Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

‘Who is this Number 10?’ asked the sheikh, pretending to look puzzled.

‘I mean by the prime minister’s office.’

‘Of course, the prime minister is most welcome then or at any time. He has only to say, and we will receive him in our modest home and he can join with us and enjoy his passion for fishing for as much time as his busy life will permit him to stay. You, too, are most welcome, Mr Maxwell. Are you also a passionate fisherman?’

‘I don’t know how,’ said Mr Maxwell. ‘Never had the time to try. I’d like to come, though. May I take it that we have your invitation to attend the opening of the Yemen salmon project, whenever that might be?’

‘Of course, of course,’ said the sheikh. ‘We would be greatly honoured.’

‘And, Sheikh,’ said Peter Maxwell, ‘of course I don’t know how long Jay can stay until we can look at dates with you, but I presume if I give you some dates he currently has free, we could work the project launch timetable around that?’

‘Dr Alfred and Ms Harriet Chetwode-Talbot are the guardians of the project, Mr Maxwell, and you must speak with them about dates and arrangements of that kind.’

Peter Maxwell looked at me and said, ‘You’ll keep me in the loop, Fred.’ It was an order, not a question. Then he turned back to the sheikh and said, ‘One last thing, Sheikh. Jay-the prime minister, I mean-thinks it would be a great idea for the project if he could be photographed beside you with a rod in his hand. Maybe we could organise for him to catch a salmon, or something, while he’s there. We sort of imagine that if he can fly into Sana’a, catch a helicopter down to the site, maybe spend twenty minutes meeting the project team and getting a few handshake photos, maybe present some sort of award, then twenty minutes with you guys-I mean you, Sheikh, and some of those people we saw out on the lawn earlier today-all with fishing rods. We could get some more group photos. It would be great if everyone was wearing full tribal dress with those dagger things. Maybe Jay could do a quick change into some sort of kit, you know, like he was an honorary tribesman…’

I felt myself blushing on behalf of Peter Maxwell but the sheikh only smiled and nodded. ‘And will the prime minister be able to spare twenty minutes to catch a salmon with me?’

‘We’ll have to work up a schedule but, yes, we need a good photo of Jay catching a salmon. Maybe the first salmon ever caught in the Arabian peninsula. That would be great publicity for the project. Of course, we’d let you use the photos in all your marketing literature.’

‘Sometimes it takes a little longer to catch a fish,’ said the sheikh. ‘Even here, in Glen Tulloch, where we have many salmon, it may take hours or days before one is caught.’

‘I’ll leave that to Fred,’ said Peter Maxwell. ‘He’s the salmon expert. But, Fred, the prime minister is going to expect to hook a fish. I don’t much care how you do it, but you need to make sure that happens.’

I just stared at him, but the sheikh spoke before I could say what I felt like telling Peter Maxwell to go and do. ‘I am sure Dr Alfred will find a way of keeping your prime minister happy. If he is a passionate fisherman, as you say, then he will be happy whatever happens, and it will give me great pleasure to greet him in the Wadi Aleyn and to welcome him as our guest, and to fish with him on our new river. Perhaps Dr Alfred can find him a fish. It will be as God wills.’

‘Great,’ said Peter Maxwell. ‘We think this project is an excellent idea, Sheikh, very imaginative and innovative, and the prime minister is delighted you are using British engineers and scientists to achieve your goals. We very much want to be a part of it, so that the Yemen nation can understand that we British are a sympathetic ally, pro-democracy and pro-fishing, ready to share our technology to help aspiring Yemeni anglers fulfil their dreams.’

He looked around the table as if he had made a speech, to see what effect it had had on us. I suppose it was a sort of speech. The sheikh nodded and said, ‘I am not a political man, Mr Maxwell, just someone who wants to share the joy of salmon fishing with a few of my tribe, and show them what can be done if there is faith enough.’

‘With your faith and our technology, we will have salmon leaping all over the place,’ said Peter Maxwell, ‘and you can expect a lot of high-rolling, big-spending tourists coming in to benefit from the Yemen salmon experience, I am sure. It will repay your investment many times. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a few emails I need to deal with before I go to bed.’ And he picked up his Blackberry and went upstairs.

‘I do not think Mr Maxwell quite understands us yet,’ said the sheikh when Peter Maxwell had left the room. ‘But perhaps, one day, God will reveal himself to him and help him understand.’

The three of us sat together for a while longer, the candles on the dining-room table burning low. Being with Sheikh Muhammad had a calming effect on me, especially now we were without the abrasive presence of Peter Maxwell. For a while no one spoke.

I wondered if the sheikh would say something more about Peter Maxwell, for although he had shown not the least sign of it, I was sure he disliked him. Instead he surprised me by turning his eyes upon me and saying, ‘You seem sad, Dr Alfred.’

I did not know what to say. I flushed again and was thankful that in the candlelight the change in my colour was probably not obvious. I saw Harriet look from the sheikh to me, intently.

‘Oh…nothing. A few problems at home, that’s all,’ I said.

‘You have illness in your home?’

‘No, it’s nothing like that.’

‘Then do not tell me, for it is not my affair. But I regret to see your sadness, Dr Alfred. I would rather see you with an untroubled spirit and with your whole heart and mind bent upon our project. You need to learn to have faith, Dr Alfred. We believe that faith is the cure that heals all troubles. Without faith there is no hope and no love. Faith comes before hope, and before love.’

‘I’m not very religious, I’m afraid,’ I said.

‘You cannot know,’ said the sheikh. ‘You have not looked inside yourself, and you have never asked yourself the question. One day, perhaps, something will happen that will cause you to ask yourself that question. I think you will be surprised at the answer that comes back.’

He smiled, as if he realised the conversation was getting a little deep for the time of night, and then made a gesture with his hand. Malcolm materialised from nowhere, startling me, for I was absorbed in what the sheikh was saying, without understanding him. The butler must have been standing in the shadows of the dining room, watching, perhaps listening. He pulled back the chair as the sheikh stood up. Harriet and I both got up at the same time.

‘Good night,’ said the sheikh. ‘May your sleep bring you peace of mind.’ Then he was gone.

Harriet and I walked slowly up the staircase together without speaking. On the landing, she turned to me and said, ‘Fred, if ever there’s anything you want to talk about…talk to me. I can see things are not right with you. I hope you can count me as a friend. I don’t want you to be unhappy either.’ She leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek and I smelled her warm perfume. Her hand brushed mine for a moment. Then she turned away.

‘Thanks,’ I said to her, as she walked down the corridor to her room. I don’t know if she heard me.

I thought for a while about my life as I undressed in my bedroom. It was warm, and a fire still burned low in the grate. I hung my borrowed evening clothes in the wardrobe and changed into my borrowed pyjamas and, having brushed my teeth, climbed between the white linen sheets of the enormous, soft bed.

What a strange evening it had been.

I remember thinking as I lay in bed that everything about my life is strange now. I am sailing in uncharted waters and my old life is a distant shore, still visible through the haze of retrospection, but receding to a grey line on the horizon. What lies ahead, I do not know. What had the sheikh said? I could feel sleep coming upon me fast, and the words that came into my mind, my last waking thought, were his but also seemed to come from somewhere else: ‘Faith comes before hope, and before love.’

I slept better that night than I had done for a long time.

Interrogator:

Describe how you found the salmon?

Alfred Jones:

It is not my happiest memory. The chartered helicopter came to pick us up after breakfast the next morning and the sheikh, Harriet, Peter Maxwell and I climbed in and buckled our straps. The blades started turning and then, in a moment, the grey roofs and soft green lawns of Glen Tulloch were slipping sideways below us. We flew amongst the scurrying rain clouds and over the brown moors beyond the house, which sloped gradually upwards to become craggy mountains.

Then the helicopter found a line of lochs heading southwest. I think it must have been the Great Glen. Low clouds brushed against the helicopter and obscured the view from time to time until suddenly the sky cleared and it seemed as if we were flying straight into a brilliant sun. Below us now, sheets of water alternated with the spongy greens and browns of headlands, and I saw we were losing height and approaching the shore of a sea loch. I glimpsed the structures I expected to see below us.

We landed in an empty car park next to some Portakabins. Beyond them was a jetty with a couple of boats tied up, and beyond that, metal structures in the loch glinted in the sunlight. As the rotors stopped spinning, a door in one of the Portakabins opened, and two figures in oilskins and hard hats came out to greet us.

When we were on the ground the first of them shouted above the engine noise, ‘Dr Jones? Dr Alfred Jones?’

The pilot cut the engines and I said, ‘That’s me. Archie Campbell?’

‘Aye, that’s me. Welcome to McSalmon Aqua Farms, Dr Jones.’

I presented Peter Maxwell and Harriet and the sheikh to him. The sheikh was wearing a beret and a military-looking pullover with epaulettes, and khaki drill trousers. Harriet and I were in waxed jackets and jeans. Peter Maxwell was wearing a white trench coat over his suit and looked, I thought, like a private detective from a bad film.

Archie Campbell gestured behind him to the cages moored in the loch.

‘You want a tour?’

‘That was rather the idea.’

We went into the Portakabin and were handed cups of hot Nescafe. Then Archie Campbell said, ‘Well, now. Let me tell you what we do here. We raise the finest, freshest salmon that money can buy. Don’t believe what they tell you. There’s nothing wrong with farmed salmon. And at least you know where they’ve been, not like the wild ones which could have swum through anything!’

He roared with laughter to show it was a joke. On the wall of the cabin was a laminated chart showing the different stages of rearing farmed salmon: the freshwater hatchery where the broodstock was reared to become alevins, then fry; the cages where the salmon parr were released and grown to smolts; the big cages further out in the saltwater of the loch where the smolts were ranched to become mature salmon. Archie led us through all this and then, when it was obvious we had had enough, suggested a tour by boat.

There was a converted fishing boat tied up to a jetty; we climbed in and slowly chugged out into the middle of the loch. Now that we were close we could see the metal structures were a series of booms which formed the tops of deep cages moored to the bed of the loch. The water inside these booms was frantic with movement, boiling with the desperate churning of tens of thousands of fish which all wanted to be somewhere else. Every few seconds a fish would leap out of the water as if it was attempting to escape or climb some fish ladder or run up some waterfall that its instincts or its race memory told it should be there. I could hardly bear to look. Here was a creature whose most profound instincts urged it to swim downriver until it could smell the saltwater of the ocean and then find the feeding grounds of its ancestors in the far north of the Atlantic, where it would live for the next two or three years. And then, by an even greater miracle, it would return south, travelling past the mouths of all of the rivers where it might have been born until something made it turn north again, searching the coastal waters until it smelt or sensed in some other way the river waters that led to the place where it had been spawned. But these salmon spent their whole lives in a cage a few metres deep and a few metres wide. ‘Look at the little darlings,’ said Archie Campbell fondly. ‘Look at all the exercise they get. Don’t tell me they aren’t every bit as fit as wild salmon.’

The water around the cages was cloudy with effluent, debris of all sorts floating past. The sheikh looked around him with growing dismay. Then he turned to me and said, ‘This is the only way? The only way?’

‘Yes,’ I told him. ‘The only way.’

‘And how many was it you will be wanting, Dr Jones?’ asked Archie Campbell.

‘We’re still working on numbers. Think along the lines of five thousand, if you can.’