A foreigner should be well-behaved.
Yemeni proverb
I spent several days in Salalah making inquiries into how to get into Yemen. I called everyone I knew, and pulled in favours from friends in the army, security contractors and NGO workers, and the team back home were working around the clock to try to find someone who could get me in.
Most leads went nowhere. Almost everyone said it was impossible. Almost everyone said I’d be killed, or at least kidnapped. There was only one man who said it could be done. ‘John’ was a former British army officer, who’d negotiated some deals with the rebel tribes of eastern Yemen in recent years, and through my network of contacts, I’d somehow been given his number. I knew nothing about him, or his business, but I rang him anyway, and asked if he thought it would be possible to at least enter.
‘Yes, mate, you can get in. I can put you in touch with a Somali bloke who knows the sultan. It’ll cost, but not too much, as they’d be glad of the publicity in that part of the country. They haven’t had any foreign journalists in years. I can get you into Al Mahra, but stay out of the Hadhramaut, it’s swarming with al-Qaeda.’
I listened as the words swirled around my mind. ‘Somali … Sultan … Hadhramaut … al-Qaeda.’ It all seemed very dangerous and surreal. I knew it was risky, but I also knew that I couldn’t give up without trying. Yemen was the forgotten land, hidden from the world by a veil of ignorance and uncaring. I needed to go there, to see for myself what it was like and what the people wanted, and to hell with the naysayers.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘When can you make it happen?’
‘Abshir will come to your hotel tomorrow night. Be on standby. In the meantime, do not talk to anyone in Salalah about your plans. There are spies everywhere.’
I waited in the courtyard of the hotel, a sprawling complex on the outskirts of the town, near to the airport. It was charmless and modern, with an air-conditioned shopping mall and cinema complex attached, and I was eager to get out of the place.
The courtyard was bustling with men, almost all of them dressed in pristine white dishdashas, and either small white hats or the colourful pashmina turbans worn by most Omanis. I scanned the seats of the coffee shop, which was full of Arabs holding business meetings, smoking shishas, or just drinking tea and talking into their cell phones.
In the midst of it, I noticed two men looking around shiftily. They were dressed identically in their white robes, but the taller of the men was dark-skinned and looked distinctively African. It must be him, I thought to myself. I walked over and looked him in the eye. He smiled and stood up without introducing himself.
‘You are John’s friend?’ said the man, inviting me to take a seat. I didn’t wish to undermine our relationship by saying that I didn’t know John from Adam, so gave a knowing nod.
‘I’m Abshir,’ said the hulking Somali in fluent English. ‘And this is Sayeed. He’s from Al Mahra in Yemen.’ The other man was skinny, but had a good smile and noble features. I immediately felt as though I could trust them both, which was unusual given the circumstances, but I knew I had to take John’s word as gospel in the absence of any other options.
‘So, what do you want?’ asked Abshir, ordering me a coffee.
‘I want to go to Yemen.’
‘Why?’ said Sayeed.
Why indeed, I thought to myself. It was a good question. The truth was that I felt as if I couldn’t ignore Yemen. For me, it represented the ultimate frontier, a land shrouded in mystery; and as a traveller, in spite of the apparent dangers, the allure was just too much. But of course, all of that was a bit of a mouthful.
Keep it simple.
‘I’m writing a book about Arabia, and the Arabs came from Yemen.’
This made the man smile. ‘You are correct. You can’t travel all the way around Arabia without visiting Yemen. You would be most welcome.’
Abshir explained that the situation was ‘fluid’, which I imagine was a bit of an understatement. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘we won’t use any names or passports. If you want to go, I can get us across the border, but we will need to meet the sultan of Al Mahra. If anyone asks, you’re a journalist writing about the tribes and culture, and nothing to do with the politics, okay?’
I assured him that was my interest anyway.
‘Good.’ He seemed relieved. ‘I don’t know how far I can get you. The Hadhramaut region is off-limits, but we could try the coastal road to Aden, but after that you’re on your own, as I can’t get you through Houthi territory.’
It sounded like a good start at least. I had no idea what I’d do once I was in, but one step at a time. Better to get in for a bit and see something rather than nothing, so I agreed to pay him a fee for his vehicle and for him to come along as a guide. And then, almost as an afterthought, I remembered that I should probably figure out what on earth a Somali was doing smuggling people into Yemen in the first place.
Abshir smiled. ‘I do business.’
Best not ask too many questions, I thought, and left it at that.
The following morning we left at dawn. Driving along the road, we left Salalah behind and with it the morning glow of the streetlights and campfires of the Indians making their brew. The road wound up over undulating hills, until soon we were back in the mountains, flanked by vast cliffs, and to the north the bluffs disappeared into the mist that engulfed the upper reaches of the great forests of acacia and groves of frankincense. Abshir had advised me to try to blend in, so I’d come dressed in my best impersonation of a Yemeni – beige Kashmir turban, black skirt and a green check shirt. My beard was two months old now, and with a deep suntan, I looked in the mirror and could barely recognise myself.
Abshir laughed. ‘You’ll fit in better than me.’
We rounded a bend and the road took a downhill turn towards a forested ridge. ‘That’s the border there.’ Abshir pointed towards a ramshackle checkpoint, where some military vehicles and a few lorries were parked up. We pulled up alongside them. ‘Wait here,’ said Abshir, as he got out and whispered something to the border guards. He came back five minutes later and got back into the car. We drove around the queue of lorries and a soldier lifted up the barrier and we drove through and out the other side.
‘Is that it?’ I said, astonished. ‘No passports or anything?’
‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘No stamps here. We won’t use names either. From now on, you simply don’t exist.’ He looked serious. ‘We’ll meet our escort over there.’
Abshir pulled over at the side of the road in a lay-by under the shade of a big tree, where three vehicles were waiting to travel with us in convoy. They were all 4x4s and rough-looking men with machine-guns and radios milled about smoking cigarettes and chewing khat leaves. We didn’t hang around. A fat soldier got into our vehicle and squeezed in next to me, resting a rusty AK-47 into the footwell. He didn’t take his sunglasses off and looked rather like a hamster, since his mouth was full of mushed-up khat. The lead jeep roared off, and Abshir followed on. Sayeed looked around and grinned. ‘Marhaba. Welcome to Yemen.’
As the road wound back down towards the coast, I felt as if I’d arrived in another world. If I thought Salalah resembled the south of India, here in the aftermath of the khareef, you could be forgiven for thinking you’d been transported into the rainforests of Central Africa. The whole mountainside was covered in a thick, green jungle and colossal baobab trees reached from the canopy high into the sky. Only rising columns of smoke coming out of the forest indicated that it was inhabited at all.
‘They’re the Mehri people,’ said Sayeed. ‘The same Jebalis you were with in Oman, but here they never left the mountains – they still live like cavemen.’
We took a mud track into the mist and passed by little huts that seemed to be dug into the hills themselves and were covered in grass, so that they were almost completely camouflaged, and looked like the kind of mounds from which you’d expect to find Bilbo Baggins emerging in The Hobbit.
Eventually we veered off out of the forest and towards the coastal road, where dramatic cliffs fell away into crashing azure waves, and the glint of the ocean gave the place the feel of a lost world, forgotten by outsiders and yet magnificent in its beauty and isolation. As we speeded along in our convoy towards the west, the mountains to the north grew further away, until we were driving parallel to the pristine, flat beach.
To the right, wild palms were dotted across the plain, alongside fields of alfalfa. Dolphins danced in the shallows and further along I saw men spreading dried silverfish across the sand to dry in the sun, while seagulls hovered above the beach, waiting for the opportunity to steal a free lunch. A solitary man stood idly throwing pebbles from a slingshot to deter the winged thieves.
‘We’re going to Al Ghaydah,’ said Abshir. ‘It’s another hundred kilometres away, though, so let’s stop for a break, it’s been a long day.’
I agreed; my legs were cramping up from being stuck next to the fat soldier, who was spilling over onto my side of the seat. Abshir got on the radio and in Arabic he told the lead vehicle to stop. We drove on a little further, until we passed an old deserted village and found a little glade of palm trees nearby that gave some shelter from the sun. I saw some dark-skinned children playing football on the beach and asked Abshir where they were from.
‘They look like coastal blacks,’ he said, without a hint of racism in his tone. ‘They’re the descendants of Africans who’ve lived in Yemen for generations. But they might be Ethiopians or Somali refugees as well. Who knows, everyone here is a blend anyway. Nobody cares about skin colour in Yemen, that’s why I love it so much.’
As we got out of the car and stretched our legs, I noticed some of the soldiers who were accompanying us. They came in all shapes and sizes and looked remarkably different. Some were dark-skinned with African features, others had more traditional Arabic features, with Semitic noses and high cheekbones; some were tall, others short and squat; but to a man they all had their cheeks filled with khat, the green mulch that seemed to be ubiquitous on this side of the border.
Khat is a narcotic that’s chewed widely across Yemen and East Africa. Its effect is mild stimulation akin to several cups of coffee, but it’s very addictive, and you can’t go far in this country without finding men chomping on the stuff. The problem, of course, is that it has become so popular that farmers don’t bother growing any real crops, which has led to starvation, economic stagnation and mass poverty.
At its closest point, Yemen is a mere eighteen miles away from Djibouti. Since ancient times, Yemen has had close relations with the Horn of Africa. The mountains of Yemen and the Ethiopian highlands have been intertwined in each other’s history and culture since the time of the Queen of Sheba.
It’s easy to see how those early tribes made the journey across the narrow straits in little boats, island-hopping across the Red Sea, across a smaller distance than the English Channel. It’s no wonder that there are so many similarities in the people you encounter – and the wars in Somalia, Eritrea and Yemen itself have resulted in mass migrations in both directions.
I noticed some rustling in the bushes nearby. ‘Look,’ said Sayeed, ‘refugees from the west.’
Fifty metres away, I saw a group of people huddled together under a baobab tree. I walked over and was immediately greeted by some children, who ran to me and began tugging at my trousers and chanting something in Arabic.
‘Musaeada, musaeada,’ they cried.
Sayeed followed me and translated. ‘They’re asking for help,’ he said. ‘These children look like they’re from Aden, or maybe the west coast, let’s go and ask the adults.’
We walked over to the group. There were three men in turbans sitting glumly in silence and several women, some in black niqabs and others in colourful long dresses. They had dark mysterious features, but an overwhelming sadness in their eyes. One of the older women told me her story.
‘We’ve come from Hudaydah to escape the fighting,’ she said, staring into my eyes with an anger I’d rarely seen before. ‘The Saudis are killing us. Our children are dying.’ She grabbed a nearby infant, who was naked apart from a pair of dirty pants. Snot dribbled across his face and flies covered his body. His stomach was distended and he looked like the kind of famished child you see in the charity adverts.
‘Look, look at my son,’ she said, holding him out in front of her. ‘We’ve lost everything. This is all we have left.’ She pointed at a small pile of clothes and pots. ‘We have no food and no money.’
‘Where are you going?’ I asked, assuming they must have a plan.
‘We have nowhere to go. This tree is our home. We came to Al Mahra, because we heard the people are friendly and we will come to no harm, but they are poor, too, so we can’t expect anything.’
The civil war in Yemen had been raging for six long years, barely noticed by the outside world. In the Arab Spring, authoritarian president Ali Abdullah Saleh was forced to relinquish power to his rival, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi. But Saleh went on to form an alliance with his former enemies the Houthis, and began co-ordinating attacks on the new government, eventually claiming the capital Sana’a for themselves.
The Saudi-led coalition, sponsored by the West, had taken it upon themselves to fight the Houthi rebels in an attempt to try to restore the Hadi government, and in doing so curb Iranian influence in the country. But like everything else in the region, it wasn’t quite as simple as that. On the one hand it was a battle between Sunni and Shi’a, but also an official government versus a rebel force with foreign sponsorship.
There were lots of outsiders meddling with the affairs of the lawless state. The UAE were busy invading the ports, while Saudi troops massed on the northern borders, using Houthi missiles aimed at Riyadh as an excuse to carpet bomb the mountains; there were US Special Forces supporting the dubious Sunni alliance and conducting raids against high-level opposition targets; all the while Russian, Chinese and Lebanese proxies were backing the usurpers with money, drugs and weapons.
On top of that, al-Qaeda ruled the roost along the south coast and in the mountains of the Hadhramaut, a somewhat inevitable result of the old tribes forming a fanatical alliance against any outside interference; and finally there was the Southern Transitional Council – another loose collection of tribes, who ultimately wanted autonomy and to return to the good old days when Yemen was split in two. The Yemenis had found themselves caught in the middle of a bloody sectarian fight and they are ultimately the ones who had suffered.
‘Yalla,’ said Abshir, ‘Time to go.’ There was nothing to do for these poor people, except give them a handful of dollars and wish them luck. ‘They’re the lucky ones,’ said Sayeed as we walked away. ‘The ones who are stuck behind are getting bombed and dying of cholera.’
Al Ghaydah appeared on the horizon. Whitewashed shacks and adobe walls with rustic minarets signalled the suburbs of the little town, which sprawled on the west bank of a dry river bed a mile away from the sea. We went via the beach first, as the soldiers said they wanted to go shopping. We pulled over next to a little harbour, where wooden fishing boats bobbed in the waves. Somalis were wading in, carrying enormous swordfish and dumping them in wheelbarrows, ready to take to the market. All sorts of fish were drying on the floor around the ramshackle huts, including tiny hammerhead sharks that had been spliced down the middle and now looked like cardboard replicas. The Africans looked shifty when I began to take photographs.
‘Who are you?’ screamed one. Abshir went over and spoke Somali to the man, who changed his demeanour immediately. ‘Please sir, go and tell the world what is happening here. We are so poor, and need the help of the white people.’
Some kids nearby were playing table football in the shade of a garage, spinning the little handles with joy. But our soldiers weren’t interested in fish or football. They’d come for one thing only – khat.
The Somalis were the dealers here and handed out plastic bags filled with sticks for twenty dollars a go.
‘That’s obscene,’ I said. Abshir nodded.
‘It is two days’ wages here. A bag like that will only last an afternoon. It’s all these people have to do, eat khat, get high and sleep.’
But the soldiers didn’t care. They handed over their money and immediately began munching on the little shoots as if they were the tastiest treats to be found.
Sayeed handed me one. It looked like a wilting sprig and its leaves were covered in a thin film of dirt. ‘What do I do with that?’ I asked.
‘Pull off the good leaves,’ he said, plucking the smallest, greenest leaves from the top of the stem, ‘and chew on them. Don’t swallow it. Just chew it up into a ball and keep it in your cheeks. You’ll feel the effects after a few minutes.’
I took the vile shrub and thought about chewing it, but as I looked at the others and saw how bits of vegetation got stuck in their teeth and their dazed, bloodshot eyes – I politely declined, using the excuse that I had a bad stomach.
Content with their purchase, the soldiers rallied with bloodshot eyes and we got back into the ragged convoy to drive into town: It was almost dark by the time we got there, and the streets were bustling with all sorts of people. It had the feel of a frontier town: lawless and desperate. We were a hundred miles from the front line with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and yet life went on. There were shops selling wedding dresses next to restaurants selling sweetmeats and cows’ entrails. As we rounded a corner going towards the hotel, I noticed a shop selling an array of assault rifles and ammunition belts.
Abshir grinned. ‘Do you want a Kalashnikov? You can get one for a hundred dollars. I know the owner, he’ll give you a discount.’
‘I think I’m okay thanks,’ I said.
The convoy pulled over in a side street. There were dozens of Toyota pick-up trucks parked outside of a hotel. Some were brown, others beige and yet more covered in military camouflage pattern. The hotel was lit with green and blue fairy lights and the bricks were painted a vile shade of pink. I looked up and saw it had four floors. The sign above the door welcomed visitors in English to experience ‘three star deluxe’.
I grabbed my bags and followed Abshir and Sayeed inside. Our hosts, with their machine-guns and belts, still chewing their khat, followed on behind. Perhaps I was expecting to stay in some sort of traditional Yemeni home, or maybe even camp in the wilds, but no, we’d been brought to the swankiest hotel in town.
The reception room was filled with cheap pleather sofas and Perspex coffee tables. The marble floor was covered in cigarette butts and phlegm, where the guests had deposited the remains of their khat onto the floor. The walls had gaudy posters of Swiss cottages plastered all over them, next to tatty pictures of Mecca, and in the corner was a rather surprising Christmas tree with a plastic fairy on the top. I was just getting used to the bizarre accommodation when Abshir motioned for me to follow on.
‘The sultan will see us shortly,’ he said. ‘He’s taken over this hotel just for you.’
‘What do you mean?’ I said.
‘You’re a journalist, the first foreigner they’ve met in a long time. And you’re here to tell his story. So just be grateful.’
‘Okay.’
I walked up the filthy stairs to the fourth floor, where I found a basic single room waiting for me. The bed was lumpy and the sheets filled with the burn holes of cigarettes, but I didn’t care. I was in Yemen, and about to meet a king.
Sayeed led the way. He’d got changed into his best white dishdasha, as had Abshir. I hadn’t brought any formal wear, so I felt somewhat self-conscious in my sarong and cheap shirt, although since everyone else was in a turban, I kept mine on. We went down a floor to a meeting room and suddenly I found myself in a conference of rebels.
There were about twenty men lounging around the edges of the room on cushions. Most of them had formidable daggers tucked into their belts; some had pistols in holsters and several had laid out their AKs at their feet. There were dozens of grenades lying on the coffee tables and at least one man had brought a rocket launcher to the tea party. They all stood up when we entered. I was presented first to the sultan.
‘This is Sultan Abdullah bin Essa,’ said Sayeed, introducing his chief. ‘Son of Sultan Essa bin Ali Al Afrar, who was the last king of Mahra and Socotra.’
The sultan smiled. He was a fifty-five-year-old, benevolent-looking man in a long robe and a khaki Kashmir turban, the same as mine. ‘Welcome. Please sit down,’ he said gravely. ‘You are from England, I hear?’ he went on.
‘I am,’ I told him.
‘Well then, please listen. I have gathered the tribes and ordered them here to Al Ghaydah. Look around. We are the Al Mahra people and I represent them at the Southern Transitional Council.’
A man walked in with a tray of food. It was a steaming pile of BBQ goat with the skull sat neatly on top of the meat and offal. Placing it carefully on the floor at the sultan’s feet, he walked away gingerly. The sultan gestured for me to dig in. I looked around at the cluster of militia men and warlords. Half of them wore camo jackets over their shirts and I imagined that this was probably no different to the al-Qaeda conferences that were happening only a hundred miles away in the villages of the Hadhramaut.
I ate a chunk of liver, washed down with sweet black tea.
‘We are in a state of emergency. We have always had autonomy here in the East and we are not interested in the affairs of the West. We do not support the Houthis, nor do we give any assistance to al-Qaeda. We just want to be left alone, but those brutes the Saudis are threatening to invade. The Emiratis already have – they have occupied my homeland, Socotra, and they are planning to take over all the ports until we give in. I do not plan on that happening. We will resist, and fight if we must.’ He stared at me over his glasses, looking like a disappointed headmaster.
‘Please tell your government to stop supporting the enemy. Saudi Arabia is killing innocent people. They are sending teams of their barbarian Salafis to try and convert the people to their medieval mentality. We are a civilised, peaceful people, who simply want to be left alone. We have already been betrayed by Britain once. We used to admire your great kingdom and were happy serving under your queen. Our people used to be friends. We were happy to be part of your empire until 1967, but we do not want to be part of the Saudi empire now. Their methods are brutish. They kill without mercy. Did you know the UAE are torturing people and throwing our leaders out of helicopters? Helicopters that were supplied by your government.’
He took a sip of tea and then smiled. ‘Now … how may I help you?’
I promised to pass on the message and explained that I was on a journey trying to get around the Arabian Peninsula, but thought it prudent not to mention that I wanted to get to Saudi Arabia. Instead, I told him I wanted to travel west towards Aden and from there I’d make another plan. The truth was, there was no real plan. I just knew that I’d have to take each day as it came in a place like this. The sultan stroked his chin.
‘I can only guarantee your safety as far as Sayhut. After that you’re into the Hadhramaut, and the road to Aden isn’t safe. I can’t authorise that, I’m sorry.’
I stayed silent. I wanted to explain to him that I’d done this sort of thing before, crossing war zones and dealing with rebels. Abshir must have read my mind and I guess he wanted to earn his keep with me.
‘Sultan,’ he said, placing his hand on the king’s arm. ‘This Englishman was a soldier.’ Abshir looked at me with a glint in his eye. I hadn’t told him that and had no idea how he’d found out, but I suppose he’d done his research on me.
‘And he has already been across Iraq and Syria. He is very experienced, and simply wants to go to Aden.’
The sultan looked at me and back at Abshir and then back at me. He didn’t blink in almost a minute, as he stared in silence.
‘This isn’t Iraq. This isn’t Syria. This is Yemen, we are in the middle of a civil war and if you fall into the hands of the enemy, then you will be executed. And that reflects badly on me as a host. But since you insist, I will think about it, and I will speak to the tribes in the Hadhramaut. I will speak to al-Qaeda and see whether they might let you pass. Until then you may explore my lands and go as far west as Qishn.’
With that, Abshir nodded. It was time to leave and so we went upstairs to our rooms and went to bed.
The next day we set off after breakfast along the coast, in one of the military vehicles out of Al Ghaydah. We passed the port of Nishtun and spent the morning exploring the ancient town of Qishn with its historic white fortress. These days it was little more than an empty village, but the beauty of its architecture betrayed a glorious past, filled with stories of kings who adorned the pages of One Thousand and One Arabian Nights. The mountains guarded the crumbling walls, and palm groves flanked meadows filled with camels and cows.
It was a scene of perfect serenity and it was hard to imagine the horrors of a war that seemed so far away, and yet in fact raged on in the mountains beyond. I thought of the remote tribes I could meet and the incredible history of places like Shibam, with its famous mud skyscrapers, which was hidden in the valleys of the Hadhramaut. Freya Stark, the English explorer, had described it as the ‘Manhattan of the desert’ and the most enchanting view she had ever encountered.
‘Do you think we’ll be allowed to carry on, Abshir?’ I asked my guide.
‘Honestly,’ he said, ‘I think you’d be crazy to go any further. If you do, then I can’t go with you. But let’s see what the sultan says later on.’
That night we drove back to Al Ghaydah at the sultan’s request. ‘He has summoned us back,’ said Abshir. ‘He has something he wishes to tell us.’ It sounded ominous, but I had no choice. I was entirely at the mercy of the sultan and for now at least, I had to backtrack to the main town and find out what his decision might be.
The sultan was waiting for us, sitting on his cushions in the same spot that we had left him. There was a queue of men waiting to meet him. Abshir told me they would come from all over Al Mahra to get his advice, to settle family disputes, to pay taxes and even ask to borrow money. They went in one by one, like children waiting to have a private lesson from their teacher. Abshir ushered me to the front of the queue. Sultan Abdullah stood up and hugged me.
‘Did you enjoy Qishn?’ he said. ‘It is my ancestral home. The fortress has been the home of the bin Afrar for centuries.’
I told him that I had.
He gestured for me to sit next to him and poured me some yellow Arabic coffee.
Another man entered the room and closed the door behind him. He was a huge hulk of a man, with deep creases in his weathered face. The sultan stood up and hugged him, too.
‘This is Colonel Ali Salim Al Hareysi,’ said the sultan. ‘He is my finest warrior.’
The colonel gripped my hand and sat next to me. ‘You can call me Mr H.’
Abshir whispered in my ear. ‘They call him the Lion of the Desert, he’s the most feared man in Eastern Yemen.’
‘British?’ The colonel raised his eyebrows. ‘We don’t get many British here. It’s a shame you’re not American. We want to ask the CIA for some money, since we’re the only ones stopping al-Qaeda. You Brits don’t have any money to give do you? I look after the borders and make sure no undesirables get in.’ He pointed at me. ‘You’re lucky you’re not an undesirable.’ He grinned, flashing gold teeth. ‘But we’re expecting war soon. If the Saudis come, or those bastards from the UAE, then I will defend these mountains to the death.’
I couldn’t tell whether he was saying these things for effect, or whether he actually meant it.
The sultan stepped in.
‘I have some bad news for you. Mr H will explain.’
The colonel, or Mr H, took out his phone and showed me a website. It was an online news article from the Yemen national newspaper. It was in Arabic, but Abshir translated.
‘It says that a British spy is known to be operating in Eastern Yemen and he is trying to convince the Al Mahra government to cede to Oman and separate from the rest of the country.’
I shook my head. ‘I’d be surprised if that was true,’ I said. ‘Do you know who he is?’ I asked Mr H.
The colonel laughed. ‘Ha! They are referring to you.’
‘Oh shit,’ I said.
‘Yes. The newspaper is sponsored by the Saudi barbarians, and they put this kind of thing in, so they have an excuse to invade. Luckily, they don’t know your name, but they know you are here. They have spies everywhere, and I’ve had reports from my men that if they find out that this conference is happening, then they will cause problems.’
‘What kind of problems?’ I said, although I really didn’t need to ask. If the Saudis found out that I’d been in Yemen illegally, then they would almost certainly ban me from Saudi Arabia and my journey would be over.
The sultan put a hand on my shoulder. ‘We can’t stay here any longer. Now that the Saudis are interested in you, we are all in danger. If they find out that me and the Colonel are in this hotel, then they might send a missile from their drones and kill us all. We need to leave, we need to go to Oman tomorrow and I will take you there personally.’