eateries with their lack of identity and anodyne piped muzak. I came to Yemen to escape exactly this, not celebrate it. Disorientated from unscheduled culture shock I returned to the heat still belching from the gaseous Pepsi.

Life was slowly returning to Crater. Blue metal shutters were being prized open revealing shoddy displays of cheap unbranded goods. I kept wondering if I might come across a McDonalds or Angus Steak House at every turn. Suddenly anything seemed possible.

Instead of commercial oddities I ran into Sheriff, who in his own way was even more displaced than the Pizza Hut. I became aware of his presence when I felt bony fingers encircle my wrist. On turning around I was confronted by a scrawny hunched up man with leathery features, drooping jowls and a sullen complexion. He was like one of those sad caged birds one finds, which in deep frustration has pecked out all their feathers leaving behind a raw unsightly carcass.
“Where you from?” he pleaded, his bloodshot eyes bouncing around in their sockets, betraying an expression both tormented and confused.
When I replied I came from England his arms folded right round me.
“Oh, an Englishman” he said with wonder “thank you sir”.
He reeked of alcohol.
“I was a member of The Queens Navy” he added proudly.
This pronouncement actually came out;
“Iwasssthamemburofththequeenthnaavy.”
Sheriff only had one rotten lopsided brown tooth propping up two bleeding gums. Unformed sounds hissed from his collapsed face, made considerably worse by slurring from the drink. Conversation was painfully slow. Establishing that his name was Sheriff took nigh on five minutes. To an outsider it must have looked as if we were partaking in an absurd game of charades.
“theth people are shad ages” he said gesturing towards his fellow countrymen, emphasising the spaces between each word to help make himself understood.
“Sad for ages” I sympathised “that’s no good.”
“No Saz ages” he spat out passionately.
“Sausages?” I groped blindly.
Sheriff’s pupils rolled up behind their lids. Resorting to other methods he took a pen from his pocket, retrieved a piece of litter from the street and scrawled S-A-V-A-G-E-S across it.

By now we were attracting quite a crowd of onlookers. Sheriff swatted them away with his gangly arms. Some of the younger ones were taunting him. Horrified by their actions he turned to me and said something along the lines of ‘they don’t know how to treat a real English gentleman’ only it sounded like somebody letting the air out of a large balloon. Frustrated he reached for more litter.
W-A-N-K-E-R-S he spelt out aggressively over an old newspaper, then showed it to me before waving it at his persecutors.

Continually thanking me for my presence Sheriff motioned that we should start walking to shrug off our audience. Perhaps the movement concentrated something in his mind, or maybe I was gaining proficiency in Sheriffesque , as suddenly his words became more audible. He told me how he had befriended the English and fought for the English. Sheriff even considered himself to be English, his preferred ways of life were English and now he desperately missed the English.
“Look at this shitty” he implored passionately, pointing at the mess around him. “wonsh thish wash sooo Beautifool. Look what the shad ages have done.”
We stared in silence.
“Pleash come back” Sheriff asked with touching simplicity, grasping my hand once again.

I felt both uncomfortable in, and lecherously drawn to his company. When he enquired if I would like to visit a spot where six Englishmen were burnt alive “like dogsh” I was torn in two directions. It was, of course, blindingly obvious that Sheriff was completely out to lunch, his delusions clearly ostracised him from his own community, and yet there was a peculiar saprophytic relationship taking place between the two of us. Sheriff was trapped in another time, a time he felt lived on in me.
I was searching for a highly dubious past and Sheriff was a tenacious link. A living, breathing embodiment of the madness colonialism leaves in its wake.

We were made for each other.

I signed up for his drunken, left-field guided tour and together we set off, an odd couple with vastly differing objectives and expectations.
To give his withered body a break we stopped at a café for chai and biscuits. The proprietor glared at us over a pair of half moon glasses. I showed Sheriff my postcards of London and asked him to chose one. For ten minutes he deliberated over these dog eared souvenirs as if there were the original tablets of wisdom from the lost Arc of the Covenant, eventually plumbing for a cheesy night shot of Big Ben. He kissed the image and put it in his pocket.
“Pleash, do you have a picshure of the Queen?” he implored.
I shook my head.
“But you are Englishhhman, you must have picshure.”
Dodging the issue I said that it was in my luggage back at the hotel where it would be safe. This seemed to appease him.
“Every day I drink to the Queen” he assured me proudly.
Judging from his wasted state I figured the Queen wasn’t the only thing Sheriff drank to. He’d probably drink to anything. The state opening of parliament, the start of the American football season, the translation into Urdu of any of L. Ron Hubbard’s science fiction novels. He didn’t need a reason to drink, he was absolutely pickled beyond repair.

It transpired that our destination was directly outside the Al-Medina, only minutes from the café. With great portent and solemnity the spot was pointed out. To me it was just another piece of run down street, to Sheriff it was hallowed ground still tainted with the blood of fallen comrades.
“Thish ish where shix brave Englishhhmen burnt to deaf in nineteensheventyshix.”
The date struck me as suspect, it was almost a decade after independence. I decided not to be pedantic instead I chose the ‘looking concerned and troubled’ option whilst maintaining my silence. The last thing I needed was a heated historical debate with a drunken sailor.
“Take a picshure to show Enghishhhmen at home sho they know what ish going on here, what the dogsh have done.”
Obligingly I took a meaningless snap of a deserted parking lot complete with confused Yemenis staring blankly in my direction.

When I put my camera away and turned to face Sheriff to say my goodbyes I was rather thrown to find he was saluting me. Unsure of what the correct protocol was I saluted him back. It was the right response. Overcome with emotion his eyes filled with tears. For a second he wavered on the spot before spinning on his heals and wobbling off down the street taking his demons with him. His mission to alert the world trough me had been accomplished.

Sheriff occupied my thoughts for much of the remainder of the afternoon. I set out for the area of Aden called At-Tawahi on the other side of the rock trying to imaging what strange beings I might encounter there. My journey was time consuming with the shared taxi taking me through featureless districts which were little better than shanty towns. Aden was one of the locations of the fiercest fighting during the 1994 civil war which ended with the eventual unification of North and South Yemen in 1995. It was evident much had been destroyed during the months of skirmishes. Investment in rebuilding had been one of the new government’s first priorities. Aden was also chosen to be the winter seat of president Salah and his cronies in a gesture of appeasement. There seemed to be a city-wide drive to build a new tomorrow, only what was emerging was free-port. Free from style, free from global trade, free from outside interest and the presence of serious money.

At-Tawahi was bathed in a fabulous golden light on my arrival, a superficial improvement which did little to spruce up its neglected condition. Originally I’d planned to take dinner at the ‘Cafeteria Broast Roasting’ in Aden Gardens, an;
‘attractive and very popular open air café which is highly recommended. Here you can sip tea, eat heartily and in the evening admire the incredibly colourfully lit up fountain.’
The café was closed, the gardens were a dehydrated stretch of bald earth while the fountain, which had long since seen a drop of water, acted as a much needed communal litter bin. A few elderly citizens played what looked like majhong on the beaten up old café tables. Aside from them the entire vicinity was deserted.

I turned my interests to the sea-front only to be greeted by an endless parade of development hoardings obscuring any sight of the water. In their shade I walked blindly hoping to find my way to the front. The only access point turned out to be the amusingly named ‘Prince of Wales Pier’, a meagre little jetty left behind by the Brits. It was a suitable monument for its bumbling namesake, Charles. Once upon a time it must have been a bustling point of entry, today it was a novelty. Ancient signs in English thanking visitors for their stay and asking all non-residents to complete departure formalities still adorned the walls. There was a painted Union Jack partially obscured by dust. The customs office was shuttered up enabling me to walk onto the pier unchallenged. Beneath slatted planks rippling tropical water looked amazingly inviting, clear and blue. Nobody was swimming. A few sailboats were moored to the jetty. Like everything else they looked abandoned. Letting the sun relax me I sat on the flooring and leaned against the railings. A few kids with sticks and line were fishing, aside from them I scribbled my notes concerning the day’s events in solitude.

The first sign of commerce in At-Tawahi came at the entrance to the pier. There was an ancient gift shop with grease smeared windows and a rickety door which the owner had specially opened up for my benefit having seen me sitting in the sunshine. My presence meant the possibility of cash, cash which he must have been in dire need of. His shop was sad to the point of being endearing. A long table displayed piles of faded postcards, only two thirds of which were of Yemen. The others depicted Saudi and Jordan. A scant selection of souvenirs on sale in a glass cabinet were even more pathetic. Here one could purchase a few carved crocodiles from Africa, piles of dusty old shells, a chipped decorative plate with an ugly bass relief of the Alps, sets of shark’s teeth in various sizes and, the piece-de-restistance, a large plastic Venetian gondola. Out of charity I brought some postcards which I had no use for, made appreciative noises concerning the merchandise, then headed back for the street.

High up on the rocky hillside above me was Little Ben, a miniature replica of its Westminster based big brother. I made my way towards its token spire over trampled down fences and undefined private back yards. Half a dozen kids who tried to involve me in a game of football found me unresponsive. I was in a personal time warp. Not for a moment did I expect to find Little Ben working, but I anticipated some kind of preservation, a soup-sans of gentrified upkeep. In retrospect I suppose my day in Aden should have prepared me for the vandalised neglect which had been metered out to Little Ben. No doubt it was once the centre piece of some ghastly colonial evocation of ‘home’, it probably stood amongst green lawns. I could even envisage a few fake Tudor cottages. Cricket would have been played in its shadow every Sunday.

Today it stood alone surrounded by industrial carnage and the remnants of war.

Mangled concrete pillars skewered by rusting steel spikes and vast mounds of gypsum clogged the landscape like lifeless apocalyptic weeds. All signs of civilisation had been eradicated. Standing at 25’ Little Ben was a most evocative brick and tile folly. The clock itself was riddled with bullet holes, a metal door at its base had been prized open affording me access to the desecrated interior. All its guts had been ripped out making it, quite literally, a hollow gesture. Of its four faces only two remained, these had been deprived of their hands and most of their numerals. Little Ben was out of time in every respect, completely at odds with its environment. Where most of Aden wasn’t even half built Little Ben was well over half destroyed.

Like a jilted lover left behind desolate and financially ruined by a former fickle partner it was impossible not to be affected by Little Ben’s hopeless plight. I tried to take some atmospheric pictures but instead became distracted by a group of children who initiated a sadistic game of ‘stone the mongrel’ at the base of the tower. As the dog’s tormented howls rang out I had to leave, knowing my presence was exacerbating the situation by encouraging showing off.
With its white clapboard exterior turned orange by the sun I could hardly miss Aden’s Catholic church as I walked down the hill. It was the only functioning Christian institution in Yemen. With a heavy heart I made my way towards it. It too was closed. By now I was revelling in nostalgia, having a fine old wallow. Delicious pangs of sadness emanated from within. Surprisingly the church was relatively intact, the statue of Christ on the roof was unaffected by the ravages of war. No limbs were missing, bullets hadn’t taken creative license by gouging out additional stigmata, there was even evidence of a fresh coat of paint. Where its congregation hailed from was a complete mystery. There was less apparent need for a church than there was for a Pizza Hut. It was a lone beacon. Out gunned by Allah it remained silent as the call to prayer echoed out from neighbouring mosques. It was the end of another frenetic day. What was left of Aden was closing down.

Following the fall from grace of the Broast Roasting café At-Tawahi was suffering from a severe shortage of ‘restaurant’ possibilities. I was lumbered with the dubious sounding Sailors Club, or a long journey back to Crater with a rumbling stomach. To my surprise, nestling behind a very drab facade, the Sailors Club possessed a tip top waterside setting with a large astroturf dining area in the open air. It was naturally deserted, but there seemed to be some sort of band tuning up a selection of electric instruments. There was a frisson of festivity. Looking out into the bay in the perfect sunset, watching the distant freight vessels on the horizon and listening to the sound of the sea was verging on being romantic. Perplexed by the contradictions posed by the Sailors Club I fingered the freshly laundered linen tablecloth in front of me and ordered a beer from a smartly dressed waiter.

When my beer arrived I had to pinch myself to check I had not inadvertently drifted off to sleep and was inhabiting a land of dreams. My beer was a real beer. No explanation was proffered, but there it was, chilled to perfection, imported from France, a can of 5.5% proof Kronenburg 1664. It was as much of an impostor as both myself and the Pizza Hut. I drank it then ordered another. And another.

As night descended floodlights illuminated the water. There was even a small tatty sculpture of a ship and ship’s wheel on a concrete plinth about 15 foot out from the water’s edge. It was thoroughly ugly, but just the fact that someone had actually gone to the effort of trying to beautify their environment astounded me. Whatever was going to happen next? Here even the smallest gesture was monumental. As the alcohol blunted my senses I realised that for the first time in a week I was really enjoying being on the move again. This was real travelling. Aden had got me thinking in a multitude of directions. Against all odds I was having the most excellent time.

Supper came in the form of fresh kingfish in a spicy tomato marinade, chips piled high on the side. It was delicious. Around me tables started to fill up with drinking Yemenis. Unveiled women shared tables with, and even talked to young and middle aged men. The small band played traditional Arabic music whilst an attractive female singer wailed over complex rhythms to my absolute delight. Combined with the beer the effect was hypnotic. Some of the clientele took it in turns to add backing wails Karoke style, others danced. I sat slack jawed unable to take events on board, we were only one step away from the arrival of decks, DJ’s and a supply of pills. Nagging voices in my subconscious kept telling me to make a move. I had to be up at 5am the following morning to prepare for my long haul across the desert to Al-Mukalla, and shared taxis to Crater would now be drying up. Half-cut I attempted a little vertical rhythmic shuffling as a way of saying thanks to the band. They cheered me on but my performance was a pale imitation of my knife wielding wedding dance. After settling a gargantuan bill (my illicit beer weighed in at over £2 a can) I waved to the assembled revellers, called out “Party On” and returned to the oppressive silence of At-Tawahi.

Crater at night was a distinct improvement from its dowdy daytime guise. Enlivened by cooler breezes coming in from the sea the city had taken on a new lease of life. Bright lights illuminated busily trading shops, cafes spilled onto the streets, a sense of community forced me to review my former impressions. Outside my hotel there appeared to be a mini open air hospice. Dozens of folk down on their luck slept on the pavement in rusting old institutional metal bedsteads. The occupant nearest me was Sheriff. His gummy mouth hung open emitting a light snore which sounded like a death rattle.

Inspired by his earlier request I suddenly remembered that I did indeed have a picture of the Queen. Reaching into my money belt I retrieved a crisp five pond note, tucked it into Sheriff’s frayed shirt pocket then saluted him momentarily. He didn’t so much as stir. Feeling pleased with myself for having assuaged my guilt I left Sheriff to a fate which I knew would be unkind. We were both thousands of miles away from the place we called home. The sad thing was Sheriff’s version only existed in his scrambled imagination.