Behind the platform, curving out from the side of the mountain, were the walls of three huge concrete basins: the holding tanks. For a moment I was truly awestruck by the enormity of this construction project. Listening to Fred’s presentations back in Downing Street I had thought, it’s like building another primary school or another supermarket. I simply hadn’t grasped what an enormous undertaking it was. This was more like the Aswan Dam, or the Pyramids. I hoped the photographers would capture the drama of the site.
In the centre of each basin wall was a pair of iron doors connected by a concrete channel to the wadi bed. Looking across to the wadi, I saw a wide, shallow river running down it. The sun had emerged for a moment from behind white towers of cloud and the sunlight glistened on many streams winding around islands of gravel or cascading over boulders. The fronds of green palms waved in a rising wind on the far bank. Behind us mountains rose, familiar as something once seen in a dream, of a staggering savagery and beauty, into an overcast sky.
I said to the boss, ‘Look at that! The river looks perfect. This is going to work!’
The boss looked at me in surprise. Of course it was going to work, the look said; you wouldn’t have dragged me 6000 miles for something that didn’t work, would you, Peter? Not if you wanted to stay in the job you like so much for another day. Before I could explain, we were at the platform, shaking hands again, smiling, joking, talking. Behind us I heard the second Chinook, with the press on board, coming in to land.
Of course the boss expected it to work. He had no conception of how much work had gone into the project, how much effort I had put into making sure it happened against all obstacles, how I had supported Fred Jones and the sheikh. I looked around me while the boss and the sheikh started shaking hands all over again for the benefit of the journos and the TV cameras, and I heard Fred at my side say, ‘Impressive, isn’t it?’
‘It’s fantastic,’ I said, with real enthusiasm. ‘I had no idea of the scale of all of this.’ I gestured to the concrete walls of the holding basins and the channels waiting for the gates to be opened and the salmon to come tumbling and leaping out. ‘Our project is going to be a huge success, Fred.’ I saw he was holding a landing net.
‘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.