by Peggy Hanson
Warnings about kidnappings in Yemen were both true and blown out of proportion. Until recent years, when serious fundamentalists got involved a couple of times, foreigners traveling on remote roads were often detained as involuntary guests of various tribes. They were treated as guests while their hosts negotiated with the government for a new well, a road, whatever. Maybe it was a good way for foreigners to get an inside view of life in Yemeni villages—though I doubt they appreciated it.
“Official warning duly noted.” That’s what one needs to say.
“There is one thing you probably know already,” ventured Jason Roberts. “A U.S. Congressional Delegation is coming to Yemen.”
“I didn’t know that! Who are they?” Gray-suited men and women from Washington trying to make what they could of this exotic country. For that matter, Yemenis trying to make what they could of the Congresspeople.
“Members of the Armed Services Committee. Three of them.” He looked at his calendar. “They arrive day after tomorrow. The President has invited them to visit the Wadi Hadhramaut, so it’ll be quite the production.”
“I didn’t get to visit the Hadhramaut when I was here before. Beautiful, I hear.”
“Oh, yes. Shibam is a UNESCO-protected city, you know. They call it the ‘Manhattan of the Desert,’ all mudbrick towers standing in a cube in the middle of the wadi. I guess it has about five hundred residents.”
My heart leaped. All of South Yemen, including the Hadhramaut, had been off-limits during the civil war, so I’d never been there. Since reading Freya Stark’s books, I’d always wanted to visit that remote area out near the edge of the unending sand of the Empty Quarter. If I played my cards right, maybe I’d be lucky enough to interview the Congressional Delegation there!
Of course, it all depended on Halima’s crisis. I had to try to help her deal with that first. My debt and duty to Halima was deeper than any travel lust.
“I’m not sure of my schedule just yet, but I would love to interview the delegation. May I request that through you?”
“No, you have to go through the Ambassador’s secretary, Julia Franken. Here’s the number.” As he handed me the card, Jason had returned from highhanded diplomat to human form and once more looked interested in getting better acquainted.
I really didn’t have time for frivolity, though he seemed pleasant enough and could be a source of valuable information. “Thanks so very much,” I said, rising and putting out my hand.
“No problem. Call me if I can help.” His hand lingered on mine two seconds too long.
A moment of vulnerability? I decided to try a feminine wile—one I rarely use because it’s an unattractive alternative. I put a plaintive, pleading note in my voice. “Are you sure you don’t have any more information on the Petrovich murder? I have to write a story, you know.”
Jason paused for a nano-second before he shook his head. “Nope. I’m sorry.” He did look sorry, but again, I may have misjudged him.
Roberts escorted me back to the watchful Marine, who let me out the door as cautiously as he’d let me in. Many groups in the Middle East harbor hostility toward America and its obvious representatives. The Embassy was clearly spooked.
In retrospect, I should have been, too.
CHAPTER 26
There are plenty of remedies for the evil eye. You can either spit, or say Mashallah, or—if you can get hold of a piece of the dress or hair of him who has the eye—you can smoke it and pass it three times round in a circle, over an incense burner, for instance. It is quite easy to tackle.
Freya Stark, A Winter in Arabia
I climbed into the only taxi sitting outside the Embassy and directed the driver to return to the Dar al-Hamd. Only later did I think it was a little strange that one should be right there, where most taxis are not allowed to park. The shiny black car behind it started up as we did. Probably diplomats venturing out.
In the taxi, I thought about Michael. I guess the Embassy would have the body by now and be sending it back to someone. To a wife or ex-wife? To his mother? Would an anonymous star go up at the wall at CIA headquarters in Langley honoring those agents who had died in service? Was that why Jason Roberts didn’t want to talk about him? What had Michael Petrovich’s mission been, really?
In addition to Michael, Halima haunted my mind. I needed to see her, find out what was going on. But how could I do that? Telephoning hadn’t worked. Friends of Yemen was closed.
Traffic was frustrating today, but we made our way through streets starting to clog with the noon rush. In Sana’a, that’s when everyone heads home to have a big lunch and then chew qat. My taxi driver had been uncharacteristically quiet for one of his profession, probably trying to get home for his own lunch.
Creeping along, we had come only as far as the northern gate to the Old City, Bab Sha’ub. On a whim, I thrust some money at the driver and asked to be put down.
He looked unhappy—more unhappy than he should have—but traffic was stalled and I opened the door and got out. I needed lunch and it was high time for my tête-à-tête with Nello. What would be his take on the Petrovich murder? And possibly, just possibly, he knew something about Halima.
I entered Bab al Sha’ub. I was starving. Nerves had something to do with it. So did forgetting to eat breakfast after finding Michael’s body this morning.
I hadn’t thought this morning I’d ever want to eat again, but the smell of warm crusty hubz being baked in the brick firin tempted me to stop en route. A young man pulled the bread out on a flat wooden paddle. Unable to resist the delectable smell, I bought a heavy little square loaf and exchanged a smile with the young baker.
As I did, I glanced back. One of the men in the sorghum patch last evening stood quietly in the background. The thin man with the scar. He’d chatted with the inscrutable Brit.
I shivered in the hot sun. The bread grew heavier.
I had five mystery people to wonder about now, though I’d barely arrived: The Brit, the Blonde, the Sheikh of the Souq with the BMW, Scarface, and the Face in the Window. Well, six, if you count the Corpse. Forgive me, Michael. I didn’t mean to sound crass. Number seven would be whoever murdered Michael. Or maybe that was someone I’d already met?
And I would never know what Michael Petrovich had wanted to speak with me about.
Wait. My paramount mystery and my whole reason for coming lay with Halima. Murder could not deter me from the mission.
CHAPTER 27
In Arabic some things are said or written twice, the second word there to ensure that the right choice of meaning is made for the first, and vice versa. A man is just and fair-minded, a woman brave and courteous, a judge has intuition, insight, discernment in the ways of men.
Eva Sallis, The City of Sea Lions
I headed for Nello’s café on al-Zubeiri Street, on the edge of the Old City. Stomach growling, I crumbled off the end of the loaf of hubz as I walked, chewing surreptitiously to not be rude in public.
The bread was wonderful, but I stopped nibbling. Nello’s place was near. There’s nothing like pasta to settle the soul.
As I entered the small front door of the Caffe d’Italia, I took a quick look over my shoulder. Scarface was behind me! Was he following me? This time I tried to meet his eyes. He looked right past me and walked on down the street, fitting in with every other futha-clad pedestrian.
I heaved a sigh of relief to find Nello wiping his hands on a spotless apron as he came from the kitchen. “Hello!” I shouted.
He didn’t say a word, but came around to give me a bear hug. Then he kissed my hand.
We both had tears in our eyes. “It’s a little late for lunch,” I said, when he gestured to one of the red and white checked tablecloths.
“It is never too late for lunch,” corrected Nello. “Not for Elizabeth. Not for an old friend.” His words were balm to my turbulent day. A Sprite can containing white wine appeared on the table. Bless the man! Nello poured it into a coffee cup for me. Then he told the cook to
make zuppa ala paesana, made from the delicious little potatoes and green beans grown in fields around Sana’a.
As he returned to the kitchen to oversee the creation, I thought back to all the nights I had gathered with other reporters at Nello’s, whether the SCUD sirens went off or not. Nello acquired wine and Red Label Scotch from bootleggers who brought it across the Red Sea from the free port of Djibouti. The forbidden nectar was poured into soda bottles for respectability, though everyone, including the police, knew what they contained. I suspected Nello contributed plenty of Scotch to the police to ensure this oversight.
Obviously, today, murder had to be the first topic. Michael and I had eaten at Nello’s just yesterday! “I suppose you heard,” I began.
“Ah, yes. Petrovich. Dead. I know.” He looked at me keenly, probably trying to figure out how much this had upset me.
“I was sure you would.” I spoke hesitantly but met Nello’s eyes to show there were no secrets here. “I just met him on the plane coming here. What do you know about him? I gather he’d been to Yemen several times before.”
Nello held up one finger, and disappeared for a moment into the kitchen. When he came back, he had a basket of fresh-baked bread and a cruet of olive oil. We couldn’t delve into really juicy gossip without sustenance.
The hubz I’d bought lay like a guilty secret in its plastic bag. It had cooled, so Nello couldn’t smell it, at least. Like all wonderful breads that are meant to be consumed as soon as baked, hubz gets hard fast, so I’d eat Nello’s bread and carry the plastic bag back. I’d give some to Mrs. Weston, soaked in milk. Oh, yes, I needed to buy some cans of sardines on the way back. Expectant mothers need protein.
“Now. Tell me what you know about Michael Petrovich.” I looked stern.
Nello glanced at me. “I do not want to say something to hurt you.”
“No. No!” My lunch with Petrovich must have given Nello undue suspicions. “I don’t like to see people I have met being murdered, but believe me, Nello, I had no special feelings for that man. Tell me what you know.”
After a quick, shrewd look my way, Nello leaned forward.
“Michael Petrovich,” he said thoughtfully. “Businessman, he was. And more. Much more.”
“What do you mean?”
Nello tilted his head. “You know him only from plane? Nothing else?”
“I met him on the plane from Frankfurt.” Better not to say I had found him quite charming.
“Petrovich,” said Nello, “is bad guy. Arms supplier. Was.”
“What?” An arms supplier? “Are you sure, Nello?”
“He is watched by police and army and maybe has some friends there, too.”
“Who did he supply arms to?” I took a chunk of bread and dipped it into oil.
“Well. To people who pay money. Big money. Groups who need arms for bad purposes. You know.” His voice dropped to a whisper, though there were no other customers in the restaurant. “Like what used to be in Aden when Soviets were there.”
“You mean terrorism.” During the Soviet control of South Yemen, the country had been a training ground for terrorists of all stripes, Palestinian, Kurdish, Irish Republicans… “I thought most of that had been pushed out with reunification of the two Yemens and with the Soviet collapse,” I said.
Nello sipped at his own glass of red “juice.” “Well,” he said. “They were pushed out as far as Somalia across the Gulf of Aden and Sudan across the Red Sea. Not too far.”
Yes, we had seen evidence of that. The World Trade Center bombing in 1993. And reporters spoke among themselves and with experts about the shadowy character, Osama bin Laden, who lived somewhere on the other side of the Red Sea but had connections here in Yemen.
Oil dribbled off my bread and down my chin as I stared at Nello. I must have looked like an idiot. Naïve! Unable to see beyond a fellow’s charm. Blinded by a man lifting my carry-on into the overhead compartment. Michael’s death didn’t seem quite so horrible, though I still wouldn’t have wished it.
“Anyhow, go on…why on earth would the Yemeni government, or Interpol, for that matter, allow such activities? It couldn’t be in their interests to have people like Michael Petrovich supporting groups like that. And how did he get tied in?”
If Nello was right—and Nello was usually right—I began to see why Jason Roberts at the Embassy had so little to tell me about Michael Petrovich. If—and I still maintained a shred of skepticism—he was an illicit arms smuggler, he certainly wasn’t a citizen America could be proud of, and diplomats are trained to put the best face on things. Of course, diplomats must also lie through their teeth when protecting knowledge of undercover activities. Often, they don’t even know who is working in intelligence. Maybe Michael had been a double agent? I was grasping at straws.
“Yemen government do not approve, no. They wish to catch him. But he is clever. Many friends. The government has many people who like money, you know? Bribes. The government does not want to upset the apple carriage. And he works with French company for fertilizer. They do not want big ‘hullabaloo.’” Nello gestured to the waiter.
He arrived with my soup. The steaming bowl called to me with fantastic aromas of garlic and tomato. I dipped in a spoon and then a piece of bread. “So who would kill an American like Petrovich, then?”
Nello’s eyes narrowed. “Who wouldn’t? He is better dead than in jail. Less trouble.” He lowered his voice even more. “I think it good if you not look too much into this Petrovich, Elizabeth. Petrovich has friends. And Petrovich has enemies. You not here to do this story? Then do little as possible. Forget that man!”
I dropped the Petrovich topic. “Do you know where Halima al Shem is these days? I want to see her!” Even with Nello, I wouldn’t share information that might harm my friend.
Before volunteering an answer, Nello popped up and out to the kitchen.
Perhaps Nello wasn’t even aware of the large role he had played in my first trip to Yemen by introducing me to Halima. That had been late May of 1994, on a day the bombing was light and I’d enjoyed lunch at Nello’s, alone for a change.
After our first meeting, I’d stopped by the Friends of Yemen whenever possible, often combining it with a stop at Nello’s. Halima couldn’t go into a restaurant, for social reasons, but I could stop by her office. On those visits, we talked of many things—life in America and Yemen, the roles of men and women, personal hopes and fears. Halima’s feminine colleagues watched us converse with awe on their faces. And with pride. A Yemeni woman holding intellectual discussions with a foreigner! Imagine.
Nello came bustling back from the kitchen. “What did you say? Professor Halima?”
“Yes. I hoped to see her while I was here, but Friends of Yemen seems to be closed.”
“She has not been by to say hello for a while. I know nothing…” Nello looked puzzled.
I shrugged and chalked that subject up as a dead end.
But I still had a job to do, sending some broad reports back to Mac in Washington. “How would you say Yemen has changed since I was here? I mean, other than a war not being waged right now. Are there changes in daily life?”
“Now that, it is hard to answer,” said Nello. “More loud. More like what you call it, your American Gold Rush? But like when you were here before, foreigners stay together; Yemenis live their own lives.”
Did Nello know I owed my life to Halima? That episode, dark and frightening, had remained a secret from virtually everyone. It hadn’t been safe to tell. Certainly I would never tell anyone what a Yemeni woman had done in secret, in a place where secrets are all that the sequestered women have.
CHAPTER 28
“I passed the hours listening to the gentle lubalub of the hookah and whispered conversations about dead poets and fine deeds. In Sana’a, qat governs. No rush, just a silky transition, scarcely noticed, and then the room casts loose its moorings. ‘Capturing moments of eternity,’ someone once called the subtle tinkering with time that qat effects.”
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Kevin Rushby, Eating the Flowers of Paradise
It was qat time in Sana’a, the post-prandial ritual of chewing the leaf, exchanging poetry and high thoughts with friends, sitting companionably, and then withdrawing into aloneness.
Tom Reilly lay back on the dusty mufraj cushions in the sparsely-furnished room, pulling off tender leaves at the top of the qat branches in a plastic bag. Three water pipes, the hookahs, gave off tobacco and herbal smells that mixed nicely with the ever-present dust of the cushions.
A few casual friends had stopped by: three Peace Corps volunteers, two volunteers from Irish Concern, and the spectacular Swede, Christine Helmund. All of them were idealists, he supposed. Even Christine. He felt he was past that stage. Though sometimes he wondered.
It was a daily thing, this qat, immutable. Every Yemeni from top officials to porters in the souq was thus engaged. The officials and rich people—the men, at least—got the choice top ends of the sprigs.
Qat was one of the things that had bonded Tom to Yemen. He looked forward to it every day. Usually he chewed with foreigners, as today, but sometimes he got invited to the home of a Yemeni man, and had the chance to join in with the poetic outbursts and intellectual arguments of the natives. Women, of course, were never in sight at these chews, though Tom knew they were in a lower mufraj with women friends, chewing the leftover leaves not chosen by the men.
Tom found it hard to articulate exactly what he got from Yemen. Living at the end of the world could be addictive. Relationships came and went. Not having a regular job like these volunteers gave him extra freedom. Glancing at the sexy Christine, he felt like a truant schoolboy, escaping the rigid structure and authority figures back home.