Of Apples and Saudi Offerings

Next stop on the Camino a Ítaca, a look back more than fifteen years to a taxi ride across Crater in Aden, Yemen and a curious perspective on colonialism. Click over here for the published Spanish version or read the English version below. 

From the outside it looked like most of the taxis that you see across the developing world. Years of ferrying people across crumbling roads, and often lack thereof, take their toll on these essential services. Here in Aden, Yemen, where few people own their own car, they are even more vital, as this biblical city is set on peninsula broken up into three distinct and very separate parts.

It’s a city that is at least as old as written history. Some say when the book of Ezekiel speaks of the Garden of Eden, it was referring to this baking volcanic rock that sticks out into the gulf of Aden. If indeed it once was a lush, green playground for the forbearers of humankind, the punishment was severe. Times have since changed and all that is left is rock, sand and dust.

As we got in, I quickly noticed that this wasn’t your average taxi. A suspicion that was proven true when the wizened old driver turned around and asked me, in an English that would have sounded familiar to his ex-colonial rulers, where we wanted to go.

I found out that he had worked for the English before they were expelled in the late 1960’s and hadn’t forgotten a word since. As he fondly reminisced about life under British colonial rule, I couldn’t help but ask if he didn’t prefer living in the current, albeit flawed democracy. “Democracy!” he spat, “give me a king like they have in Oman, Saudi Arabia or even our old ruler the Queen of England any day.” The anti-monarchist in me grew curious, even if it meant that his driving got even more erratic as he became more excited. “Kings rob at the beginning of their rule but as they get comfortable, they let some crumbs fall for the common people. These ‘democrats’ though, only have four years and steal everything, leaving nothing behind for us!”

Greed however is one of the most addictive of the cardinal sins and once you get a taste for expensive Vega Sicilia wine, it’s hard to drink the local pitarras. When Juan Carlos betrayed his fascist minders and opted for democracy over dictatorship, even war criminals the likes of Henry Kissinger congratulated him. It looked like a new Garden of Eden and a literal example of having your cake and eating it too.

His decision though, is less magnanimous than it seems. The West was increasingly uncomfortable with the anachronism of a dictatorship in its midst, so why not change a caudillo for a king? Europe is full of moth-eaten parliamentary monarchies that retain the medieval idea of hereditary heads of state. So why not one more?

Unlike his generous Saudi friends though, constitutional monarchs are terrorised by ballot boxes. The chance that their subjects might outgrow their sadomasochistic urge to be dominated disturbs their pampered sleep. Here’s where the taxi driving Methuselah might have been half right, this anxiety seems to drive ‘democratic’ monarchs to develop a taste for the crumbs too.

But even if they do, everyone has the right to the presumption of innocence, ex-kings included. A trial by the media is as immoral and as unfair as a monarchy. This citizen deserves the same as other mortals, a trial in a court of law. Only then will even the most submissive masochist see that magnates need to be shown the exit of Eden.