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Erotic Gadgets. Ahmad governed by means of spies, subsidies and the executioner's ax, decapitating more than a thousand enemies. He was a man of enormous appetite: he would do away with an entire roast lamb at a single sitting and then gulp down a pound of honey as a between-meals snack. He had three wives and 40 concubines, but in the last years of his life his potency declined, and he had unsuccessful recourse to rejuvenation treatments by a Swiss doctor. His luckless harem consoled itself with sorties into lesbianism and erotic gadgets sent from Japan. Like many Yemenites, Ahmad chewed qat, a narcotic shrub similar to marijuana, and switched to morphine in 1953—heroically breaking the habit six years later.
Ahmad did his best to carry Yemen back to the 10th century instead of forward to the 20th. He grabbed choice lands and houses that struck his fancy, and jailed those owners who complained. He handled all the state funds, but never kept accounts or made a budget. The country had no daily newspaper, no long-distance phone, no credit system—not even a Coca-Cola plant. As nearly as anyone can estimate, Ahmad's annual income was about $16 million, his expenditures about $21 million. He raised money by adding charges to customs duties and levying internal tariffs on trucks and caravans. In times past, fertile Yemen, known as Arabia Felix, was the granary of Arabia, but it now must buy wheat and butter abroad. Exports of Yemen's top-grade Mocha coffee dropped from 25,000 tons to 12,000, and last year to 5,000 tons. Starved and graft-ridden, Yemen's 4,500,000 people began exporting themselves; some 500,000 emigrated. The religious as well as temporal leader, Imam Ahmad sternly forbade movies, stringed instruments and alcohol—anyone caught with liquor was publicly flogged.
Unpaid Hardware. But Ahmad could be generous. Following the Koran's injunction on charity, he would spend hours daily under a tree in his palace courtyard receiving all comers, handing out money to widows, orphans, old soldiers, the halt and the blind. His several ramshackle palaces were filled with unworkable plumbing, gilt furniture, fading carpets and hundreds of clocks, all stopped.
In his own way, Crown Prince Badr tried to get the clocks moving again. An arms deal with Russia engineered by him brought T-34 tanks, Yak fighter planes and an arsenal of small arms to Yemen, although Ahmad cried: "I don't need them—I have my sword!" He never paid for the Red hardware and was content to let it rust into uselessness. As fast as Badr brought in Egyptian teachers, Czech technicians and Yugoslav pilots and maintenance crews, Ahmad deported them. The Red Chinese built a showcase highway from the port of Hodeida to the capital, but after nine months of use, it is pot-holed and partially blocked by landslides.
Only 1% of Yemen's population attended primary school—and 30% of this elite suffer from pellagra. Infant mortality up to two years of age runs 58%, one of the world's worst. In all Yemen there are only three hospitals, two high schools and a primitive military academy, but the six-man Yemenite Foreign Office used to concoct reports to the U.N. of totally imaginary hospitals and schools, including a College of Aviation.