had become the Mövenpick. The Mövenpick, destroyed in the next period of fighting, was now the Aden Hotel.
In the small part of town where the English had been, the signs still said, WE HOPE YOU ENJOYED YOUR STAY. PLEASE COME AGAIN at the Prince of Wales pier. A bookshop in the customs shed sold black-and-white postcards of the once bustling port, and paperbacks, forty years old, in which someone had laboriously inscribed, Miss Sirihin Abdullah Murji, P.O. Box 1959,
Mombasa.
I thought of a grandfather, difficult and vainglorious in his youth, who now has been softened by incapacity, and can almost be regarded with affection.
We drove around to see the small museum and the Rambow Tourist Restaurant and Cafeteria, where Rimbaud once had lived. And when I walked into the hotel, that evening, the man who had offered to reconfirm my ticket, to Jeddah next day, came up with a smile. “Your flight is canceled,” he said (and having seen Aden, I was surprised they even made the pretense of flights). “But there’s another one in four days’ time.”
Four days, I thought, could be forty in this wilderness, so I went outside, found an old African man with a battered car, and we drove into the deserted downtown area known as Crater. In the Yemenia office a woman in a black veil looked out at me, preparing for hostilities, and then turned away to a friend.
“It’s important that I get to Jeddah tomorrow. I’ll take any flight that’s available.”
“One moment,” she said, and then turned to the little girl who had appeared by her desk and joked about their friends, a birthday party coming up, perhaps. Then, turning to the computer, she slowly tapped on a few keys and then, looking at her watch, said, “There’s a flight to the capital, but it leaves ten minutes from now.”
“I have to be out of Aden,” I said. “There must be something leaving.” She stirred, and yawned, and went over to talk to another friend. There seemed no point in hurrying; no one was going anywhere in Aden.
Then, coming back and tapping away at her computer again, she said, “There is a flight leaving in the morning. But from Sana’a, across the mountains. A six-hour drive away.” It left at 6:00 a.m., which meant that check-in was seven hours from now.
“I’ll take it.”
“I can’t help you with this. You must go to the other Yemenia office.”
I went out into the dark—the main street was like the cemetery—and roused the driver from his sleep; we rattled off to another Yemenia office, a few hundred yards away, where another woman in a black veil looked up at me.
This new adversary clicked away on her keyboard—computers are slow in Aden, and linked to a world no one really believes in—and then, after many blocked paths and wrong turns, she announced that a plane was leaving in the morning, from Sana’a, the capital, long enemy territory to Aden, six hours away across the mountains. Check-in was six hours from now, she said; I couldn’t make it.
Time slips away in a place like Aden; space itself dissolves, as if the whole city is drifting away on the narcotic
qat
that everyone chews. The clock at the top of the Crescent Hotel clearly hadn’t moved for years.
I bought a ticket from her—no price was too high—and went out to summon my driver again, to drive back to the hotel. I called the hotel in advance, from the Yemenia office, to fix up a taxi to drive to the capital, and we made our way back, at a donkey’s pace, through the broken center of the city, past roadblocks and detours, the large ditches Chinese laborers were digging on behalf of the Aden Sewage Company. The city is stretched out along the coast like a piece of gum that someone has been chewing for a very long time.
At the hotel, racing to collect my things and check out, I was told that the taxi had been called for, but showed no signs of arriving; it was better to go to the taxi stand at the bus station. A young employee in a suit pushed me into
In the small part of town where the English had been, the signs still said, WE HOPE YOU ENJOYED YOUR STAY. PLEASE COME AGAIN at the Prince of Wales pier. A bookshop in the customs shed sold black-and-white postcards of the once bustling port, and paperbacks, forty years old, in which someone had laboriously inscribed, Miss Sirihin Abdullah Murji, P.O. Box 1959,
Mombasa.
I thought of a grandfather, difficult and vainglorious in his youth, who now has been softened by incapacity, and can almost be regarded with affection.
We drove around to see the small museum and the Rambow Tourist Restaurant and Cafeteria, where Rimbaud once had lived. And when I walked into the hotel, that evening, the man who had offered to reconfirm my ticket, to Jeddah next day, came up with a smile. “Your flight is canceled,” he said (and having seen Aden, I was surprised they even made the pretense of flights). “But there’s another one in four days’ time.”
Four days, I thought, could be forty in this wilderness, so I went outside, found an old African man with a battered car, and we drove into the deserted downtown area known as Crater. In the Yemenia office a woman in a black veil looked out at me, preparing for hostilities, and then turned away to a friend.
“It’s important that I get to Jeddah tomorrow. I’ll take any flight that’s available.”
“One moment,” she said, and then turned to the little girl who had appeared by her desk and joked about their friends, a birthday party coming up, perhaps. Then, turning to the computer, she slowly tapped on a few keys and then, looking at her watch, said, “There’s a flight to the capital, but it leaves ten minutes from now.”
“I have to be out of Aden,” I said. “There must be something leaving.” She stirred, and yawned, and went over to talk to another friend. There seemed no point in hurrying; no one was going anywhere in Aden.
Then, coming back and tapping away at her computer again, she said, “There is a flight leaving in the morning. But from Sana’a, across the mountains. A six-hour drive away.” It left at 6:00 a.m., which meant that check-in was seven hours from now.
“I’ll take it.”
“I can’t help you with this. You must go to the other Yemenia office.”
I went out into the dark—the main street was like the cemetery—and roused the driver from his sleep; we rattled off to another Yemenia office, a few hundred yards away, where another woman in a black veil looked up at me.
This new adversary clicked away on her keyboard—computers are slow in Aden, and linked to a world no one really believes in—and then, after many blocked paths and wrong turns, she announced that a plane was leaving in the morning, from Sana’a, the capital, long enemy territory to Aden, six hours away across the mountains. Check-in was six hours from now, she said; I couldn’t make it.
Time slips away in a place like Aden; space itself dissolves, as if the whole city is drifting away on the narcotic
qat
that everyone chews. The clock at the top of the Crescent Hotel clearly hadn’t moved for years.
I bought a ticket from her—no price was too high—and went out to summon my driver again, to drive back to the hotel. I called the hotel in advance, from the Yemenia office, to fix up a taxi to drive to the capital, and we made our way back, at a donkey’s pace, through the broken center of the city, past roadblocks and detours, the large ditches Chinese laborers were digging on behalf of the Aden Sewage Company. The city is stretched out along the coast like a piece of gum that someone has been chewing for a very long time.
At the hotel, racing to collect my things and check out, I was told that the taxi had been called for, but showed no signs of arriving; it was better to go to the taxi stand at the bus station. A young employee in a suit pushed me into
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