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2.
3. I had left Khormaksar a few weeks before.
After my
wedding, the births of my three children and the marriage of
my first daughter, the sight from the aircraft window of the
two great craters of Aden falling away into the distance
remains the happiest memory of my life.
A.
My personal responsibilities had evaporated.
I had for
some eight months been British Adviser on the cabinet of the
South Arabian government, a shaky structure set up just
outside the Colony's border and comprising those remaining
rulers who retained confidence in Britain's word (and who
travelled by Land-Rover rather than by camel and could
therefore get to our weekly meetings), plus four Adeni
politicians brave and ambitious enough to risk the journey
along Murder Mile' in Ma'alla.
/
The
5. Like players in Haydn's Farewell Symphony, the Federal
Ministers had slipped away. I call them Ministers but the Arabic Wazir (Vizier) is more appropriate. At home they ran
their states with wisdom and infinite patience.
Ministerial role sat lightly on their shoulders. My
favourite, the Fadhli, chose the Justice portfolio, observing
that since there was no justice in the federal regime he would
spend his time where it mattered, with his tribes, who
remained loyal and guarded my family until we too slipped off.
my
6. It was, I think, in the early summer of 1967 that Sir Humphrey Trevelyan arrived as the last Governor of Aden
fourth, two having been shot from under us servants of the
Aden government. In a brainstorming session at Government House of his top officials I argued, against my colleagues, for support to the federal rulers. They were, I said, the
only horse left in the race with a puff of wind, the other
runners having turned against us one by one. By then I had
been longer in the Western Protectorate than any other British
official and in that time we had changed policy more times
than I could remember; only the rulers retained a shred of
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