2007 - Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (9 page)

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

Harriet

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

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

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

Press comment

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.

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 regarded 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.

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.

Comment

We acknowledge that we have, from time to time, sung the praises of the National Centre for Fisheries Excellence. This organisation had established for itself within the angling community a reputation for good science and common sense.

Fly-fishing has become ‘cool’ in the USA, and even in the UK we are discarding our waxed jackets for the latest in clothing technology from Orvis, Snowbee and many other manufacturers. Films are made about fishing, once regarded as the most boring of sports. This trend was firmly set by the making of
A River Runs Through It
in 1992, while television programmes about fishing such as
A Passion for Angling
and Go
Fishing
attract prime-time audiences and are repeated endlessly on satellite channels.

So, fishing is fashionable, and its appeal crosses borders and it is becoming truly international, but nothing so far has prepared us for the idea that the mountains of the Heraz, in the Republic of Yemen, are soon to become the next playground for internationally minded game fishermen seeking the latest salmon fishing thrill.

Who is making this happen? A prominent and wealthy citizen of the Yemen has teamed up with the National Centre for Fisheries Excellence, an organisation we would not have anticipated would become involved in an adventure of this kind. But money talks and the millions of pounds that Sheikh Muhammad of the Wadi Aleyn is spending are talking loudly enough to grab the attention of the NCFE and even (it is rumoured) the director of communications at Number 10 Downing Street.