that are meant to be consumed as soon as baked, hubz gets hard fast, so I’d eat Nello’s bread and carry the plastic bag back. I’d give some to Mrs. Weston, soaked in milk. Oh, yes, I needed to buy some cans of sardines on the way back. Expectant mothers need protein.
“Now. Tell me what you know about Michael Petrovich.” I looked stern.
Nello glanced at me. “I do not want to say something to hurt you.”
“No. No!” My lunch with Petrovich must have given Nello undue suspicions. “I don’t like to see people I have met being murdered, but believe me, Nello, I had no special feelings for that man. Tell me what you know.”
After a quick, shrewd look my way, Nello leaned forward.
“Michael Petrovich,” he said thoughtfully. “Businessman, he was. And more. Much more.”
“What do you mean?”
Nello tilted his head. “You know him only from plane? Nothing else?”
“I met him on the plane from Frankfurt.” Better not to say I had found him quite charming.
“Petrovich,” said Nello, “is bad guy. Arms supplier. Was.”
“What?” An arms supplier? “Are you sure, Nello?”
“He is watched by police and army and maybe has some friends there, too.”
“Who did he supply arms to?” I took a chunk of bread and dipped it into oil.
“Well. To people who pay money. Big money. Groups who need arms for bad purposes. You know.” His voice dropped to a whisper, though there were no other customers in the restaurant. “Like what used to be in Aden when Soviets were there.”
“You mean terrorism.” During the Soviet control of South Yemen, the country had been a training ground for terrorists of all stripes, Palestinian, Kurdish, Irish Republicans… “I thought most of that had been pushed out with reunification of the two Yemens and with the Soviet collapse,” I said.
Nello sipped at his own glass of red “juice.” “Well,” he said. “They were pushed out as far as Somalia across the Gulf of Aden and Sudan across the Red Sea. Not too far.”
Yes, we had seen evidence of that. The World Trade Center bombing in 1993. And reporters spoke among themselves and with experts about the shadowy character, Osama bin Laden, who lived somewhere on the other side of the Red Sea but had connections here in Yemen.
Oil dribbled off my bread and down my chin as I stared at Nello. I must have looked like an idiot. Naïve! Unable to see beyond a fellow’s charm. Blinded by a man lifting my carry-on into the overhead compartment. Michael’s death didn’t seem quite so horrible, though I still wouldn’t have wished it.
“Anyhow, go on…why on earth would the Yemeni government, or Interpol, for that matter, allow such activities? It couldn’t be in their interests to have people like Michael Petrovich supporting groups like that. And how did he get tied in?”
If Nello was right—and Nello was usually right—I began to see why Jason Roberts at the Embassy had so little to tell me about Michael Petrovich. If—and I still maintained a shred of skepticism—he was an illicit arms smuggler, he certainly wasn’t a citizen America could be proud of, and diplomats are trained to put the best face on things. Of course, diplomats must also lie through their teeth when protecting knowledge of undercover activities. Often, they don’t even know who is working in intelligence. Maybe Michael had been a double agent? I was grasping at straws.
“Yemen government do not approve, no. They wish to catch him. But he is clever. Many friends. The government has many people who like money, you know? Bribes. The government does not want to upset the apple carriage. And he works with French company for fertilizer. They do not want big ‘hullabaloo.’” Nello gestured to the waiter.
He arrived with my soup. The steaming bowl called to me with fantastic aromas of garlic and tomato. I dipped in a spoon and then a piece of bread. “So who would kill an American like Petrovich, then?”
Nello’s eyes narrowed. “Who wouldn’t? He is better dead than in jail. Less trouble.” He lowered his voice even more. “I think it good if you not look too much into this Petrovich, Elizabeth. Petrovich has friends. And Petrovich has enemies. You not here to do this story? Then do little as possible. Forget that man!”
I dropped the Petrovich topic. “Do you know where Halima al Shem is these days? I want to see her!” Even with Nello, I wouldn’t share information that might harm my friend.
Before volunteering an answer, Nello popped up and out to the kitchen.
Perhaps Nello wasn’t even aware of the large role he had played in my first trip to Yemen by introducing me to Halima. That had been late May of 1994, on a day the bombing was light and I’d enjoyed lunch at Nello’s, alone for a change.
After our first meeting, I’d stopped by the Friends of Yemen whenever possible, often combining it with a stop at Nello’s. Halima couldn’t go into a restaurant, for social reasons, but I could stop by her office. On those visits, we talked of many things—life in America and Yemen, the roles of men and women, personal hopes and fears. Halima’s feminine colleagues watched us converse with awe on their faces. And with pride. A Yemeni woman holding intellectual discussions with a foreigner! Imagine.
Nello came bustling back from the kitchen. “What did you say? Professor Halima?”
“Yes. I hoped to see her while I was here, but Friends of Yemen seems to be closed.”
“She has not been by to say hello for a while. I know nothing…” Nello looked puzzled.
I shrugged and chalked that subject up as a dead end.
But I still had a job to do, sending some broad reports back to Mac in Washington. “How would you say Yemen has changed since I was here? I mean, other than a war not being waged right now. Are there changes in daily life?”
“Now that, it is hard to answer,” said Nello. “More loud. More like what you call it, your American Gold Rush? But like when you were here before, foreigners stay together; Yemenis live their own lives.”
Did Nello know I owed my life to Halima? That episode, dark and frightening, had remained a secret from virtually everyone. It hadn’t been safe to tell. Certainly I would never tell anyone what a Yemeni woman had done in secret, in a place where secrets are all that the sequestered women have.
CHAPTER 28
“I passed the hours listening to the gentle lubalub of the hookah and whispered conversations about dead poets and fine deeds. In Sana’a, qat governs. No rush, just a silky transition, scarcely noticed, and then the room casts loose its moorings. ‘Capturing moments of eternity,’ someone once called the subtle tinkering with time that qat effects.”
Kevin Rushby, Eating the Flowers of Paradise
It was qat time in Sana’a, the post-prandial ritual of chewing the leaf, exchanging poetry and high thoughts with friends, sitting companionably, and then withdrawing into aloneness.
Tom Reilly lay back on the dusty mufraj cushions in the sparsely-furnished room, pulling off tender leaves at the top of the qat branches
