5 May 2008
Hey anybody out there still with me. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a chance to post on Henry’s website here. Am well aware that as of today it has been three months since Henry left us. His presence permeates all I do and think about, but especially today, another “anniversary.”
I am back from Yemen - a most amazing trip, how to find the words to even talk about it? I had a day and a half at home, a time overwhelmed with obligations and phone calls and the ever present pile of mail, and left again for a family event in Columbus, Georgia, and now today arrived in Orlando to be with Peter’s family, while Anne’s family is visiting here this week.
The following paragraphs I wrote one night in Sana’a, but could never get it posted:
21 April 2008
Hey anybody out there still with me. It is just turning into Sunday midnight here in Sana’a, Yemen. I can hardly believe we are here. Since this website was created to record stories of Henry, I am stretching things a bit to write about this trip.
How about this:
Yemen.
Start with our arriving at the Tripoli airport late at night, October of 1965. The airport then was not a building, per se, but a cavernous aircraft hanger left over from WWII. I remember very little about that night - so late, so tired, so dirty; Peter was three and Allison three months. Henry was there to meet us. He had gone on to Libya several months earlier, as originally he was based in Benghazi - there was no family housing for us as the Esso office was in the process of being transferred to Tripoli. Once Henry found a “villa” for us in Tripoli, he could send for his family. A most vivid memory of the night the kids and I arrived is the vastness of the hanger, where far over in one corner was bivouacked a contingent of British Royal Marines, in battle dress, awaiting their connecting flight on to Aden. Each marine was lounging beside his wooden footlocker on which was stenciled: Aden. I thought, Aden? Where is Aden? I had a vauge idea it was far south of Tripoli, but did I even know which continent? I don’t think so.
I occasionally noticed Aden/Yemen in the news, it seemed they were always fighting each other. I did not pay much attention.
Through osmosis perhaps, I came to know that the Queen of Sheba, Bilqis, visited King Solomon, bringing him frankincense. She traveled up the old Frankincense Trail from her kingdom in the far south of Yemen. A desire to visit Aden/Yemen was brewing. During those later years that we were in the Middle East, Aden/Yemen became an object of desire for me. Henry would just roll his eyes: “Do you want to go in the middle of the fighting? Or rather when they are just kidnapping tourists? “
By 1993 I was well acquainted with two women who, at separate times, had gone to Yemen, enjoyed fabulous trips, and they were not kidnapped. One evening John Boulware was at the house for dinner; he listened to my on going project to generate a trip to Yemen. Henry was not at all sympathetic to this discussion. John, a little more understanding, and probably to just shut me up, offered to take me. His wife Michelle was out of the Kingdom then, he needed to make a trip to check on something at his company’s office in Sana’a, and said it would be easy to get me a visa and take me along.
Now, the gauntlet was between us. Henry and I talked about this. Well, I talked and he continued to read TIME magazine, never looking up. Finally, he said - okay, okay - but leave the car keys.
Aside here - a cartoon in the New Yorker Magazine from years ago: the scene is a couple on the beach, a great gigantic cartoon raptor swooped down and flew off with the husband gripped in it’s huge talons. The wife is running along the beach, looking up at the stricken husband in the clutches of the bird, and shouting -
Drop the car keys! Drop the car keys!
This line became a classic at our house, used often and for many occasions.
Henry never said no. He said, “Drop the car keys.”
I stayed in Dhahran. Michelle returned from the States and very thoughtfully brought me a wonderful book on Yemen - a consolation gift. She thought I should have gone when I had the chance. I bought a lovely book in the Kobar bookstore, “Felix Arabia, the Flower Men of Yemen,“ with pictures of the place to which I was not going. I put the two books up on the shelf, and Henry and I never discussed the subject again. Yemen descended into civil war the same year Henry retired - 1994.
The “Yemen Thing” lay buried, smoldering deep in my being, and burst into flames when Vicci Roo unexpectedly called a few weeks ago.
The conversation: Hi Bonnie. Do you want to go to Yemen with me?
The instant reply: yes!
Our children, now grown and fairly well traveled, were somewhat reserved about my taking this trip - but then, they have been around enough to know that what one reads in the papers is not necessarily what is happening on site. However, they were a bit hesitant about my going. The surprise was two good friends, who really were opposed to this venture. As one husband collected newspaper accounts of the unrest and recent attacks on the American embassy in Yemen and subsequent travel advisory against Americans traveling to Yemen, the wife came to me with: ”…and just what would Henry say if he were still here?” I know very well what he would say: “Drop the car keys.”
On the other hand, when he would say to me he didn’t care if I did such and such, I would say to him, “just say one way or the other, so I have something to go against!”
So. I sent in my check for airfare to the Council on US-Arab Relations for the Mallone Fellow Visit to Yemen.
I let things pile up, and as the departure time drew near, I simply was not ready, this situation true to form for me. Far into the night before departure I was tending to last minute business instead of packing, and it seemed I could hear Henry, as he has said to me so many times in this situation, with a despairing but kindly smile: “You can’t seem to settle down and do what needs to be done. All you are doing is re-arranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic.”
And, with that last comment from him, I boarded the plane for Washington D.C. and two days of mandatory orientation before jumping off the deep end.
This is all for now. The trip was so vast in scope for me, am trying to figure out how and what to write about it
Bye for now - thanks to those who still read with me - Love, Bonnie and the Cook Family