A Foreign Affair

by Stella Russell

  ‘Yes, at least ten thousand, I believe, thanks to our donor owner of TeleYemen who has arranged for texts to be sent to 30,000 Hadramis,’ he said fiddling with various knobs and lenses, his hands shaking with nerves.

  ‘And will we be indoors or out?’

  ‘Without a doubt we will be outside so I am arranging a microphone and amplifier as well as an awning to keep the sun off you.’

  ‘How thoughtful of you! Thank you! Now just remind me, will you, when south Yemen was an independent country?’

  ‘From after the British left at the end of 1967 until 1990. That was our Marxist period, if you remember.’

  ‘Oh, yes. What happened after that?’

  ‘We got rid of Marx and became one, united Yemen, Madame Roza.’

  ‘That was better was it?’

  ‘No! It was not “better” – that was when our real troubles started, if you remember!’

  ‘You didn’t like the way they used the roundabouts in Aden – wasn’t that the problem?’ I asked, offering up my half-profile to his lens.

  ‘Roundabouts? I told you, they are robbers!’ Click!

  ‘Oh yes, now I remember – you call them barbarians, don’t you, because about half of them can’t read or write?’

  ‘That is not the reason why we want to separate again, Madame Roza. Is it fair to hate a person just because he is illiterate?’

  ‘Of course not. Is it that you want to get rid of that little president of yours?’

  ‘We do not discriminate against anyone in this country on account of their height, Madame Roza, and please face the camera now and stop frowning.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry Aziz, I’m trying to think hard but I really don’t see exactly what the real issue is? How does anyone expect me to make a rousing speech when I’m not absolutely clear about where the real problem lies?’

  ‘But I haven’t got time to explain everything to you now,’ he wailed, ‘We must leave here in five minutes. I’m sure Sheikh Ahmad will be very pleased if you can say nearly the same as what you said last night at al-Wuqshan’s but at greater length and even more passion, about how much Britain loves and will support an independent free Yemen.’

  ‘Oh I can do that all right! I can do that standing on my head,’ I said, greatly reassured after the tiniest failure of nerve that might have been a harbinger of what lay ahead.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  What a relief to be back in the champagne LandCruiser, climbing those hair-pin bends up and out of the Wadi Duan, at last!

  Everything I’d experienced in the less than forty-eight hours I’d spent in that Disneyland of a wadi with its Brazilian wax-like strip of vegetation down the middle had been so challenging! From the start, those sexy goatherds in their straw witches’ hats and gloves had set the crazy tone. Who could really blame me for drinking a drop too much at the psychedelic Buckingham Palace and winding up in Jammy’s bed? Was it any wonder my very bowels had revolted at the oddness and strain of it all? But it was time to put all that behind me now: I was back in Sheikh Ahmad’s good books, more or less, and all four wives had been left at home. There were four cardboard boxes containing two thousand freshly printed Princess Diana head cloths in the boot of the LandCruiser, and a shiny black megaphone fixed to its roof.

  ‘Rozzer, promise me something?’

  ‘Almost anything, Sheikh Ahmad,’ I answered him, recalling our mutual probationary status, but not wanting to sound uncooperative.

  ‘I want to ask you to take very great care with the words you use in your speech this afternoon,’ he said.

  ‘Nothing too high-brow? Don’t you worry! I know I’ll be addressing simple people…’

  ‘No, that is not what I meant, not at all. Hadramis may be uneducated but they are not simple.’

  ‘Oh, sorry!’ I was hurt by the tone he was using with me. I couldn’t see any need to parade his distrust of me.

  ‘What I mean is that it is not as easy to speak one’s political mind in Yemen as it is in England. We do not want to attract the interest of the security services by using words which could overexcite people, do we? Words like “conflict” and “battle” and “war” and “fight” should not be used – even “struggle” is too strong…’

  ‘So words like “revolution” and “overthrow” and “uprising” are a no-no?’

  ‘Precisely! God forbid! Rozzer! Even to think such words can be dangerous! The words “reform” and “change” are risky too and should be handled very carefully.’

  ‘So that rules out “secede” and “independence” and “separatist” too?’

  ‘Forget you ever knew those words if you don’t want to land us all in jail or worse!’

  His mounting agitation caused me to panic: ‘But what am I going to speak about? At this rate I can’t even hint at, let alone mention, the whole raison d’etre of the movement, a separate south Yemen! What, may I ask, is the point in having this rally? Will anyone mind if I witter on for twenty minutes about what the queen gets up to with her corgis?’

  ‘Calm yourself please, Rozzer! The elegant historical references to Britain’s love for and great interest in Yemen that you made in your speech at Wuqshan’s last night will be perfect if you enlarge and amplify them, but keep far away from anything political. It is not yet the right time to start a revolt – that may have to come later when the democratic option fails – but for now, we are only preparing some ground and gathering support,’ he instructed me. ‘And please, do not mention the queen’s dogs; Moslems believe that all dogs are unclean. They would be shocked and disgusted to learn that the Queen allows them into her palace and even into her bedroom.’

  ‘Yes, sir!’ I said, with a mock salute, twisting round in my passenger seat to wink at Aziz who looked even less relaxed than Sheikh Ahmad; there were now great wet patches under his armpits and down his front, deep worry furrows on his brow.

  We were leaving behind the baked rocky wastes of the countryside and entering a town surrounded by groves of date palms: in the shaded doorways of white-washed blocks men lolled and slumped, their cheeks bulging and eyes rolling. The odd skinny donkey trudged in front of a cart bearing families of women in tall straw hats and children. An occasional motorbike passed in the opposite direction with a noise like a primitive rocket’s. At last, a pile of dusty plastic sandals and flip-flops outside a mosque accounted for the comparative lack of activity; the hour of qat had given way to the afternoon prayer, asr, Sheikh Ahmad said. ‘We have a window of three hours in which to gather our crowd, speak and then disperse before the sunset prayer, the maghrib,’ he continued. ‘We’re really talking about a flash mob, aren’t we?’ I remarked, knowing I’d have to explain the concept to them. ‘Yes, Rozzer! Quite right!’ said Sheikh Ahmad once I’d enlightened him. With my heart leaping hopefully at the note grateful admiration I detected in his tone, I found it in my heart to forgive his earlier transgression.

  We were reaching the centre of the little town, a vast expanse of a square that was easily dominated and partly shadowed by a gigantic white wedding cake of an edifice which he said had been built by the local mini-sultan in the 1920s, when British influence in Hadramaut was at its zenith. ‘Those mini-sultans, especially our Hadrami ones, believed they were on a level with the Indian maharajas of the British Empire – they wanted their palaces and their fancy motor cars and their sons educated in England too.’

  ‘Actually, the sultans of our tribes around Aden were not so grand,’ Aziz corrected him tetchily, ‘only the sultan of Dahej had palaces – two of them, one in Aden.’

  ‘You’re forgetting that gigantic castle the Sharif of Beihan built which is crumbling to dust now!’ Sheikh Ahmad set him straight.

  I let my companions play their stress-busting game of trumping each other’s grasp of south Yemeni history and only interrupted to observe of the wedding cake, ‘It obviously owes a good deal to the Mughal style, but nothing at all to English neo-Gothic. It’s attractive, certainly, but I much prefer
your homage to Brighton’s Pavilion, Sheikh Ahmad.’ I was seizing every opportunity that came my way to recover lost ground with the man I loved.

  Aziz took a practical tack: ‘I have a plan to erect the awning and the sound system up on its first storey balcony area. That way, your speakers will be properly visible and audible to everyone here in the square below you. The caretaker’s a member of the movement and the cousin of one of my brother-in-laws. He will open the gates for us and lead us out to the balcony.’

  ‘Mabruk! - congratulations, Aziz! You have done your work very well!’ said Sheikh Ahmad, piloting the LandCruiser smoothly across the empty square and round the side of the giant wedding cake towards a pair of high iron gates.

  A quick text message meant that Aziz’s relative was ready and waiting for us, a skinny, bandy-legged old fellow formally dressed in a medium weight tweed jacket over his futa and flip-flops, in spite of the baking heat of the day. ‘Salaam aleikum! How do you do today? I hope you rested well after your excellent speech last night, madam?’ was this relic of our Yemeni Raj’s cheerful greeting. I thought I’d seen his face before.

  It was soon arranged that while Sheikh Ahmad and Aziz saw to the practical arrangements – the efficient erection of the awning and sound system, the distribution points for the head cloths, the meeting and greeting of other speakers – this old Munir would see to my comfort and refreshment in one of the first storey rooms that opened onto the balcony. That suited me perfectly, because the sheikh and Aziz were starting to irritate me; Aziz was shaking with nerves, dropping microphones on his toes and having a hissy fit at the boys erecting the awning. Sheikh Ahmad was marching around, stony-faced, barking in Arabic at anyone he saw.

  Munir found me an armchair that was losing its horsehair stuffing but still as grand and hard as a throne and insisted on us calmly taking ‘afternoon tea’ together. Stiffly seated on matching thrones with a low table between us and the softest of breezes wafting over us from the open French window, we sipped genteelly at our glasses of black tea while making colonial small talk. Meeting me, he said, was ‘a stroll down memory lane’ for him; while still a teenager, he’d been a personal assistant of the last British political officer in Hadramaut. Apologising profusely for the lack of the ‘most excellent McVities digestive biscuits that my dear friend Mr. Rumbelow always insisted he must have for his tea’, he proffered instead a plate of a local substitute, brand name Abu Walad.

  ‘This name means “the father of the boy”,’ he told me, before waxing oddly geo-political. Clapping his hand to his breast pocket in a gesture which might have denoted fervent sincerity but must also, with hindsight, have activated a recording device, he began in a loud, clear voice: ‘Every time I take one of these biscuits, Madam, I think how this poor boy, South Yemen, has had so many fathers – Ottoman Istanbul, imperial London, Soviet Moscow, but now we have Sanaa –’

  ‘I know, I know,’ I interrupted him wearily, ‘There was only one father whom you truly loved, London. You feel like everyone else I’ve met here, that you were happiest as a British colony and now you bitterly regret your childish rebellion against us in the 1960s. And now, of course, you’ve never known a crueller father than Sanaa…’

  ‘Ah, Madam! You have read and understood our hearts like a mother reads the hearts of her children! You have come among us like Mary the mother of your Jesus, to suffer and to comfort and inspire us, to take South Yemen under your protecting English wing and raise us up to prosperity and peace again?’

  ‘Well, I suppose I have…’ I replied vaguely, helping myself to a third Abu Walad.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said, eagerly re-positioning himself well forward on his throne, invading my personal space, and slapping himself hard on in the area of his heart again, ‘I did not quite hear what you said, madam.’

  ‘I was agreeing that I feel I do have a role to play in the liberation of south Yemen from tyranny, yes,’ I said in the voice I always use when I’m making speeches – firmer than Celia Johnson’s in Brief Encounter but not as firm as Maggie Thatcher’s after her elocution lessons. Unsuspecting of any foul play, I was more interested in warming up for my forthcoming speech than in watching what I said to an old doorman, rather pleased to find that the word ‘tyranny’ was one I might usefully employ since it was not on my index of censored words.

  ‘Oh madam, yes! That is most certainly true!’ said the old boy, leaning back in his chair again. ‘And you tell us that your great, kind government is supporting all our efforts, your foreign office…?’ He was up close again, on the edge of his chair.

  ‘Naturally, I have official departmental and government backing…’

  ‘Of course, why did I ask?’ he said, slumping back again in relief and slipping his hand inside his jacket for what I took at the time to be an armpit scratch, but which I now realise must have de-activated the device he had secreted there.

  It seemed to me then, and only then, that there was something too insinuatingly inquisitive about that old snake Munir. I decided I didn’t want to talk to him anymore and I had the perfect excuse not to because, what had started as a low background buzz was growing too loud for me to hear myself think, let alone listen to anyone else speak.

  When Munir got up to open the glass doors leading to the balcony our ears were assaulted by what could have been a vastly amplified recording of day-to-day goings on in a bee hive. Stepping out onto the balcony for a look at the scene below, he returned a moment later, his beady old eyes as round as a pair of Abu Walads: ‘There are as many people out there as there are stars in Allah’s sky!’ he declared, ‘Seiyun has not seen such a crowd since the Marxists’ compulsory celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of the October Bolshevik revolution in 1977!’

  ‘Are we talking hundreds or thousands?’

  ‘Madam, I am speaking of tens of thousands!’

  My heart skipped a beat or two. A single broadcast text message had succeeded in convening a major political rally! I worried that a shortage of my signature head cloths might soon lead to scuffles. Sure enough, up rose some shouts and a roar, followed by a single gunshot. I was imagining that someone had lost a foot or even their life on account of a freebie Diana when Sheikh Ahmad and Aziz suddenly burst into the room, both of them wild-eyed, pale and sweating.

  ‘Rozzer!’ said Sheikh Ahmad, ‘Quick, please! There is no time to finish your tea. There are no more head cloths and people are becoming angry. You must be the first speaker because you will be the best surprise. They will be calm and peaceful to listen to you!’

  I thoroughly enjoyed feeling that my beloved needed me, that I alone could help him out of that tight spot, that the mere sight of me could calm the storm of thousands, bring harmony where there’d been discord and order where there’d been chaos. Further inspired by Munir’s vision of me as a cross between a mother and an archangel I drew myself up to my full height and walked over to Sheikh Ahmad. ‘I’m ready,’ I murmured, standing on tiptoe to plant a light kiss and some Abu Walad crumbs with it among the spikes of shiny black hair above his right ear. It’s funny the things that stand out in one’s memory, isn’t it? I have no idea what Aziz was doing at the time or where Munir had got to, for example, but I can still see each of those crumbs clinging to those hair follicles above that ear and the surprised smile Sheikh Ahmad rewarded me with.

  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!”’