Herod, the shopping area you visited with your mother was the Crescent in Steamer Point, pictured above. In faroff days before air travel the liners and troopers would anchor in the inner harbour and passengers/tourists would go ashore by launch. Along the arcade on the right are the big shops of Cowasjee Dinshaw and Shilay Yehuda.
I've just found this very interesting thread and can offer a few more pictures of Aden/Khormaksar where my father was stationed in 1951/52. They have been posted before, but Photobucket demands $400 a year for hosting so I'm gradually reposting them. Aden was an unforgettable experience for a small boy, even though he had been to India already.
Like all Service families our journey began 12 weeks ahead with the inoculation parade. The queue of National Servicemen stretched all the way round RAF Binbrook’s SSQ, waiting for the jabs for yellow fever, smallpox, tetanus and the dreaded TABC, a cocktail against typhoid and typhus which laid out mother and myself with flu-like symptoms which lasted a week. On the previous day the medical orderlies were busy sterilising their big glass syringes and sharpening their needles on whetstones, for use-once needles hadn't been thought of yet.
So began our great adventure. Our group of 10/11 year olds were collectively known (and often dreaded) as the Khormaksar Kids, and that was in polite circles. Adults hated the place but we greatly enjoyed the posting, and an account of Aden through 10-year-old eyes runs every couple of days from post #3515 p176 at
http://www.pprune.org/military-aviation/329990-gaining-r-f-pilots-brevet-ww-ii-176.html
The aerial photo was taken overhead the Officers' Married Quarters which were on the opposite side of the Sheikothman Road from us hoi polloi. The Kids were dissuaded from entering therein for reasons we could not understand, though looking back perhaps young Graham's insertion of Qty 4, Locust size 4", via the window of OMQ No. 27, Adjutant and Lady for the habitation of, might have had something to do with it.
