The Separations, Part One

There were many things about diplomatic life I failed to anticipate But perhaps the most unexpected was that my husband’s employer—the British Foreign Office—could force us to live apart for years.

One last cuddle before daddy leaves the continent—the first of many goodbyes.

There were many things about diplomatic life that I failed to anticipate: My home would always be full of strangers, I couldn’t go for a hike without asking permission from my bodyguard, I had to learn to check my car for explosives. But perhaps the most unexpected was that my husband’s employer—the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office—could force us to live apart for months or years at a time.

As soon as I moved in with Tim in the Residence of the British Ambassador in Yemen, the British government seized control of my life. They conducted a security investigation into my life and family. They told me where I could travel in Yemen. They assigned me a bodyguard to tail me every time I left the house. Yet I didn’t mind any of these things if it meant I could be with the man I loved.

I had naïvely believed that committing to Tim meant that at least we would always live together. Once we had a daughter, I assumed we would raise her together. In the same country, the same city, the same house. I clearly hadn’t done my research.

In our early years, I came to understand some of the pressures on diplomatic couples. When a diplomat was posted overseas, his or her partner had to either give up their career in the UK or find a portable career. I realized how lucky I was that I could write from anywhere. I met doctors and lawyers and architects who had abandoned their work for their marriage. Things were even more challenging if both partners were diplomats, as they often ended up working in different countries. I had not known marriage could survive such a thing, yet it was clearly possible.

Yet not always. The loneliness of living apart from a partner made it easier to succumb to temptation. When you are constantly moving from country to country, meeting extraordinary new people, there are so many opportunities to fall in love. Affairs were not uncommon. Before Tim headed off on his first posting, the FCO told him that if he was to have an affair, could he please “sleep NATO.” In other words, don’t fuck a Russian. Tim obeyed.

Our own separations began even as Theadora was forming. Once I got pregnant on a trip with Tim to New York (another long story), I had to remain there for my first trimester, while he returned to his post in Yemen. Because I was forty and my pregnancy considered high-risk, the Foreign Office and my doctor in New York didn’t want me traveling until Theadora had firmly taken root. Fortunately, a friend was willing to lend me his studio flat in Washington Heights until I could leave the city.

At first, I thought I would have a marvelous time in the city on my own, despite pining for Tim. I had never lived in New York when I wasn’t working full-time in an office. My flexible writing hours meant I could linger in art galleries, wander Central Park, and spend time with my dearest friends.

I had forgotten that my dearest friends all had jobs. They were not available during the day and I was exhausted at night. Normally I would have spent all of my time working, but I had just turned in a draft of my first book and couldn’t do further work on it until I heard back from my editor.

I was supposed to be resting, never my strong suit. So I signed up for a bartending course at Columbia University. My former boyfriend Lance used to bartend for the Columbia bartending service, mixing drinks at university events and private parties of the wealthy. I figured cocktail crafting would be a useful skill to have as a diplomatic spouse.

On the first day, I looked around to find myself in a room full of 21-year-olds who were mystified to find a forty-year-old pregnant lady among them. Our instructors, however, were accommodating. We were required to taste our drinks, in order to evaluate them. But because of my pregnancy, I wasn’t drinking. My instructors understood, generously offering to taste all of my drinks for me.

I enjoyed the class, memorizing cocktail ingredients in bed once I got home. I’ve always loved any kind of school. For our final exam, we were asked to go up to the bar one by one and make a specific drink. While making this specific drink, we had to tell a joke. It was one of the most enjoyable final exams of my life, though I can’t for the life of me remember the joke I told or the drink I made.

When at last I was cleared to go back to Yemen, Tim met me in London, where the Foreign Office had scheduled my amniocentesis. Tim came in with me, watching the needle pierce my abdomen, observing its movements on the screen to be sure it didn’t go anywhere near our little one. After discovering—much to our relief—that Theadora had no obvious genetic abnormalities and was definitely a girl, we resumed life in Yemen.

But not for long. The Foreign Office didn’t want me to give birth in Yemen, where one in eight women died in childbirth, so I headed back to London. Airlines won’t let pregnant women on the plane too close to their due date, so I had to leave more than a month before Tim. Having no place of our own in London, we sublet the home of a friend of a friend in Hackney.

I found ways to cope with the solitude in that last month of my pregnancy, working through edits on my book, joining a local sports center so I could swim, visiting a friend next door, and meeting with a group of women all due to give birth in the same month I was. The National Childbirth Trust (NCT) organizes these groups in every part of the UK. I was so grateful to discover this remarkable organization, which offers free support to pregnant women and new mothers in the form of workshops, advice, and community.

As the birth drew closer, I began to feel unwell. My skin itched constantly, keeping me from sleeping. I guessed I had developed obstetric cholestasis, a liver disorder, and a blood test confirmed it. A woman’s liver generally returned to normal after giving birth, but the effect on the fetus was unknown. So my midwife rang to tell me I had to come in to be induced the next day.

I burst into tears. “I can’t!” I said. “My husband is in Yemen!” Tim wasn’t scheduled to arrive for another two weeks. And it took a day to fly to London. The midwife said she was willing to push it back just one day, but no longer. I rang Tim. “But I have houseguests,” he said, stunned. “I have so much work left to do!”

Yet he dropped everything and got on a plane, arriving just before the induction began. When Theadora was finally lifted out of me after an emergency Caesarean, he got to meet her first, bending over her on the table where her airways were being cleared, his face alight with love.

He stayed for six weeks, taking us back to the hospital when Theadora failed to thrive, accompanying me to breast feeding clinics, changing diapers, and holding Theadora when I needed to sleep. I still remember the morning he had to fly back to Yemen. Theadora was asleep in her Moses basket, tucked under blankets, her head turned to one side. I had brought her into the bathroom so I could watch her while I showered. Tim knelt down next to her and kissed her little face. “Goodbye sweetheart,” he said, his eyes filling with tears.

We didn’t know when we would see him again. I couldn’t take Theadora back to Yemen until she was old enough to get her first vaccines, so it would be at least three months. I felt panicky to be left alone with a baby, but there was no alternative.

When our landlord told me he needed the house back earlier than planned, I had to move. Thankfully, a woman I had just met in my NCT group offered me refuge. “We have a room in the basement,” she said. “You can stay with us.”

We were not easy to move. Tim and I had bought all the things we needed for the baby in London, as many would not be readily available in Yemen. This meant I had a bottle sterilizer, breast pumps, changing mat, a year’s worth of onesies and other clothing, a pram, a car seat, a kitchen full of food, boxes of diapers and wipes, containers of ointments, and a suitcase full of books. I didn’t think I could get it all in a taxi by myself, while wrangling the baby.

Lloyd, the former head of Tim’s bodyguards in Yemen, came to my rescue. He had just moved to Salisbury, and offered to drive up to London to help me. I was weak with relief. He lugged all the boxes and suitcases into my new home and arranged them around the bed. When I hugged him goodbye, I started to cry. I didn’t want to be here, in this soulless basement room with my husband a continent away. I didn’t want to have to set everything up again. I didn’t want to be alone. My hosts invited me to join them for dinner that night, which I gladly did.

It was the last time they would ask me to join them. I understood this, as they too had a newborn too, and had already done me the enormous favor of housing me. They couldn’t be expected to feed me as well (though I would have been happy to make dinner together). I didn’t want to ask them for any more favors. Having limited room in the refrigerator and no energy for cooking, I subsisted for most of my time there on cereal and toast.

When our babies were less than three months old, my hosts decided to paint the inside of the house. I was horrified, thinking of the effect of paint fumes on the brains of tiny new humans. I asked them if they were worried about this. They were not. And so, unwilling to expose Theadora, I moved again. Another NCT mothers helped me this time, moving me into the loft of another woman in our group. It was huge and airy and I felt a huge sense of relief to be there, knowing that this time I would not leave until Tim came to fetch me.

We were all delighted to be reunited in Yemen. Theadora got to sleep in a proper crib. The staff in the house fell in love with her, constantly stealing her from my arms. Best of all, Theadora had her father and I had my husband. Every night while I fed her, we read to her. We read her Shakespeare, we read her short stories, we read her novels. We read her anything we had nearby. When he was home, Tim lay on the carpet beside her playmat and made her laugh. He was a more patient parent than I was, content to focus just on Theadora, ignoring work, chores, and everything else.

Our delirious happiness lasted three months. On Monday April 26, a suicide bomber leapt onto Tim’s car as he was on his way to work and blew himself up, triggering an explosion so powerful that the bomber’s head landed on the top of a nearby seven-story building.

Next week: Our evacuation from Yemen, life in Jordan, and the much longer separations ahead.

A last family photo outside our first home together before Theadora and I are evacuated from Yemen.