A Foreign Affair
Authors: Stella Russell
A Foreign Affair
Stella Russell
© Stella Russell 2013
Stella Russell has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published 2013 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
Table of Contents
Prologue
You may already know me or, at least,
of
me...
Cast your mind back to 2007, to a tabloid tale of a ‘Princess Di-alike’ with ‘flashing sapphire eyes’ and ‘a ruddy nerve’, deported back from Yemen in hand-cuffs.
In the end I got off lightly, could count myself lucky he wasn’t sentencing me to ten years in Holloway, was what the judge said. ‘Miss Flashman,’ he pronounced, ‘your case has provided an important object lesson for those of us who dream of blithely quitting these shores for foreign climes without prior knowledge of where we might go, or with what or whom we might involve ourselves. However,’ he sighed, ‘to punish you with the statutory 10-year custodial sentence for your offence would, in my opinion, be a wicked waste of over £400,000 of British taxpayers’ money.’
Instead, he referred me to the Raddington to have my head examined for a fraction of that price, and there at the Raddington I was soon embarked on a course of writing therapy. What follows is the unexpurgated tale of the single week I spent in Yemen in the spring of 2007, a girl’s own adventure story for our times if ever there was one!
Chapter One
‘
Ahlan
wa
sahlan
- you are most heartily welcome, Madam!’
The first Yemeni I’d ever encountered looked gratifyingly dazzled at the sight of me. Good, I thought; I’d carefully planned that in the dead white heat of an early Aden afternoon my gauzy Nile-green cotton tunic with sequin detailing at the neckline combined with a nimble handling of my transition from dinghy to jetty, would make a favourably strong impression on whoever awaited me ashore. Self-possession is nine-tenths of how you open doors, I always say.
‘Excuse me, but for one moment I believed you were that most beautiful and gracious of ladies, Princess Diana of Wales, until I remembered that dear lady’s passing away...’ he said, one hand on heart and his head humbly bowed, extending a hand to assist me with my silver wheelie case.
He was sweating in his tangerine orange shirt, with what might have been an Indian tablecloth tucked around his large stomach like a bath-towel and a pair of grey ankle socks and pristine Nike trainers on his feet. After describing himself as an immigration officer, he pressed his Raybans into service as an Alice band, shrugged accommodatingly at my lack of a Yemeni visa while handling my passport with the utmost reverence, and declared: ‘Dear Madam, allow me to wish you a long and pleasant stay in Aden, which was the first jewel in the crown of your Queen Victoria’s empire, if you remember...
‘Oh?’
‘Yes! You have forgotten, of course, but see how well we have remembered you British,’ he said, pointing up at a fresh-looking sign that read Prince of Wales Pier. ‘At my own suggestion the name was reinstated when this area of town was improved a few years ago!’
‘Wonderful!’ I said. I’d winced at his bizarre demonstration of nostalgia for an imperial past most Brits would prefer forgiven and forgotten, like some old snap of ourselves sporting a tank-top or shoulder pads. But then I recalled that the tone of the document responsible for my presence in Yemen in the first place - Sheikh al-Abrali’s recent letter to my employer, the editor of the
Daily
Register
, about an imperial tidemark, the 50th anniversary of the British withdrawal from Aden – had been identical.
Dear
Sir
, it had read
My
warmest
greetings
to
the
readers
of
your
mighty
organ
and
especially
to
those
who
are
citizens
of
Brighton
,
where
I
learned
your
glorious
tongue
!
I
,
the
sheikh
of
the
also
mighty
Abrali
tribe
of
south
Yemen
,
beg
leave
to
remind
you
that
exactly
half
a
century
has
passed
since
your
great
Great
Britain
ceased
to
rule
over
its
Crown
Colony
of
Aden
and
surrounding
East
and
West
Aden
protectorates
.
On
this
50th
anniversary
of
your
departure
from
our
shores
,
do
you
Great
British
remember
the
hundreds
of
noble
public
servants
and
brave
servicemen
who
lived
and
died
in
the
service
of
this
small
but
once
very
precious
corner
of
your
glorious
dominions
?
May
I
remind
you
and
all
your
compatriots
that
here
in
Aden
we
are
still
tending
not
one
,
but
two
cemeteries
filled
with
the
holy
bones
of
your
heroes
.
The
sleep
of
those
dead
is
peaceful
but
not
so
the
lives
of
the
children
and
grandchildren
of
those
you
once
ruled
.
Aden
,
all
the
south
of
Yemen
,
moans
and
groans
under
the
brutal
boot
of
northern
tribesmen
.
Lawlessness
and
hunger
and
injustice
and
the
twin
scourges
of
al
-
Qaeda
and
Somali
pirates
stalk
the
area
you
once
cared
for
like
a
good
parent
.
Oh
gracious
,
just
Albion
,
will
you
be
deaf
to
your
southern
Arabian
foster
children’s
cries
?
Your
duty
is
a
moral
and
urgent
one
!
Yours
faithfully
,
Sheikh
Ahmad
bin
Hussein
bin
Mustafa
bin
Hussein
bin
Mustafa
bin
Walid
,
bin
Ahmad
bin
Mustafa
bin
Hussein
al
-
Abrali
.
The immigration officer - Aziz, as I’d shortly learn to call him - continued in the same vein: ‘You will discover that the people of south Yemen, especially us Adenis, remember you British very, very, very kindly. You have nothing whatever to fear here!’
‘I didn’t think I had.’
Was there any call for this majestic mode I’d somehow adopted, I asked myself, until it occurred to me that at this far remove from anyone and anything I knew I needn’t worry. I could relax, be whoever I liked and why not a female pillar of Queen Victoria’s British Empire for a change? I admit, playing that particular part flattered the Flashman genes I’ve always been enormously, some – my sister-in-law Fiona for one – might say inordinately proud of. ‘I never believe what I read in the papers about things like pirates and kidnappings and entire countries falling to al-Qaeda,’ I told him, drawing myself up to my full height and squaring my shoulders.
‘Ha!’ he chuckled, ‘You look and speak like a true British lady, Madam, a lady such as my uncles remember so well from the good old days. An Englishwoman is as courageous and noble as a lion they told me!’ With the delicate tip of his little finger he stroked first the lion and the unicorn and then the golden crown on the cover of my passport.
I was tempted to giggle but, still in imperial mode, replied; ‘Now, would you be so kind as to recommend a hotel? I gather the Crescent’s the place to stay.’
From a long afternoon spent listening to an ancient acquaintance of my brother Ralph’s, a senior member of his London club, describe his years as a magistrate in the last years of the Aden Colony before it ‘all went to pot’, I’d gleaned only two useful pointers. First, I must be sure to arrive to Aden by boat. Second, I must ‘put up’ at the Crescent Hotel.
The atrocious heat I’d encountered in following his first instruction had already inclined to me to mistrust his injunctions. My descent of the Suez Canal and the best part of the Red Sea by Egyptian container ship, and by petrol tanker thence for the short hop to Aden from Djibouti, had been hellfire-ish. Only the certain knowledge that nothing good awaited me back home – whether with Ralph and Fiona at Widderton or in London – prevented me from abandoning ship and heading north again to the cool. By day I’d been dragged through boiling, soggy cotton wool while by night after night, incarcerated in the airless tin coffins of my cabins, I’d prayed for that daytime torture to begin all over again. Nevertheless, better all that than my sister-in-law’s ‘I told you so’ and the bailiffs at the door of my flat, but only just.
My first view of Aden was no compensation for all that discomfort. I might just as well have touched down by plane at night for all the
frisson
of pleasure I got from the sight of its famous ‘black rocks’ cradling an off-white sprawl of buildings which I assumed to be ‘Crater’, the commercial heart of Aden according to Ralph’s old friend. The only other sights of note were a colourful fairground wheel, a slightly scaled-down replica of Big Ben on cliff, and a giant bill-board displaying the face of a man with gleaming white teeth on one of the high-rises overlooking the harbour. All in all, I was more than prepared to ignore the old boy’s advice about the Crescent Hotel.
‘Yes, the Crescent! Yes...Yes,’ said Aziz, looking suddenly deflated, ‘I can confirm that in the good old days certainly the Crescent was a fine, clean lodging place. Your queen herself condescended to rest her freshly crowned head there when she visited Aden in 1954?’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. I would not lie to you. But these days I am very sad to say that it is a centre of base vice, with a rear view of the city’s security headquarters.’ Eyeing my silver case gleaming in the late afternoon sunshine bathing the pier, he said ‘For you Madam, only our five-star Aden or Sheraton hotels will be suitable and it will be my pleasure, my honour indeed, to transport you to one of them.’
‘Please take me to the Aden Hotel then,’ I said, adding under my breath, ‘I haven’t travelled all this way in roasting sardine cans to stay in a Sheraton.’
My word appeared to be Aziz’s command. He turned away to yell at one of the dozen or so youths – their nether parts similarly wrapped in bath-towels, futas, as I learned to call them - who were lounging on the nearly corniche wall under the meagre shade of a palm tree with their left cheeks distended like cartoon characters with toothaches. I gathered from Aziz that they’d been enjoying a post-prandial
qat
chew, the daily cure-all of the Yemeni male, involving hours spent masticating the small new leaves of a shrub that possessed powers akin to those of strong coffee. With a little pink plastic
qat
bag still dangling from his wrist and his teeth edged in a mossy residue, a skinny lad in flip-flops scampered along the pier towards us to obey an instruction to wheel my luggage to Aziz’s car. Then the three of us, in a two-one formation – my self-appointed boon companion Aziz and I, followed by the porter lad – made for Aziz’s car.
A shiny top-of-the-range white Toyota LandCruiser, it was stuffed to the gunnels with furry mats and lace doilies, dangling prayer beads, a mini Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock and a box of pink tissues, as well as the usual flight deck’s worth of illuminated gadgetry on its dashboard. For what I knew to be a very poor country indeed, Yemen paid its immigration officers surprisingly well, I thought. But what did I know or understand about the place at that stage? Nothing whatsoever. Possibly sensing my ignorance, Aziz turned on the air conditioning and set about remedying it with a guided tour of his city by luxury refrigerator on wheels.
‘This cool is heavenly! You won’t make me get out and look at anything, will you?’ I begged him.