by Paul Torday
Now I sort of accept it, and I just want you to know I’m thinking of you every minute, and when I’m asleep I dream about you. You can’t ask for more than that, can you?
Don’t leave the marines just because your girlfriend whines at you every time you have to go away. If that’s really what you want to do, then of course it’s right. But don’t do it for me if it’s a sacrifice, because then you’d blame me when you got bored and restless and then we’d end up divorced five minutes later. I don’t want to divorce you; I want to marry you. Anyway, what would you do instead?
We’ll talk about it when you come back. Don’t do anything until then.
Masses of love,
Harriet
Letter
Captain Robert Matthews
c⁄o BFPO Basra Palace
Basra
Iraq
15 May
Darling Robert,
I wish I knew where you were and what you were doing. It would mean I could worry a bit less. I hope, wherever it is, you are not too uncomfortable and it is not too dangerous. I tried to look your unit up on the Internet but, of course, I found nothing.
Isn’t it strange, writing letters to each other? Because I’m not allowed to email you and I can’t speak to you by phone, I am left with no choice. Apart from a few thank you letters and one or two to you I haven’t written any letters to anyone since I used to write to my mother when I was away at school. Even then it was mostly to ask her to send me more money. And because I haven’t the least idea what you are doing in Iraq, thank God, we can’t talk about that. So I suppose I’ll have to bore you to death, and tell you about me.
Our client, a sheikh from Yemen (I’m not supposed to tell anyone his name—I would tell you, but it wouldn’t mean anything to you anyway) has come to see us with the most extraordinary idea. He wants us to commission the best UK fisheries scientists to introduce salmon into the Yemen. He has an estate up near Inverness we helped him buy a few years ago, with a few miles of river which are apparently quite good fishing in June and July. You would know about all that sort of thing. The sheikh has become rather good at it, and enjoys going up there to fish more than almost anything. He also takes beats on other rivers whenever he can. He is almost obsessive about his fishing, much more so than his shooting or stalking. I’ve seen him at it, and he seems to know what he is doing.
He is a very impressive character. He is quite small, but stands very upright and communicates a sense of power which you cannot ignore. I don’t mean I fancy him, and he certainly doesn’t fancy me—tall, thin European women are not his type. He is happily married, anyway, with wife number four being the current favourite.
I don’t know what we are going to do about his request. He has clearly got a bee in his bonnet about fishing and the Yemen salmon project in particular. It seems almost wrong to take any money from him for something as dotty as this, which is bound to fail, but it is a lot of cash and our project management fees would be serious money just on their own.
Anyway, darling, I just wanted to write to let you know I was thinking about you and missing you.
Love you lots.
Harriet
Letter
5 Scarsdale Road London
15 May
Darling Harriet,
So good to hear from you. I’m sure this letter will take ages to get to you but where we are now is about a from anywhere Under Security Regulations Chapter XII Section 83 all references which might indicate the location, intention or capability of a unit must be deleted from correspondence. Security Office, BFPO Basra and the heat is at least degrees in the shade See above. Security Office, BFPO Basra. I am not allowed to tell you what we are doing but it is not a whole lot of fun, and conditions are . The Iraqis are either very friendly or absolutely murderously . So a letter from home is a chance to escape and forget all this for a few minutes. Keep writing. Each letter you send me is like a long cool drink of water.
I’ll stop now. The censor at Basra will probably delete most of this anyway. Sir or Madam, as noted earlier, under Chapter XII Section 83 we are required by military regulations to delete references in private correspondence which might compromise the unit concerned or otherwise act against the interests of British forces. Security Office, BFPQ Basra
Loads of love,
Robert
XXXXX
Letter
Captain Robert Matthews
c⁄o BFPO Basra Palace
Basra
Iraq
10 June
Darling Robert,
Your letter took weeks to reach me, and some awful man in the censor’s office in Basra had crossed out lots of what you wrote, and then scribbled over the letter. Awful to think someone else is reading everything we both write. Otherwise, there are all sorts of things I would like to say to you but won’t or can’t, because nothing is private any more.
The papers are full of stuff about Iraq again. It seems to have got worse again after years of relative calm: children being shot, people being blown up by car bombs or shot at from helicopter gunships. I shudder when I think you are in the middle of all that. Why does it all have to start up again just as you arrive there?
I don’t suppose you will ever tell me what it is really like, even when you come home. I can’t wait for you to come home.
We had a meeting in the office a few days ago, and decided we would try and help our sheikh with his salmon fishing project. Everyone was saying things like ‘It’s not our job to tell the client what he can or can’t do—our job is to help him do it.’ The fact is it is ages since we had a really big deal. Things have been slow for a while. So I was deputed to write to some man that our contacts in DEFRA tell us is one of the top fisheries scientists. The pompous little man did not even bother to reply himself—he got his secretary to write a short note containing ten good reasons why the whole idea was a waste of time. Naturally I wasn’t going to stand for that so I rang up an old friend of mine who works in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and told him what was going on. I said, ‘Look, with all this bad news coming out of the rest of the Middle East, isn’t this a potential good news story? Shouldn’t we be encouraging our client to spend his money, however mad it may seem? Isn’t this a good news story about Anglo–Yemeni cooperation?’ I thought it was rather clever of me to think of that angle, don’t you? It only occurred to me because you had just been sent out there.
Anyway, the idea seemed to ring a bell with my old friend. He said, ‘You know, Harriet (yes, I know—former boyfriend but a very long time ago), I think you might have a very good point. Let me talk to some people.’ The next thing I knew I had someone on from the prime minister’s office in Downing Street, asking for more details of the sheikh’s idea. Then the next morning I had some grovelling man on the phone called David Sugden who said he was the ‘immediate superior’ of the man I had written to, a Dr Jones, and that Dr Jones had now ‘come to terms’ with the project. And finally, this morning, I was visited by Dr Jones himself. If ever someone walked into my office with his tail between his legs, it was Dr Jones.
He looked just as I had imagined him after speaking to him on the phone. He wasn’t very tall, about my height, say five foot ten. He had sandy hair and a square, pale, indoors sort of face, and didn’t look as if he told many jokes. He also looked as if he was going to make things as difficult as possible for me. But I had done my homework and managed to show him I knew a little bit about what I was talking about, and after a while he became almost reasonable. I could see the scientist in him thinking ‘This can’t be done’ when I started talking. When I finished I could see he was thinking ‘Just in theory, is there any way in which this could be done?’ So at least he was honest enough to accept he might have been wrong, and in fact he wasn’t really that pompous after all. He did look henpecked, though.
I hope you never look henpecked when we get married. I will try not to peck too hard.
Love you lots
Harr
iet
Letter
5 Scarsdale Road London
15 June
Darling Harriet,
we drove down a street and suddenly guns were pointing the wrong way.
and the helicopter arrived after a vew anxious minutes, a very beautiful old mosque with blue tiles pieces as a result of an error by a US Cobra pilot. Apart from that nothing exciting has happened, it is mostly the heat and the flies that get us down. Yesterday we drove into a village near and came across a small boy in the street. There had been a visit by the Sunni insurgents lost his mother and stood in the middle of the street screaming. Sunday papers arrived at last four weeks late but before we had a chance to clean up and read them we were given new orders.
I didn’t think we were supposed to be that close to the
Anyway, orders is orders and I suppose we’ve got to go there. I haven’t even been allowed time to go back to base and get a change of clothes. A clean shirt would be nice.
Thinking of you all the time, much love,
Robert
Letter
Captain Robert Matthews
c⁄o BFPO Basra Palace
Basra
Iraq
22 June
Darling Robert,
I couldn’t make much sense of your last letter. The censor had attacked it with his pen and obliterated nearly all of it. But keep writing anyway. At least I know then that you are well and still thinking of me. Sometimes I ache with worry for you. One hears so many dreadful stories from the newspapers and much worse ones if one ever meets anyone with family out where you—where I think you are.
I’d better go on with my salmon story. My Dr Jones has come up trumps. He has written an absolutely brilliant proposal about introducing salmon into the Yemen. It is too technical to go into here and anyway it would bore you to death if I went into all the details, but the upshot is, he thinks, in theory, that something can be done. When I passed this on to my client he was thrilled. He rang up in person, something he never does, and said, ‘Bring Dr Alfred Jones to my house in Scotland. If I like him, I will give him whatever money he wants to make this thing happen. He is a clever man, but I need to meet him to know if he is an honest man, and if he can have the faith to do this.’
So I rang up Dr Jones, and the client sent his car to take us to a little airport in south London where he keeps his Learjet, and we flew together up to Inverness. Dr Jones was rather overawed and didn’t say much. His eyes kept on darting round the cabin of the plane in a nervous way as if he couldn’t quite believe what was happening. I have flown in the client’s private jet at least twice before, so of course I could pretend that it was all part of a day’s work.
We got to Glen Tulloch about lunchtime but then I had to go and sit with the factor and deal with all sorts of trivial problems about the estate. The sheikh joined us for a few minutes, issued a few instructions and then disappeared again. When he came back he said, ‘I have sent your Dr Jones to fish with Colin. I have been watching him from the road for a while. He is a true fisherman, not just a scientist. I am pleased with your choice, Harriet Chetwode-Talbot.’ When he calls me this I am never sure whether there is irony in his voice, or whether he is simply being correct in his manner of address, as he sees it.
I said that was good luck. ‘It is not luck, Harriet Chetwode-Talbot. It is God’s wish. He has set this man in my path, the right man at the right time, insh’Allah. I will talk to him later at dinner, but already I know what I needed to know.’
And later at dinner he did talk to Dr Jones. It was all very simple and somehow very moving. My client is, I think, more than a little mad, but it is a charming form of madness, almost a divine form of madness. He believes that the salmon and its long journey through endless oceans back to its home river is, in some strange way, a symbol of his own journey to become closer to his God. You know, a few hundred years ago, the sheikh might have been called a saint, if there are saints in Islam?
Dr Jones called me Harriet tonight. He never looks me in the eye. I think he fancies me, but he is a married man and so feels guilty. Don’t worry, darling. As far as I am concerned, there is only you.
Love,
Harriet
Letter
Undated and unsigned letter from the Family Support Centre at the Ministry of Defence
Dear Harriet Chetwode-Talbot,
Copies of your correspondence with Captain Robert Matthews have been forwarded to this office by Security, BFPO Basra Palace.
Captain Robert Matthews is now, for operational reasons, in an area where postal services cannot be guaranteed. Further correspondence will not therefore be forwarded to him. Nor will any postal facilities be available to his unit until further notice.
Please note the call centre number below will access the Family Support Centre, who will provide counselling to enable you to cope with any trauma arising from loss of contact with a close friend⁄relation⁄spouse.
0800-4001200
This counselling service is provided free of charge by the MoD but calls will cost 14p per minute.
MoD
7
Press comment
Article in the Yemen Observer, 14 August
Fishing project for western highlands
Sheikh Muhammad ibn Zaidi has surprised the Arab world with his decision to introduce salmon fishing into the Wadi Aleyn in the Heraz. Yemenis may understandably ask many questions about the legitimacy of this project. We say that we should wait and see what the scientific reality of the salmon project turns out to be.
The project is being debated in a lively manner at family dinners and at khat chews. There are many who think that the introduction of salmon into a desert country is neither a realistic nor an economic proposition. Others however state that the project is being supported by a leading fisheries scientist from the UK and that there is a real prospect in future years of our tourist industry being boosted by the sale of salmon fishing permits.
The agriculture and health ministry declined to comment but we understand that the present Aquatic Law N°42 does not expressly forbid the development of a salmon fishery in the Yemen. Therefore Sheikh Muhammad is entitled to develop such a fishery without the need to seek further consent from the government.
Article in the International Herald Tribune, 16 August
Yemeni sheikh plans new ecosystem for wadis
Sana’a, Yemen Republic
Sheikh Muhammad ibn Zaidi, a key figure in Yemeni political circles, has long been noted for his pro-Western views in a country whose relationship with Western states has sometimes been troubled. On Sunday he urged President Saleh to lend his backing to a revolutionary eco-project that has received some support in UK government circles.
Sheikh Muhammad is planning to spend millions of pounds sterling with the British government to introduce wild Scottish salmon into a wadi in the western Yemen. In stark contrast to US policy, which currently involves further military build-ups in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, the UK now appears to be shifting its political ground. Although British government officials deny any formal relationship with Sheikh Muhammad, nevertheless a UK government agency, the National Centre for Fisheries Excellence, has taken a leading role in this environmentally challenging project. British policy in the region now appears to be looking for ways to take cultural and sporting images, likely in an effort to soften the impact of recent military actions in southern Iraq.
The funding will be provided by Sheikh Muhammad. UK government officials today distanced themselves from the project, claiming it was a private-sector initiative. However, it is likely that such a major scheme involving some of the world’s most prestigious fisheries scientists could not proceed without sanction from Prime Minister Jay Vent’s office.
Some observers speculate that Sheikh Muhammad’s initiative may not be universally welcome in his own province. The area is home to several radical Wahhabi madrasas, religious training schools, and it is understood that salmon fishing is regarde
d as an unacceptable activity by some Wahhabi imams. Water is also a scarce resource in the Yemen, and its diversion into the wadis to support a run of salmon will not be universally popular in a country where the availability of water is often a matter of life and death.
Article in The Times, 17 August
British fisheries scientists in major row
Concerns were raised yesterday in Parliament that a key Government agency, the National Centre for Fisheries Excellence (NCFE), is going outside its mandate. Set up a decade ago to support the work of the Environment Agency in monitoring and improving the health of rivers in England and Wales, NCFE is now said to have diverted over 90 per cent of its resources into a project to introduce Atlantic salmon into the Yemen.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) confirmed that the funding for the Yemen salmon project is not coming from the UK taxpayer but has been met entirely from private-sector sources. However, questions are being asked as to whether this is an appropriate use of a key government department at a time when so many environmental and other challenges face rivers in England and Wales as a result of global warming and the risks from agricultural and industrial pollution to our rivers. A spokesman for the RSPB confirmed that, if the Yemen salmon project went ahead, the society would seek to have English cormorants exported to the Yemen, to ensure that the natural checks and balances on any salmon river were maintained.