A Foreign Affair (17 page)

He and Aziz escorted me out of the room, along a lengthy corridor, into another empty room with a set of identical French windows and out, onto the balcony where Aziz had had the awning and sound system erected. Once there, I was first conscious of a blast of hair-dryer heat. Next, I knew just how Princess Diana felt on the balcony of Buckingham Palace in July 1982: astounded by both her power over a sea of strangers and her powerlessness over the man she loved. I threw my shoulders back and prayed to St Serafim for the gift of melting Sheikh Ahmad’s heart. For almost as far as my eye could see roiled a broiling mass of Arab masculinity, sprinkled with waving south Yemeni flags and bright new Princess Di head cloths.

Raising my arms above my head, I shook hands with myself in a gesture of togetherness I’d instinctively copied from any number of politicians seen on the television news. Then, relaxing into the occasion, I opened my arms in a wide embrace before drawing that ocean of impassioned humanity towards me, using a gesture I’d probably learned from pictures in Jesus in the Illustrated Children’s Bible I’d had as a child, although in hindsight, I might have looked as if I was guiding a car out of a garage. No matter, because a seismic roar of welcome was ascending. Cupping a hand to one ear I mimed deafness and the roar crescendo-ed obligingly. For an instant I was a rock star, sorely tempted to draw the microphone to me, wait for silence and begin a tremulous rendition of that famous Evita solo about it not being easy and people thinking it strange... But singing is not my forte while public speaking does seem to be. Sheikh Ahmad said a couple of words in Arabic before ceding me the microphone, with Aziz at my side to translate.

‘
Salaam
aleikum
!
’
made an excellent beginning instead, not least because the answering roar of ‘
Wa
aleikum
salaam
!
’
gave me time to think of what to say next, no easy task given my necessarily restricted vocabulary. It seemed to me that the surest way of avoiding banned words or any mention whatsoever of the region’s grievances would be to look to other famous orators for inspiration and even direct quotation. What Yemeni would know what Shakespeare had had King Harry declaim at Agincourt, or what Churchill said during World War Two or Maggie Thatcher, or the Queen, or Tony Blair had said wherever and whenever? The point was that the cadence of my words, whatever they were and in whatever order they came, should resonate in my audience’s ears and strike a chord in their hearts.

‘
Friends
,
South
Yemenis
,
Hadramis
,
lend
me
your
ears
!
I
come
to
know
and
love
this
country
not
just
to
visit
it
,
for
we
English
were
not
so
very
long
ago
,
as
perfectly
acquainted
with
you
and
your
ways
,
and
you
with
ours
,
as
if
we
were
a
band
of
brothers
.
Therefore
,
I
say
unto
you
,
let
us
apply
ourselves
to
the
healing
of
this
breach
between
our
mighty
peoples
.
Once
more
unto
the
breach
,
I
say
,
once
more
!
It
is
time
to
become
a
band
of
brothers
again
,
to
put
asunder
what
men
of
power
in
the
north
of
this
country
are
insisting
must
remain
joined
,
and
join
again
what
was
so
rudely
put
asunder
in
1967
,
and
stop
all
this
al
-
Qaeda
nonsense
at
once
!...
’
While Aziz translated, with some difficulty, I worried that I was straying onto the treacherous reefs of politics, so I continued in a different, simpler and more personal vein, ‘
I
am
here
to
offer
myself
to
you
all
as
the
south
Yemeni
people’s
princess
but
I
have
nothing
to
give
you
but
my
blood
,
toil
,
tears
and
sweat
and
only
one
thing
to
say
to
you
: “
You
sit
back
and
take
it
if
you
want
to
but
this
lady’s
not
for
sitting
back
and
taking
anything
!”
’

I was well satisfied with the way I was managing to deliver a coherent message in carefully coded and non-incendiary terms, but how long could I keep it up? I didn’t want to mention the Queen directly in case I found myself mentioning her corgis’ living arrangements, but she did provide me with the inspiration for my next line: ‘
You
have
had
almost
twenty
anni
horribili
–
about
fifty
actually
,
if
you
count
your
Marxist
period
-
so
it’s
high
time
you
started
being
able
to
look
forward
to
some
sunny
uplands
flowing
with
milk
and
honey
–
or
at
least
enough
water
!
’

Now in serious danger of losing my plot I decided it was time to round everything off in a memorable crescendo and one could do a lot worse than look to Churchill for that. Not until I’d started on the only lines that came to mind ‘
We
shall
fight
them
in
the
wadis
,
we
shall
fight
them
at
the
airports
,
we
shall
fight
them
in
the
qat
fields
and
in
the
towns
...
’
did I realise my fatal mistake. I’d been so busy re-jigging the quote to suit local conditions that I’d failed to notice the lethal repetition of the word ‘fight’. Would Aziz notice before it was too late and have the miraculous presence of mind to replace it with ‘kiss’ or ‘greet’ or ‘hug’?

No. Aziz had done his job only too well by faithfully translating my every word. Far below me, chaos was already breaking out again, the ocean of men growing choppier by the second, wails of pain and fury rising, guns firing here and there, the entire square soon banging away like popcorn in a pan. I stood there mesmerised, stunned by my effect, paralysed, before turning to go inside, where the scene had unaccountably and utterly changed. Aziz had melted away but Sheikh Ahmad was nowhere to be seen either. Instead, Munir, authoritatively stern rather than obsequious now and flanked by a brace of burly but sleek men armed with mobile phones and side arms, awaited me.

‘You will come with us now please, Madam Flashman,’ said the serpent Munir with a smirk, while one of the sleek heavies slipped a pair of US-made plastic handcuffs on my wrists.

Chapter Twenty-three

Believe it or not, my arrest and bundling in the back of yet another air-conditioned LandCruiser - this time a tan model with blacked-out windows, a siren and a tangle of aerials on its roof - was an alarming but not altogether unwelcome development.

I naturally wondered what had become of Sheikh Ahmad but was assured he was safely ensconced in the identical vehicle behind us. I sensed with relief that I was in official hands, clear of all that pop-gun madness, the maddened, baying crowd in the square I suspected might easily have smothered me in its frantic eagerness to rally to the cause I’d been representing.

The driver swung the vehicle through the high metal gates and screeched down the narrow side alley at top speed, flattening a pair of children against the alley wall, knocking an old man’s walking stick out of his hand and forcing a couple of youths carrying what, with hindsight, was almost certainly a corpse in a blanket and a man with a bleeding stump for an arm, out of our path. The atrocious truth - that my head-cloths and words between them had provoked both death and injury – was not, I’m ashamed to say, uppermost in my mind.

Time to take stock. There were four of us in the car: the driver, myself and two of those sleek fellows with side arms and mobile phones at the ready. They weren’t wild-eyed, unpredictable and scrawny types, like the handsome boy-band brothers or most of the crowd we’d just left behind. More like Aziz to look at, they were the sort of men who spent their working lives parked in swivel chairs behind big desks, fiddling with paper clips and picking their teeth. Their soft stomachs spilled over the tops of their futas and their double chins over their shirt collars. I judged I could rest assured that those men were too idle and happy to do me any harm by instructing an underling to get busy with a cattle prod, let alone administer any punishment themselves.

Confident of my immediate surroundings therefore, I began to worry and wonder about Sheikh Ahmad again. To take the edge off the tugging ache in my heart I forced myself to compile a mental list of his shortcomings: secretive, tyrannical, distrustful, polygamous, bourgeois need to keep up with the bin Joneses in the
wadi
, sentimental about his womenfolk... For all his faults, however, I couldn’t reasonably suspect him of betraying me to the authorities. The same could not be said of Aziz, against whom the evidence was stacking up too neatly to ignore. Firstly, and most incriminatingly, that toad Munir had been Aziz’s contact; secondly, where on earth had Aziz got to the instant the fighting erupted? He’d been at my side, translating, and then he’d evaporated; thirdly, and most incriminatingly in my view, he had been exceptionally, nervously sweaty all day. I strongly suspected him of being hand in glove with that beastly Bushara in the conception – via those head cloths – of a plan to bring about my downfall.

Bushara’s motive I could easily understand: good, clean, honest jealousy. But I couldn’t think of a single good reason why Aziz should have set out to torpedo the cause he’d been working so hard for. Hadn’t he been demonstrating all the flair and devotion of a young Goebbels in its service? What or who could have persuaded him to betray the interests and trust of the man we both loved? But then what had persuaded him to betray me in the matter of his father’s car radiator? Staring out of the blackened window at what looked like a dead grey sea of sand, dolefully munching on
Abu
Walads and swigging from a plastic bottle of water the heavy beside me had had to manipulate for me on account of my handcuffs, I thought hard....

Yes! Of course! A shaft of intuition informed me that Aziz’s debilitating fear of his father on account of the latter’s non-acceptance of his sexual nature must lie at the root of the whole matter. ‘
The
sins
of
the
father
shall
be
visited
on
the
son’
, who in turn will go and visit a few more sins on those around him and spoil everything for everyone else, I thought miserably. There was still so much I couldn’t fathom that eventually my thoughts strayed away to my lost wheelie case. In the normal way of things, nothing would have induced me to team a zebra print jersey tunic with baby-blue harem pants and scarlet ballet pumps, so the very idea of arriving somewhere and meeting new people in that no longer even fresh-smelling get-up, without even a l’Oreal wet-wipe to freshen my T zone, was making my flesh crawl.

‘Excuse me, could either of you please tell me where we’re going?’ I ventured.

‘Sanaa,’ said the heavy in front, shortly.

‘Oh, good!’ I dared say I’d be able to find something to wear there, although the range of cosmetics on offer might disappoint. The more I thought about it, the more I missed my treasure chest.

‘You like the capital city of Yemen?’ said the heavy beside me, sounding a little surprised, ‘but you prefer Aden?’

‘Oh no, Aden’s a bit over-rated, if you ask me. We British have never been any good at beautifying places; have you ever seen London’s South Bank complex? I’ve actually never been to Sanaa. Is it very beautiful?’

‘Madam, “beautiful” is too small a word to describe my birthplace. We say that Sanaa is the oldest living city in the world, that if you have not seen its typically Yemeni ancient brick skyscrapers with their typically Yemeni white decorations and their colourful
qamariyya
half-moon windows that light up at night like a magic jewellery box in a princess’ boudoir and are so typically Yemeni...’

‘Stop! Let me guess. You’re a bit of a poet and you’ve worked for the Ministry of Tourism?’

‘Madam, how intelligent you are! I was employed in that ministry for three years on account of my typically Yemeni poetic soul and my knowledge of English, but there was no work for me after 2001 because no tourists wanted to come to Yemen thanks to that dog, that traitor to his ancestral homeland, Osama bin Laden. Now I am employed in the defence of the integrity of our glorious Republic of Yemen.’

‘You’re a “typically Yemeni” secret policeman in other words.’

His obvious enjoyment of my little tease was encouraging. When his colleague in front tuned the car radio to some grimly wailing
habibi
station, I seized the opportunity to discover more about my situation and prospects.

‘How long will it take to get to Sanaa?’

‘Many hours. Maybe seven, maybe eight, but we will stop in Marib to refresh ourselves. These days, in this area, it is not safe to travel all night.’

‘Bad roads? Robbers?’

‘No, no madam. Much more dangerous! I’m sure you are aware that your allies and ours, the Americans, are flying robot spy planes that can fire missiles precisely at a single moving vehicle, searching for the people you call “terrorists”. This area we are passing through now is where many people who admire Osama bin Laden are able to hide because these desert tribes do not like to break the tribal law of hospitality to strangers, so the spy planes are especially active here. Our most up to date information is that there will be some drone activity tonight; al-Qaeda terrorists, some bin Husi tribesmen, members of a clan called the al-Amra, are said to be in the region to confer and coordinate their plots with associates from the desert tribes here. We would not like the Americans to mistake our vehicle for one of theirs and lock onto it and target it with one of their Hellfire missiles...’

‘I should think not!’ Although I confess to a secret thrill at the idea of the al-Amra brothers receiving their just deserts from on high courtesy of an American drone, I was suddenly seriously alarmed for my physical safety for the fourth time since I’d arrived in Yemen. ‘I wonder how you can allow the Americans to violate your sovereign air-space like this!’

‘Your outrage is shared by millions of Yemenis, Madam,’ he sighed comfortably, ‘People say that if we have terrorists then Americans are terrorists too because they break their own law of always giving everyone a fair trial. But my belief is that our president has no choice except to cooperate with them; the Americans can pay him a lot of money for their terrorism in our land, and we are a very poor country. Ah, yes! We are now passing the place where six years ago an American drone targeted a travelling LandCruiser with a Hellfire missile and turned one of your “terrorists” and four of his fellow passengers into ashes. If you were a tourist and we had time to stop I could show you the broken wing mirror and pieces of tyre rubber that have been left in this place as a memorial.’

‘Really? Who says I can’t be a tourist? What’s the big hurry?’ I was hoping that if our vehicle paused, the one Sheikh Ahmad was travelling in would be obliged to do the same.

‘My boss, the head of all Yemen’s national security services himself has requested that you are handcuffed and waiting for him in his office first thing tomorrow morning.’

Again, this may sound strange but I confess that this news did not much alarm me. Instead, I was relieved to learn that my case – whatever it might be – was being treated with urgency and seriousness. Never having met a spy chief before, I couldn’t help relishing the idea of meeting Yemen’s. Perhaps fortunately, I had quite forgotten Sheikh Ahmad telling me that none other than Aziz’s father headed up Yemen’s security services. I remained for the time being blissfully blind to the fact that I was caught in the claws of one of the biggest beasts in Yemen’s political jungle, a person already strongly predisposed against me. When we arrived at the hotel in Marib therefore, my new friend was able to banish my blues simply by opening the LandCruiser’s back door and handing me a pink
Puma
sports bag filled with most of my favourite personal effects. A momentary panic on discovering that the vehicle Sheikh Ahmad was travelling in had not stopped behind us, faded to cross disappointment when it was explained to me that, being a man and a native Yemeni, he could be billeted more cheaply in an establishment on the other side of town.

In the hotel’s generously proportioned and mercifully empty marble Ladies I discovered that the Puma bag contained not only my make-up and full complement of unguents and underwear but also a couple of fresh outfits – the sun-yellow kaftan with its white silk embroidery and the Chinese blue
shalwar
kameez
I particularly liked – as well as a few scarves, neatly wrapped in tissue paper. Whoever had appointed themselves my lady’s maid cum valet had even thought to throw in my old
Vogue
, my strappy Jimmy Choos and some workaday functional flats that would go with anything. To cap it all, safely swaddled by my pink silk kimono was a half bottle of
Stolichnaya
. Long before I found the accompanying note at the bottom of the bag, I’d detected the hand of Aziz. Who else came anywhere close to understanding my woman’s heart well enough to fix me such a personal survival kit? His less than enthusiastic endorsement of my outfit that morning now struck me as a sure proof that he’d known perfectly well I’d be not only needing but badly wanting a change of clothes.

His note, on pale pink paper, was short and fairly to the point:

Madame
Roza
,

I
hope
that
one
day
you
will
be
able
to
forgive
me
for
what
I
have
done
and
remember
how
carefully
,
with
how
much
love
,
I
have
packed
this
bag
for
your
comfort
.

Thanks
to
my
monstrous
father
my
choice
has
been
a
terrible
one
:
between
betraying
our
friendship
,
my
love
for
Sheikh
Ahmad
and
the
cause
we
all
share
OR
sacrificing
my
own
life
and
the
honour
of
my
children
by
being
put
to
death
for
the
crime
of
homosexuality
.

You
should
know
that
you
will
meet
my
father
in
Sanaa
tomorrow
.
You
should
also
know
that
he
will
punish
you
for
the
loss
of
the
LandCruiser
,
probably
by
keeping
you
in
jail
,
but
only
until
you
can
repay
him
the
cost
of
the
car
,
because
your
kidnappers
never
returned
the
vehicle
.
If
you
want
to
blame
someone
for
this
unheard
-
of
breakdown
in
tribal
law
,
please
consider
the
part
that
you
have
played
.
I
understand
that
your
withholding
of
the
gift
of
a
can
of
beans
and
a
tin
of
mustard
to
the
old
sultan
,
is
at
the
root
of
the
matter
.