A Foreign Affair

by Stella Russell

  ‘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.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  My cell was airless and windowless, murkily lit by a fly-encrusted fluorescent strip tacked crookedly over the door. Aside from a length of foam rubber mattress, covered in a grimy nylon sheet and a smelly old pouch of a pillow, there was a covered plastic bucket in one corner, near some rusty pipes, no tap.

  It stank grimly of damp, sweat and urine but it was at least cool and, with my handcuffs removed at last, I was tempted to start rootling around in my pink Puma bag which a guard had kindly chucked on the mattress for me. Total immersion in my Vogue’s ‘capsule wardrobes for holiday travel’ might distract me from my horrid surroundings, raging thirst and aching heart.

  I was wrong. I couldn’t stop fretting about Sheikh Ahmad, hoping against hope that someone was tending his wounds for him, but also wondering if my declaration of love had had time to sink in. Restless, I got up and paced my cell – all six by three feet of it – and had just paused to relieve myself in the bucket by the cell-door when it opened to admit none other than Mrs Rev.

  ‘You must have the wrong room number,’ I snapped at her, with my knickers round my ankles.

  ‘Oh! I seem to have interrupted you mid-stream, but I’m sure you won’t mind. I know from personal experience at Mukalla airport, if you remember, how frank you like to be when it comes to bodily functions,’ she said, standing only two feet away and staring down at me unflinchingly while my bladder relinquished its last trickle. ‘Keith and I just happen to be in Sanaa for the christening of the consul’s twins tomorrow. Actually, it was Keith’s idea to visit you, but prison rules say no fraternising between the sexes in the cells, so here I am.’

  ‘You don’t expect me to make you welcome, do you?’

  ‘No. However, I do pride myself on knowing my Christian duty, dear,’ she sneered, lowering her vast bulk in its saffron yellow caftan onto one half of my thin mattress.

  ‘And what exactly do you think that is?’ I towered over her now, arms akimbo, ‘If you want to do something useful, I could do with a coffee and something to eat.’

  ‘Actually, I was thinking we might say a prayer together,’ she answered me in a tone that made my flesh crawl, and turned to scrabble around in a duty free plastic bag for a bible she’d brought.

  Instead of yanking her to her feet and booting her straight back outside the door, my mind jumped a few steps ahead. That bag of hers looked suspiciously like the one into which she’d popped my precious family heirloom, Harry Flashman’s binoculars, at Mukalla airport. ‘Thanks, but no thanks you sanctimonious kleptomaniac,’ I told her, ‘The very last thing I feel like is bible-reading with you. Let’s talk business instead.’

  ‘M
e? Kleptomaniac?’ she almost choked, ‘Pots and kettles! But what kind of business did you have in mind, dear?’

  ‘Listen! You give me the cold shoulder for no reason and splatter my favourite outfit with grease, so I help myself to some gin; I liberate a few little goodies from your guesthouse kitchen, most of which you probably didn’t even know you had, so you scupper my chance of a lift back to Sanaa from Silent Valley; I broadcast the state of your bowels at Mukalla airport, you denounce me as a thief. What’s the score? Love all, by my count, quits in other words. So why go and kick off another round by nicking my ancestor’s binoculars?’

  ‘It’s very simple, dear. You’re not only a thief but a shameless impostor. When you claimed to be the granddaughter of Brigadier Winchelsea you carelessly overlooked the little possibility that one of those gathered there at Silent Valley was a true relative of his – namely, myself. I can find it in my Christian heart to forgive a little pilfering and a lot of rudeness but I’d rather die than let you get away with a falsehood about my family name. You stole my family honour so I stole your family heirloom. Do you understand me?’

  ‘Yes, of course, every Flashman knows the meaning of honouring a family name,’ I replied, surprised to have discerned a sliver of common ground between us.

  ‘Good!’ she said, her plump digits fingering that plastic bag. ‘I have brought your binoculars along today in the hope of being able to return them to you, but that will depend entirely on your meeting an important precondition.’

  ‘Oh? – if you’d like me to put a little corrective disclaimer notice about your forebear in the Daily Register for example, I think I can arrange that.’ I said.

  ‘Oh no, dear! What real amends would that make? And anyway it’s to the Almighty, not me, that reparation is due.’ I didn’t like the turn that negotiation was suddenly taking, and I was right to worry. ‘Your heirloom will be returned to you,’ she continued, ‘but not before you have knelt here before me while I read the word of God to you, not before you have repented, opened your heart to God and begged to be born again in His grace.’

  ‘I’d rather lick your armpits!’ I shouted randomly, reaching down to grab the bible out of her hands and preparing to crown her with it. I was suddenly incandescent, quite beside myself, with anger, shouting: ‘Bible-bashing blackmailers like you are giving the Christian faith I love a bad name. You’re little better than the bin Ladens of this world or those Jewish fanatics who’ve colonised the West Bank! With you lot throwing your weight around the world the rest of us western Christians haven’t got a leg left to stand on! I could strangle the lot of you!’

  ‘Don’t you think you’ve got enough murder charges pending, dear? The ambassador certainly does,’ she was saying, glaring up at me, bold as you like.

  That last sneer of a ‘dear’ – coming on top of my lack of sleep and sustenance, and watching my beloved being beaten up, and having Aziz’s father get the better of me with the terrible news of the deaths and injury caused by my speech in Seiyun, and being confined to that cess-pit of a prison cell, knowing I couldn’t rely on any diplomatic assistance – must have tipped me over the edge. I had had enough.

  ‘Get up, you rancid butter-ball! Get up this instant!’ I screamed at her, dancing around her, Bible cast aside, my fists at the ready. When she ignored my command and, still seated on that mattress, rolled herself up like a hedgehog around that precious plastic bag, I dropped to my knees in front of her and began hammering on her back in the manner of a vigorous Keith Moon, losing myself in the rhythm of my tumultuous tattoo, thrashing and pounding away, deaf to the roars which brought a couple of guards running, deaf to their barks of Arabic as they hauled me off her and re-handcuffed me and pushed me roughly into the bucket corner of the cell with my face to the wall. But I did hear Mrs Rev’s outraged yelps as they helped her to her feet and she hobbled past me out of the door, and I’ll never forget her devastatingly plucky parting shot: ‘Thanks for the massage, dear!’

  Game, set and match to Mrs Rev.

  Sliding to the floor by that toxic bucket, I prayed to St Serafim of Sarov for a miracle and wept and wept and wept. I was still sobbing my heart out when the door of my cell opened to admit the British ambassador in his familiar panama hat and creased linen suit. In his hand was a Tesco plastic bag which I prayed to St Serafim contained something edible. Once I’d allowed him to blow my nose for me with a used tissue he found in his pocket, I calmed down and waited while he fetched a guard to remove my handcuffs and provide me with water. The honey sandwich he’d brought me was manna from heaven.

  ‘Better?’ he asked gruffly, as I finished it.

  ‘Much, thank you.’

  ‘Let’s get to work then,’ he began with a grunt, lowering his bulk onto my mattress beside me, ‘I’m sure I don’t need to tell you Ms Flashman that you’re in very serious trouble, not just with the Yemeni authorities, but with us.’

  ‘Us?’ Was he entitled to use the royal ‘we’?

  ‘I mean, the Foreign Office, the Met…’

  ‘What for, for crying out loud?’

  ‘To the Yemenis’ eleven charges against your name we’ll be adding three more. First, your false impersonation of a representative of the security organs of the British state empowered by Britain to promote a movement diametrically opposed to the aims and interests of Britain and her allies…’

  ‘But…’

  ‘But nothing. I’ve just come from General al-Majid’s office where he invited me to listen to the recordings and see the transcriptions of statements and claims you made in Seiyun, so there are no “buts” about it.’ We’re looking at fraud.’

  ‘I see…’

  ‘I wonder if you really do,’ he interrupted, ‘because you appear to be ignorant of the fact that we’re currently doing everything in our power to preserve the status quo in this country in order to prevent al-Qaeda getting as firm a foothold here as it has had in Pakistan. Of course, we have nothing against the southern separatists personally – I’m in favour of Scottish independence myself - but the very last thing we need is a breakaway south Yemen overrun by bin Ladens!’

  ‘I see,’ My friendly heavy had warned me…

  ‘Washington’s kicking up a stink about you already. Thanks to your antics they’re not going to listen to a word we have to say about the counter-effectiveness of using their ruddy drones in this country; I spent all this morning being bawled at, first by my US counterpart and then by the Yemeni foreign minister, and I’ve got London breathing down my neck on a half hourly basis…’

  ‘So you’re not in the best of moods…’

  ‘No. Now, moving on. Your promotion of yourself by means of images of the late Princess Diana printed on Yemeni headcloths, while on the face of it a lesser crime, is the one most guaranteed to disgust and outrage the man on the Clapham omnibus.’

  ‘Fat lot it has to do with him!’

  ‘For your information, you’ve caused a serious diplomatic incident. The story has been top of domestic news bulletins since 10 am this morning.’

  ‘I see’

  ‘Last but not least, there is your false claim to be the granddaughter of a fallen hero – a crime uncovered by said hero’s daughter, the wife of the Anglican vicar in Aden. That, on the face of it, minor misdemeanour will disgust and enrage the tens of thousands of Daily Register readers who will read the daughter’s exclusive double page spread account of it tomorrow morning. There are bound to be questions in the House.’

  Yet another ace serve from Mrs Rev! I was trying to KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON, asking myself over and over again WWFHD? But the more I wondered, the sicker I felt, especially as news of the punishment I’d just inflicted on Mrs Rev had obviously not yet reached our man in Sanaa.

  ‘It’s my professional duty to warn you of two matters, Ms Flashman,’ he was saying, ‘First, Yemen and the UK do not have an extradition agreement and second, your crimes are of a kind unlikely to elicit any public sympathy in Britain.’

 
‘In other words, Her Majesty’s Government will be quite content for me to rot here,’ I said, with as much dignity as I could muster.

  ‘Try and get some rest,’ he said after a long silence, struggling to his feet with some more grunts. ‘Is there anyone you’d like us to contact back home?’

  The mere thought of Ralph and Widderton Hall brought tears to my eyes, but they dried again the instant I remembered Fiona. She’d be over the moon to learn of my permanent incarceration on the other side of the world, probably plan a dinner party to celebrate.

  ‘No, not just yet, thanks. I don’t want to worry anyone,’ was what I told the ambassador.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  In extremis, it is the little things that count. That much I’d learned. By the time the hands of the clock had inched round to visiting time and the ambassador was due again I’d improved my sordid situation in a number of small but vital respects.

  Just one of my best Princess Di smiles had earned me a brown paper bag of sunflower seeds from the youngest guard. Next, I’d casually rearranged the top half of my butter yellow shalwar kameez to reveal the longest possible cleavage, a simple but instantly effective manoeuvre that earned me two packs of cigarettes from the sleazy cell superintendent. In exchange for the stump of an old lipstick I never wore any more – Rimmel’s Candy Coral, I think it was - my bucket was being slopped out the instant I’d used it by an African female.

  Better still, I’d had a fairly detailed briefing on the physical and mental condition of Sheikh Ahmad from an English-speaker who’d insisted on taking my temperature and inspecting my throat and ears and turned out to be a member of Sheikh Ahmad’s tribe as well as a keen supporter of PARP. My beloved’s fine torso was very badly bruised, I discovered, some of his ribs cracked, his stomach aching and one of his liquorice-drop eyes possibly permanently blinded, but he was bearing up as well as could be expected thanks to the fact that one of his cell guards happened to be a distant cousin of Bushara’s and another a great-uncle of Jammy’s.