YEMEN: Imam’s Coffee

British bombees last week gratefully gulped mugs of the finest Mocha coffee, quite unconscious of the fact that Arab experts in Whitehall were afraid that their beverage might cause a diplomatic incident.

Into the sun-hammered compound of Aden’s Government House one day this spring ambled two mean, dusty camels, bearing on their backs 1,200 pounds of coffee for Governor Sir John Hathorn Hall. The coffee was a gift from the Imam of the Red Sea state of Yemen. Connoisseurs call the Mocha coffee of Yemen the finest in the world, but Sir John had an even better reason to be grateful for the gift.

In Arabia a present of coffee is a pledge of friendship stronger than any written pact, and for years Britain has courted the friendship of fanatically religious, 65-year-the old Yahya ibn Hamid-ed-Din, Imam of Yemen. A notably independent, notably stingy monarch, he for years nursed a boundary grudge against the British Government, listened attentively to the blandishments of Italy’s would-be imperialists. But his camel loads of coffee meant that at last he was on Britain’s side.

His residency cluttered with coffee sacks, Sir John decided that the practical thing to do was to send the coffee to England for war relief. This decision wrinkled the brows of the Foreign Office. In the mysterious East, Kings’ gifts are not for commoners. Should the Imam ever hear that his royal gift had been given to Tom, Dick & Harry, he might well feel insulted.