Recent Columns

Fear is a funny thing. Along with other Commonwealth citizens, Jean and I were recently informed that most staff members of the British Embassy here are leaving and that we should consider the same.

It's Valentine's Day. Great fun. Two years ago today, I proposed to Jean. Her ring was presented in a restaurant, with the help of the official town crier, his booming voice, clanging bell and scroll. Moments later, along with thousands of others in London, Ont., we heard about our upcoming "royal wedding" on the radio.

Chalk up a victory for misguided tolerance in the recent flap with Lebanon's ambassador to Canada, Raymond Baaklini.

And now, for a change, some good news from the Arabian Peninsula.

Jarring images of how an Islamic extremist burst into, of all places, a hospital in the last days of 2002, to fire bullets from his Kalishnikov into the heads of our friends will linger for a while. My wife Jean and I and some colleagues are still laying to rest what has become known across Yemen as 'The Jibla Tragedy.'

SANA'A, YEMEN ✦ The Yanks. We love 'em. We hate 'em. Indeed, Jean and I are still recovering from the news of the brutal slaying of threeU.S.aid workers, including a doctor friend, at Jibla missionary hospital. The killer, apparently an Islamic extremist, reportedly said he killed "to get closer to God." Right. And who better to kill than American Christians? It's killing two birds, innocent as they may be, with one stone. Indeed,U.S.foreign policy really has folks in a huff these days. In fact, many of us would bend over backward to disassociate ourselves from the Yanks. No?

It didn't take long for what started out like a normal day in our household to turn into the day from hell.

When you're a humanitarian aid worker in a place like Yemen, the thought of being killed for no good reason is always there. When you talk with colleagues about security threats, sometimes you joke about the false impressions people back home in western countries tend to have about life in the Middle East.

Dear Santa: Thanks for last year's gift, the Gulliver's Travels book. I enjoyed the Houyhnhnms, those horse-like characters. So bright. So noble. And those savage Yahoos. So dim. So lost. Poor Gulliver couldn't see himself in them. But Gulliver really was a traveller. Like you Santa. That's why I'm writing. Distribution problems down here are getting worse.

Life in Yemen is different. Still, a colleague surprised me not long ago when I invited some boys from the office for an afternoon getaway at a local recreation centre.

The children. Oh, the children. The smallest hold tightly onto black, tent-like baltos that drape over their mothers. Others sing in a school courtyard near our home. But the beggar kids who run to our vehicle when it's stopped at intersections really get me.

Jean is back in Hamilton to put final touches on McMaster University's Nov. 8 symposium on international women's health. My wife has left me to fend for myself. But rather than take on our kitchen stove, I've decided it's better to get kidnapped.

Dear Osama: We've been back several weeks now and Jean and I are settling nicely in this ancient land of your ancestry. But we're still not sure where the old bin Laden family homestead is. And where, Osama, are you? Somewhere warm?

Folks who lined up to throw pies at the prime minister for his candid suggestion that 9/11 was linked with growing global disparities and Western greed may want to stop reading this. The rest of you may meet my wife, Jean, a woman I thank God for every day.

It's daybreak and we're again travelling the dusty roads of Sanaa, Yemen's capital. After two days of travel, Jean and I are nearing home, a ground-level apartment on a street with no name. Thank you U-2.