I hope you never look henpecked when we get married. I will try not to peck too hard.

Love you lots

Harriet

Letter

5 Scarsdale Road London

15 June

Darling Harriet,

we drove down a street and suddenly guns were pointing the wrong way.

and the helicopter arrived after a vew anxious minutes, a very beautiful old mosque with blue tiles pieces as a result of an error by a US Cobra pilot. Apart from that nothing exciting has happened, it is mostly the heat and the flies that get us down. Yesterday we drove into a village near and came across a small boy in the street. There had been a visit by the Sunni insurgents lost his mother and stood in the middle of the street screaming. Sunday papers arrived at last four weeks late but before we had a chance to clean up and read them we were given new orders.

I didn’t think we were supposed to be that close to the

Anyway, orders is orders and I suppose we’ve got to go there. I haven’t even been allowed time to go back to base and get a change of clothes. A clean shirt would be nice.

Thinking of you all the time, much love,

Robert

Letter

Captain Robert Matthews

c⁄o BFPO Basra Palace

Basra

Iraq

22 June

Darling Robert,

I couldn’t make much sense of your last letter. The censor had attacked it with his pen and obliterated nearly all of it. But keep writing anyway. At least I know then that you are well and still thinking of me. Sometimes I ache with worry for you. One hears so many dreadful stories from the newspapers and much worse ones if one ever meets anyone with family out where you-where I think you are.

I’d better go on with my salmon story. My Dr Jones has come up trumps. He has written an absolutely brilliant proposal about introducing salmon into the Yemen. It is too technical to go into here and anyway it would bore you to death if I went into all the details, but the upshot is, he thinks, in theory, that something can be done. When I passed this on to my client he was thrilled. He rang up in person, something he never does, and said, ‘Bring Dr Alfred Jones to my house in Scotland. If I like him, I will give him whatever money he wants to make this thing happen. He is a clever man, but I need to meet him to know if he is an honest man, and if he can have the faith to do this.’

So I rang up Dr Jones, and the client sent his car to take us to a little airport in south London where he keeps his Learjet, and we flew together up to Inverness. Dr Jones was rather overawed and didn’t say much. His eyes kept on darting round the cabin of the plane in a nervous way as if he couldn’t quite believe what was happening. I have flown in the client’s private jet at least twice before, so of course I could pretend that it was all part of a day’s work.

We got to Glen Tulloch about lunchtime but then I had to go and sit with the factor and deal with all sorts of trivial problems about the estate. The sheikh joined us for a few minutes, issued a few instructions and then disappeared again. When he came back he said, ‘I have sent your Dr Jones to fish with Colin. I have been watching him from the road for a while. He is a true fisherman, not just a scientist. I am pleased with your choice, Harriet Chetwode-Talbot.’ When he calls me this I am never sure whether there is irony in his voice, or whether he is simply being correct in his manner of address, as he sees it.

I said that was good luck. ‘It is not luck, Harriet Chetwode-Talbot. It is God’s wish. He has set this man in my path, the right man at the right time, insh’Allah. I will talk to him later at dinner, but already I know what I needed to know.’

And later at dinner he did talk to Dr Jones. It was all very simple and somehow very moving. My client is, I think, more than a little mad, but it is a charming form of madness, almost a divine form of madness. He believes that the salmon and its long journey through endless oceans back to its home river is, in some strange way, a symbol of his own journey to become closer to his God. You know, a few hundred years ago, the sheikh might have been called a saint, if there are saints in Islam?

Dr Jones called me Harriet tonight. He never looks me in the eye. I think he fancies me, but he is a married man and so feels guilty. Don’t worry, darling. As far as I am concerned, there is only you.

Love,

Harriet

Letter

Undated and unsigned letter from the Family Support Centre at the Ministry of Defence

Dear Harriet Chetwode-Talbot,

Copies of your correspondence with Captain Robert Matthews have been forwarded to this office by Security, BFPO Basra Palace.

Captain Robert Matthews is now, for operational reasons, in an area where postal services cannot be guaranteed. Further correspondence will not therefore be forwarded to him. Nor will any postal facilities be available to his unit until further notice.

Please note the call centre number below will access the Family Support Centre, who will provide counselling to enable you to cope with any trauma arising from loss of contact with a close friend⁄relation⁄spouse.

0800-4001200

This counselling service is provided free of charge by the MoD but calls will cost 14p per minute.

MoD

7

Article in the Yemen Observer, 14 August

Fishing project for western highlands

Sheikh Muhammad ibn Zaidi has surprised the Arab world with his decision to introduce salmon fishing into the Wadi Aleyn in the Heraz. Yemenis may understandably ask many questions about the legitimacy of this project. We say that we should wait and see what the scientific reality of the salmon project turns out to be.

The project is being debated in a lively manner at family dinners and at khat chews. There are many who think that the introduction of salmon into a desert country is neither a realistic nor an economic proposition. Others however state that the project is being supported by a leading fisheries scientist from the UK and that there is a real prospect in future years of our tourist industry being boosted by the sale of salmon fishing permits.

The agriculture and health ministry declined to comment but we understand that the present Aquatic Law N°42 does not expressly forbid the development of a salmon fishery in the Yemen. Therefore Sheikh Muhammad is entitled to develop such a fishery without the need to seek further consent from the government.

Article in the International Herald Tribune, 16 August

Yemeni sheikh plans new ecosystem for wadis

Sana’a, Yemen Republic

Sheikh Muhammad ibn Zaidi, a key figure in Yemeni political circles, has long been noted for his pro-Western views in a country whose relationship with Western states has sometimes been troubled. On Sunday he urged President Saleh to lend his backing to a revolutionary eco-project that has received some support in UK government circles.

Sheikh Muhammad is planning to spend millions of pounds sterling with the British government to introduce wild Scottish salmon into a wadi in the western Yemen. In stark contrast to US policy, which currently involves further military build-ups in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, the UK now appears to be shifting its political ground. Although British government officials deny any formal relationship with Sheikh Muhammad, nevertheless a UK government agency, the National Centre for Fisheries Excellence, has taken a leading role in this environmentally challenging project. British policy in the region now appears to be looking for ways to take cultural and sporting images, likely in an effort to soften the impact of recent military actions in southern Iraq.