Olives (5 page)

‘
And you’re
offering to help out with the police in return.’

Lynch beamed
at me, sitting back. ‘Aren’t you the smart lad, eh? Well, yes,
that’s precisely the deal, Paul. I’ll help you stay out of prison
if you can give me a hand. Nothing more, just a hand.’

‘
And how do I
know you can deliver?’

‘
I have
precisely the same question. We’ll just have to trust each other.
Now isn’t that a quaint notion altogether?’

Lynch pushed
my passport across the desk to me. ‘I’ll be in touch, Paul,’ he
said, standing. He opened the door and I didn’t look around as I
went down the corridor, but I could feel his gaze on my back. I
left the Embassy wishing fervently I’d never gone there in the
first place.

I found a
stranger reading a book and drinking beer at my garden table when I
got home, my mind still in a spin from the surreal meeting with
Lynch. Wiry and tanned with a sweep of blond hair above a high
forehead and sporting a goatee beard, he stood and offered his
hand.

‘
Hi. Lars
Anderssen. I live upstairs. I’m sorry to steal your garden, but I
sort of shared it with the last guy and hoped you would be open
into the same arrangement.’

‘
Fine by me,’
I said, responding on autopilot – Gerald Lynch and what he did or
didn’t know about my nasty little secret dominated my
thoughts.

Lars offered
me a seat at my own table and picked a beer out of the cool box
next to his chair. I took the dripping can from him, wiping my hand
on my jeans. ‘Isn’t it a bit cold to be drinking chilled
beer?’

He grinned.
‘Not for a Swede.’

Smiling back,
I found myself putting Lynch away in a mental cupboard and focusing
on my charismatic neighbour. Working with a local telephone
operator on secondment from a big Swedish equipment manufacturer,
Lars had been living in the upstairs flat for a couple of years.
He’d been travelling for the past ten days, a job in Saudi Arabia
nobody else could or would take on, so they’d sent mad boy Lars in.
He’d come back that morning and was now embarking on the process of
getting splendidly drunk.

‘
I haven’t
seen a fucking drink in ten days. We’ve got a compound in Riyadh
that swims in this stuff, but this damn job was in Khamis Mushait.
You ever been to Khamis Mushait?’

‘
Nope.’

He raised his
tin to eye level in a bobbing toast. ‘Well, then you take my
advice. Don’t. It’s a flyblowing shithole.’

I corrected
him automatically.

‘
Flyblown.’

Lars’ smile
was infectious. ‘That’s the one.’

‘
So how have
you found life here?’

‘
Ya, it’s a good place, for sure. The people are crazy maybe
and the government’s rubbish mainly. The women are beautiful, but
too much of this
hijab
thing. The ones that aren’t wrapped
are crazy. The wrapped heads are not so fun.’ He waved the tin at
me. ‘The local beer’s shitty, but I think you can’t have
everything.’

We sat and
chatted for a while about settling into Jordan, about the Ministry
of National Resources and my magazine. Lars knew of the
Ministry.

‘
It’s a new
Ministry, you know. They formed it two years ago. They realise
finally they’re causing problems by not regulating the extracting
industries. You say extracting?’

‘
Extractive.’

‘
Okay, so.
The extractive industries. They went crazy licensing it all off
before and they’re having problems with over-working some of these
natural resources. You can’t replace the potash, or the Dead Sea
mud, you know?’

I nodded.
‘That was my understanding from the Minister. I had a meeting with
him the other day. He’s an impressive guy. They’re trying to bring
it all back under control. And the water’s a problem,
too.’

‘
Yah. They
lost most of the water they had in ’67. It’s all Israeli now. You
should go up there and take a look at Lake Tiberias. It’s huge and
they just lost it in a crazy war they were never going to win.
They’re like that. Crazy.’

I sipped at
my beer. ‘Well, I’m off to see the potash people later this week.
It’s all down by the Dead Sea, apparently. I’ve got a fixer from
the Ministry to hold my hand.’

‘
The Dead
Sea’s some place. You’ll like it. Who you are working with at the
Ministry?’

‘
Aisha
Dajani? She works with the secretary general there, Emad
Kawar.’

‘
Yah, I’ve
heard of her. Her family owns this place, you know?’

I soon
realised Lars had a massive network of friends and followers and
was totally plugged in to the beating heart of Amman’s social
scene. ‘Yes, she found it for me.’

Lars nodded
sagely. ‘Makes sense. It’s a big family, spread across this whole
area. They’re Palestinian. A lot of money. She’s the pretty one?
Drives a Lexus?’

I shrugged.
‘I guess so.’

He raised his
can, his index finger pointed at me. ‘That’s big trouble. Big
family, big money. I tell you, Arab men are crazy jealous. Stay
away.’

I laughed
lightly. ‘I’m nowhere near. I’ve got a girlfriend back in the
UK.’

Lars was
thoughtful. ‘These guys here,’ he gestured at the house. ‘They had
big problems early last year. A cousin got involved with Hamas,
blew himself up in an Israeli bus full of kids. Usual thing, bomb
belt and a green bandana, a goodbye video and all. You know about
it? I think he would have been the brother of your girl with the
Lexus. The other brother got lifted up by the security people, but
I think they let him go.’

I took a long
pull of beer before answering him. ‘I don’t know. I’ve not heard
anything about that before.’

Lars threw me
a calculating look. ‘It was a big deal for the family. It made the
papers, which they would have stopped if they could, I think. A
suicide bomber. Big fuss. The other brother, he runs the family
business now. The father died, too, a few years ago, you see? A lot
of deaths in the family, these people. A lot of trouble. You want
to watch out. Renting a house is one thing, but that is close as
you want to get, no?’

I could
hardly believe a wealthy Jordanian family like Aisha’s would have
nurtured a suicide bomber and Lars must be wrong about Aisha’s
father – Ibrahim seemed pretty much alive to me. I finished my beer
and stood.

‘
Well, look,
it was nice meeting you. I’m actually supposed to go to their place
for dinner, so I’d better smarten up a bit,’ I said, standing.
‘Thanks for the beer.’

‘
Anytime man.
What’s your mobile number?’ I told him and he left me a missed
call. ‘There. Lars as in bras, not as in arse. Call me
anytime.’

I saved the
contact, shook hands and went indoors to brush up for dinner. I
felt apprehensive about meeting Aisha’s people, despite the
prospect of getting an update from Ibrahim about my police
case.

I’d never met
a suicide bomber’s family before.

FIVE

Aisha arrived
at half seven to pick me up. She wore a white woollen dress under a
red coat and a rich, spicy scent. I had managed to scrape together
an open-necked shirt, jeans and a favourite, perhaps slightly
over-worn, linen jacket — pretty much all that remained of my clean
clothes from the hotel. I stank of supermarket
deodorant.

‘
So who’s
going to be there?’ I asked as we walked down to her car. I’d
thought we were having a family tea at the kitchen table, not a big
dinner party.

‘
Oh, just
family. Uncle Ibrahim and Aunt Nancy, Mum, my brother Daoud and my
sister Mariam.’

I’d never
thought to question the relationship between Ibrahim and Aisha
until Lars mentioned her father dying. I stared at her, startled.
My seat belt clicked into the clasp. ‘Oh. I thought Ibrahim was
your father.’

Aisha laughed
at my confusion. ‘No, Paul, Ibrahim is my uncle. My father died a
little over five years ago.’ Her face darkened and her voice became
gentle and sad, her eyes following her finger as it traced a path
on the top of the steering wheel. ‘I still miss him. I sometimes
feel I miss him more each day rather than less.’

‘
I’m sorry.
You sound as if you were very close.’

Her mouth
tightened for a second before she raised her chin and smiled sadly
at me. ‘Oh yes, I was very much Daddy’s girl. He used to call me
his ‘
Ferriyah.
’ It means
“little bird”. He was always spoiling me. All my life he was there
for me, close to me. And then one day he just wasn’t there
anymore.’

‘
How
—’

Aisha reached
out and touched my arm before turning the engine on. ‘Come on,
Paul, let’s go. Leave the past for now, it’ll just make me
sadder.’

I nodded and
sat silently as we drove across the Abdoun suspension bridge,
looking at the houses in the
wadi
below and
thinking about Aisha’s father and the loss she still felt. I had
never missed my own father, although he wasn’t technically dead,
just gone from our lives. Dad was still around somewhere, messing
up some other woman’s head the way he messed up Mum’s. I wasn’t
sure how I’d feel to be told of his death, especially now I had a
stepfather I actually admired.

Ken had
stepped into my mum’s life a few months after my dad had stepped
out. He ran a small engineering company. A decent man who doted on
her, he had insisted on paying for Charles’ university place and
had quietly slipped me a thousand pound cheque ‘to help you settle
down’ when I’d left home, making me promise not to tell my mum
about the gift: ‘She’ll only fuss, lad.’

If I’d
accepted the two grand Ken tried to give me to help me settle down
in Jordan, I might never have taken the little house near the Wild
Jordan Café. For the second time, for all the right reasons, I was
glad I had refused his kind generosity and made my own way. And yet
it made me more grateful to him, I think, than if I’d
accepted.

The Dajani
house was in Abdoun, the wealthy part of West Amman. Aisha stopped
the car at the top of the long, sweeping driveway and I tried not
to stare at the huge villa with its pillared entranceway and
imposing double doors. I felt like a slob.

A woman stood
in the doorway. ‘You must be Paul. Welcome. I’m Nour, Aisha’s
mother.’

She was in
her late fifties, slim, elegant and pretty and I liked her
instantly. Nour slipped her arm into mine and walked me into the
house to meet the family, her manner easy and intimate. Aisha’s
sister Mariam was giggly, just seventeen and studying computer
science at a private university. Ibrahim greeted me like the
prodigal son and brushed away my attempts to thank him again for
his help. He had a nasty Marlboro habit and I quickly discovered he
made a natural comedy act with his wife Nancy, a wisecracking lady
whose deep-etched laughter lines were somehow at odds with her
sad-looking eyes.

I was mildly
surprised to be offered a beer: When Aisha and I had gone to dinner
together, we had shared a bottle of red wine. We had been wrapped
up in Ministry talk and I hadn’t asked her about when or how she
drank. I had assumed her life at home, as a Muslim, would be
teetotal.

My health was
enthusiastically toasted with a heavy-based crystal tumbler of
Black Label by Ibrahim before Nour sat me down on a huge, tasselled
sofa and interrogated me with such charm that I had pretty much
told her my life story in minutes. She was joined by Nancy, who
flicked cigarette ash randomly into the wide selection of ornate
ashtrays around us as she demanded to know what a nice boy like me
was doing all alone in Amman. The talk turned to an upcoming
exhibition of Aisha’s work in a gallery in Amman. Nour was every
inch the proud mother. I was forced to confess I knew nothing about
Aisha’s life as an artist.

‘
We’ve been
so busy with Ministry stuff,’ I explained. ‘It never really came
up. Although I noticed she always has inky fingers.’

Nour laughed,
‘That’s Aisha. I can’t believe she didn’t tell you about her
sketches.’

She called
over to Aisha, whose head was thrown back in laughter at the finale
of some scandalous story of Ibrahim’s, her hair tumbling down over
her shoulders. She came, still laughing.

‘
Yes,
Mum?’

Nour gestured
fussily. ‘Why haven’t you told Paul about your sketches? You’re too
secretive. Show him the ones you’re taking to the
gallery.’

‘
Fine. Come
on, Paul.’

I followed
Aisha into a room adjoining the entrance hall. It was crammed with
pen and ink sketches on paper and canvas, pads stacked up on the
surfaces, a desk in the centre strewn with brushes and pens. The
tabletop drawing board had an angle poise lamp to the
side.

I stood,
awed. ‘Why didn’t you mention this?’

She smiled;
Gio
conda. ‘You didn’t
ask.’

I ambled over
to a charcoal sketch of an old Bedouin
woman, scanned the portraits forming a series around
it. They were vibrant with contrast, the craggy lines of their
sun-hardened skin scored in deft, lifelike sweeps.