2007 - Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (33 page)

We have sold the flat in London and bought a smaller one as neither of us is there very often. We travel to London once every other month. We meet and have dinner together, and try and make some sense of our lives. I’m not sure we will succeed. We’ve agreed we will remain married. Neither of us can think of anything else to do with our lives. We both have our work. I’ve told Mary I don’t want her to feel financially responsible for me. She agrees, but I think she wants to look after me, really, if only I would let her. But I’m happy, here in these hills, raising juvenile fish and putting them into the river. These little salmon fry have more chance here than they would in the Yemen. This is their natural habitat, and this is my natural habitat, too.

In the evenings I read a lot. I can’t get a television signal where I live, and I can’t afford to pay for satellite TV. I don’t miss it. I never watched it much, anyway. So I read. I read anything and everything, and at weekends, if I’m not in London, I browse the shelves of the secondhand bookshops in Alnwick and Morpeth, my nearest towns. I can’t run to new books, but it seems to me so many good books have already been written I don’t need to get new ones. I buy handfuls of old novels and biographies for a few pounds, or sometimes I just trade in the ones I have read. They let me do that. I’m a good customer. I buy the classics—Dickens, Thackeray, Fielding. Lately I’ve started on books of essays—Hazlitt, Browne, and so on. In one of them I read something I rather liked, and I’ve got it here. I keep it with me. I’ll read it to you, if you like.

‘And we recall that Tertullian, the son of a centurion that lived in Carthage, who wrote many sacred texts discoursing on the gospels, and on the nature of faith, once wrote ‘
Certum, impossible est
.’ It is certain that this thing is impossible. Others aver that what Tertullian wrote was not ‘
Certum, impossibile est
‘ but ‘
Credo, quia impossibile est
.’ I believe in it, because it is impossible.’

I like that. Don’t you?

I believe in it, because it is impossible.

Conclusions of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee

The decision to introduce salmon into the Yemen

Conclusions and recommendations

1. We conclude that it appears likely given the body of evidence that the decision to introduce salmon into the Yemen was not taken by any minister, but was the initiative of a private Yemeni citizen, the late Sheikh Muhammad ibn Zaidi bani Tihama.
   
2. We conclude that the home secretary was, as he stated in the House of Commons, unaware of the alleged attempt at an assassination of the Sheikh Muhammad at his residence in Scotland by an alleged member of al-Qaeda. As this event was never proven to have occurred by a UK court, we cannot criticise the home secretary or the security services for failing to predict another such attempt, which is alleged to have taken place in the Wadi Aleyn shortly before the hydrological event which unfortunately terminated the life of the prime minister.
   
3. In relation to the matter that was brought up during evidence of the death of Captain Robert Matthews, we conclude that the secretary of state for defence was genuinely unaware that Captain Matthews was on a mission in Iran, without the knowledge of ministers, and no blame can be attached to anyone for the unfortunate series of events which led to Captain Matthews being posted as Missing in Action.
   
4. We conclude that the director of communications, Mr Peter Maxwell, was acting on his own initiative in advising the late Mr Jay Vent PM to take notice of the Yemen salmon project, and that Mr Peter Maxwell had concluded that some electoral advantage could be gained from Mr Vent’s presence at the launch of the Yemen salmon project, and that was his basis for recommending Mr Vent’s involvement with the project.
   
5. We recommend that future directors of communications have their job descriptions phrased so as to make clear their role is to communicate, and not to take future prime ministers into harm’s way, regardless of electoral considerations. We recommend that Peter Maxwell should not be reinstated in his former role.
   
6. We conclude that insufficient attention was given to risk assessment by the project engineers and managers, notwithstanding that such assessments are not required in Yemeni law as they would be under the UK Health & Safety at Work Act. Had such an assessment been carried out, the hydrological event which led to the death of the prime minister and others might have been predicted and appropriate precautions taken. Notwithstanding this conclusion, we are unable to say that any one individual was culpable in this matter.
   
7. We conclude that the National Centre for Fisheries Excellence exceeded its mandate in agreeing to act as the primary technical resource for the Yemen salmon project, and we recommend that the centre be disbanded and merged with the Environment Agency.
   
8. We conclude that, in policy terms, we cannot endorse the view of the prime minister’s office that an initiative involving the introduction of salmon into the Yemen would sit alongside its other policies in the region, which are mainly focused on military intervention in protection of regional oil resources and associated attempts at introducing the democratic process. We believe the government should choose between salmon and democracy in its regional initiatives. The combination of the two sends a confusing signal to regional players.
   
9. Nevertheless we have detected a benign outcome from the tragic death of the late James Vent PM. The perception in the region that UK policy can also focus on non-military, non-oil-related subjects, such as fly-fishing, has not been entirely negative. On the contrary, we understand that a statue of the late prime minister and Sheikh Muhammad ibn Zaidi bani Tihama is being subscribed for, showing both of them in chest waders and carrying fishing rods, as they were when last seen alive. This will be erected in the centre of Sana’a, if planning permission can be obtained.
   

Readers may find the following helpful.

alevin: the earliest stage of the salmon after hatch, a translucent creature with an umbilical sac

Allahu akhbar
: God is great anadromous: able to tolerate both freshwater and saline environments

Bedu
: nomadic desert tribesman inhabiting the Arabian peninsula

broodstock: hen fish from which eggs are stripped for rearing in a hatchery

caddis fly: invertebrate insect resident of freshwater streams (
Limnephilus genus
)

DEFRA: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

dissolved oxygen: The level of dissolved oxygen in a river is an indicator of how well migratory fish are likely to survive in it. The lower the level, the more they are at risk.

diwan
: room set aside for the use of gentlemen wishing to chew khat (see below)

diyah
: blood money

Environment Agency: department of DEFRA with responsibility for the management of rivers, the rural environment, flood management, and the enforcement of anti-pollution legislation

falaj
: ancient system of irrigation used in and regious consisting of stone tunnels or conduits taking water from aquifers in the mountains to farmers and others in more low-lying areas

FCO: Foreign & Commonwealth Office

fry: Once the baby alevin has absorbed the contents of its yolk sac it becomes a fry.

genetic integrity: idea, dear to fisheries scientists, that the genetic purity of salmon from a particular river should be preserved and not diluted by the presence of fish from other rivers—illegal when applied to humans

gillie: man or boy employed on many Scottish salmon rivers to stand at your elbow and explain why you are unlikely to catch a fish with your present technique

glide: when the current in a river is enough to turn a salmon fly but not fast enough to be a riffle (see below)

Hansard
: official record of proceedings of the British Houses of Parliament

imam
: someone who leads prayers in a mosque, a person of authority in the community

invertebrate: creature with no spine

jambia
: curved dagger much favoured by Yemenis

jazr
: Yemeni term for worker in an unclean trade, such as a butcher

jebel
: general Arabic word for mountains

jihadi
: person who devotes his or her life to the religious struggle, sometimes inaccurately conflated with a suicide bomber or assassin

khat
: mildly narcotic leaf which is chewed

NCFE: National Centre for Fisheries Excellence, one of a number of scientific organisations researching into fishery management, now abolished

parr: next stage of development of a salmon after a fry, similar in appearance to a baby brown trout, about the size of a finger with brown markings

riffle: when the surface of the river water is slightly broken, and the current is moving faster than a glide (see above)

Salaam alaikum
: traditional Arab greeting (May God be with you)

salmonid: migratory fish including salmon and sea trout

sayyid
: ruling class in the Yemen, a title given to tribal or religious leaders who claim descent from the Prophet Muhammad

sebkha
: white encrustation of salt on the surface of the desert usually indicating the presence of moisture, a sign of quicksand

selta
: vegetable broth very popular in the highlands of the Yemen

sharia
: law as practised and observed by the Prophet Muhammad in his lifetime, in force in certain countries in the Muslim world

sitara
: colourful shawl worn by women in the highlands of the Yemen

smolt: The juvenile salmon, at some point between sixteen months and two years after achieving parr form, starts to change physiologically. It develops salt-excreting cells, and it takes on a silvery appearance. Once fully silvered it becomes known as a smolt, a fish about six inches long. In this form it makes its way downriver to the saltwater estuary. From there, by degrees, it makes it way in the company of other smolts and salmon to the feeding grounds in the North Atlantic where it may remain from one to four years.

Spey cast: an elaborate double-looped cast much beloved by Highland gillies which has the merit that the fisherman never gets his line tangled up in the bank or the trees behind (as in an overhead cast) because the loop of the Spey cast is always in front

thobe
: a robe worn in the highlands of the Yemen and in Saudi Arabia

wadi
: a riverbed dry except in the rainy season (when it is a river)