The Prisoner

      DECEMBER 1941. HODEIDA, THE YEMEN

      It was in the early afternoon when the prisoners could expect to be fed. At that time of day, a little light penetrated the subterranean gloom, while outside every living creature abandoned the cauldron of the streets. The grating rumble of a cart, the cries of bartering tradesmen and even the ululating calls of the muezzin fell silent as the sun lingered at its zenith. It was then that some women in the town gathered up scraps saved from their meal of the night before and made their way through the labyrinth of foetid passageways to the little square in front of the dungeon. From where they were, below the level of the street outside, the prisoners could not hear their approach, but they knew that their only meal of the day would shortly arrive.

      All of a sudden vegetables, crusts of bread, bits of fish and fruit showered down from the bars high above, caught like motes of dust in a shaft of light. With clanking chains, the fettered men surged forward to fall on the debris, pushing each other out of the way. Some of those giving food were wives or relatives, others were responding to the Koran’s injunction to show compassion to the imprisoned. Apart from these charitable offerings, and a communal bowl of boiled rice every two or three days, the prisoners received no food, for the fact of their being where they were was proof that they had somehow transgressed, and the task of the guards was to keep them locked up, but not necessarily alive.

      One prisoner was slower than the others. He limped painfully towards the food on the floor, holding up the chains linking his feet with a piece of rope. Around his left ankle, below the fetters he was supporting, was a dirty bandage, caked in dried blood and pus. Although he was always the last, he still managed to find something: a fish head, a torn corner of pitta or a broken cake of rice, which he would pick methodically from the floor of beaten earth. The seven or eight other prisoners – murderers, smugglers, petty thiefs, crooked traders, perhaps even the odd innocent man – had nothing to do with the stranger who called himself Ahmed Abdullah al Redai. Too much interest was taken in him by the authorities for that to be prudent. Not that he looked important or dangerous, dressed as he was in filthy clothes which fell away from his emaciated frame. But even in the depths of their oubliette they had heard about Ahmed Abdullah. While his Arabic was fluent, the accent was strong and foreign, and they knew that he was not, as his name professed, a Yemeni from the town of Reda. Some said he was a soldier from the war between the Nazarenes; while others had heard that he was a spy in the pay of the British in Aden, to the south. There were even those who believed he was a Christian.

      For hours, the prisoner sat motionless in a corner of the cell, resting his back against the stone wall. Every so often he slowly raised himself and shuffled over to the communal water vat, lifting to his lips a ladle fashioned from an old tin can. A festering bucket served the prisoners’ other physical needs and he would approach it suppressing his lingering feelings of disgust. He felt bitter now, when recalling his hopes on first seeing the cloud-covered mountains of the Yemen from the sambuk which had brought him across the Red Sea from Eritrea. As the vessel beached at Hodeida, an old mufti with a white beard had been carried through the waves by two fishermen and hauled aboard. He had stood on the prow, and before the passengers could wade ashore they had been required to make the Muslim profession of faith: There is no other god but God and Mohammed is his prophet. The stranger had repeated the familiar words without feeling fraudulent, for he recited his Arabic prayers five times a day and did so sincerely.

      The senior port official, an elegant young man in robes of white silk, sat under a lean-to on the beach, where he questioned the new arrivals. He acknowledged their responses with a bored nod, and then waved them through. The stranger waited until he was the last before he approached. He stood before the low writing table, looking down at the young man, who sat on cushions and a carpet laid over the sand. He was neither a Yemeni nor a Muslim, he announced, but an Italian officer who had been fighting against the British. He was the equivalent of an amir al-alai, a colonel, who had commanded eight hundred horsemen, and he now sought refuge from his enemies in the Yemen. The official silently studied the figure in front of him. Dressed in miserable clothes with no possessions, or proof of identity, he looked like thousands of other desperate Arabs along the coast struggling to survive in difficult times. The hands were rough and callused, the weatherbeaten face scarred down the right cheek and, though his blue-grey eyes shone brightly, the whites were yellowed with malaria. But something about him, perhaps the quiet intensity with which he spoke or the levelled eyes which held his own with no sign of fear, made the young official hesitate to dismiss him. He invited the stranger to sit and tell him more, and ordered an underling to bring them tea.

      To the prisoner, that interview felt like months ago, although he knew it could not have been more than two or three weeks. But for all the outside world would be aware, he could remain in the dungeon for years. All his efforts to evade the British seemed so futile now. Had he surrendered with the others, at least the enemy would have recognised his rank and kept him alive. But fortune had abandoned him and every day in the semi-darkness he was growing weaker. The glands of his groin were swollen from coping with the suppurating bullet wound to his ankle. It would not be long before gangrene set in. He had often faced death before, and he was resigned to it. In his pain and misery, it was not even unwelcome.

      During the long, uninterrupted hours in the stifling cell, the prisoner’s mind wandered back