2007 - Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (31 page)

‘We hope so,’ he said, and gave me a smile of real friendliness. For a moment I found myself liking the guy. I’d never given him much thought before, not as a person, I mean. ‘Come and look at the salmon,’ he said. The boss and the sheikh, the boss’s security people and some of the press were making their way up a ramp to the edge of a holding basin. The sheikh’s men mostly held back. I noticed again that a few of them held rifles and remembered where we were—in the heart of the Yemen, not visiting a new hospital in Dulwich. But, I thought, the Yemen must be safe now, mustn’t it? The security people would never have let the boss come if it hadn’t been. I mean, there had been that strange story about al-Qaeda attempting to murder the sheikh in Scotland, but we had all discounted that as a piece invented by some Scottish newspaper.

We stood at the top of the ramp and looked over the edge of the wall. The basin was full of silver salmon, darting here and there or else lying motionless in the shaded parts of the water. At intervals around the edge of the basin were machines that looked a bit like huge outboard motors, churning and aerating the water.

‘How are they doing?’ I asked Fred.

‘We’ve had a few deaths from stress, but whether that was from the heat or the journey I’m not really sure. Anyway, the number of deaths is well within our projections, and the temperature of the water in here is quite stable.’

I stared at the fish, quite fascinated. Then I looked around me at the towering mountains, the slopes of sand and gravel below us, the palm trees and the Yemeni tribesmen standing guard on the top of rocks and on the nearer ridges.

‘It’s unbelievable,’ I said. ‘If I wasn’t seeing it with my own eyes…’

‘You see,’ said Fred, ‘the sheikh was right. He has made us all believe. And now we are ready to open the sluice gates, and the miracle will begin.’

‘Will it?’ I asked him. I could see Fred was tense, but I think it was anticipation and not doubt.

‘There’s every chance. The air temperature has dropped steadily for the last few days. It’s only about 25 degrees Celsius now, and we are coming up to the hottest part of the day. The water temperature in the wadi is perfect and…’ He glanced up at the sky, where fluffy grey and white cumulus now obscured the sun. ‘I think we can expect some more rain soon.’

We trooped back down the ramp and walked past the platform to a row of Portakabins. Jay and the sheikh went inside to change into their fishing kit and Colin McPherson, whom I hadn’t seen in the crowd before, started unloading rods from the back of a pickup, and then assembling them and making up the cast and flies. A crowd of excited tribesmen gathered around him shouting and gesticulating. Not all of them, though; I could still see a watchful ring of guards further away, staying aloof from the proceedings and scanning the hills around us. One in particular, it struck me, would make a particularly dramatic photo: he stood higher up than the others, on a rocky promontory overlooking the river, his robes fluttering in the strengthening breeze, his rifle resting on his shoulder, the muzzle pointing uphill. I thought of asking a friendly cameraman to take a picture for me, but then there was a roar of applause as Jay and the sheikh both appeared from the Portakabin, wearing chest waders and tartan shirts. They walked towards the pickup, where McPherson was handing out rods to a select few of the tribesmen. When Jay and the sheikh drew near, he picked out two rods he had reserved for them and handed them over. There was another roar of applause, and some of the tribesmen started ululating. Even the journos were entering into the spirit of the moment. I saw old McLeish from the
Telegraph
, a hardened cynic if ever there was one, brush something from his eye. I like to think it was a tear but it may only have been a piece of grit.

Jay and the sheikh walked back to the wooden platform beside the first holding basin. As they did so, I felt something hit the back of my neck, and I looked up in surprise. It was beginning to rain: just a few drops, big, surprisingly cold drops, which made little craters in the dust where they fell. Somebody handed Jay a portable transmitter, and everyone started going, ‘Sssh! Ssssh!’ Gradually the silence spread, until the only sound was the busy murmuring of the water a few hundred yards downhill. Into that silence, the boss spoke. ‘What a tremendous honour it is,’ he said, ‘to be asked to be here today.’

More cheers and ululations, but the boss held up his hand, and dead silence fell again. He turned to the sheikh. ‘Thank you, Sheikh Muhammad, for inviting me, and from the bottom of my heart I say this: yours is the vision, yours is the imagination, yours is the boundless financial generosity without which this project would never have been realised. And we are proud, proud that you have chosen to work with British scientists, British engineers, and indeed engineers of many nations, to realise this project and bring it to fruition. Who would ever have dreamed that one day salmon would swim in the rivers of the Yemen?’

He paused again. The silence was again absolute.

‘You dreamed it, Sheikh Muhammad. You had that courage and that determination, and now today, at last, the moment has come. Let us go together, you and I, and fish for salmon in the Wadi Aleyn!’

Tremendous cheering started, faded away and then started again as the boss held the transmitter up in the air, so that we could all see what was happening, and then pointed it, like a TV remote, at the sluice gates. He pressed a button. Slowly, the gates began to open. They did not open fully, but enough for a steady flow of water to emerge, enough for the fish to swim in. In the water spouting from the foot of the sluice gates and in the concrete channel I could see glistening shapes tumbling and wriggling as they were swept down to the river.

At once the crowd started moving towards the river. It was beginning to rain quite steadily now, and it was getting darker. We all bunched up together near where the concrete channel debouched into the wadi itself.

‘Make way for Dr Alfred,’ cried the sheikh in a clear voice, and the crowd fell back to allow Fred to come forward. He was not wearing waders, but nevertheless he strode in his boots into the stream and peered down into the water. We were all going to get wet soon enough anyway, I thought. It was raining harder and the sky far above us at the head of the wadi was almost black.

Even from where I stood I could see the fins of the salmon cutting through the shallow waters of the Wadi Aleyn. Some of them leaped from the water, almost dancing on its surface. And they were turning upstream! A few were going the wrong way, downriver, but most of the salmon were going upstream. The salmon were running the waters of the Wadi Aleyn, in the heart of the mountains of Heraz!

Jay and the sheikh waded into the river holding their fishing rods, and picked their way carefully over boulders until they were each standing in the centre of the wadi about thirty yards apart. The press cameras and TV videocams were now all pointing at the two of them. We had live feed to Sky TV, BBC2-4, ITV, CNN and al-Jazeera. Amidst all the press crouching or standing on the riverbank, I saw Colin keeping an eye on his master. I saw our security people take up positions on the bank opposite Jay, their eyes watchful, their hands never far from the concealed holsters they wore, scanning the rocks and ridges on either side of the river. A dozen Yemenis carrying their fishing rods and landing nets strode past, along the new track that ran along the wadi, heading for the casting platforms that had been built further upstream.

Then the sheikh cast out his line, and a moment or two later so did the boss. I had to hand it to the boss; he looked like he’d been doing it all his life. The line went straight out and didn’t make much of a splash when it hit the water. It was typical of the man: everything came easily to him. If he’d been told he had to ski the next week or play in a water polo match, he’d have done it, and looked good doing it, as well.

Then I heard Fred shout, ‘Be careful! The water is rising! Keep an eye on it!’

The boss either didn’t hear, or didn’t want to hear. He had let his fly come round and was making his next cast. The rain was coming down like stair rods now, and the river looked as if it was almost boiling under the weight of water coming down out of the sky.

‘I think you should come out now!’ shouted Fred. ‘There’s a hell of a lot of water coming down!’

Even I could see that the water in the wadi was rising. I found I had unconsciously stepped back a couple of yards, higher up the bank. At the same moment Colin began to wade into the river, I suppose to help the sheikh out. I saw our security men looking at each other, wondering what to do.

There was a flash of lightning, or perhaps it was not lightning, but it made me turn my head and I saw the tribesman I had noticed earlier on the promontory, with his rifle raised to his shoulder. He had either just fired a shot, or was about to fire one. Had I heard a shot? The water coming down the river was beginning to roar now. One of the security people pulled a gun from under his jacket in a single fluid move, and I think he shot the tribesman. At any rate the man fell backwards off the rocky crag and disappeared from my sight. I don’t know who he had been intending to shoot. I think it must have been the sheikh, but I can’t be sure.

There was uproar and several more shots were fired by the Yemenis, I don’t know what at. I don’t think they had yet grasped what was going on. The crowd broke up, people scrambling up the bank to get away from the river and from the shooting. I found that I was several yards higher up the bank again, my heart thumping in my chest, staring down at the boss.

He had turned to look at the noise, but he wasn’t moving. I think he was smiling. I don’t think he had seen the tribesman either shooting or being shot, although he knew something had happened, because he had turned to look downstream.

I saw him look at the sheikh, who was bent over, supported by Colin, who was now at his side and struggling to keep his balance against the weight of water. Maybe the sheikh had been shot. I don’t know.

Behind the boss I saw a wall of white and brown water come round the corner of the canyon and surge down the wadi towards him. I could see, rather than hear, Fred still screaming to him to get out. Then Fred, too, turned and started to scramble towards safety, up the bank.

The boss was still smiling, I think. I was some distance away by then, but you can tell sometimes from a person’s posture that they are smiling. He was facing away from the wall of water coming towards him. He must have heard it. I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t. They say you can get very absorbed fishing. At any rate, I like to think—I am as sure as I can be—that as he lifted his rod to make another cast, he was very happy. He was far away from politics, far away from wars, from journalists, from MPs, from generals, from civil servants. He was in a river and there were salmon running past his feet, and with the next cast I am sure he believed he would catch a fish.

Then the surge hit him. A boiling torrent of brown water, mud, rocks, palm fronds raced down the wadi with a noise like a train, and in a moment Colin, the sheikh and the boss instantly vanished without trace. The wave then powered on and disappeared round the next corner into the canyons far below.

One second the boss was standing there; the next he was gone. And I never saw him again. Or the sheikh. Or Colin McPherson. They never found their bodies.

That was what happened when we launched the Yemen salmon project, and the salmon ran in the Wadi Aleyn.

Dr Jones’s testimony of events which occurred at the launch of the Yemen salmon project

Dr Alfred Jones:

From a scientific perspective, the Yemen salmon project was a complete success.

I knew it was a success from the minute I looked down and saw the salmon entering the water flowing down the wadi. A few days ago they had been thrashing about in a huge cage in a sea loch on the west coast of Scotland, now they were wriggling down a concrete chute from a concrete basin high in the mountains of the Yemen.

It did not matter to them. The salmon came wriggling down into the wadi, and a few simply went with the current and disappeared downstream. But most of them turned upstream, heading against the flow, not knowing where they might be going, only knowing that they had to head upriver until they found a place to spawn. Their instincts told them what to do, just as I had hoped they would.

Most of the fish were silver, but a few were already coloured, an indication that the hen fish were ready to spawn the thousands of eggs they carried, and the cock fish ready to inject their milt and so fertilise the eggs. My eyes filled with tears as I thought of it all: here, at the tip of the Arabian peninsula, though thousands of miles from their home waters, the salmon were ready to do their duty.

As I watched their fins cutting through the water, I felt a sense of elation. And I remembered the sheikh’s words, that we would see a miracle, and I knew that was what I had just witnessed. I remembered Harriet telling me the sheikh would think the project had been a success if one single fish ran up the wadi. Now there were hundreds. One fresh fish was already netted and killed, inside my jacket. I had to somehow insert it onto the end of the prime minister’s line, to make sure he caught his fish.

Then I noticed the colour of the water changing, the sound of the river beginning to grow, the noise of the waters cascading down from the peaks far above becoming angrier and more threatening. The sky was darkening to a deep, inky black.

It was a plug. I should have anticipated it. Such things are not unknown on spate rivers, and that is essentially what the Wadi Aleyn is: a river that goes from almost dry to flash flood and back again in a few hours. Salmon running spate rivers learn to wait for the water. They smell the rain, they know a flood is coming, and then they surge upriver, meeting the torrent with impossible strength and courage, leaping the waves or hanging in the water at the sides of the river when the speed of the flow becomes too great even for them.

And in spate rivers sometimes you get a plug. The rain is too heavy to soak away into the ground. It runs straight off, and the run-off carries with it mud, dead trees, rocks, and if the debris should come to some constriction in the riverbed, then a temporary dam is formed. The water builds up behind the obstruction until the force is so great that the plug is breached, and then a wall of water goes surging through the breach and on down the river. You don’t want to be standing in the water when that happens.