bout de papier, Vol. 21, No. 2 (2005) — Spring 2005 // Printemps 2005, p. 28
COMING OF AGE IN ARABIA — A
MEMOIR OF ADEN BEFORE THE
TERROR, by Tom Henighan, Ottawa,
Canada, Penumbra Press, 2004.
A must-read for all foreign service officers whose first overseas assignment at a tender age included consular and political work. Tom Henighan, Professor Emeritus of English at Carleton University, begins his story “Who at age twenty-two, in good health and full of curiosity about the world would want to be at home?” In his story he describes himself as one of the first “commoners’ in the officer corps of the US State Department of the late 1950s. His first posting is captured within these bookends, an innocent maturing abroad within the confines of an elitist institution in transition.
Tom’s first big consular case came early — a dead body to be identified by family and then buried in Aden. Tom was left with the decision to force the body into a poorly estimated local coffin by breaking the legs! His first murder involved an American military transport ship whose atmosphere of terror had been neatly spelled out in the Captain’s telegram to the consulate. His consular investigation of the crew carried out under an army guard initially met all of Tom’s expectations of childhood mystery stories but proved at its conclusion to be a step into maturity as he came to understand that fear, ambiguity, and desire coexist in real stories.
An unexpected exotic political adventure came his way with the order to report on the condition of three imprisoned Arab nationalist leaders biding their time in a distant island prison off the horn of Africa. This was the image Tom harboured of life in the foreign service — escape from everyday office routine and a dreary social life — this was more like living! The prime object of his lengthy journey was found grinning in a dust blown barbed wire enclosure while having his hair cut, a ritual which captured for Tom the complete absurdity of the British Imperial style with its mixture of jocularity and ruthlessness. The return air trip confirmed his impressions shared as it was with the local sultan and the official executioner of the Sultanate.
The last days of Empire are recalled in his amusing memory of an informal dinner with the British Resident Adviser in Mukalla — Alastair McIntosh — “… looking like a fat pink groundhog on its hind legs..’ who might have inspired Monty Python skits with his daily dose of gin and mid-meeting naps.
The serious reader looking for some hint of the Yemen of today’s war on terror will find scattered throughout the book several good recollections of the slow nationalist project under way since the late fifties. By that time the British were already looking for a middle way between Arab aspirations for self rule and their continuing Imperial presence while the Chinese and Russians were also looking out for their future interests in the region. The US Consulate in Aden soon found itself acting as a transhipment post for materials destined to the establishment of a permanent US presence in Yemen to counteract these intrusive new interests.
At this juncture Tom’s boss passed on to Tom his more senior responsibility as signing officer for the transhipments. That should have been a signal to Tom of trouble ahead in their relationship! Tom, who had earlier dismissed some wise and very clear advice from a friendly local program administrator that he salaam his boss more often, was now working his way into the damning appraisal that would lead to his decision to resign from the US State Department and later seek his fortune further north among us. The secretive appraisal system of the 1950s makes good historical reading for all those who saw our own system change to the quasi-negotiated performance appraisal system of the twenty-first century. Many readers will know Tom personally for his work in Canadian Studies and will therefore be familiar with his cheerful and amusing presence, a presence which everyone can now enjoy vicariously as you share your memories with those of his short career in our shoes. Released by Penumbra Press in Manotick, Coming of Age in Arabia has just been the publishers also of James Bartleman’s Out of Muskoka and Senator Landon Pearson’s Letters from Moscow, both released in 2004. Tom Henigan’s and the other books are available at independent book sellers in the National Capital Region; e.g. Nicholas Hoare, Place Bell Books.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 21, No. 2 (2005) — Spring 2005 // Printemps 2005, p. 28. Read the rest of this issue →
