2007 - Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

by Paul Torday

  I could half picture this in my mind if I tried hard enough, and forgot about the sun that was now reddening my face and neck and burning my forearms. Even in November the heat here is more than I am used to.

  Then I tried to imagine the gates of the holding tanks opening, and a bow wave of water coming down the new concrete spillway a few hundred yards away, and waves slapping together where it met the water of the wadi. I tried to imagine the salmon slipping down the spillway, finding the waters of the stream and, following the instincts of tens of thousands of years, heading upstream to spawn. I could not imagine it.

  §

  This evening I sat beside Harriet in the dining room in the sheikh’s villa. My face and arms were smothered with Aftersun, but I could still feel the heat in my skin. I drank copious amounts of cold water, which a servant poured from a copper jug into copper goblets. We ate selta, a kind of vegetable broth with lamb, fresh-baked Arab bread and hummus, and a spicy mixture of garlic and tomatoes and other vegetables I could not identify. The sheikh was in a humorous mood. ‘So, you have walked along the Wadi Aleyn, Dr Alfred. What do you think of our project now?’

  I shook my head. ‘It will be very difficult. I must confess, Sheikh, I am very daunted. It is one thing to plan this project thousands of miles away and another thing to see the rocks and sand of the wadi.’

  ‘And another thing to feel the heat,’ added Harriet, looking rather pointedly at my sunburned nose and cheeks. Under the sheikh’s influence her mood has improved a little since we came here. She is more cheerful, although from time to time a sad, inward look still crosses her face.

  ‘No one who has not seen the wet season can imagine it, what it is like, how the rains fall so swiftly; just as no one who has not been here in the dry season can imagine the heat and the dust that brings. You shall see. Yemen is not just desert. There are green pastures and fields in the Hadramawt, and at Ibb and Hudaydah. Have faith, Dr Alfred, have faith!’ And the sheikh smiled and shook his head, and laughed to himself as if amused by something a child had said.

  §

  Harriet and I have been put in a guest wing at the far end of the house, away from where the sheikh and his retinue sleep. There are half a dozen bedrooms here, all large and luxurious with big comfortable beds and marble floors, with prayer mats laid out and a green arrow set in mosaic tiles, pointing the way to Mecca. The bathrooms have huge sunken baths with (I think) gold fittings. Bowls of fruit and flowers are set out and iced water can be poured from a giant Thermos. Sometimes someone lights frankincense in a burner in the central courtyard, and its strange and exotic scent pervades the whole house, making me think of church again in a distant childhood.

  As I made my way along the corridor to my room just now, I passed a half-open door and heard the sound of someone weeping.

  I stopped. Of course it was Harriet. Gently, I pushed at the door. She was sitting on the edge of the bed. There was just enough moonlight coming in through the filmy curtains to see the glint of tears running down her cheek. I stood there tentatively, my hand still on the door, and said, ‘Harriet? Is something the matter?’

  Of course there was something the matter. What an idiotic question. She mumbled something in a choked-sounding voice. I could not make out the words. I stood there awkwardly a moment longer and then instinct took over, and I sat on the bed beside her and put my arm around her. She turned and buried her face in my neck and I could feel the moisture on her face against my skin.

  ‘Harriet, what is it? Please tell me.’

  She sobbed for a while longer and my shirt collar became damp. It was a curious feeling, holding her in my arms like that. It didn’t feel wrong. It felt right.

  She said, ‘I’m sorry. I’m being pathetic.’

  ‘No. Tell me what has upset you.’

  ‘It’s about Robert,’ she said in a trembling voice. ‘I keep thinking something dreadful has happened to him.’

  Harriet had told me about her engagement to Robert Matthews, a captain in the Royal Marines. She never speaks much about him, and I never think much about him as a result, although if I do, it is with an odd, irrational twinge almost like jealousy.

  ‘I haven’t heard from him for weeks and weeks,’ she said. ‘I’m so worried. It’s like an ache, all the time.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s somewhere where he can’t answer letters,’ I suggested. ‘I imagine the communications in Iraq are difficult.’

  ‘It’s worse that that,’ she said into my shoulder. ‘Promise me you won’t tell anyone, if I tell you.’

  I promised. Who would I tell?

  She told me how the letters she had been receiving from Robert had at first been almost obliterated by the censor and then had ceased to come altogether. What was worse was that she had been contacted by something called the Family Support Centre, and all the letters she had written to him had started being returned. Then she hinted that, in some way she did not make clear, she had received information that, wherever Robert was, he was in serious danger. I tried to think of words to comfort her, and she clung to me for a moment longer, but then she became calmer and sat up straight and I removed my arm.

  ‘God,’ she said, ‘I must look a mess. Thank goodness it’s so dark. I’m sorry to have let you see me like this. I just lost it for a while.’

  ‘It must be a huge worry for you,’ I said. ‘I completely understand. I have no idea how you’ve kept so calm all this time. You mustn’t bottle it up. We must help each other. You should have said something about it before.’

  ‘You have your own worries, I know,’ she said. ‘I had no right to bring my troubles to you.’

  ‘Harriet, I know we started out on this project—that is, I know I started out on this project—on the wrong foot with you. Since then I’ve gained a great deal of respect for you, and I’m very fond of you. I want you talk to me as you would to any other friend, whenever you want to.’

  She looked at me and gave a sad smile. ‘That’s very sweet of you.’ Suddenly, she leaned forward and kissed me briefly and coolly on the lips. Then she stood up and made for the bathroom, saying over her shoulder, ‘I must clean my face up. Thank you, Fred. Goodnight, and sleep well.’

  I came back to my room, and now as I sit here finishing this entry in my diary, I still feel the touch of her lips on mine.

  §

  Sunday 20 November

  Harriet and I went for a walk along the wadi this morning, before the sun got too hot. We left the sheikh’s house very early, and Ibrahim drove us down the bed of the Wadi Aleyn and as far along it as he could get the Land Cruiser, which was a lot further than I could have managed. Then he went and sat on the ground on the shady side of the vehicle, his back propped against it, and let us get on with it.

  I had thought there would be a constraint from last night, and that Harriet would feel embarrassed by the fact I had found her in tears. But she said, as we set out along the wadi, ‘Thank you for last night. It helped to talk about it all.’

  I said I was glad if I had been of help.

  As we walked up the path that ran alongside the wadi, I felt a feeling of contentment I had not known for a very long time. Sheer rock walls formed the sides of a canyon, and above their tops I could discern ridges of higher mountains yet. The sky was a dark blue, and buzzards screeched and wheeled far above—their eerie cries echoed between the rock walls. There was little vegetation here: a few thorn bushes, tufts of grass, the green fading to brown as the memory of the summer rains disappeared. Here the wadi became steeper, and I could envisage it as a series of rills and small waterfalls when it was full. The salmon could get up this far. We turned a corner in the canyon and to my delight the area widened out into a gravel plateau, dissected by the dry beds of smaller streams that formed the tributaries of the main wadi.

  The sight of those gravel beds filled me with excitement. I said to Harriet, ‘Spawning grounds. If the salmon ever get this far up, they will love this.’ I bent down and scooped some of the grav
el up and let it trickle through my fingers. ‘The gravel is small enough here for the salmon to dig trenches with their fins and lay their eggs in them. I would never have imagined it! Perfect!’

  Harriet smiled at me. ‘You look like a little boy who’s been given a toy car,’ she said. Then her smile faded. We were looking at each other and there must have been an expression on my face that gave me away, that gave away the fact I had at that minute, and in that second, fallen in love with her. I didn’t even know it until I saw the look on her face.

  ‘Fred…’ she started to say, in an uncertain tone, but I had caught sight of movement behind her. Someone was coming.

  Harriet turned round, and we both saw a girl walking towards us. She was dark-skinned and thin, not veiled but dressed in a sitara, a brightly coloured robe of greens and pinks, and she wore a headscarf of a deep rose colour. In that barren place the vividness of her dress was all the more striking. On her head she balanced a pitcher and in her hand she carried something. As we watched her approach, I saw that she had come from a small house, not much more than a cave, which had been built into the side of the mountain wall that formed the far boundary of the gravel plateau we were standing on. I now saw that the side of the mountain had been terraced in places and that there were a few rows of crops growing on the terraces. Small black and brown goats stepped up and down amongst the rocks with acrobatic grace, chewing the tops of the thorn bushes.

  As the girl approached she gave a shy smile and said, ‘Salaam alaikum, ’ and we replied, ‘Wa alaikum as salaam, ’ as the sheikh had taught us. She took the pitcher from where it was balanced on her head, kneeled on the ground, and gestured to us to sit. She poured water from the pitcher into two small tin cups, and handed them to us. Then she reached into her robe and drew out a flat package of greaseproof paper from which she withdrew a thin, round piece of bread, almost like a large flat biscuit. She broke off two pieces, and handed one to each of us, and gestured to us to eat and drink. The water and the bread were both delicious. We smiled and mimed our thanks until I remembered the Arabic word, ‘Shukran.’

  So we sat together for a while, strangers who could speak no word of each other’s languages, and I marvelled at her simple act. She had seen two people walking in the heat, and so she laid down whatever she had been doing and came to render us a service. Because it was the custom, because her faith told her it was right to do so, because her action was as natural to her as the water that she poured for us. When we declined any further refreshment after a second cup of water she rose to her feet, murmured some word of farewell, and turned and went back to the house she had come from.

  Harriet and I looked at each other as the girl walked back to her house. ‘That was so…biblical,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Can you imagine that ever happening at home?’ I asked. She shook her head. ‘That was charity. Giving water to strangers in the desert, where water is so scarce. That was true charity, the charity of poor people giving to the rich.’

  In Britain a stranger offering a drink to a thirsty man in a lonely place would be regarded with suspicion. If someone had approached us like that at home, we would probably have assumed they were a little touched or we were going to be asked for money. We might have protected ourselves by being stiff and unfriendly, evasive or even rude.

  My thoughts turned back to the water we had just drunk. I asked Harriet, ‘Did you notice how cold the water was?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘it was delicious.’

  ‘That means there is a well somewhere near here, going deep into the aquifer. To be that cold it must be a long way from the surface. If we can get water at that temperature pumping into the wadi, my salmon will have a far better chance of survival.’

  ‘Our salmon,’ said Harriet.

  We turned and walked back down the canyon to where Ibrahim was waiting.

  This evening the sheikh noticed a difference in my mood and asked what we had found on our walk. I told him of the gravel plateau where I thought fish might spawn, and I told him of the girl who had poured out for us the cold water of the aquifer, and he heard the excitement and pleasure in my voice. He said, ‘Now you are beginning to believe, Dr Alfred. You are beginning to believe it could happen. You are beginning to learn to have faith.’

  I remembered the words he had spoken a few weeks before, or maybe they were words which had formed themselves in my head: ‘Faith comes before hope, and hope before love.’

  ‘We will live to see those salmon swim the Wadi Aleyn, Sheikh,’ I told him.

  He answered, ‘The salmon will swim the wadi in due time, and if God spares me, I will see them.’ I thought of the man who had come through the trees at Glen Tulloch and tried to shoot the sheikh, and I knew he was expecting another such to come.

  Harriot went upstairs, and I sat for a while talking with the sheikh. He was in a communicative mood. We talked about the ancient land that was now the Yemen: the frankincense trade routes across the desert, the arrival of Greeks, Sabaeans, Romans, all seeking the fabled riches of gold and spices from this remote tip of the Arabian peninsula. He told me about the arrival of Islam and the Imams of Zaidi (‘to whom I am a distant relation,’ added the sheikh with pride) over 1200 years ago.

  ‘This house was first built in the year 942. according to your calendar, and in the year 320 according to ours, and my family have lived here ever since, here and in Sana’a. It always interests me when European people come here, that they have no idea how old our civilisation is. Do you not think we have learned how to live and conduct our lives according to God, in that time? That is why some of our people hate the West so much. They wonder what the West has to offer that is so compelling that it must be imposed upon us, replacing our religion of God with the religion of money, replacing our piety and our poverty with consumer goods that we do not need, forcing money upon us that we cannot spend or if we do, cannot repay, loosening the ties that hold together families and tribes, corroding our faith, corroding our morality.’

  It was the first time I had ever heard him speak so openly, this usually guarded and private man. And I realise it must have been because he was beginning to trust me, because I myself am changing.

  §

  Monday 21 November

  I wrote my diary entry for yesterday before I went to bed. I took some time over it because I want to capture as faithfully as I can everything that happens on this journey. It is a journey, in more than one sense. One day I hope this diary will be a record of something momentous, but whether that momentous thing is the arrival of the salmon or some other event in my life, I am not sure.

  Last night I had a dream. I fell fast asleep as soon as I climbed into bed, but then I dreamed that a sound awakened me, and that Harriet was in my room standing by the bed, naked. I dreamed that she climbed in beside me, and the rest of the dream I don’t wish to write about even to myself, but it was the most wonderful, the most real dream I have ever had. When I awakened the memory of the dream came to me at once. My lips felt bruised. I wondered if perhaps it had been more than a dream. I tried to see if I could smell her perfume on the pillow, but somewhere they were burning frankincense again, and its rich, spicy smell was everywhere. It must have been a dream. I dreamed it because something has happened between myself and Harriet. I felt it on the mountain when we walked up the dry riverbed together. I felt it, and I don’t know what Harriet feels or thinks, but my wish that she should feel for me what I now feel for her is so strong it must have invaded my subconscious and directed all my dreams last night.

  It was pure wish-fulfilment, of course.

  I am married to Mary and have been happily married to her for many years. I know we are having a difficult passage in our life at present, but it is unthinkable we could part, that there could ever be anyone else in my life. I am just not that sort of person.

  Am I?

  Harriet is engaged to her soldier and visibly pining for him, and therefore nothing could possibly happen between Harriet and m
e. Therefore it must have been a dream.

  But if it wasn’t! What then?

  I cannot sit still. Something has happened to me, but what? The windows are open and a soft breeze off the mountains is moving the curtains. It is still early. A golden sunrise is infusing the edges of the soaring cliffs and ridges around us and above us. Through my window come faint scents—of flowers I have never smelled before, of unknown spices. The noise of the village waking comes with them: cocks crowing, the bray of a donkey, the clatter of tin water containers, and occasionally a burst of Arabic.

  I have journeyed this far, to this strange place. The man who started the journey months ago as a staid, respected scientist at the National Centre for Fisheries Excellence is not the same man now standing at a window looking out onto the wild mountains of the Yemen. How much farther will this journey go? Where will it end, and how will it end?

  23

  Extract from Hansard

  House of Commons

  Monday 28th November

  (Mr Speaker in the Chair)

  Oral or Written Questions for Answer

  Written Answers

  Mr Charles Capet (Rutland South) (Con):

  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will comment on a report in the Daily Telegraph concerning an explosion at a military installation in western Iran. Will he comment as to the possible involvement in this event of a team from 41 Commando (RM) to which I referred in a previous question laid before this House? Will he once again look into the whereabouts of Captain Robert Matthews, as I requested in a previous question to him? And will he comment as to what, if any, measures are being taken to ensure the safe return of Captain Matthews to his regiment?