Hindsight

Hindsight becomes even more clear with age, but photos and diaries plus education and interest provide not only clarity, but understanding, an important aid in writing a memoir.

It doesn't surprise me at my age to discover documentation appearing to show that various intelligence agencies, both British and American, had an interest in our relationship from the onset when we were teenagers of 15 and 16 to the last meeting at your office in the Ministry of Defense over 15 years later.

It did surprise me to identify some of those involved over 50 years after the fact, and I'm not referring to your uncles, whose sources you were well aware of.

Home Videos

          I just found out something that I did not know, or if I did, that I'd long forgotten. It's so exciting. I will try to figure out how to make a CD out of it and send you a copy, for Old Times' sake, if you want one. You won't have to share it with anyone else. It's between the two of us, and as you could recall from context, we were still innocent teenagers. You were 16 that January. I was 17.

Even though I don't like you at all anymore, I cannot resist looking back at the photos and diaries and such, especially since I've been writing these letters to you as well as working on The Project. They bring those warm feelings rather than the others described over the years in this format. I like reverie. I look at the earliest photos and can still sink into love again. It's ridiculous, I know, but it is the nature of star-crossed love. Even broken promises, betrayal and abandonment cannot change it. Old photos.

Remember just before you went back to England for spring term in 1966 and we were at my family's house and we were having fun behind the long curtain between the living room and dining room? Mother filmed us that day! I knew that she'd used her video camera sometimes, including at the horse races and the stables, and that she'd made photos and home movies of what I think could now be considered all "The Players." I don't really give a hoot about those, but I'm happy about the one that is you and me in Manama. Perhaps it will take the pain of Now away for a moment. A home movie!

Hacker Schmacker

Four times in the last week I have been hacked and the worst was yesterday. I'm assuming that your goons are hard at work and enjoyed reading the first draft. It seems that copies of everything on the hard drive were taken and then the drive wiped. 

Please say "Let's hear it for backups." Photos, letters, diaries. All backed up. Honestly, Hamad, it would be far better if you'd do the right thing, keep your promises to me, hit the Memory button and think for awhile.

Then again, perhaps it was Anonymous?

Tea and Chess

Oh, the irony. I just found this as I was packing curios into a box for the move out of this house. My daughter brought it home to me at Christmas time when she visited from London. Fortnum & Mason is just up the road a bit from where we lived for the first three plus years of her life, in a "grotty garret" as the Major said.

The grand chessboard. Remember how we used to play? My last move was providing cover for you.

Here's the closeup. Can you read it?

Trust Me

Do you remember what you said when I asked you if you trust me? You'd taken my purse from my hand, opened it and looked through the contents before handing it back to me. 

"I trust you very little, my dear, and that's more than I trust most others."

I remembered what you said today as it hit me that my biggest mistake in life was directly the opposite. I trusted you more than any others, right from the beginning.

I thought the depth of our love, first love, true love, ages 15 and 16 and 16 and 17 and 17 and 18 and 25 and 26 and whenever we were together, was more than sufficient for trust. You put me in danger at 32 and still I trusted that you would keep your word subsequently.

Tell me this, please. Did you think, knowing me all those years, that I would take a story to the National Enquirer? Even understanding the recent surprise I gave you, did you honestly think at some point that someone whose heart you knew so well would join the ranks of women who'd had private relationships with foreign leaders and sold a one-page story to a supermarket tabloid?

(By the way, either your oldest son or someone acting as him expressed to my daughter a concern that details could end up in the Seattle Times. I pointed out no such thing had happened in decades and was unlikely to happen then.)

Maybe there was only one page to those stories. Maybe they weren't as intriguing as ours, mixed in with politics and world affairs. 

How's your trust level doing today? Do you still trust me more than most others, my dear? 

I do wonder sometimes if you've appreciated my discretion all these years. You didn't ask me for it. It was a gift from me to you. Some gifts wear out over time and cannot be repaired. 

Rats

Palaces. 
Villas. 
House with rats, rat mites, a hazardous tree falling onto and into the house and, recently, raw sewage spilling onto my kitchen floor from burst pipes in the old house where I rent one floor and my crazy hoarder landlord lives in part of the basement with his garbage and rats dancing on his back at night while he sleeps. Palaces to rat-infested, filthy holes, just like your prisons. If I could go from one to the other, think what it could be like for you.
       A rat like you.

Mae West's Good Advice

Mae West, famous American actress from Hollywood's Golden Age, wrote:

          "Keep your diaries when you're young and they'll keep you when you're old."

I kept my diaries. I kept the letters. I kept the photographs. 

I kept my promise for more than 40 years to keep these things out of the tabloids and gutter press. 

You failed to keep every promise that you made to me. 

I remind you of one important thing. I never signed a non-disclosure agreement.