Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

as Colin had suggested, and started to put line out.

‘Put some line out, take a step, then put a bit more out and take a step,’ Colin instructed me from the bank.

When I had got a bit of line out I tried a double Spey cast and saw with pleasure how the line shot out like silk, the fly landing on the water as gently as thistledown.

‘I’ve seen worse casts than that,’ said Colin, in a friendlier tone than he had used up until then. Then he sat down on the bank, took out a pipe and started to fiddle around with it. I forgot about him and concentrated on the fishing. A step, cast the line out, watch the fly come round gently on the dark water, strip the line, a step, and cast the line. Mesmerised by the flowing water and the silent beauty of the pool, I fished it down slowly and carefully. Once I saw a swirl and some bubbles just beyond my line, right beneath the opposite bank in the slow water, which I thought might have been a fish moving. But I did not dare lengthen my cast for fear of tangling my line in the overhanging branches. Once there was a flash of blue and bronze and I heard Colin, now some yards upstream, say, ‘Kingfisher.’

At last I reached the end of the run, and the water was too slow to fish down any further, so I waded back to the bank. By that time I had almost forgotten where I was, I was so absorbed by what I was doing, so tranquillised by the absolute silence apart from the music of the water over the gravel as it ran out to the next pool below. Then Colin appeared at my elbow.

‘I’ll change the fly for something with a wee bit more colour. Maybe an Ally Shrimp. There’s a fish showing beneath those alder trees.’

‘I think I moved it,’ I told him.

We walked back up the bank, and while Colin tied on a new fly I looked behind me. The road to the house ran past and beyond was the moor. I heard the shrill shouting of a pair of oystercatchers and, further away, the unmistakable cackle of a grouse. Colin handed me the rod, and I stepped into the head of the pool again. I fished down again as before, and just as I was coming to the place where I thought I had seen something move, I felt that prickling in the back of the neck we sometimes get when someone is watching us. I put the line out, and turned my head to look. About thirty yards behind me and a little bit above me, on the road, stood a small man in a white headdress and white robes. He looked absolutely out of place on that road, with the heather moor behind him. He stood very upright and quite still. He was watching me intently.

A tug on my line made me snap my attention back to the river. There was a swirl, then splashing, and suddenly line started screaming off the reel at a prodigious rate as the fish took the fly and ran. My heart beating, I lifted the rod tip and started to play my fish. It did not take long: after ten minutes I had brought a medium-sized silver sea trout to the water’s edge, which Colin deftly landed in his net.

‘Five pound,’ he said. ‘No bad.’ He seemed pleased.

‘We’ll put it back,’ I said. Colin did not approve of this idea, but he did as I asked and then we set out back towards the house.

§

Later

In the end it was not until this evening that I met the client. When I returned to the house I was handed over to Malcolm, who turned out to be the butler. I always imagined butlers wore black coats and striped trousers, looked like Sir John Gielgud and went everywhere with a glass of sherry balanced on a silver tray. Malcolm wore a dark suit, a white shirt and a dark tie. He looked sombre and discreet and moved noiselessly about the house. He showed me back to my room, where I changed back into the clothes I had flown up in. Then I was given tea in the library, with cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off and the day’s papers to read-all of them, from TheTimes through to the Sun.

From time to time Malcolm would put his head round the door and apologise for keeping me waiting. His Excellency was engaged in a conference call that was taking longer than expected. His Excellency was at prayer again. His Excellency was in a meeting but would be free at any moment. Finally I asked, ‘What time is our flight back to London?’

‘Tomorrow morning, sir, after breakfast.’

‘But I didn’t pack anything-I didn’t know we were expected to stay.’

‘Don’t worry, sir; you’ll find everything is ready in your room.’

Malcolm’s pager went off and he excused himself and left. A little while later he came back and said, ‘I’ve taken the liberty of running your bath, sir. If you care to go upstairs and have a bath and change, His Excellency will meet you here in the library for drinks at seven o’clock.’ I shook my head in disbelief and followed Malcolm upstairs again. He showed me to my room. By then I was beginning to know my way. I went in and had my bath, stretched out full length in steaming water infused with something that smelt of pine, wondering at the strangeness of the day.

As I lay gazing at the ceiling of the bathroom I felt a profound sense of peace steal over me. It was as if I was on holiday. I was away from the office, away from home, and I had had the wholly unexpected pleasure of catching a fish, something that happened to me about once every other year (Mary is not keen on fishing holidays; she says they are barbaric, a waste of money, boring for non-participants and therefore a self-indulgence on my part). I stepped out of the bath and dried myself with a huge white towel, and wandered back into the bedroom. Although it was high summer, a fire had been lit and table lamps switched on. The bedroom was warm and softly lit, encouraging me to lie on the bed for twenty minutes’ sleep. But I thought I might not wake up in time for dinner so I sat and wrote down a few words in my diary about the journey here, and the sea trout I caught.

When I had finished I inspected the clothes laid out for me on the bed. There were evening clothes, shirt and black tie, clean underwear, socks, which all fitted as if they had been made for me. On the rug beside the bed was a pair of black loafers, gleaming with polish. These also fitted like gloves. Somehow I was not surprised. I left my room and, as I came to the landing at the head of the stairs, I saw Harriet coming towards me from the other wing of the house. She was wearing a stunning black evening dress, with a gold belt around her waist. I have to admit she looked surprisingly glamorous. She saw me, smiled and said, ‘I’m so sorry you have been kept waiting. His Excellency has many duties and unfortunately had to take time to deal with them this afternoon.’

I bent my head in acknowledgement. I no longer minded having been kept waiting all day. I felt curious and expectant, as if some important secret was about to be revealed to me. I was looking forward to meeting Harriet’s client.

We went downstairs together. Harriet was wearing a perfume which, although faint, reminded me of the smell in a garden on a summer evening after rain. I found myself inhaling it as I walked down the stairs behind her. Mary says expensive perfumes are a form of feminine exploitation and no substitute for the frequent application of soap and water. We entered the library, and there standing in the centre of the rug in front of a log fire was the small man in white robes I had seen on the road earlier that afternoon. Now I noticed that the robes, and his headdress, were edged with gold. His face was dark-skinned with a grey moustache and beard beneath a hook nose and small, deep-set brown eyes. He had an air of stillness about him and stood very upright so that one forgot his height.

‘Welcome to my house, Dr Alfred,’ he said, extending a hand.

I went forward to take it and as I did so Harriet said, ‘May I present His Excellency Sheikh Muhammad ibn Zaidi bani Tihama.’

I shook hands and we all stood and looked at each other, and then Malcolm arrived with a silver tray with a tumbler of whisky and soda and two flutes of champagne. Sheikh Muhammad took the whisky, and Malcolm asked me if I wanted something else, or would the champagne be acceptable?

‘You are surprised,’ said Sheikh Muhammad, in his clearly very good English, ‘that I drink alcohol. In my homes in the Yemen, of course, I never do; there is none in any of my houses. But when I discovered that whisky was called the water of life, I felt that God would understand and forgive me a little, if I drank it in Scotland from time to time.’ His voice was deep and sonorous, with few of the guttural sounds that Arabic speakers sometimes have.

He sipped his tumbler of whisky and made an appreciative, soundless ‘Ah’ shape with his lips. I took a sip of my champagne. It was cold, and delicious.

‘You are drinking the Krug ‘85,’ said Sheikh Muhammad. ‘I do not drink it myself, but friends are kind enough to say it is palatable.’ He motioned us to sit down, and Harriet and I settled side by side on one large sofa, whilst he sat opposite us. Then we began to speak about the salmon project. Although it is late now, I remember very clearly the sheikh’s words. He is a man, I think, whose presence and words would not be quickly forgotten by anyone who met him.

‘Dr Alfred,’ said Sheikh Muhammad, ‘I greatly appreciate the work you have done so far on the proposal to bring salmon to the Yemen. I read your proposal and I thought it most excellent. But of course you think we are all quite mad.’

I muttered something along the lines of ‘Not at all’ but he waved away my denials.

‘Of course you do. You are a scientist-a very good one, I am informed. A leading light in the National Centre for Fisheries Excellence. Now come some Arab people who say they want salmon! In the Yemen! To fish! Of course you think we are quite mad.’

He sipped at his glass and then looked around. Malcolm appeared from nowhere with small tables for us to put our drinks on, then faded away to some corner of the room out of the light.

‘I have observed,’ said His Excellency, ‘over the many years I have been coming to this country, a curious thing. Will you forgive me if I speak frankly about your countrymen?’ I nodded, but he had taken my forgiveness for granted because he continued almost without a pause. ‘In this country you still have a great deal of snobbery. In our country we too have many different ranks but everyone accepts these ranks without question. I am a sheikh from the sayyid class. My advisers are cadis. My estate workers at home are nukkas or even akhdam. But each knows his place and each talks to the other without restraint or fear of ridicule. Here in the UK this is not the case. No one seems to know what class they belong to. Whatever class they do belong to, they are ashamed of and want to appear as if they are from another. Your sayyid class put on the speech of the nukkas in order not to stand out, and speak like taxi drivers and not lords because they are afraid of being thought ill of. The reverse is also true. A butcher, a jazr, might make a great deal of money and adopt the speech of the sayyid class. He too is uneasy in case he pronounces a word wrongly or wears the wrong sort of tie. Your country is ridden with class prejudices. Is this not the case, Harriet Chetwode-Talbot?’

Harriet smiled and inclined her head ambiguously, but did not say anything.

‘But I have for a long time observed,’ said His Excellency, ‘that there is one group of people who in their passion for their sport ignore all things to do with class. The sayyid and the nukka are united and stand together on the riverbank and speak freely and without restraint or self-consciousness. Of course I speak about salmon fishermen, indeed fishermen of all descriptions. High and low, rich and poor, they forget themselves in the contemplation of one of God’s mysteries: the salmon, and why sometimes it will take the fly in its mouth and sometimes it will not.’

He sipped at his whisky again, and Malcolm was there at his elbow with a decanter and a soda siphon.

‘My own people have their faults, too,’ continued the sheikh. ‘We are an impatient people, and sometimes violent, very quick to pick up a gun to finish an argument. Although our society is in many ways an ancient and well-organised one, we are first members of our tribe, and only second members of our nation. After all, my family and my tribe have lived in the mountains of Heraz for over one thousand years, but my country has existed for only a few decades. There are still many divisions in our country, which not long ago was two countries and much longer ago was many kingdoms: Saba, Najran, Qa’taban, Hadramawt. I have noticed in this country that although there is violence and aggression-your football hooligans, for instance-there is one group for whom patience and tolerance are the only virtues. I speak of salmon fishermen in particular, and all fishermen in general.’

Sheikh Muhammad’s voice was gentle and quiet, but he had the gift of compelling attention and respect with every word he spoke. I said nothing, not daring or wishing to break his chain of thought.

‘I have formed the view that the creation of a salmon river in the Yemen would in every way be a blessing for my country, and my countrymen. It would be a miracle of God if it happened. I know it. My money and your science, Dr Alfred, would not alone achieve any such thing. But just as Moses found water in the wilderness, if God wills it, we will enable salmon to swim in the waters of Wadi Aleyn. If God wills it, the summer rains will fill the wadis, and we will pump out water from the aquifer, and the salmon will run the river. And then my countrymen-sayyid, nuqqa and jazr and all classes and manner of men-will stand on the banks side by side and fish for the salmon. And their natures, too, will be changed. They will feel the enchantment of this silver fish, and the overwhelming love that you know, and I know, Dr Alfred, for the fish and the river it swims in. And then when talk turns to what this tribe said or that tribe did, or what to do with the Israelis or the Americans, and voices grow heated, then someone will say, ‘Let us arise, and go fishing.’’

He sipped the last of his whisky and said, ‘Malcolm, have they dinner for us?’