A Foreign Affair Read online

  Once again, I was forced to reconsider because back in front of the castle peace and quiet reigned, except for a pious mumbling. Each of the men had unfurled a little prayer mat in the dust and was facing Mecca for the noon prayer. If they were arms smugglers they were worryingly God-fearing arms smugglers, I decided. Up and down they bobbed, busy about their blessed business while the chickens pecked in the dust, and the disabled LandCruiser, their red pick-up and all those new weapons baked in the fierce midday sunshine. The children, the young woman and I retreated from the heat to the cool interior of the mud castle, straight into a room furnished with a 50-inch Sony television tuned to some noisy children’s cartoons, and some mattresses lining the walls. Once my eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom I became aware of a very old man crouched in one corner of the room, motionless and desiccated as a mummy.

  Fatima gestured to me to make myself comfortable. Impossible. For the next half an hour, all the girl children manhandled me as they would have done a giant Barbie doll; my hair, my watch, my breasts, my mules, my mascara, my painted toenails, a mole on my neck, my blue eyes, even my bra-straps, were all fiddled with and marvelled over. I tend to give children a wide berth. Living in too close proximity to my Highgate friend’s six year-old had only deepened my dislike of their habitual commotion, but these ones instantly doted on me, however little encouragement I gave them. I began to feel like Julie Andrews; if the temperature hadn’t been so unsuited to any exertion whatever I might have jumped to my feet and led them in an all-dancing, all-singing Yemeni version of My Favourite Things – ‘whiskers on Islamists and hot sun on dry rocks, overdressed womenfolk and privvies without locks …brown cardboard boxes all filled up with guns…’

  Hot and bothered by all that poking and stroking, I was tempted to administer a round of little pinches to as many little brown arms or thighs as I could reach, but I resisted the urge and passed the time profitably by getting them to teach me some more Arabic. In the space of about an hour I’d mastered numbers one to ten, boy and girl, chair and table, heart and liver, car and aeroplane, gun and grenade, cat and dog, but had resolutely drawn the line at memorising all their names. Every time I looked there seemed to be more of them. Young Fatima couldn’t possibly have spawned all those children, not even if she’d kicked off production at the age of eleven, not even if half a dozen or so were twins or triplets. I suspected the presence of perhaps half a dozen adult females in some area of the establishment I might never gain admission to.

  Fatima had disappeared, into the kitchen to join those other females in the preparation of a meal by the smell of it. I hadn’t eaten anything but a single serving of dry Rice Krispies since 6.30 that morning and was ravenous, heartily wishing I could pop outside to the LandCruiser to raid my suitcase for the bag of Bombay mix. At last, a long thin sheet of blue and white striped plastic was tidily laid on the packed mud floor by the eldest of the girls. Leaving me alone with my own body and clothes at last, the others skipped from the room, returning with dish after dish of food to put on that plastic landing strip. I was then led outside to have my hands washed; one girl poured some water over my hands and another carefully dried them with a pink paper tissue. Back inside the plastic strip was already covered with salads, mini bananas, bowls of honey, high stacks of round flat breads, mounds of yellow rice with unidentifiable meaty objects nestling in them, cucumber and chopped tomatoes, and steaming teacups of chicken broth with segments of fresh lime on their saucers.

  The men began appearing, all delicately wiping their wet fingers on pink tissues just as I had, before settling themselves around the food and starting to eat, and gesturing to me to do the same. Neither the young woman nor any of the girls joined us at the meal. I was therefore the only female among ten or more males who ranged in age from the ancient patriarch, who surprised me by popping in some dentures and making a greedy beeline for the meat, to a toothless toddler who sucked on a banana he kept dipping in the honey. In that hungry company, I made sure that I tucked into as much of the spread as I could, as fast as I could. The broth flavoured with freshly squeezed lime juice was a particular culinary triumph. It struck me that the dish-watery chicken consommé Fiona so prided herself on serving up at all her dinner parties would be mightily improved by a similar flavouring. Knowing how hugely it would irritate her to tell her so, I made a mental note to pass on the tip the next time I was at Widderton.

  But would there be a next time? What if, like some prisoner on Death Row, I’d just enjoyed my last meal in the land of the living? Surely I hadn’t been towed all the way out here to amuse the children? One or other of the men might be planning to press me into service as a supernumerary wife perhaps? I did know that Mohammad had allowed his followers four each. While I didn’t fancy the idea of having to share the contents of my suitcase with any other wife, I thought I mightn’t mind sharing a husband. One would have been hard put to find as fit a group of young British males as that troop of pious gun-runners in their futas and tastefully toning headcloths outside the pages of one of our fashion magazines. It struck me then that, like the members of a 1990s boy band, they were so uncannily alike to look at they had to be brothers or dangerously inbred cousins.

  Not until everyone had eaten, quickly and in silence, and got up from the floor to go and wash their hands with the aid of a little water and more delicate finger work with pink tissues, not until I was herded into an outbuilding, a carport-like structure for a post-prandial qat chew and invited to settle on one of the mattresses lining the walls, did I realise that one of that toothsome troop spoke English.

  ‘If you’re wondering what’s going on,’ he muttered in a Brummie brogue, ‘we’re going to stay here all afternoon, chewing and chilling and working out what the fuck we’re going to do with you.’

  Chapter Five

  Another time, another place and the presence of a fellow Brit might have reassured me. If he’d hailed from Devon or Suffolk say, I might have relaxed. As it was, only a West Yorkshire accent would have set more alarm bells clanging than that Brummie bleat.

  WWFHD? Great-great-great grandpa Harry certainly met some odd-balls but I’m sure he never faced anything to compare with this. The folk he encountered could be complicated but they didn’t tend to be as layered as a multi-storey car park. If you were a mid-19th century Afghan, for example, you looked, sounded, behaved and thought like a mid-19th century Afghan. You didn’t suddenly become a London hansom cab-driver. Nowadays, a Bangladeshi dung-merchant can crop up as mayor of London or an ex-convict from Siberia as a suited denizen of Chelsea or Knightsbridge. Enriching and life-enhancing as all these plural identities are, fascinating as we may find the types one meets these days, those of us fated to sail through life under a single flag can be left at a considerable disadvantage. Actually, now I come to think of it, I’m a fine one to talk! My Russian Orthodoxy muddies my waters, and the Union Jack can hardly be described as a ‘single flag’…

  Now, where was I? In ‘deepest, darkest do-do’ as Nanny Atkins loved to say.

  While my limbs obeyed a polite invitation to arrange themselves on the mattress seating in that carport, my mind raced in every direction, hunting for an escape route. Could I ask to visit that hell of a loo again and make my getaway from there, while no one was looking? No, not in my mules, not without another human habitation or road in sight. Might I nip out to the LandCruiser, locate my mobile phone somewhere at the bottom of my wheelie case, hope it was charged up enough to try and call International Direct Enquiries to get a number for the British Embassy up in the capital, Sanaa, to put in an SOS call? Most unlikely. Could I kick up an almighty wailing fuss, pretending to be too modest and God-fearing to sit with a group of men, insisting on being shown straight to the women’s quarters? Once there, might I be able to bribe the friendly Fatima with some accessories (my mules, watch and ring, for example), to help me escape? I liked this plan better but how could I be sure that Fatima had the wherewithal to help me, however much she coveted my
goods? I even wondered if, armed with the Green & Blacks I’d nicked from the Revs, I couldn’t entice all those pesky kids into some hard labour: digging me a Great Escape tunnel under the mud castle. For a moment there, I think I took leave of my senses.

  No. My best chance of leaving Yemen alive, I decided as I nervously picked the tender green leaves off the qat twig I’d been offered, lay in waiting for and seizing any opportunities as and when they arose.

  The minutes ticked by, and the hours, and the six men became ever more saggy-mouthed with the growing weight of their qat cuds. I’d soon found I hated the chalky taste of that shrub. Feeling sick, as if I’d drunk ten too many double espressos, I’d refused any more which meant there was nothing to do but watch my hosts flapping their hands, chopping at the air, disappearing behind clouds of cigarette smoke, pointing at me, shouting and explaining and remonstrating, while steadily picking and chewing, and chucking their qat stalks onto the packed mud floor around them. Now and again, they passed me a plastic bottle of water to swig or a pack of Rothmans. The barest breath of a breeze came rippling down the length of that carport only about once every half hour but still I smiled and was at pains to look impeccably modest. My pose was as follows: feet tucked neatly under me to guard against any inadvertently insulting flashing of my soles, head bowed and eyes downcast in the manner of a slave, hands folded neatly as if in prayer.

  After almost three hours I was as uncomfortable as Fiona when she’s been wearing her support pants all day and far too bored to be scared of anything anymore. I decided to rid myself once and for all of my uncertainty with regard to the character and intentions of my hosts:

  ‘Would I, by any chance, be right in thinking that you are Islamist terrorists?’ I politely inquired of the Brummie, ‘Is that why you’re stockpiling all those weapons?’

  ‘You westerners,’ he answered me with a sneer that combined Elvis Presley’s smile with Hannibal Lecter’s grimace, ‘anyone who doesn’t see the world like you is a “terrorist”, anyone who thinks the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan are crimes is a “terrorist”, any Moslem’s a “terrorist”, anyone with a darker skin than you is a “terrorist” – you remember that Portuguese guy who got killed by police on the London underground?’

  ‘Perhaps I should have phrased my question differently,’ I backtracked hastily, ‘I really meant to ask if you’re all just arms smugglers with a living to make or serious al-Qaeda types fighting a global jihad?’

  ‘You understand nothing about this country, do you?’ he said with another cross between a sneer and leer.

  ‘Hardly surprising when I’ve barely been here twenty-four hours!’ I muttered, as he took it upon himself to explain to me that there are parts of Yemen, especially the north, where every man has his own private arsenal – millions of men of all kinds, with maybe five different guns apiece lined up against their bedroom walls, but a sheikh might have a tank and plenty more would have rocket propelled grenade launchers. From the Brummie I learned that it was almost as common for a man to carry a gun in Yemen as for a woman to carry a handbag. I risked a joke, of sorts: ‘So you’re telling me that you lot are actually about as dangerous as a team of handbag salesmen?’

  He didn’t care for that logic, and I trace the roots of his fierce antipathy towards me back to this fateful exchange. But it was the result of my super-courteous subsequent request to him to fill me in on what I imagined must be the ‘fascinating’ conversation he was having with his brothers that convinced me that in toying with his amour propre I’d been dicing with my death.

  ‘We can’t agree about what to do with you,’ he explained, shifting so close to me along the mattress that I could feel his hot vegetable breath on my cheek, smell his sweat. He was a common or garden bully; it takes one to know one. This is probably neither the time nor the place to go into it, but just like my great-great grandpa Harry - although at primary rather than secondary school - I myself was an accomplished hair-puller, Chinese burner and defacer of others’ written work. You’ll say I was ‘projecting’ or ‘compensating’ or ‘transferring’, but I think I was just brighter than average and badly under-exercised. As simple as that, just like those under-employed lolling Yemeni qat chewers.

  ‘Well, I’d be fascinated to know the various options,’ I replied breezily, refusing to give him the satisfaction of either sounding or looking scared.

  ‘Haroun there, on your left, is dead keen to try out the video camera he bought in Dubai duty free last week; he fancies filming us executing you, and Saeed beside him agrees but he’s worried about getting blood on his new shirt. The rest of us have been teasing them, saying they just want to draw attention to themselves because they’re still well hacked off about not being picked for one of the 9/11 flights. They keep telling people that they would’ve been if they’d had Saudi passports….Now Saeed’s talking about doing the job neatly with the electric carving knife I brought him back from the UK…’

  ‘So, OK, two out of six of you would like to kill me,’ I interrupted him hastily, worried I might throw up but determined to re-deploy all my wits and charms in the service of saving my skin, ‘Would you mind translating what I’m going to say to them?’

  ‘All right,’ said the Brummie, looking surprised.

  ‘Tell Saeed and Haroun that, it so happens, I spent last night at the guesthouse of the Anglican church in Aden and was delighted to learn that some of their spiritual brothers had hurled a few bombs at it. In fact, I’m sorry they didn’t manage to blow the whole place to kingdom come. Tell them that that’s precisely the sort of target-rich environment they should be aiming at. Who’s going to be impressed or grateful if they kill one Russian Orthodox Englishwoman? No one! But time it right on a Sunday morning and they can hope to pick off a dozen or so of those nauseating born again Christians at that church compound and, by the way, the vicar’s wife’s a Christian fundamentalist…’ I’m not proud myself, but not everyone is marked out for sainthood and any hero worth her or his salt has a flaw or two, don’t they?

  The Brummie must have conveyed my meaning fairly accurately because, after listening attentively, my would-be murderers began laughing and slapping their thighs and crossing themselves Christian fashion and miming being blown up by each other, throwing themselves about on the mattresses and cushions, playing dead. I wondered if the qat or simply an authentic joie de tuer was to blame for their childish levity, but what did I care just as long as they shelved their schemes for electric carving knives and video cameras?

  Turning back to the Brummie bully I asked him to fill me in on any other plans for me.

  ‘Those two – Abdul Wahhab and Abdul Rahman – are only interested in money. They want to ransom you for 6.5 million dollars, which isn’t a bad idea because we could use that kind of money to buy more weapons, but they’re crapping on about building a chain of 5* hotels with Jacuzzis – I’m trying to tell them that no one gives a shit about Jacuzzis anymore and anyway, this country hasn’t got enough water …’

  ‘I see…,’ I said, thinking as fast as I could, ‘I’ve got a message for them too, if you wouldn’t mind translating again. Please tell them that I think their hotel idea is brilliant. Yemen deserves a decent chain of hotels. Indeed, you might mention that I stepped inside the ghastly Aden Hotel for a moment yesterday but stepped straight back out again! What a shambles! I would be very prepared – in fact, honoured - to stay on here in Yemen and help them get the business off the ground once the ransom is paid. They could use someone with my contacts book and sense of style to promote the brand.’

  Once again, the translation must have been up to scratch. I could almost see the scrolling dollar signs in Abdul Wahhab and Abdul Rahman’s qat-enflamed eyes. More importantly, I could tell that they relished someone taking them seriously, as proper entrepreneurs. So much of life seems to be about psychology and so much of psychology these days about ‘positively affirming’ people, no matter what.

  ‘Now what about this chap on my le
ft – has he got another plan for me?’

  ‘Him? Hamza’s been saying that you’ve got to be a British spy; what else would you be doing travelling alone in Yemen at this time? He says you’re more use to us alive than dead, says we shouldn’t harm a hair on your head.’..

  ‘Hurrah for Hamza,’ I muttered to myself, turning on him my most dazzling, Princess-Diana-arriving-at-the-Serpentine-Gallery-in-her-Liz-Hurley–black-dress kind of smile.

  ‘… but he’s only saying that because he’s a south Yemen nationalist,’ the Brummie went on, ‘We know he only really cares about kicking the northern barbarians out and getting independence back again with British support. Saeed and Haroun have been on at him for forgetting about the real goal: the righteous global jihad against the Zionists. They keep talking about how the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and the Zionists’ occupation of Palestine are Christian and Jewish crimes…’

  ‘Ummm, yes,’ I nodded sagely, ‘I can see that in the context of global jihad, Hamza’s Yemeni aims might seem a bit parochial. On the other hand, please would you translate again, they could be described in modern managerial parlance as a SMART target: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely.’

  My last excellent point was probably lost in translation. No matter. I’d carefully resorted to a dispassionate tone to conceal the fact that my heart was leaping with hope and joy at the first real chance I’d spotted of managing to save my skin. If this random Hamza had hitched his star to the same pro-British bandwagon as Aziz and that chief of the Tourist Police in Aden, pro-colonial sentiment in south Yemen must constitute a considerable counterweight to al-Qaeda influence.

  The Brummie was still bleating in my ear:

  ‘… but me and Saeed have been teasing him about independence for south Yemen being a stupid dream. You might be interested to know that I’m with Saeed and Haroun; I want you dead. And, by the way, we’re going to have a vote about it. You’re British, you like that kind of democracy, don’t you? – don’t you? – you do, don’t you?’