Olives
Alexander McNabb
Copyright © Alexander McNabb 2011
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsquent publisher.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Smashwords Edition
If the Olive Trees knew the hands that planted them, their oil would become tears.
Mahmoud Darwish
My father has slipped from us all, his mind increasingly leached away by dementia. My one enormous regret is that, back when he’d have understood what I was on about, I couldn’t have put this book in his hands and said, ‘Hey, Dad, I’ve written a book.’.
This is for him anyway.
ONE
To be honest, this was not one of my finest moments. I waited for something to happen, picking flakes of paint from the wall and cracking them between my fingernails before letting them fall. The only sound in the police cell was the ambient roar of emptiness with the occasional dry snap of paint.
Anne, my landlady and my lover, had cried seeing me off at Heathrow. It always made her nose go red. She cried the day I came home and told her I was going to move to Jordan for a year. It was our first row in two years together but as we finally went through the act of leaving there was only terrible sadness. I promised to call her every day. As I rounded the corner into the security hall she called my name out. I turned and she mouthed ‘I love you’.
I blew her a kiss as the shuffling queue took me out of sight.
The flight was overbooked and they upgraded me to business class. I made liberal use of the free champagne, trying to convince myself of the sense of what I was doing. For the first time I confronted the thought I might lose Anne, twisting it in my mind like a knife as I sipped the cool drink and watched the clouds below.
My black mood lifted as we bounced through the turbulence above the black desert approach to Queen Alia International Airport, the champagne adding to my feeling of recklessness. I was still light-headed when I met the lugubrious hotel driver, a beaten-down man called Amjad who sported a great soup-strainer moustache as he stood in the arrivals line, listlessly displaying my name on a sheet of paper. We walked out to the car park and settled down for the drive to the Intercontinental Hotel. The Grand Hyatt was out of bounds since my last, first, trip to Jordan. My publisher, Robin, had set fire to my room with a cigar celebrating the Ministry of Natural Resources contract I was now coming to Jordan to fulfil.
Amjad asked if this was my first time in Jordan, a question I remembered from my last trip, along with the familiar honorific ‘seer’ and the faint reek of cigarette smoke. He was delighted when I replied no, I had been before. The stands of trees flashed past, the brown land dotted with pale stone-clad houses and patches of cultivation. Every few hundred metres, someone at the roadside hawked steaming canisters of coffee or great bunches of radishes, rows of gleaming beef tomatoes and stacks of huge, green and yellow mottled watermelons.
He offered me a cigarette. I didn’t object when he opened the window and lit up. I was in a happy place thanks to the champagne and giddy newness. For now, my tearful parting from Anne was forgotten.
About halfway to the city along the King’s Highway, Amjad startled me, wailing and hammering on the wheel. A cop stood in the road ahead, waving us down. We pulled over and a second cop strode up to the car and wrenched the driver’s door open. They forced Amjad out of the car, shouting. I watched him colour and push away the second copper’s hand on his shoulder, getting a mighty shove back that made him lose his footing. I’d normally have stayed out of the way in the car, but their bullying made my blood rise, the champagne lending me the courage to act.
Now my hope and nervous anticipation about starting a new life overseas was mired in this drab little cell. I shivered and pulled the grubby blanket tight around me against the damp. The sunset glowed balefully through the window high above. My movement brought back the dull headache from the cop’s massive return punch, my cheek still raw from being ground into the gritty tarmac as they pinioned my arms.
I had never had freedom denied me before. I had never been held against my will. They pushed me into the cell and slammed the door and I railed and pummelled at it, hurling obscenities at the uncaring silence. My hands reddened and bruised, I finally slumped down on the mean little bed and waited for something to happen, playing the scene by the highway over and over in my mind, trying not to think of Anne and what she’d make of my idiocy.
One thing was certain. I had blown things in a big way.
They’d taken my watch, so I lost track of time. It seemed like hours before I found the little crack in the paint and started to break off tiny chunks and snap them. I’d cleared the paint flakes off a couple of square feet of wall by the time they came for me. It was dark outside.
I tensed at the sound of heavy footsteps echoing down the corridor, the clatter of keys on steel. The door was opening to my shame. I felt sick. A surly policeman stood aside for a silver-haired man in a brown suit and heavy beige overcoat. He cast an incurious eye around the cell, brushing at his moustache with his fingers and wrinkling his nose.
‘Paul Stokes?’
A smoker’s rumble. I nodded.
‘I am Ibrahim Dajani. You must come with me now.’
I stood, steadying myself against the wall. ‘What’s happening?’
He smiled. ‘You are being released. Come.’
I followed him, the slam of the door and chink of keys echoing with our footsteps along the corridor. We burst into the bright neon light of the reception area and a woman in her late twenties rose to her feet, her kohl-accented eyes flickering uncertainly.
‘Hello, Paul. Are you okay?’
I’d met Aisha Dajani when we had signed the magazine deal. She and I had talked on the phone since, finalising my secondment to the Ministry.
‘Yes, I think so.’ I shivered violently. ‘I think I’ve been stupid.’
I felt Ibrahim’s hand on my shoulder, caught a hit of sandalwood from his cologne. ‘You will be okay, Paul. You are lucky. The driver reported back to the Intercon and they rang Aisha.’
‘My luggage?’ The question seemed daft even as I asked it, the threat of tears pricking my eyes.
‘The hotel has it safely,’ Ibrahim said. ‘Come. There is some paperwork which we cannot avoid but I think you can put this behind you. We have some influence.’
He led me into an office where a stout man in a braid-laced uniform slumped behind a tatty desk. We sat on chairs set sideways against it and separated by a coffee table as Ibrahim chattered to the man in Arabic. I recognised the word Amjad the hotel driver had used for journalist, ‘sahafi’ being used several times. Ibrahim lit a cigarette and offered one to the policeman, who took it and lit up from Ibrahim’s lighter. They seemed to be negotiating something. The officer fell silent, pulling a pad from a drawer and painstakingly inserting carbon paper into the multipart form before filling it out, his lips pursed in deliberate concentration. He passed the form across to me, tapping it with his pen for me to sign.
‘What’s this?’
Ibrahim lowered his voice confidentially. ‘It is the charge sheet, Paul. It is formality, but they want you to sign before they will release you. We have agreed they will not press charges but they say you were drunk and abusive, that you tried to assault a police officer. This is serious offence.’
‘What about my passport? They took my passport.’
‘We will get it back. For now, you should sign this form.’
‘It’s in Arabic.’
He smiled, his brown eyes on me. ‘You are in an Arab country, Paul. I think you should sign it and we can follow this up with our good friend Captain Mohammed later on.’
I signed.
The policeman took the form back and placed it in a file. He stood, his hand on the file, and shook hands with Ibrahim, who said something to him in Arabic. They both laughed before Ibrahim led me out of the office. Aisha joined us as we went outside to Ibrahim’s car, the street lights glittering on the Mercedes’ paintwork.
The stony ground crunched as we pulled away from the police station. We turned out onto the main road and Ibrahim glanced at me. ‘The hotel driver said to thank you for trying to help him, Paul. Bass you have landed yourself in a lot of khara… Aisha?’
‘Hot water?’ I could hear the amusement in Aisha’s rich voice behind me.
Ibrahim frowned. ‘Yes, this is polite. Hot water. If the Ministry found out about this problem they would be forced to take the action, perhaps to cancel the contract with your company. They would at least, I think, ask for your replacement.’
‘I didn’t mean to actually punch him. I just reacted because he was bullying the driver. I don’t like bullies. Anyway, I missed. I never even connected.’ I hated the querulous tone in my voice.
‘It’s lucky you didn’t,’ Aisha said, ‘But you’ve still caused a lot of trouble for yourself.’
‘I know, I know. Thank you for helping me.’
Aisha sat back. ‘What else could we do? I’m responsible for you and I’m supposed to be helping you with the magazine. I’ve got to try and make sure you don’t screw up.’ She waited a few seconds before delivering the shot. ‘It looks like it’s going to be a big job.’
I refused to snap back at her. ‘I didn’t mean to cause all this. I just didn’t think—’
‘Khalas. It is over now.’ Ibrahim said, his eyes on the dark road ahead, the lights picking out the central reservation and concrete margin. ‘Try to remember you are in a foreign country, Paul. Things are not always simple as they might seem. Stop worrying. We will get you to your hotel and settled. You cannot tell anyone about this, not your office in London and surely not anyone in the Ministry. We will, Insh’Allah, let the charges to be dropped in time. As far as the world can see, this did not happen. You understand me?’
He glared across at me and for a second the gloves were truly off. I nodded back at him. ‘I understand. Thank you both.’
Aisha sighed theatrically. ‘Don’t worry about it, Paul. I guess it’s all in a day’s work.’
It was past eleven by the time I got to my hotel room. I slung my bags onto the bed and headed straight for the shower, where I scoured myself. The damp stink of the cell clung to me, a dirt inside me as well as on my skin and in my hair. Eventually I ran out of little bottles of shampoo and gel and just stood under the hot stream of water, letting the blessed torrent run over me as plastic bottles rolled around my feet.
I forced myself to make two phone calls, lying to both Anne and my mother so they wouldn’t worry about me. I put my mobile on to charge then sat on the bed in my hotel dressing gown. Eyes closed, I rocked back and forth, reprising the day and my own stupidity, grateful beyond words for my freedom.
I was about to discover freedom is relative.
TWO
I woke, disoriented, to the insistent chirruping of the bedside phone – Aisha was waiting down in the hotel’s reception. I told her I’d be ten minutes, splashed water over myself and shaved, a puffy-eyed thirty-something gawping back at me in the mirror. The misty apparition nicked me in his haste. By the time I was done, three or four dots of toilet paper decorated my face.
I tore my clothes out of my bag, catching my foot in my jeans and hopping around like an idiot. I crossed the room and snatched open the curtains. The sight of the city spread out in front stilled me for a moment, the ragged ribbon of cars glittered in the early morning sunlight, snaking between the stone buildings stacked on the hillsides. A wave of vertigo forced me back. The realisation this was my new home made my stomach churn.
Aisha sat on the round velvet sofa in reception. I was hot from rushing around and my laptop bag dragged my open-necked shirt halfway across my shoulder. I let it drop, feeling awkward and silly.
‘Look, I am really sorry about yesterday, Aisha. I know I’ve caused you a huge amount of trouble. I honestly don’t know what to say.’
‘Just drop it, okay, Paul? Just don’t mention it to anyone. Ibrahim will take care of it. He has influence. We say wasta. Okay?’
I’d come across the word before. Wasta is a powerful thing: it says more about you than American Express ever can, a full-on ‘not what you know but who you know’ deal.
I nodded. ‘Sure, okay.’
She gazed up at me neutrally, a pause to let her point sink in before she stood and slid her handbag onto her shoulder. ‘Come on then. Let’s get you to the Ministry.’
We walked into warm sunshine. Aisha’s high heels clicked on the flagstones. I took in the crisp air, a welcome change from England’s damp autumn.
Aisha delved in her jeans for coins to tip the valet. She turned to me, shading her eyes against the sunlight. ‘Settling you in has been a problem. We’ve been looking for flats over the past couple of weeks but it’s been hard to find something for the budget your company specified. I think I’ve found somewhere, though. Do you feel up to looking at it later on?’
‘Yes, yes I would. That’s great. Thanks.’
I’d assumed from her husky voice she was, in common with Ibrahim and the rest of Jordan, a smoker. But if so, she didn’t do it in her Lexus, which smelled faintly of leather and her rich, musky perfume.
After a twenty minute drive through Amman’s jostling rush hour traffic, we arrived at the shabby-looking building housing the Ministry of Natural Resources. Aisha took me to the third floor and showed me to my desk in the surprisingly modern open plan interior. The window looked out over the city.
‘The Minister’s travelling right now, but I thought you’d probably want to settle in quickly. Abdullah Zahlan has just taken over as communications director and he wanted to meet with you when you’re ready. Can I tell him twelve?’
This was news to me. ‘New director? What happened to Shukri?’
‘He moved on. Part of the reform program. So, twelve?’
‘Sure. No problem.’
She paused. ‘But not a word about yesterday to anyone. Okay?’
‘Yes, okay.’
My gratitude was starting to give way to a sense of mild unease at the constant reminders of my indebtedness. I decided to focus on work. Thanks to the sales skills of my boss – publisher and wanker extraordinaire Robin Goodyear – the Ministry had contracted The Media Group to produce a monthly magazine and that was precisely what I was going to get on with doing. I started working on the editorial outlines for issue one which needed approval by the Ministry before we could get the project off the ground. I immersed myself in my magazine, thoughts of police cells and assault charges banished for the moment.
I couldn’t shake the feeling it wasn’t over yet. The police had kept my passport and I hadn’t had the heart to ask Aisha about it that morning. I resolved to bring it up next time I met her.
Robin called after two, just as the Ministry people were knocking off for the day. As usual, his faux-posh voice was disgustingly cheerful as he brayed at me.
‘Stokesy. Hi. It’s me. You have a nice weekend? All settled?’
The bastard had booked me on a Saturday flight so I wouldn’t miss Sunday, a working day in Jordan. When our call was over he’d be off down to the pub then back home to Sunday roast and a pissy, red wine-fuelled row with his poor wife, Claire. The thought of Sunday pubs brought a wave of homesickness and the strong temptation to whinge to him about just how badly yesterday had gone. Ibrahim and Aisha’s exhortations to silence won the day. Just.
‘Fine. No problems.’
‘You meet with the Minister yet?’ Robin asked.
‘No, he’s travelling until tomorrow. I met with Abdullah Zahlan earlier, he’s the new communications director, he’s taken over from Shukri. He’s feeling out of the loop and causing trouble. I’ve got a lot of changes to the planning and he’s complaining about the lack of a Web element to the project.’
‘He’ll be okay. Shame about Shukri. Top bloke. Just give the new guy some love, Paul. Hurry up and finalise that outline, there’s a good boy. We’ve got a mag to get out by the fifth.’
How did Robin always manage to jangle my nerve endings? I smiled so he’d hear my happiness on the phone. ‘I just need to get email up and running and make these changes and it’ll be with you. Give me until tomorrow morning your time, yeah?’
‘Time waits for no man, young Paul. Hup hup.’
‘Just cut me a little slack would you, Robin? I need to get settled. I’m supposed to be looking at a place to live this afternoon with Aisha.’
‘Aisha? Oh, yes? The Dajani bint, ya? The one with the big tits? You got in there quick, didn’t you laddie?’
I held my breath and concentrated on keeping my voice steady. Robin’s casual, drawling sexism was infuriating.
‘She’s been assigned to get me settled in and to help us with the magazine, Robin. You know that.’
His tone slid to treacly and cajoling. ‘Whatever, Paul. Look, I’m right behind you. I understand you’re feeling a little at sea right now, but we’ve got to get moving on the project fast. We need the client committed, you hear me? We need to pull together on this one. It might be the last real magazine you ever work on, you know?’
I was feeling sorry for myself but I could expect little sympathy from Robin. It was one thing for him to get drunk after signing the Ministry contract on our last trip and set fire to my hotel room as he blundered around with his stinking cheroot but quite another to have the editorial staff punching coppers. If Robin had to deal with the consequences of my brush with authority, I’d be standing outside The Media Group’s smart Richmond offices with my final pay check minus deductions in seconds flat.
I knew he’d hear the resignation in my voice. ‘Yeah, okay.’ My final obeisance: ‘Thanks, Robin.’
‘Anytime. Give big tits a kiss from me.’
Bastard.
Aisha was chattering away in Arabic on her mobile as she navigated one-handed through the jostling traffic. I tried to mask my anxiety, but I’m not a good passenger at the best of times. I aligned my laptop bag with the seam of my jeans.
The radio was tuned into Sawa, the American-funded station that mixes funky beats with skewed newscasts in an attempt to win over the ‘Arab street’. The Jordanians listen to the music and turn it down during the news. She finished her call, waving the mobile at me, her attention charmingly diverted away from the road and the random, lane-swapping traffic all around us. I focused on the seam/laptop occlusion.
‘My cousin. He’s been helping me to look for houses. He has some good ideas, maybe.’
I managed to look up. ‘Where are we going?’
‘To a place near the first circle. Amman is built on seven circles, they are roundabouts. The first circle is the old area of the city.’
I was in her debt, no doubt about it, but I worried about my passport. I had trusted Ibrahim when he had told me the case wouldn’t go further and I had signed that stupid form without really knowing what it was. I felt ungrateful pushing it, yet I had to know. I pressed my hands together and looked across at Aisha. ‘Has Ibrahim got any idea about where my passport is?
She smiled as she drove, her eyes on the road. ‘Don’t worry, Paul. Ibrahim can manage these things. It will maybe take a little time is all.’
I gazed out at the rainbow mosaic of shop fronts flashing by, immersed in the bustling strangeness of it all and wondering how much ‘a little time’ is. I checked the seams of my jeans and the laptop bag were still aligned.
We stopped at a traffic light and I was startled by a tap on my window. A small, dirty-faced child stood by the car, tears carving pale streaks down his cheeks as he held up his hand in the Arab gesture of supplication, his thumb and first two fingers pressed together in a little bunch. He pulled an exaggerated needy face.
If his appearance had taken me aback, the outburst from the seat next to me threw me even more. Aisha dropped the electric window, barking a stream of violent, guttural Arabic. He backed away sullenly. The lights changed and we pulled off, leaving him glaring at me in the wing mirror.
I shook from shock and anger, glaring sightlessly out of the window before twisting to face her.
‘There was absolutely no need for that.’
Her eyes stayed fixed on the road ahead. ‘He’s begging. They’re a problem.’
‘I’ll ask if I need someone screamed at. He was just a poor Palestinian kid.’
I caught the paleness of her knuckles on the wheel. ‘We are Palestinian, but we are not beggars. Whatever we lose, however desperate it becomes. It is bad enough we have to beg the world to understand we have had our land stolen from us, to beg to be allowed to return to our houses. Better we save our begging for these things than wandering the streets for pennies.’
We drove too fast and in silence down a tree-lined street dotted with embassies, passing my hotel before turning right and dropping down into an area of older, more ornate buildings. Everything in Amman is clad in the same pale stone, the older buildings exuding a quaint colonialism.
Aisha finally spoke. ‘Look, Paul, there are a lot of these beggars in Amman and they’re organised. They are gypsies, Bedu. You’ll get the picture; they hassle people. Life here can be harsh sometimes. We’re not all wealthy and settled in nice middle class homes.’
I talked to my hands. ‘No, look, it’s my fault. I’m sorry. I just got a shock, that’s all. I’m a bit nervy right now. There’s a lot of strangeness to get used to.’
‘It’s okay. Forget it.’
Aisha took us downhill into a leafy avenue of fine old houses before she gestured, her wooden bangles clacking. ‘This is the First Circle, the centre of old Amman and it’s becoming fashionable for cafés and bars. There’s a place here that may be within your budget, but it’s unfurnished. It’s just up the street from the Wild Jordan Café, quite a popular place that the Americans built as a gift to Jordan. They like to give us little gifts.’
I stayed quiet as she pulled the car to a stop in front of a flight of stone steps leading up to a house standing apart on the hillside, ornate wrought-iron railings protecting its windows and a vine trailing on the pergola in the garden to the front of it. I found myself following the swing of her hips as she led the way up the steps from the road. She turned abruptly at the top, caught me looking at her bum and raised an eyebrow. I felt my face redden. She pulled a soft pack of cigarettes from her burgundy handbag and offered them.
‘I don’t, thanks.’
‘Suit yourself,’ she said, lighting up and inhaling hungrily. Her lipstick left a dark red mark on the white filter. As she raised her head to let the smoke go, I noticed she had ink on her fingers, like a naughty schoolgirl, an incongruity in someone so sophisticated. ‘It’s owned by a lawyer and his wife. It’s on two floors, there’s a Swedish guy who rents the upper floor. You would get the ground floor and the use of the garden area.’
She opened the door and waited for me to go in. It wasn’t huge, a traditional house built maybe in the thirties or forties and clad in pale Jordan stone. A green-painted door led straight into the cool, terracotta-floored kitchen. I wandered around the echoing rooms before going back outside and standing in the lush little garden. I looked out across to the Jordanian flag flapping merrily atop the Citadel, the central hill of Amman. The pale stone buildings carpeted the city around us, glowing deep orange in the sunset. I listened to the sound of a cricket in the bushes, taking in the fresh breeze and wishing time would stop and leave me with these feelings forever. All thoughts of police charges and cells were gone, chased away by my joy at this little house. I heard Aisha’s step behind me and caught a whiff of her cigarette smoke, looking round to catch the glow of the setting sun on her golden skin.
‘I want to live here.’ I said, 'This is beautiful.’
‘Alhamdulillah.’
‘Sorry?’
‘It means thanks to God. Why do you look so worried if you like it?’
‘How am I going to furnish it?’
‘I can get the landlord to defer the first three month’s rent if you agree to leave the furniture behind you when you go.’
I glanced at Aisha, her brown eyes alive, gauging my reaction. I took in the garden again, the trellises and the wooden table and chairs under arches of vines. She ground the cigarette out under her foot. I blurted, ‘Of course I will. Christ, it’s ideal. Idyllic. Who’s the landlord?’.
Aisha sashayed toward the car. ‘Come on, I’ll take you to your hotel.’
I laughed, persisting. ‘Who’s the landlord?’
She stopped and turned, grinning. ‘My cousin.’ Then she flicked her hair at me and carried on down the steps.
Wasta.
THREE
My first job the next morning was to finish the editorial plan and get it approved. I had a meeting with Zahlan to go through the update and he complained bitterly once again that The Media Group wasn’t providing a microsite, blog or even an online newsletter version of the magazine. I resolved to talk to Robin about how we could get around what was obviously going to be a big problem for us unless we could find a way of addressing Zahlan’s digital inclinations.
Scanning email got me a travel warning from the Yanks for Jordan: present danger despite the peace deal, terrorist threats against US and other allied nationals, extreme caution, yadayada. Great. Looking up the Foreign Office resulted in, as usual, the suggestion that Brits might like to wear a hat if walking through Gaza at midday as the sun can be tiresome. The website suggested, in a mild sort of way, British nationals in Jordan might want to drop into the Embassy and register if they fancied. I fancied, deciding to do just that later in the week.
I did my online rounds and scanned Facebook, Twitter and Gorkana but my heart wasn’t really in it and I settled down to working on planning the magazine to escape from the nagging thoughts of police charges. They filled my every quiet moment, driving me to constantly seek out noise, activity and bustle.
The magazine was intended to highlight Jordan’s resource issues and look at the initiatives the Ministry of Natural Resources was putting together to try to make the most of what little the country had to offer. Although I’d done a lot of online research, I had conversations with as many people as possible to try to understand the Ministry’s work and give myself a grounding in the issues. I wanted to create a magazine that truly reflected the Ministry’s work with quality and insight. Robin, of course, was only concerned with revenue, his reading never going further than spreadsheets and expensive restaurant menus.
At four in the afternoon I surfaced, blinking, to find Aisha standing against my desk wearing a fitted black dress with a wide, burgundy belt that brought Robin’s comments back to me. He might be a sexist bastard but he did have a point: Aisha was a very shapely girl. She looked every inch the Arab. Her nose curved slightly, her eyebrows were heavy and her lips full with unnerving sensuality.
She smiled. ‘Who is Robin?’
‘The guy with me last time I was here. My boss, my publisher. Why do you ask?’
‘You were growling his name under your breath.’ She clicked her fingers softly. ‘Oh, wow, I remember. Him. Are you actually friends?’
‘Robin? No, he’s my boss, not my friend. Actually, he’s the bane of my life.’ I remembered him trying to make a clumsy pass at Aisha during our last trip to Jordan. Robin only did clumsy passes, although usually drunk at parties and in front of his weary wife, Claire.
Aisha shot me a quizzical glance. ‘Bane?’
‘Bane. Problem, irritation. Obedience, bane of all genius, virtue, freedom and truth, makes slaves of men. Shelley.’
‘Shelley.’ She deadpanned.
‘Nineteenth century English poet. Percy Bysshe Shelley. The Revolt of Islam and all that.’
‘Right.’ She rolled the ‘r’ and crossed her arms. Her right hand bore an expensive-looking ring and a schoolgirl ink stain but her left was bare. The fine hairs on her brown arms were dark.
I sat back in my chair. ‘Zahlan said you’d be fixing contacts for interviews.’
‘Yes, I spoke to the Secretary General about it. Do you have an idea of what you want to focus on? I’ve already got interviews lined up with a couple of key players the Minister told me about, one of them is the potash extraction company.’ She laughed. ‘They’re Brits, so I thought that’d be a nice easy start for you.’
‘I’ve just finished the contents, actually. You want to grab a coffee and have a look over it?’
‘Sounds good. Let’s do it after work.’
‘Starbucks?’
She shook her head. ‘No. God, no. Anything but that. Starbucks is the bane of coffee. Is that right? Let’s meet at the Four Seasons. Five?’
‘Done.’ I smiled at her, inwardly quailing at the thought of what five-star Four Seasons coffee at five would cost me.
I took a cab to the Four Seasons, where we were stopped by security scanning the car with what seemed to be a divining rod. The cabbie chuckled throatily at the performance.
‘This little stick he find bomb too much, seer. Too much.’ He gestured with his thumb at the uniformed guard walking up and down balancing his little dowsing stick. I was still shaking my head at the strangeness of the whole rigmarole as I walked through the airy lobby, past a huge display of flowers and grasses arranged in ranks of tall glass vases. I found Aisha in the sumptuousness of the yellow-carpeted piano lounge, sitting at a big round table and tapping away at her MacBook.
She smiled up at me. Her bag covered the seat next to her, so I took the next available space and took out my own machine.
She pulled a face. ‘A Dell?’
‘Don’t start. It’s a tool, not a religion.’
A waiter came over and we ordered coffee. I pulled up the flatplan and we started going through the magazine contents and discussing how we were going to set up interviews and shoots with the people I needed in the Ministry and in the big world outside. The coffee came, a little theatrical presentation of porcelain on silver trays with cafétieres and dainty biscuits. By the time we reached the end of the planning, two hours had passed and we were on our second round of coffee. Aisha’s bag had moved and we were sharing my computer.
Aisha pushed her chair away and stood, stretching. She leaned on the back of my seat. ‘This is really good, Paul. People are going to love this.’
I grinned. ‘Thanks. I hope so.’
‘Zahlan’s concerned it’s all on dead trees. You know that, right?’
I nodded. ‘Yes. He made it abundantly clear. He wants an online version as well as what he calls “more interactivity” but that wasn’t really part of the plan. We did discuss that carefully with Mr Shukri when we signed the deal.’
Aisha sat back down, this time sideways with her legs crossed towards me and taking sips of coffee, her red nails rich against the white and gold porcelain. ‘Yes, but Shukri’s old school. He wouldn’t know the Internet if it came round and bit him on the ass. I think your Robin sort of took advantage of it. But Shukri’s gone now. Zahlan’s in charge and he’s shaking things up. He’s very good you know, Paul.’
I leaned back, stretching my tired muscles. ‘I’ll talk to Robin. I’m sure we can spin out a PDF version of the magazine and I can certainly put the content up for someone to use it on a website, but I can’t see him agreeing to a whole social media program. The Ministry’s going to have to resource that.’
She frowned. ‘You’re the ones making the money out of this.’
‘Not enough to start building whole online campaigns. That’s not fair. We signed up to a magazine, not to a whole web campaign.’
She paused, thinking, the cup to her mouth and the dark coffee lapping against her lips. ‘Well, I guess it’s not our problem, anyway. Zahlan and your Robin can work it out.’
I snorted. ‘He’s not my bloody Robin.’
She put her cup down and pressed her napkin to her mouth, a little smear of red on the crisp cotton. ‘So tell me, why did you volunteer to come to Jordan?’
‘I didn’t volunteer. Robin gave me the choice of this or the doghouse. I’ve done a couple of short term overseas secondment jobs with TMG before and I fancied the challenge of something completely different. I’m not sure I was ready for how different this has been.’
‘Are you worrying about the police thing still?’
I shrugged. ‘Of course I am. I can’t get it out of my mind. Why wouldn’t I worry? I’ve just made the biggest move of my life and started it with the biggest blunder of my life.’ I checked myself. ‘Well, almost.’
She was fast, her face a picture of innocent enquiry. ‘Almost?’
I kicked myself mentally. I hadn’t even told Anne about my career-ending screw-up at the Herald and here I was telling an almost complete stranger. For some reason I couldn’t hold back or evade the enquiry in Aisha’s brown eyes. Her mouth was turned up in a quizzical smile.
I took the plunge. ‘I made a mistake once when I worked on a local newspaper in the UK. I had just started my first stint as a reporter. It cost me the job and meant I could never work on a newspaper again. And newspapers is all I ever wanted to do since I was a kid.’
Her smile faded and she leaned forward. ‘That sucks.’
‘It’s a while ago now and I enjoy the stuff I do at TMG generally. It’s not hard news journalism, but it’s writing and writing is what I do best. Well, apart from screwing things up.’
‘You shouldn’t beat yourself up about it, Paul. Ibrahim will take care of it. Look, what about we finish up here and grab something to eat?
‘Sounds good. Where?’
She grinned. ‘Anywhere.’
*
It was past midnight when I opened the door with my key card. I lunged for the chirping hotel phone, flashing red in the darkness.
‘Paul? Is that you?’
‘Hey, Annie.’
‘Paul, your mobile’s been off all day. I’ve been worried.’
Oh no. ‘I swapped out the chip for a local one this morning, Anne. I didn’t have time to text you the new number, I’m really sorry. It’s been busy here.’
‘How are you settling in?’
I tried not to think of the police cell and ‘our good friend Captain Mohammed’ pushing his charge sheet across the scarred desktop for me to sign. ‘Really well. I’ve got a few problems with one of the big bugs at the Ministry who wants us to do more online stuff, but it’s nothing that can’t be handled. I’m sure golden boy Goodyear will talk him round. I’ve found a house to rent here, a really nice one in one of the old parts of the city and I’ll be out of the hotel at the weekend if everything goes to plan. It’s nice here, Annie, you’d like it.’
‘I’m glad it’s going well. How’s your mum?’
‘I haven’t talked to her since I arrived. I’ll give her a call tomorrow. How’re things with you – do you miss me?’
‘You know I do Paul. It’s cold here without you. I sort of don’t know what to do with myself in the evenings. It’s been raining and I’ve got the fire on, but I need a glass of red wine and a warm Paul.’
Anne was a Leo, constantly basking in what little heat England afforded. I thought of Paphos and the fine blonde hairs on the coconut-scented warmth of her flat brown belly, a million years ago on a beach so hot the air shimmered above the sand.
I smiled. ‘I’m going to come back at Christmas. Can you wait for me?’
‘You know I will. I’d come out to you, but you know how it is with the practice right now. I can’t take lunch off, let alone a long weekend.’
Busy Anne the professional high-flyer, the BlackBerry-toting practitioner of international contract law. I often wondered what she ever saw in a scruffy journalist with a distinct distaste for big business and its corporate values. Her work and clients were something we didn’t talk about anymore because it inevitably led to rows.
We chatted a little, whispering sweet nothings before we kissed air above our handsets. I undressed and drew a hot flannel over the drawn face peering back at me in the big bathroom mirror.
I lay in the dark for ages, comfortable in the puffed warmth of the hotel duvet but kept awake by memories of Anne and the nagging thoughts of dank prison cells. I flailed myself in the silent room with thoughts about what the police would do now, peeling back the layers of false reassurance like onion skin until there was nothing left but the certainty of jail before disgrace. I found myself wondering how I would survive weeks or months in an Arab prison, although Jordan was now my prison – I’d never appreciated how much actually having a passport in your hand meant, how that silly little document meant the freedom to walk out, to turn your back and just leave.
Sleep finally came and wiped away my cares, bringing dreams of home and being a kid again, playing with Charles before he left for university – a rare moment when he’d had time for his kid brother. My dad was there, too. Which was nice, if somewhat fanciful. He was never really there, even before he took his last walk out of the house without saying goodbye, leaving my mum sobbing on the sofa with the side of her face red and swollen.
Jordan takes a Friday/Saturday weekend and my first Friday I stayed at the house taking deliveries of furniture and fittings. Aisha came around to help, hauling two friends along with her, a fussy little bird of a girl and her friendly, lumbering boyfriend. They were good people and we were instantly at ease working away cleaning, shopping and arranging my new possessions. I was humbled by how helpful and hospitable they were to a complete stranger, particularly when I found out they were actually packing themselves because the guy was moving to Kuwait for better money than Jordan could ever have offered him. She planned to follow him one day.
Saturday afternoon I checked out of my hotel and into my new home. Aisha arrived soon after I did, banging on the kitchen door so hard I thought one of the glass panels would smash.
I opened the door and she burst into the kitchen, grinning. ‘Here. A present for you, from Ibrahim. He says not to do anything stupid, he had to put a deposit against this.’
We were supposed to go out for drinks with the couple who had helped me move in. Aisha, normally a conservative dresser, wore a low-cut top with a pashmina draped around her shoulders.
I opened the brown envelope and my passport slid out. My relief was electric, the little burgundy document giving me the option of escape home. I felt ashamed of the thought. Ibrahim had acted as my guarantor and if I pulled a runner he would have to face the consequences. And yet, at that moment, I knew I’d skip the country if it came to facing a return to jail. I stammered my thanks but Aisha waved dismissal.
‘It’s okay, Paul. He said to tell you there’s no formal charge yet. He’s still negotiating with Captain Mohammed and hopes to have the case dropped completely.’
‘Please just thank him for me, Aisha.’
‘No thanks needed, Paul.’ She smiled at me, her big eyes on mine. ‘You’re a friend of the family. Come on, let’s go meet the guys.’
The bar was a two-minute drive uphill from my new home. Decorated in Arabesque, its red-tinted ambience was an escape from the chill night. Everyone seemed to be smoking, chattering over the funky Arabi chill-out backbeats.
We sat together in a corner and talked about the Ministry and my initial meeting with the Minister earlier in the week. Harb Al Hashemi, the Jordanian Minister of Natural Resources, was one of a small band of reformers trying to introduce liberalisation and foreign investment in the face of an increasingly conservative parliament. He had been shockingly frank about Jordan’s problems during our meeting.
Aisha laughed at that, hitching up the shawl around her shoulders. ‘We all like to talk about how bad things are. Harb’s probably glad of the chance to talk to someone from outside about it.’ She played with her wine glass, frowning. ‘He has a hard time trying to get these reform programmes pushed through, but Jordan desperately needs them. We need to cash in on the peace dividend. If they have truly reached a lasting deal in Palestine, Jordan has a new chance to build and grow. The water privatisation is really the most important job we’ve undertaken at the Ministry and Harb’s negotiating his way through a social and political minefield. But Jordan simply doesn’t have enough water.’