European style.
Soon a team of top scientists and engineers is coming with the sheikh to stay at his palace and make scientific observations and deductions, in order to have the best possibility for the future survival and sporting value of the introduced fish.
The
19
Letter
Captain Robert Matthews
c?o BFPO Basra Palace
Basra
Iraq
1 November
Darling Robert,
I keep writing to you and they keep returning my letters marked ‘Addressee unknown’. I got my father to ring up one of his old friends in the regiment and they gave him the runaround and even the commandant general could find out nothing about where you are or what you are doing.
So now there’s this new thing. I sit and look at this pile of letters returned to me, and I think of all the words I wanted to say to you-did say to you, in fact-and which you have never read. You will never read them either, when you come back-I would be far too embarrassed to show them to you. For now, I will keep them though. It’s a bit of a one-sided conversation, like talking to someone as they lie asleep. But it’s better than no conversation at all. When you come back, we’ll talk of other things.
I keep looking on the MoD website where they list fatalities for Operation Telic 2. That’s what the MoD calls what you are all doing in Iraq, isn’t it? Your name is never there, but every morning I log on and there’s a moment of nausea as I scroll down and look at the new names. The list is growing.
How hypocritical people are. I don’t go to church; I haven’t done so since I left school except for friends’ weddings and the funerals of my parents’ friends. But now I find myself muttering prayers for you. I am praying to a God I don’t believe exists, but I am praying to him all the same.
And both from God and from you there is a deafening silence. It all became too much a few days ago, and I did something I swore I never would do, because I know it will make you angry when you find out. I rang 41 Commando Royal Marines last week and asked if anyone could tell me where you were. I was passed from one man to another, and none of them seemed to have any idea at all. They were hardly prepared to acknowledge that you even existed. I kept ringing though, and eventually I must have got through the outer defences because a cheerful-sounding voice quite different to the other people I’d been talking to said, ‘Good God, how did you get put through to me? Bob Matthews? Last I heard he was working around As Sulimaniyah. Bandit country. Close to the Iranian frontier.’ But before I could get any real news out of him, somebody shut him up and then I got a different voice, a smooth purring voice on the line: ‘I’m sorry, madam, we don’t give out information of that sort for operational reasons.’ I must have tried a dozen times since then, ringing up your regiment, ringing up the MoD. I even tried the Family Support Group, but they said they had not been given any information.
I’ve had your mother on the telephone once or twice. They have been very stiff upper lip about the whole thing. I know your father served in Northern Ireland, and probably other dangerous places too, so perhaps they are more used to the idea that people can be out of touch for weeks on end. Your mother keeps on saying, ‘Don’t worry, dear. He always turns up in the end. I expect he’s a bit busy to write just at the moment.’ I think she is worried though. I think I can hear worry in her voice. Robert, I’m getting on with my life. There’s plenty to do. But I have to be honest with you even if you never read this. The worry is like an ache. Sometimes it is more like I imagine a malignant ulcer must feel like, deep within me. Sometimes, not often, the pain is fierce. Mostly it’s just a remote but ever-present hurt.
There’s any amount of work to keep my mind off things. The project, which is how we all refer to the sheikh’s salmon fishing plan, is all-consuming. You probably don’t remember what I am talking about-I can’t remember how much I told you about all this before the letters started being returned. I do long to tell you all about it. The whole thing is so absurd: a mad scheme to introduce salmon fishing to a desert country. And yet it’s happening.
Next week I am flying out to the Yemen. We will be there for several days as guests of the sheikh completing our field studies and doing the final checks before the project goes live. So, darling, I will be in the Middle East at the same time as you! I am going with Fred Jones, the fisheries scientist, and the sheikh himself, and we will inspect the construction work that has now started and have a look at the Wadi Aleyn, which one day the sheikh believes will have salmon running up it. Fred is getting really excited about the trip. He works as a consultant to Fitzharris & Price now.
NCFE fired him, for political reasons which neither he nor I understand. The sheikh understands though, I think. He is now Fred’s employer. So we are travelling in his plane to Sana’a and then driving into the mountains, the mountains of Heraz. It sounds so mysterious, a name from the Old Testament.
How frustrating that you are only a few hundred miles away and yet you might be on the other side of the planet for all I know. Actually, I looked at a map and I know you are more than fifteen hundred miles away from where I’m going to be. I wish I knew exactly where it is that you are, just this moment, as I write these words.
I can’t bear this.
Loads of love
Letter
Captain Robert Matthews
c?o BFPO Basra Palace
Basra
Iraq
4 November
Darling Robert,
I’m writing again so soon because we are off in three days’ time, and I don’t know how long it will be before I can write again. Something happened tonight that I have to tell you about.
Tomorrow we fly to the Yemen and spend a couple of days in Sana’a, the capital, before travelling to the sheikh’s house at al-Shisr, close by the Wadi Aleyn. There’s been so much work to do this week, I’ve hardly had a moment to think about anything except the preparations for the journey. Fred (that’s Dr Jones) has been brilliant. When I first met him I thought he was very pompous. He told me the whole project was a joke and not worth him spending five minutes even thinking about. He’s improved out of all recognition since then. He’s a really nice man, rather old-fashioned, very strait- laced, I should think, and totally dedicated to his work. He’s also going through a rather difficult patch in his marriage, but he hasn’t let that affect his work in any way.
The sheikh inspires him. The sheikh inspires all of us. Most of the time I am so wrapped up in the detail of the project that I haven’t had time to think about what we are all doing. I think it’s self- protection, really, because the whole concept behind the project is totally bizarre. If I ever did really try and think about what we are trying to do, I’d probably never be able to go on with it. I didn’t need Fred to tell me (when he was still Dr Jones) that salmon needed cool, oxygen-rich water to swim in, and that conditions in the Yemen were less than ideal. I had worked that one out already.
But the sheikh believes he can do it. He believes that Allah wants him to do it, and therefore he must and will complete his task. He never contemplates failure. He never shows fear or doubt. And he manages to keeps us all believing, just as he believes. We concentrate on the detail of each step we have to take, and think ‘If this can be made to work, then maybe we can take the next step. If we can get the salmon, alive and well, into the holding tanks in the mountains. If we can keep them reasonably cool in the holding tanks until the rains come. If the rains come and the flows in the wadi are good enough, we can release them through the gates into the wadi. If they turn upstream and run…If, if, if…But, as Fred keeps saying, we have the technology. The rest is up to the salmon.
I try to think of other insane projects where belief has overcome reason and judgement: the Pyramids, Stonehenge, The Great Wall of China-the Millennium Dome, come to that. We are not the first and will not be the last people to defy common sense, logic, nature. Perhaps it is an act of monumental folly. I am sure it is. I am sure people will laugh at us and scorn us for the rest of our lives. You won’t be able to marry me because I will always be the girl who once worked on the Yemen salmon project.
Last night we sat late in our office together, going over equipment inventories, cash flows and project milestones. The sheikh maintains an iron grasp of the detail of his project. If we fail, it will not be because he has forgotten something. While I was clearing papers away and switching off computers he said, ‘Harriet Chetwode-Talbot, I shall always be in your debt. You have worked for me diligently and well.’ He nearly always calls me by my full name. I don’t know why. Anyway, I blushed. He usually gives instructions, rarely praise. ‘You think our project will fail.’
It was not a question. I stammered something in reply, but he brushed aside my words. ‘Think of it in a different way. The same God who created me, created the salmon, and in his wisdom brought us together and gave me the happiest moments of my life. Now I want to repay God and bring the same happiness to my people. Even if only one hundred fish run, if only one fish is ever caught, think what we will have achieved. Some men in my position, with great wealth and the freedom to spend it as they like, have built mosques. Some have built hospitals or schools. I, too, have built hospitals and schools and mosques. What difference does one more mosque or one more hospital make? I can worship God outside my tent on the sands as well as in a mosque. I want to present God with the opportunity to perform a miracle, a miracle that he will perform if he so wills it. Not you, not Dr Alfred, not all the clever engineers and scientists we have employed. You and they have prepared the way, but whatever happens will be God’s will. You will have been present at the delivery of the miracle and you will have been of great assistance to me, but the miracle is God’s alone. When anyone sees a salmon swimming up the waters of the Wadi Aleyn, will they any longer be able to doubt the existence of God? That will be my testament, the shining fish running in the storm waters of a desert land.’
My poor attempt on paper, my inadequate recollections of the sheikh’s words, full of error and omissions, can’t capture the power of the man’s personality. When he speaks like that I can imagine the effect on their listeners that the prophets of the Old Testament must have had. His words, his very thoughts, get inside my head and echo for a long time in my memory, and my dreams.
Now I come to something dark, something I wish had not happened. But I must tell you about it.
