I had been a dozen times around the holding basins, which were slowly filling with water from the aquifer. The oxygen bubblers were working rhythmically at the sides. Water temperatures were being held stable at around 21 degrees Celsius and we thought we could drop that three degrees when the rains came. I had checked everything, and rechecked, and I knew I was driving the project teams, and myself, mad with my constant questioning. In the end I took myself off up the wadi. I wore a hat and covered myself with sun cream, but still I felt as if I was in a furnace.
This was the time before the rains came. Out in the desert sandstorms would build themselves on giant thermals. In the towns and villages people and animals moved about as little as possible in the heat of the day, found shade wherever they could and waited for the sun to go lower in the sky.
In the wadi the heat and airlessness were almost too much for me. There was a sense of something building, like a distant storm. When the rains came, we would make a call to the UK. Within twenty-four hours of that call, the fish at McSalmon Aqua Farms would be taken from their cages and placed in the flying aquariums, which is what everyone called the stainless-steel pods in which they would be flown out to the Middle East. In another twenty-four hours they would be ready for delivery into the holding basins. And then we would wait. We would wait for the waters of the Wadi Aleyn to flow, and as the flow grew from a trickle to a stream, from a stream to a river, we would open the sluice gates. And then we would see.
I found I was breathing hard and feeling a little dizzy. The heat was getting to me. There was no one within a mile of me, at least no one I could see. I found a flat stone in the shade of overhanging cliffs that was not too hot, and sat on it, trying to recover myself. I took a Thermos of cold water from my backpack and took a pull on it. After a moment I felt a little better.
The silence around me was absolute. Even the buzzards were quiet. Rock walls stretched above me. There was not a single sign of vegetation. What did the goats live on now, the goats belonging to the girl further up the wadi who had once brought us water?
I tried not to think about Harriet, but she kept intruding into my thoughts, as real as if she was standing in front of me. I could almost see her, like a ghost, now gaining substance, now fading again, her voice, thin and insubstantial, saying, ‘There isn’t any hope, not for me, not for you.’
I thought about the sheikh saying, although I could not remember his exact words, ‘Without faith, there is no hope. Without faith, there is no love.’
Then in a moment, in that vast space of rocks and sky and scorching sun, I understood that he had not meant religious faith, not exactly. He was not urging me to become a Muslim or to believe in one interpretation of God rather than another. He knew me for what I was, an old, cold, cautious scientist. That was what I was then. And he was simply pointing out to me the first step to take. The word he had used was faith, but what he meant was belief. The first step was simple: it was to believe in belief itself. I had just taken that step. At long last I understood.
I had belief. I did not know, or for the moment care, what exactly it was I had to believe in. I only knew that belief in something was the first step away from believing in nothing, the first step away from a world which only recognised what it could count, measure, sell or buy. The people here still had that innocent power of belief: not the angry denial of other people’s belief of religious fanatics, but a quiet affirmation. That was what I sensed here, in this land and in this place, which made it so different from home. It was not the clothes, not the language, not the customs, not the sense of being in another century. It was none of these. It was the pervading presence of belief.
I believed in belief. I didn’t exactly feel as if I was on the road to Damascus, and I was aware I could not think straight because of the power of the sun, but now I knew what the Yemen salmon project was all about. It had already worked its transformation on me. It would do the same for others.
30
From:
Date:
15 July
To:
Subject:
Visit
Fred
I am coming back to London for a review meeting in the first week in August. I know this is slightly later than I originally suggested, but I had to get a date in the diary of our CEO western hemisphere, and that is never easy. I trust you will be able to accommodate this change in your own plans as I think it is most important we meet. I am concerned that you have allowed my extended absence in Geneva (which I think we agreed at the time was an essential career step for me, and one I think that, in the light of the insecurity of your present position, I was wise to take) to lead you into a state of complacency about our marriage. While I am working every hour in the day every weekday and most weekends in order to provide for our future financial security, you appear to be leading a life progressively more and more disconnected from reality. Of course you tell me very little, but from what I can gather, you have spent the spring fishing in Scotland with your sheikh and his lady friend or sunning yourself in the Yemen with the same lady, while our flat is neglected, and I am neglected too. It is very difficult for me to say it, but I am neglected.
So please be sure to be available when I arrive in London. We need to talk.
Mary
From:
Date:
16 July
To:
Subject:
Re: Visit
Mary,
While you are at the mercy of the Inter Finance CEO western hemisphere and his timetable, my own schedule is now decided by the office of the prime minister. They have decreed I must be in the Yemen on the dates you say you will be in London, and I am afraid there is nothing I can do about that. I have to be there.
I am terribly sorry. I agree we need to meet. I will be back in mid-August, if all goes well, and I suggest either I fly to Geneva or you fly to London one weekend.
Love,
Fred
From:
Date:
16 July
To:
Subject:
Re: Re: Visit
Fred,
I cannot for a moment imagine that the prime minister couldn’t do without you for a day or two in the Yemen. He has a whole government at his beck and call, surely he could do without one fisheries scientist for a couple of days? I can only assume you are deliberately avoiding me.
You can fly to Geneva if you like. I cannot guarantee my availability that far ahead. I have a lot of travel commitments coming up.
Mary
From:
Date:
18 July
To:
Subject:
Yemen trip