A Foreign Affair

by Stella Russell

  ‘Radfan!’…’Yaffa!’…’Shabwa!’… ‘Lahej!’…’Abyan!’… Names of places I’d never heard before were being hurled out at random from every part of the room. The idea of our grandmotherly monarch’s bosom hiding a heart graffiti-ed over with the name of every region of South Yemen, had an instant and powerful appeal it seemed.

  Emboldened by all the enthusiasm, I smiled modestly and gestured for silence, preparing to forge on in much the same vein by recycling a few sentiments from my Silent Valley address. But Sheikh Ahmad was suddenly on his feet and loudly applauding, firmly thanking me for my kind words before inviting Aziz to lay out the campaign strategy. I didn’t mind; in fact, he was quite right, it was high time we all turned our attention to practicalities; the moment for tables, charts and power-point presentations had arrived.

  Relaxing after my exertions, another tot of vodka to hand, I found myself feeling exceptionally warm towards all those freedom-loving Hadramis, even if their futas – most of them horridly embellished in the local style with neon pink bobbles and tassels and gold and silver threads – did make them look like Chinese holiday decorations. The sense of being joined with others in a selfless and noble endeavour was an extremely pleasant one. I began thinking about how much we in our over-individualised western civilisation have forgotten about the joy of engaging in a common endeavour for a common ideal. What’s become of all the brass bands, am dram societies and local party associations of old? I suppose Weightwatchers and AA meetings count as collective endeavours of a kind but they’re all ‘me, me, me’ too when you come to think about it – it’s all self-rather than others’- improvement, isn’t it?

  Aziz proved a let-down from the point of view of visual aids. He had no photocopied hand-outs of printed tables, pie-charts and bar-graphs, no power-point presentation to offer us, or even a flip-chart to hand. But he had something else, some very exciting ideas, many of which he’d already begun to implement.

  What follows is a page of bullet-pointed notes I made the following morning, a run-down of Aziz’s plans for publicising the cause:

  Daily text messages of the party slogan .’Freedom for free’. The owner of Yemen’s largest mobile phone network is half–Adeni, a party sympathiser and multi-millionaire donor who has promised to offer those who join PARP free text messages for three months.

  Print a million headcloths with my face on them for distribution at rallies I address. T shirts are not much worn by Yemenis and would excite too much attention from the security police, whereas headcloths have to be tied in such a way that my image would not be clearly displayed anywhere but on the crown of the head, invisible except from above. Photographs of me must be taken without delay; the bales of headcloths have already arrived from India.

  Hire a light aircraft to trail a banner with the party slogan and symbol – a mini Big Ben - up and down each of Hadramaut’s wadis. Our host, Wuqshan, owns two suitable aircraft. Sheikh Ahmad reports that Bushara has already stitched the banners. (Grrrr!)

  Purchase 2-3 million pink hydrogen balloons emblazoned with the party slogan and symbol – a Big Ben - for release at rallies, at Sanaa airport when the president is departing on a trip, etc. Sheikh Ahmad reports that the boxes of Chinese balloons have already reached Mukalla.

  Sheikh Ahmad will be filmed standing to attention while a Union Jack is run up a flag-pole erected in the courtyard of his home and a recording of God Save the Queen is played at top volume. The footage should be downloaded onto YouTube – proof that a love of and loyalty towards Britain runs deep in a part of the world regarded as al-Qaeda central.

  Capture the educated young female vote with printed slogans slipped in tins of baby food: eg. ‘Feed your baby freedom’, ‘Give your baby independence’ and ‘Breast is good but secession is better’. The owner of Yemen’s leading brand of baby food happens to be a northern tribesman who opposes the president because the regime is bad for his business. He has already agreed to put a slogan inside each tin.

  Target the illiterate – luckily not as many in south Yemen as in north Yemen thanks to the Marxists’ drive for education , but growing in number – by ensuring that I am recognised as the face of the movement. Stickers of me for cars, bicycles, fridges, wheelbarrows, shop shutters, schoolbags, qat bags etc. should be free.

  By the time he’d reached the last item on his agenda, Aziz looked exhausted but thrilled by the reception his ideas had been getting. However, he’d saved the best news until last:

  ‘Tomorrow, we will test the public support for our ideas by holding a first rally in Seiyun at which Madam Roza will be the honoured speaker – other engagements have been booked for Zingibar, Ataq and Hawta – from there Inshallah we will progress to large centres such as Mukalla and Aden…’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Aziz and I lost no time in forming a mutual appreciation society. Arm in arm on the back-seat of the LandCruiser, high as kites after our performances, we couldn’t stop congratulating one another.

  ‘But that was real genius, Madame Roza, your mention of the queen’s breasts all beautifully carved…’

  ‘Thank you, thank you - but I’ll tell you what genius is, Aziz – the baby food slogans!’

  ‘And you looked so royal! Everybody fell in love with you…’

  ‘Really? How nice!’ I said, hoping that Sheikh Ahmad was listening, ‘But Aziz, headcloths instead of T shirts with my face on - such a brilliant idea! You’re totally wasted here. Have you ever heard of Saatchi & Saatchi?’…

  It took us a while to notice that Sheikh Ahmad, sitting up in front next to the driver he’d borrowed from our host, wasn’t contributing to the conversation. I guessed we must have forced him to confront the sad truth that his talents were of a less visibly starry sort than ours. The gift of creative thinking for the purpose of public relations is not given to everyone, and nor is the power to move and energise crowds with a few well-chosen words. He was doubtless feeling that Aziz and I had rather stolen his thunder. Poor Sheikh Ahmad! After all, it was almost all his money that would be funding many of Aziz’s bells and whistles. I longed to be alone with him, to plant a forest of butterfly kisses on the crown of his head.

  We all know that power is the most powerful aphrodisiac there is and, after an uncommonly disempowering sort of a day with the sheikh’s wives, I think I could be forgiven for having drunk my fill of power that night. I thoroughly dislike the word ‘horny’, but there was no other word for the way I was feeling by the time we arrived back at the Brighton Pavilion There must be some way I could inveigle Sheikh Ahmad into accompanying me to my guestroom, I told myself.

  The sight of Jammy waiting for us just inside the front door reminded me that she’d been promised a rare ‘visit’ from the sheikh that night. I didn’t snarl my ‘good night’ at her as I swept straight past her on my way to my, but she could have been forgiven for thinking I had. So, you can imagine my surprise, when I heard her little slippered feet pattering along behind me as I sped down the long corridor, and an urgently whispered ‘Roza!’ as she caught up with me.

  ‘What is it Jammy? I’m very, very tired.’

  ‘I have a wonderful plan, Roza. Please listen.’ Her eyes behind her glasses were ablaze with excitement and hope, and her hand was clutching my forearm.

  ‘A plan? What do you need a plan for tonight?’ I was in a foul mood suddenly and no wonder in view of those stats; my clear advantage of 19 points, to Jammy’s paltry 13.5.

  ‘Roza, will you listen please?’ she asked, pushing me ahead of her into my room ‘ – there’s no time to lose. Listen!’

  ‘If you haven’t grabbed my attention in fifteen seconds, Jammy’ I said, squinting at my watch, ‘I’ll ask you to leave. Clear?’

  ‘OK. Roza, we both know that Bushara has too much influence over Sheikh Ahmad, don’t we? We would both like very much to see that change -’

  ‘I’m listening…’

  ‘My proposal is that we break the strong spell she has cast on him by in
troducing something new, something appetisingly exotic, into his sexual diet, something that will make her seem stale and uninteresting.’

  ‘I’m not following you now, Jammy – stick to the point will you? – what have you got in mind? Handcuffs, butt-plugs? Something like that? What makes you think my wheelie case is stuffed with that sort of gear….’

  ‘No, Roza! I mean you!’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes, you! I have seen how you look at him, as hot as a curry. Your adventurous western ways will be wonderful for him. Now, as I told you, Sheikh Ahmad will visit my apartment tonight; you will undress now; you will wear a balto; you will follow me as fast as possible to my apartment; you will swiftly remove your balto and you will get into my bed; all the lights in the bedroom will be extinguished..’

  ‘Will I? Will they?’

  ‘Yes, yes! - I will be receiving the sheikh first in my main room; we will chat for a few minutes; I will make myself sexually attractive to him and caress him a little to prepare him; I will excuse myself to go to the bathroom, telling him that he must come and find me in bed, according to our usual habit; I will go to my son’s room however; instead of me in my bed, he will find you!’

  ‘Brilliant, Jammy!’ I said, but I was thinking truly, the enemy of Jammy’s enemy was Jammy’s friend, to the extent that she would pimp her own husband to get one over on Bushara. Still, why should I look a gift-horse in the mouth? ‘What a clever idea, Jammy,’ I said, ‘but I can see just one little snag: won’t he turn on a light when he comes into the bedroom?’

  ‘No, no, he prefers to have intercourse in the dark – he finds it more romantic and mysterious, he says’, she answered promptly, leaving me wondering if she’d ever compared notes with Iman and Bushara on this subject. ‘But, just to be on the safe side,’ she went on,’ I’ll remove all the bulbs from the light sockets in there.’

  ‘All right! Let’s go for it’ I agreed. Quickly releasing the wishbone lever by the bed, I dashed into the ensuite to undress.

  It must have been after midnight when we raced through those vaulting empty chambers, along dark corridors towards the pavilion’s women’s quarters together. ‘Hurry Roza’ hissed Jammy, ‘I think I can hear him way behind us, he is coming! Hurry!’ It struck me that Jammy was commendably fleet of foot for someone of her weight, who spent so much of her life holed up indoors.

  ‘How do you keep so fit?’ I panted

  ‘The sheikh gave each of us an exercise bike for Eid al-Fitr last year – we all love them!’ she replied, ‘Yella Roza – we’re nearly there!’

  I might have felt uneasy about our plot, given that Jammy’s three teenage daughters and seven-year-old son were occupying bedrooms next door to the one in which I was planning to hoodwink Sheikh Ahmad into some noisy high-jinks. But there simply wasn’t time for scruples of that sort. As soon as I’d shimmied out of my balto and slipped between what felt, kinkily, like velvet sheets, Jammy went straight to work on removing the light bulbs.

  Seconds later, a token knock on the apartment door heralded Sheikh Ahmad’s advent. A few moments too soon, because Jammy was still squeezing into what she insisted was a vital bit of kit for the preliminary seduction phase of our operation: a tight bodice in magenta satin trimmed with yellow nylon lace. ‘Yella Roza!’ she commanded, bending low over the bed, ‘- pull this tighter for me, please, so that my breast does not fall out – the sheikh is always saying “less is more”!’

  And then she was gone and that first phase set in motion. The greeting and chatting and seduction was proceeding without a hitch by the sound of it but I, dog-tired by now, was in serious danger of dropping off so I was hugely relieved when at last the door opened and my nostrils were assaulted by that delightfully familiar scent. But that was all the delight I got that night because the entire operation had to be brutally aborted in the very earliest stages of its crucial second phase.

  On sliding into bed naked beside me and reaching for me with a happy sigh, his hands first encountered my breasts which, being of the same proportions as Jammy’s, easily passed muster. What suddenly scotched our plot, what had him leaping out of bed was his shattering discovery that on stretching his body the length of mine in order to align our pelvises prior to a conventional sexual docking, his shins encountered ones which were sadly not as smooth as those of any of his wives’ would have been, simply because four sweltering days and nights had passed since they’d last seen my Episilk. He bellowed something in Arabic along the lines of, ‘Aziz, you filthy shirt-lifter, how many times do I have to tell you that I do not care for you in that way?’

  By the time Jammy had heard all the commotion and decided it wasn’t some lively foreplay but an emergency, Sheikh Ahmad had slung his futa around him again and was standing above me aiming his mobile’s tiny torch beam at my head, like a pistol.

  ‘Rozzer!’

  ‘Your lucky night!’ I said, turning on my side with the sheet hiding my breasts, propping up my head on one elbow and treating him to a Marilyn Monroe wink. It was hard to know how to play it. I was doing my best to make light of the unfortunate episode, heroically hiding my agony of sexual frustration. But the sheikh was in no mood for jokes.

  ‘Rozzer, please leave this instant! We will talk in the morning.’

  Cowed as I was by the cold anger in his voice, I bravely played my last card. Casting aside that kinky velvet sheet, I revealed myself in all my naked glory to him, trusting that he’d soon alter his tone and change his mind at the sight of so much beautiful white flesh. But he turned towards his face away and it was Jammy who reacted:

  ‘Roza, habibti – darling, in our culture it is dirty to keep hair there,’ she said, pointing pityingly at my lush pubic triangle, ‘Tomorrow we will show you how to remove it all with sugar and lemon. Iman is the expert, and it won’t hurt at all!’

  I think Jammy was trying as hard as I was to normalise the situation with some girly chit-chat, but to no avail. Sheikh Ahmad was shaking with fury: ‘Cover yourself this instant, Rozzer!’ he commanded, ‘I have already asked you to return to your own room, and you,’ he said, turning on a tearful Jammy, ‘where have you mislaid your Arab pride?’

  With hindsight now, of course, I can see that I was seizing an opportunity, making the most of any chance that came my way, but my all-consuming passion for Sheikh Ahmad and perhaps a drop too much Stolichnaya, had blinded me to the obvious fact that the scheme to banjax Bushara was an utterly hare-brained one that would back-fire badly on both of us.

  Chapter Twenty

  Wince! And again, and again!

  The events of the previous night had played havoc with my bowels. I’d passed the small hours of the morning operating that wishbone lever on my bedside table, opening and closing the door to the en suite, trying but failing to forget Sheikh Ahmad’s look of cold disdain at the sight of my naked body in the light of his mobile torch beam.

  The most sensible thing to have done would have been to pop an Imodium, make my adieux and head straight for Sanaa and the airport, but such a course of action – the eminently rational reaction of a person disappointed in lust - was the very last one I felt like taking because I wasn’t in lust. I was in love, and in the painful process of making two discoveries about that state of mind and heart; first, that a person doesn’t fall out of love nearly as easily as they fall into it, and second, that a sine qua non of the condition is an insatiable craving for the loved one’s respect and admiration, not his shock and awe, let alone his fear and loathing.

  This last lesson was what made it imperative for me to, in the slightly re-jigged words of the immortal Shirley Temple, ‘pick myself up, dust myself off and start all over again!’ I’d stop trying to deploy my base physical charms to seduce Sheikh Ahmad. In future, my campaign to make him fall in love with me and repudiate his present marital arrangements would be confined to the higher plane of spiritual and intellectual warfare, what real Moslems call jihad and we Russian Orthodox know as podvig. The golden rewards I
was after in this holy war were not sexual and marital in the first instance but intellectual and spiritual.

  Picking myself up and dusting myself down – that morning it was all about wiping myself down, actually – would have to wait; I was too ill to move from my bed except to use the loo and too ill to cross the room to pick up the phone when it rang, even though I knew it would be Sheikh Ahmad. If he planned to take me to task for my behaviour the previous night, he was going to have to come and find me.

  Sure enough, after about ten minutes, there was a knock at my bedroom door. I was tempted to make a light joke, to call out something culturally appropriate along the lines of ‘Has the mountain come to Mohammad?’ but restrained myself. I couldn’t be one hundred per cent sure that my visitor was Sheikh Ahmad and, if it was him, I wanted him to know I was ill, not just having a lazy lie-in.

  ‘Rozzer?’

  ‘Come in, Sheikh Ahmad!’ I called out in a voice weak enough to sound convincingly indisposed but strong enough to be heard. A speedy spritz of a Jo Malone cologne to freshen the air around my bed, a quick peck on my icon locket and a lightning prayer – ‘Please St Serafim, turn my bowels to ice!’ – and I was ready for him.

  It was a relief to see that he was in no fitter state for visiting than I was for receiving. His black hair looked dull and roughly clumped rather than shiny and neatly en brosse. There was a puffiness about the lids of his lovely eyes, and an unaccustomed droop to both sides of his mouth as well as his shoulders. Even his futa – an unbecoming beige number – sagged like a sodden dishcloth.