A Foreign Affair (19 page)

Standing by, helpless, while my beloved was booted up his backside and casually clobbered across his broad shoulders with the barrels of guns wielded by five men half his size is by far the worst thing I’ve ever experienced, worse even than my near beheading for rapid release on YouTube. I felt each blow as if it had been on my own skin. ‘You cowards!’ I screamed as he toppled sideways, like a felled redwood, groaning. The guards who’d clapped the hardest at my banister-ride struck him the hardest before re-handcuffing me and frogmarching me to the lift.

My blood was boiling. I was in lioness mode, vowing to myself that Aziz’s father would live to rue the day he’d been born – no, the day he’d been conceived.

Chapter Twenty-five

‘Mrs Flushmin, we meet at last! I am General al-Majid.’

Now, where had I heard that name before? Obviously somewhere in Yemen, sometime in the past few days, but for the life of me I could not recall where...

At my entrance, the same slight, dark man who’d given the order to beat the living daylights out of the man I loved, Aziz’s father, had risen from of a cloud of cigarette smoke behind a dark wood laminate desk. With my hackles up already I kicked off boldly with, ‘You’ll be inviting the Americans who installed your CCTV cameras to a viewing of the savagery I’ve just witnessed, will you?’

‘Ah!’ he said, with a poisonous smile. ‘Very interesting! You have heard of “waterboarding”, have you Mrs Flushmin?’ He lit a cigarette before continuing: ‘Our American allies have found it most effective, but here in Yemen we try not to waste water if we can help it. Each to their own method of extraction...’

I swallowed hard, inwardly cursing the Americans for having robbed their allies of any right to the moral high ground, and tried a different tack: ‘My surname is Flashman, not Flushmin. If you’d just remove these silly handcuffs, I’ll write it down for you...’ I said, striding straight across a stretch of shiny parquet floor towards him to thrust my tightly praying hands in his face. Once free, I intended to help myself to a biro from his plastic pen-tray and a Post-it note from his matching plastic dispenser – both American, from Staples, if I wasn’t much mistaken - and scribble my name in large capitals for him, before requesting a cigarette.

‘Your attitude, Mrs Flushmin, is forcing me to conclude that you have not yet comprehended the gravity of your situation,’ he said, narrowing snakily hooded eyes at me as he stubbed out his half-smoked Rothmans, ‘I must warn you that things will not go well for you if you continue in this way...’ I wondered if he’d watched too many Bond movies; seeing him waste a good two inches of a Rothmans was torture. ‘I am not going to remove your handcuffs,’ he went on, ‘because I do not require you to write down your name. I have it written clearly here, at the top of no fewer than ten reports detailing your anti-Yemen activities during the past week.’ So saying, he sat back down in his swivel chair, ominously spreading a sheaf of coloured papers out to form a pretty fan for himself and flicked it slowly to and fro, as if to say ‘Are you feeling the heat yet?’

We stared at each other appraisingly for a while, until his reptilian gaze, resting an instant longer than was necessary on my breasts, dictated a change of tactics. Hitching one buttock and half a thigh onto his desk, I leant across the desk to target him with no more than five centimetres of cleavage, confident there was more in reserve if that didn’t do the trick.

‘General al-Majid – or may I call you Abu Aziz?’ I began, deploying the overflowing ashtray voice I tend to resort to when intent on seduction.

‘No, you may not call me Abu Aziz. Aziz is my third, not my first, son,’ he intercepted me with a sneer.

‘General al-Majid,’ I re-launched, ‘I am aware that I have put the odd foot wrong these past few days and I sincerely regret that, but frankly I’m sorrier still that I’ve wasted a whole week down south when I could have been here, consorting with men of your calibre, with the people who really matter in Yemen, seeing and learning things that will help me put your great country’s strong case more fully and forcefully in our corridors of power back in London...’

It had seemed to me that his face was starting to register a soupcon of interest so I had begun to breathe more easily, but ‘Finished?’ he interrupted briskly, ‘How unlike an Anglo-Saxon to waste time with idle flattery and false talk! I am grateful to our American advisers and trainers here for recently impressing upon me the importance of correctly valuing one’s time – “time management” is the term they use...’ Only then did I realise that his face had been registering interest in the clock behind me rather than in my cleavage or my kind words about north Yemen. ‘Seven minutes later than I’d planned,’ he declared, ‘we will proceed now with an examination of these reports.’

‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a coffee or a cigarette – preferably both?’ I hazarded miserably.

‘No. Mrs Flushmin, you have a remarkable ability to forget your predicament and that it is impossible for you to smoke or drink anything – coffee, tea or even vodka – with your handcuffs on. Now, please be seated on a chair, rather than my desk.’

‘Look here,’ I said, doing as I was told but desperate to go on the offensive again. ‘Naturally, neither of us wants to waste time, so let’s get straight to the point, shall we? How much of all this hullabaloo is about issues you have with your son’s sexuality?’ I’d switched to what I can best describe as my Woman’s Hour mode, probingly interrogating. ‘There’s something serious here which you both need to address and work out before you can move forward,’ I said, hurling in as much as I could remember of the revolting language Fiona had used while training to be a counsellor. ‘You may find this hard to believe, General, but your son adores you and I’m sure you love him to bits too, but you need to learn to accept him for who and what he is, and then give yourself permission to show you care. Only then will you be able to move on... Admit it,’ I went on without pausing for breath or a glance in his direction to gauge his reaction, ‘none of this is about me, is it? Umm? Deep down, you know you’re both hurting. You don’t need to tell me; I know how families can be! I’d be happy to try and mediate a reconciliation, if you like. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying he’s not irritating but...’

‘Mrs Flushmin, my relations with my third son are not your business, or even mine at this moment.’ Damnation! Another dead end. ‘Now, your first infraction -’

‘How
much are these Americans paying you, General?’ I rallied again for a fresh attack, ‘or do all those millions of dollars trickle straight down from the president in the shape of LandCruisers and all expenses paid luxury trips to German clinics to have your faulty waterworks fixed?’

‘Mrs Flushmin!’

‘Sorry, I take that last bit back,’ I retreated once more, but only
pour
mieux
sauter
. Hadn’t Aziz warned me that he’d be aiming to ransom me for the price of the car? Now for the nuclear option: ‘I just think you ought to know that back in England I own a stately home not very far from London which I’d be very pleased to make available to you for the period of one year – if you can just see your way to releasing myself and Sheik Ahmad al-Abrali...‘

‘You are wasting your time, Mrs Flushmin,’ he said, lighting another Rothmans, and relaxing back in his chair.

A year not enough. I thought quickly, ignoring a pop-up cartoon of a furious Fiona. ‘Five year lease? It’s Queen Anne with a Victorian chapel, its own hundred acres of parkland, half a mile of drive, a roof that’s in good repair, a reasonable income from hiring out the ground floor as a wedding venue approximately ten times a year, trout-fishing...’

‘You are degrading yourself, Mrs Flushmin...’ sighed the general from behind his smokescreen.

Hellfire and damnation! Aziz had been wildly mistaken. Whatever he may have been like before moving to Sanaa and collaborating with the Americans, his father was now plainly incorruptible: ‘Mrs Flushmin, there are only two things you need to know about me. First, I am extremely rich and second, my threats are never empty. If you do not want both your ears and both your lips sliced off by that
jambiyah
up there in that wall cabinet, you will be SILENT! NOW!’ he bellowed at me. I waited while he scribbled on a pad of pistachio green paper, ripped off the top sheet and added it to his pretty fan. ‘There!’ he announced with satisfaction, ‘I now have eleven reports concerning your movements and activities since your arrival in our country almost a week ago. Your failed attempt to corrupt a state official has been added.’

‘Eleven! But that’s preposterous!’

‘I have been waiting – patiently, I think you’ll agree - to show you the proofs of these accusations,’ he observed, languidly fanning himself with those charge sheets, repellently confident.

I confess that revisiting this episode is almost as painful as recounting the minutiae of the day I spent with the merry wives of the
wadi
and their offspring. You’ll forgive me if I simply lay out the charges against me in bald, bullet-pointed form. Just like tables and lists and charts, I’ve found that stark statement can remove a little of the sting from a thing. Bullet-points here will save me the misery of dwelling on the delight Aziz’s father clearly took in my discomfort or the way he slowed down to place particular emphasis on what he considered my most serious misdemeanours. I will merely highlight those with an asterisk. Actually, it would be quicker to asterisk those of lesser gravity – just the one, in fact.

Here is the list, more or less:

No
valid Yemeni entry visa

Close
fraternising with a person the US suspects of having links to al-Qaeda: Sheikh Ahmad al-Abrali

Causing a delay and affray at Mukalla airport*

Spying
for a foreign power with previous colonial interests in the south of Yemen

Being in a state of inebriation in public

Conspiring
to destroy the integrity of the Republic of Yemen

Publicly
demonstrating Britain’s willingness to intervene in south Yemeni affairs.

Verbal incitement to civil unrest at a public rally

Provocation
of 12 deaths, 57 serious injuries; creation of 23 widows and 82 orphans in Seiyun.

Physical assault against two employees of CLIT

Attempt
to bribe a senior CLIT official

‘Do you understand everything that you have just heard?’

‘Yes, I do.’

That gargantuan death, injury, widow and orphan toll were still ringing in my ears, making every other charge pale into insignificance except the one about Sheikh Ahmad being in cahoots with al-Qaeda. Had I been right after all to take fright at his long acquaintance with bin Laden?... No, I mustn’t allow myself to be disorientated. I must keep a clear head, a tight grip on who was my enemy, who the only man I’d ever really loved, and who – namely Aziz – at once both a vile traitor and a tragic victim.

WWFHD for pity’s sake? Where my famous forebear would have been filling his breeches by this time, my favourite female ancestor would, I was quite sure, have held her head high and brazened it out. I decided that, like Roza the First, I would remain calm, even nonchalant. ‘Haven’t you forgotten something General al-Majid? I’m a little surprised you haven’t rounded the list off to a neat dozen by mentioning my loss of your LandCruiser.’

‘In the light of the charges you are already facing, it seemed unnecessarily vindictive to add this one.’

‘I see,’ I said, rising to my feet in an effort to grab back some control of my situation, ‘Naturally, I would like to see our British consul as soon as possible.’

‘This is your legal right and it has already been arranged. Not the consul but the Ambassador himself has expressed a wish to visit you here this afternoon.’

More bad news, given that Mrs Rev had foully prejudiced our Scotsman in Sanaa against me. ‘Actually, do I have a legal right to refuse to see him?’

‘You do not,’ he said, stubbing out another almost unsmoked cigarette and barking an instruction into a phone,’ You will now be placed in a cell in the basement of this building.’

‘Handcuffs?’

‘They will be removed when you arrive there.’

‘Shower?’

‘CLIT is not the Sheraton Hotel, Mrs Flushmin – have you never heard of Lubyanka? You may be interested to learn that while the Arab Republic of Yemen was never a Marxist state like our foolish southern brother, its orientation was always socialist. This means that relations with the former Soviet Union, especially with its military and security establishments, were close until relatively recently. Our new American allies have generously offered to renovate and modernise our detention facilities in expectation of increased numbers of terrorists they hope to accommodate, but we think the old Soviet-design is better – more effective...’

Two guards had arrived to escort me out of the office and down four floors in the glass lift again, past the president on his prancing horse, to the strip-lit basement. One small step to a prison cell, one giant step closer to Sheikh Ahmad, was the only consoling angle on my situation I could conceive of at that precise moment.

But there turned out to be another. Approaching me from the opposite direction down that strip-lit basement corridor, handcuffed and flanked just as I was by a pair of armed guards, was one of the boy band brothers. As the distance between us narrowed I recognised the Brummie bully. He must have been picked up in Marib, I deduced, and was probably a survivor of a drone attack the night before. The sight of him must have jogged my memory because I was suddenly recalling where I’d heard the name al-Majid before. I’d been kneeling on a blue and white striped sheet of plastic, contemplating my own demise by electric carving knife, when that Brummie bully’s mobile had rung....

‘Fancy seeing you here,’ I greeted him cheerfully, suddenly elated at being able to join a dot or two at last.