Ramadan is here. People were out until early hours (around when the power went out) and the streets were quiet and buses hard to find this morning. Things will be even quieter at the time ofthe Magrib prayer that ends the fast for the day as everyone is home break-fasting.
A sign of the season here, and I'm sure other Arab cities, is the return of workers from Gulf states and their inappropriately large cars on the streets of Aden. It is typical for workers returning home for the holiday season to make the long haul from Emirates or Kuwait home to Yemen. In case your geography is so-so, here's a map:
Kuwait is nestled between Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia and Aden is in the far southwestern tip of the Peninsula. Long way. Something tells me too that there's not a friendly string of Motel 8s to make the drive easier.
Many Arab states rely on remittances from native sons and daughters that move to the rich gulf states for work to keep societies with high employment rates afloat. Yemen impressively and surprisingly survived such blows when Saudi Arabia expelled large numbers of Yemeni workers in the Kingdom, the most recent expulsion coming this past December. Those are double shocks - not only did they lose the remittances but they had to absorb those workers into the domestic work force. The regime might not have done so smoothly but they're still around.
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