by Joan Smith
Joan Smith
What Will
Survive
Contents
Home is where the heart is?
Snap: Princess of Wales ‘will not live abroad’
Landmine death brings new call for ban
Row continues over PM’s Question Time
Four arrested in Métro plot
Landmine tragedy claims ex-model who wanted to help the world
Fabrizio Terzano 1946–1997 Award-winning photographer who found solace in landscape after brush with death in Afghanistan
Transcript of live interview, World At One, BBC Radio 4, Monday, 21 July 1997
Ingrid Hansson Producer, Researcher, Author
Tragic Aisha’s son in pizza punch-up
For Sale
12 March 1997: Fair World Now! Demands Closure of Al-Khiam Detention Centre in Occupied South Lebanon
MP Refuses to Back Down in Diana ‘Hysteria’ Storm
Joan Smith is a novelist, journalist and human rights campaigner. She is well-known for her columns in the Independent, Evening Standard and other newspapers, and appears regularly on radio and TV. She has advised the Foreign Office on promoting free expression, been judge of the Amnesty International media awards and is a patron of the National Secular Society. Her books include Misogynies and Moralities, as well as five crime novels.
The Big Interview:
Home is where the heart is
This week model-turned-children’s-champion Aisha Lincoln invites Diana Weisz into the Somerset house she calls her haven.
Husband Tim holds the fort while the raven-haired beauty sets off on her latest mission to help the underprivileged of the world.
DW:
Aisha Lincoln, we’re standing on the front lawn of your beautiful country home. How long have you lived here?
AL:
We came here, it must be about fifteen years ago, when the boys were tiny. We were down here for the weekend and we happened to drive past and see a for-sale sign. I fell in love with it straight away.
DW:
It’s certainly a peaceful spot, and the coast is only a mile away.
AL:
(Laughs) Its not peaceful in the winter! I love walking on the beach on a November afternoon, when all the visitors have gone. When the children were young, I used to take them down to watch the waves crashing on the shore. I didn’t want them to grow up with a sentimental view of nature.
DW:
You must miss all this when you’re on your travels. It’s a real English country garden, with trellises and climbing roses. When you announced your retirement from the catwalk, I think most people assumed you were tired of travelling so much – Paris, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and all the other wonderful places you visited as a model. But your work for the poor and underprivileged seems to take you away almost as much. Don’t you ever have an urge to stay at home with your husband and the boys?
AL:
The boys are grown up now Max is about to start his gap year and Ricky is training to be a vet.
DW:
Is that because of living in the country?
AL:
Actually, we’ve never had pets, my husband is allergic. Anyway, the places I’m visiting now couldn’t be more different from when I was modelling full time – I haven’t given up completely, by the way. As you probably know, I’m involved in a project to educate women in East Africa about the dangers of FGM –
DW:
Could you just explain to our readers? I mean, not in detail –
AL:
Female genital mutilation. I first heard about it from Waris Dirie, when we were working together in New York and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing — she’s a UN ambassador now, of course. I’ve also been involved in a very simple scheme in Pakistan, where women have been going blind because of fumes emitted by the cooking stoves they use. I spent a week in a village where they were being taught to use a safer method, and just this one simple thing should be enough to save the sight of thousands of women. I really found it inspiring.
DW:
You’ve obviously heard some tragic stories. When was the house built?
AL:
What? Oh — we think it must have been 1870 or thereabouts, with later additions. I mean, architecturally it’s a bit of a hotchpotch.
DW:
I believe it was once used as a hotel?
AL:
(Laughs) Yes, all the bedrooms are named after flowers. The boys were horrified at having to sleep in rooms called Bluebell and Foxglove — you can imagine! For ages after we bought it, we kept getting phone calls from people who’d stayed here and wanted to make another booking! It needed a bit of work to convert it back to a family house, but of course we kept a lot of the original features.
DW:
Including the servants’ bells, I believe?
AL:
That’s right, they’re in the kitchen.
DW:
Along with an Aga.
AL:
Yes, but it’s oil-fired! To be honest, when you see how hard women work in developing countries, it makes you appreciate all the things we take for granted.
DW:
Is that why you’ve said some quite critical things recently? You’re probably aware that some people in the fashion world feel let down.
AL:
(Shakes her head) Let down? I’m sorry if they feel like that, but I never took the fashion world all that seriously. I like nice clothes, but it’s hardly Mastermind, is it? I mean, I hate the way we’ve turned fashion and beauty into the only things that matter. When I travel to developing countries, the people I meet don’t even know what it means to be a model. Why should they?
DW:
You have controversial views on cosmetic surgery Is that because of your charitable work?
AL:
Oh, I decided I would never have plastic surgery ages before I even thought of setting foot in Africa. It’s one of the reasons I cut down on my modelling work, not wanting to be forced into messing around with my face. Ageing is a natural process —
DW:
Some people would say it’s all right for Aisha Lincoln to say that; she’s got good genes.
AL:
That may be true, my mother always looked very young for her age. But I also think it’s a question of priorities. I haven’t got the skin of a nineteen-year-old, obviously, but there are more important things in life. It’s hard to get worked up about a few wrinkles when you’re on your way back from places where people literally haven’t got enough to eat.
DW:
But you did do a rather unusual photo shoot last year for Vogue, and there was a lot of comment about the fact that the pictures were taken by a famous war photographer. Some former colleagues suggested you were raising two fingers to the fashion world, working with someone who doesn’t usually do fashion and refusing to wear make-up. Wasn’t that about showing you could still look fantastic at forty-three?
AL:
Does forty-three seem old to you? (Laughs) My sons are always teasing me about my clothes. They’d be horrified if I suddenly started wearing, I don’t know, pearls and a twinset. It’s been a while since Fabio was a war photographer, by the way. In recent years he’s been doing collages of landscapes and old buildings all over the world. A friend took me to his exhibition in Paris and I just loved them — you’ll see one in the dining room, the pictures were taken in Rajasthan and the colours are ravishing. That’s how we met, at his private view, and when he suggested photographing me for Vogue, I was thrilled. Then he explained what he wanted to do and the idea was so original; treating the face, my face, as a natural phenomenon — like a landscape. You know the prints were sold to raise money for the Sudan project, a
mong other things?
DW:
Do you think your foreign background has affected your views?
AL:
I’m English! My mother was Egyptian, but she came to live here before I was born. Her brothers both went to the States, so it’s not even as if I’ve got close family in the Middle East. My father’s family is Scottish, I have his family tree somewhere. It’s probably in the loft, with all the other junk I’ve collected over the years.
DW:
But you’re not exactly an English rose! Your looks are often described as exotic. Does that bother you?
AL:
It doesn’t bother me, but I was surprised by it at first.
DW:
You’ve been compared with Iman, David Bowie’s stunning wife, who is also a model.
AL:
I’ve worked with Iman a couple of times, but we’re very different. She’s from Somalia — like Waris, in fact. I’m Anglo-Egyptian, but much more English than Egyptian. I grew up here and I only know about three words of Arabic, though I’d like to learn more.
DW:
So tell me about your next project, which involves the Middle East, is that right? I’m sure our readers would love to hear about it.
AL:
That’s right. After we finished the Vogue shoot, a publisher came up with the idea of a book — Fabio was in Lebanon during the civil war and he’s always wanted to go back. He loves that part of the world and he’s very keen to show it isn’t just about death and disaster. Countries like Lebanon and Syria actually have thousands of years of culture, going back to Roman times, and that’s what the book aims to show. You can imagine, with my background, that I jumped at the chance! I don’t know those countries at all, which is why the publishers asked me to write a kind of diary — to see it through fresh eyes. Obviously the pictures are the important part, I can’t claim to be a writer (laughs), and all the proceeds will go to charity.
DW:
It sounds a bit diferent from your other charity work.
AL:
It is. Some of the royalties will be used to help victims of war — rehabilitation, fitting artificial limbs, that sort of thing.
DW:
When will we be able to see the book?
AL:
That’s up to our editor, but I hope some time next year.
DW:
Does it have a title?
AL:
We’ve had several ideas but none of them is quite right. The working tide is Through Aisha’s Eyes: A Middle Eastern Journey (pulls a face) — something had to go in the contract! I hope we’ll be able to come up with something more evocative while we’re there.
DW:
And you’ll talk to us about your adventures when you get back?
AL:
I’d be delighted.
DW:
Aisha Lincoln, thank you for letting us see your lovely English house and garden. Good luck with your trip.
Photograph of Aisha Lincoln at Cranbrook Lawns by Bryan Brooks. Collage, page 11, © Fabrizio Terzano 1996
Aisha moved in the bed, wanting the reassurance of the body next to hers. She pushed against it, murmured something, and slipped back into a deep dreaming sleep. As if a film was just beginning, she saw her mother sitting in an armchair on the far side of an enormous room, leaning forward and holding out an encouraging hand. Aisha struggled to put one foot in front of the other on the patterned carpet, her legs heavy, and suddenly she was running across the vast expanse. Her mother smiled and began to speak but the sounds that came out of her mouth were unintelligible. Aisha cried out, sure that her father and her sister were somewhere in the garden that had suddenly appeared behind her mother’s chair, hiding among the borders of English flowers overgrowing a sunny path.
Abruptly the scene changed. Now Aisha was standing in a narrow street of tall houses, staring up at arched windows and balconies, and her heart began to pound. The glass in the windows was broken, the walls of the buildings pockmarked and stained, the balcony above her hanging down as if it might collapse at any moment. Car horns sounded and she started, surprised by a crowd of people who appeared from nowhere and jostled her as they pushed past. Spotting a figure whose thickset shoulders, grizzled head and camera bag seemed familiar, Aisha called after him, but when he turned he was a stranger and she saw that the bag was a Kalashnikov. She sat bolt upright in the bed, woken by the sound of her own voice, her eyes wide open in the suffocating darkness.
‘Stephen?’ She flung out her hand. ‘Stephen? Where are you?’ Clutching the sheet, her chest wet with sweat, she reached further, feeling for warm flesh.
There was no answer. On her knees, Aisha scrabbled on the mattress, finding nothing but a scratchy woollen blanket. Edging across the bed, she swung her legs to the floor and gasped as her feet scraped on concrete. What the hell — this wasn’t a hotel room. She stretched out a hand until she came in contact with a wall, and groped her way along it until she found a light switch.
An unshaded bulb illuminated a claustrophobically small room and Aisha blinked, unsure for a few seconds where she was: the bed was empty and her clothes were folded on a wooden table, the only other piece of furniture in the room. She seized her underwear, pulled it on and cracked open the door, blinking as she saw a bare courtyard, bounded by a high wall and a gate. The roughly whitewashed buildings which made up three sides of a square were silent, the pale disc of the sun and a light breeze suggesting it was still very early in the morning. The only human touch was a row of old olive oil cans, planted with mint and geraniums. Aisha retreated into the little room, leaving the door ajar to let in some fresh air.
She lifted her hair away from her damp face for a few seconds, and shook it out. ‘God,’ she said experimentally, sitting at the foot of the bed, her voice sounding eerie in the silence. In the distance a dog barked and she thought she could hear goats bleating, but no other signs of life. Where was the young woman who, she now remembered, had brought her to this bare room the previous evening? More to the point, where was Fabio? Feeling a jolt of anxiety, Aisha leaned across the tangled bedlinen — judging by its state, she had spent a pretty restless night — and reached for her overnight bag. She drew her watch and mobile from a side pocket, checking the time as she waited for her phone to lock on to a local network; it was only ten past six local time, which explained why no one was stirring. It was much too early to ring anyone in England, although she had no qualms about trying Fabio’s mobile. It was switched off, as it had been when she went to bed, and Aisha left another crisp message. Then she keyed in a code to pick up her messages, hoping to hear Fabio’s slightly-accented English. Instead, she got a much more familiar voice and made an impatient sound as she listened to his message: ‘Tim here, meant to call earlier, sorry. Not much to report in my little part of the world, unless you count a break-in at the petrol station — kids, I expect. You certainly got a spread in Hello! Not the cover — even you can’t compete with the Spice Girls, I’m afraid.’ His laugh was ingratiating, meant to take the sting out of the words. ‘Pretty strong stuff, some of it, good on you for getting it in.’ Aisha heard a sigh. ‘Oh well, I’ll catch you another time. Bye darling.’
Aisha deleted it and a younger male voice came on the line. ‘Hi Ma, it’s me, Ricky, you all right? I only just picked up your message and you sound really down. Call me, OK? Listen, Dad’s really pissed off because everyone’s seen you in Hello! Fab pictures — you’re so cool. Bye Mum.’
She was still smiling when the last message began to play. ‘Aisha, fuck, I can’t believe I’ve missed you again. I’m at some ghastly reception and I didn’t hear the damned phone. What time is it there? Maybe it’s too late to call you — are you two hours ahead or three?’ He paused and Aisha could hear noises in the background, laughter and the chink of glasses. ‘Yeah, I’m coming, just give me two seconds,’ he said in a muffled voice, then more clearly: ‘This is hopeless, darling, I’ll call you tomorrow.’ Aisha saved the message,
then listened to it a second time, picturing a crowded room in London, perhaps a party in an upstairs room at the Foreign Press Association.
Suddenly a helicopter clattered overhead, drowning out the final words, and Aisha went to the door, wondering if it was the one she had seen yesterday. The machine was directly overhead, blocking the sun and casting a faint shadow over the courtyard. She stepped back, gripped by an irrational desire not to be seen, and stared up at its dark underbelly. The vibration was almost unbearable until it began to rise vertically, then pulled away at a dizzying angle, and Aisha realised she had been holding her breath. A door opened on the other side of the courtyard and someone peered out, spotted Aisha and closed it again.
‘Hello,’ she called out, but the figure — possibly a child although she couldn’t even say whether it had been male or female — was gone. Realising she was wearing only knickers and a cropped white top, Aisha withdrew into the little room and wondered whether she could locate the primitive washing facilities she had used the night before; she was sure they were on the other side of the courtyard, but behind which door? Reluctant to barge into someone’s bedroom by mistake, Aisha decided she would just have to wait for the household to stir and reached for the novel she had begun as they left Damascus the previous day.
They had set off for the border towards the end of the morning, after Aisha had had a final walk in the old city, sitting for half an hour by the fountains in the garden of the Azm Palace. When she had climbed into the back of the Volkswagen, she had not immediately realised that something was going on between Fabio and their driver, Mahmoud, who was taciturn at the best of times. Mahmoud — Aisha felt slightly guilty for being unable to remember his second name — was in his forties, according to Fabio, but looked older, with tobacco-stained teeth and a permanent smell of stale smoke clinging to his old blue suit. He understood basic English but seemed to dislike speaking it, leaving Aisha to communicate with him through Fabio, and the dispute which finally blew up between the two men as they waited to cross the border into Lebanon was conducted entirely in Arabic. They were so absorbed with each other that they didn’t notice when flames burst from the bonnet of the vehicle behind them in the queue, which had been moving with agonising slowness. Aisha had to shake Mahmoud by the shoulder to get his attention and even then he merely hawked through the open window and steered the Volkswagen into another line. She turned and watched as the other driver pulled his wife and small daughter to safety, ready to go and help if need be, but half a dozen men clustered round the vehicle and managed to extinguish the blaze with water carried from a standpipe in plastic bottles.