Olives (3 page)

‘
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.