Word: yemen
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...incessant border squabbles along the bleak mountainous boundary between independent, isolated Yemen and the British Protectorate of Aden, on the southern tip of Arabia, are, as one British diplomat put it, part of the "burden of empire." Last spring, Aden's British Governor Sir Reginald Champion added another straw to his imperial burden. An Adenese chieftain, the Sharif of Beiham, had asked that a frontier customs post be set up to tap the rich stream of smuggled coffee, skins and qat (an Arabian drug) which kept flowing into his territory over an ancient traders' trail from Yemen. Governor...
...back & forth across the frontier. Then the Yemeni built a small fort to improve their position. After a fruitless exchange of diplomatic protests, Aden's British government dropped a few smoke-bombs near the fort. The Yemeni sat tight. A fortnight later the British dropped real bombs, and Yemen's new fort was flattened. But no one was hurt, because the British had considerately informed the Yemeni of their plans well ahead of time and the fort's garrison of 20-odd stalwarts had prudently withdrawn...
Back home, meanwhile, enterprising traders made the most of the incident -and furnished economically backward Yemen a perfect illustration of the law of supply & demand. While the shooting was still going on, tireless scavengers on both sides of the embattled border had diligently collected the bullets from the bullet-riddled countryside; on the local market, the price of lead was down...
...inhabited by some 500 Arab families who worked the nearby vineyards and orange groves, occasionally sniped at a passing Jewish convoy. As the Jewish troops approached, most Arab families fled, the rest were chased out. Today Akir is a community of 300 Jewish families from Bulgaria, Poland, Rumania and Yemen. These new inhabitants have moved in to stay...
Life in Akir has few refinements. Moshe Ben Yaacov Libby, a lean, swarthy immigrant from Yemen, lives with his family of five in a rusty, corrugated-iron shelter. They cook Arab style over an open clay oven and eat from a rough board supported by orange crates. Moshe's wife has found only occasional work picking oranges, and the 'family's stake is going for food. But Moshe, who spent three years in a British detention camp in Aden, plans to stay. He says: "The Arabs of Yemen hated us. There we had a three-story house...