When I arrived in abandoned Aden in early 1968, I used to wonder so much about the people that had once lived at the Dhobi Lines flats.   The few kids of us that there were used to roam around the compound (we were well fenced in by copious loops of barbed wire) while our parents were asleep in the afternoons.   Sometimes we would break into the many empty flats there, and could find household items - left behind, as if their owners would be coming back for them.   Some of the flats, I seem to remember, were given over to laundry equipment (hence:  'Dhobi' Lines?).*   In the sand around the flats we would find glass marbles around the place.   The kids that lived there before us must have been mad keen on playing marbles(?)   We collected so many of them, that we were able to play our own games of marbles.   Also, I remember seeing - beyond the barbed wire perimeter - a redundant children's playground;  neither we, nor the Arab children were allowed to play there - it was heavily patrolled.

Dhobi Lines flat, Khormaksar 2007. Arrow points to former home of webmaster, Peter Pickering

In fact, except at school (St Francis at Steamer Point), we were kept very much away from all of the local population.   Sometimes, when we strayed too close to the barbed wire fence, we would have stones thrown at us by locals.   All of the families in the Dhobi Lines compound at that time were Airworks personnel - seconded to the South Yemen Airforce.   After about 7 or 8 months we all left the flats for houses at the White City compound, over the road.   The reason we had not been able to move there first is that those houses had been trashed at the time of the withdrawal (largely, apparently, by British personnel not wanting to leave the infrastructure to Arab terrorists) and needed to be overhauled.