Olives Read online

  NINETEEN

  I took the crystal tumbler of Black Label from Daoud. He sat on the chair by the sofa and I offered him a cigarette. The women were clearing the table after our dinner, laughing and chattering.

  ‘Did you see there’s been another bomb?’ I wanted to test his reaction, to finally put my suspicions to rest.

  ‘Yes, in Haifa. I heard it was bad.’ Daoud frowned. ‘I’ve been trying to get through to my people there, but the lines appear to have been cut. It might just be too much traffic. It’s odd, I visited there the day before yesterday.’

  I put my glass down and leaned forward. ‘You were there?’

  Daoud played with the ice in his glass. ‘We don’t talk about it much. I have two offices in Israel: a representative office in Haifa and another in Eilat. Both offices are highly profitable for our shipping business. I often travel there.’ My reaction seemed to amuse him. ‘There are quite a few Jordanians with business interests over there, you know, Paul. Stop looking at me like I’m a monster.’

  I had never imagined Daoud could actually have business interests in Israel. I realised I had been over-simplifying him to fit my own role for him as a ‘vengeful Arab’ stereotype. If I took away revenge as a motive, I was left with a Jordanian businessman with offices in Israel and a British with an over-active imagination.

  ‘But the farm, your land. The things you’ve lost.’

  Daoud sipped his drink before leaning forward and looking directly at me, his face still smiling but his voice earnest. ‘Life goes on, Paul. One day we will have a proper peace in Palestine, one we can believe in, that lasts. Jordan is at peace with Israel, has been for over ten years. It’s not all perhaps quite as polarised as you might think. We’re traders, businessmen. You can’t pretend Israel doesn’t exist, that’s something you leave for the dreamers and the extremists. The rest of us, we have to live. Okay, it’s not quite love at first sight and most of us don’t like to talk about it, but it’s a fact of life. There are something like two million Arab-Israelis. My grandfather’s brother became Israeli after 1948. He was a lawyer who played a key part in keeping the farm within the family. And he helped to found our business over there, too.’

  Aisha came over. ‘Coffee? Turkish, medium, yes?’

  ‘Yes, please. Thanks, Aish.’

  I watched her walking to the kitchen, her graceful, long-legged step accentuating the curves under her tight cream dress. Daoud cleared his throat and I jumped.

  ‘Talking about the farm, how did you guys get on there?’

  Like our agreement to keep the police charge secret, Aisha and I had agreed we’d keep the helicopter incident between us.

  ‘It was amazing, a real experience. I never thought the West Bank would be, well, beautiful. You don’t really get shown olive trees and old men smoking argileh by the roadside on the television. You just see the violence and stuff. And Mariam is an inspiration, truly.’

  ‘It’s a way of life that has all but passed now,’ Daoud said, frowning.

  I remembered Mariam sitting in the kitchen, her lined face stark in the candlelight her finger held against her lips.

  ‘I met Hamad there.’

  ‘He’s a good man.’

  ‘He’s quiet. I didn’t really get to talk to him, but something puzzled me. He met some men outside in the yard, very late at night. It was sort of odd.’

  I could almost hear my heart hammering as I took a sip of icy whisky. Daoud looked directly at me, his frown deepening.

  ‘Really? Why, what were they doing?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know. I saw them through the bedroom window. Their car woke me up.’

  He sat back, shaking his head. ‘The men sometimes meet up and talk revolution and so on, but usually in the warmth of someone’s kitchen, where they can share their dreams of freedom and their big talk. Now and then they plot something or another, but it rarely comes to anything. And it’s the young ones, not the old ones who are trouble.’

  Daoud shifted to sit on the edge of the sofa, his glass held in both hands. ‘Damn Hamad. I’ll have to go over at the weekend and make sure he’s not up to anything stupid.’

  He put his hand on my leg and I managed not to flinch.

  ‘Thank you, Paul. I appreciate your candour. It isn’t always easy, keeping this family in check. I sometimes wonder if I’m quite old enough for it.’

  He sat back and I leaned forward, my inner journalist taking over. ‘Your company is sponsoring the Dead Sea Water Conference. Are you so confident you’ll win the privatisation bid?’

  He smiled at me, a tight little smile. ‘You’re working still, Paul?’

  I shook my head. ‘No, just curiosity. I’ve seen a few documents that talk of your bid and it seems all very, well, innovative. As far as I understand it, the British approach is about more effective resource management while yours is focused on simply finding more water.’

  Daoud winced. ‘It’s not simple. It’s bloody difficult, otherwise half the world would be over here doing it. It’s technically very innovative and uses technologies only we can bring to the table. Look, if you’re interested I can give you a copy of our bid. You’ll keep it to yourself, I know. It’s important you do, there are political issues involved as well.’

  ‘Thank you, I’d like to read it. If you don’t mind me asking you questions about it all. The Minister wants to refocus the next issue of the magazine on the whole water management thing and I have to admit, I’m on a steep learning curve.’ I sipped my drink, frowning as the thought hit me. ‘How do you mean, it’s political?’

  ‘It’s in the Israeli’s interests to stop us exploiting new water reserves. They need us struggling with inadequate resources while they get fat on the water they’ve taken from us over the years. As I told you before, Paul, I mean to take our water back. And as you can imagine, they’re not going to be happy about it.’

  ‘What about the 1994 peace treaty?’

  ‘They’re saying they don’t feel bound by its water provisions. So why should we be? Israel provides Jordan with a fraction of the water they undertook to supply. We cannot go on like this.’

  Aisha came from the kitchen holding two tiny cups of strong, cardamom-fragranced coffee, bending to place them on the side table.

  ‘Go on like what, you bully?’

  He looked up at her and smiled, sitting back. ‘Never mind. We were just talking shop. Listen, I said I’d maybe meet up with Ghaith at Nai. You guys fancy going out for a drink?’

  Aisha grinned. ‘Cool. We’re on. You haven’t been to Nai before have you, Paul?’

  ‘Nope. What is Nai?’

  ‘A place for spoiled brats from rich families to behave badly,’ said Daoud, his face dark and his eyes on Aisha. ‘I’m glad you haven’t been there, Paul. It shows you have a pure soul.’

  Aisha punched him. ‘Come on, I’ll get Mariam.’

  Daoud turned to me. ‘One second, Paul, and I’ll dump that file for you.’

  I sipped carefully at the hot, strong coffee until Daoud returned a minute later holding a memory key with a Jerusalem Holdings logo on it.

  ‘Here. The Jerusalem technical bid document. There are no financials in there, but it’s still highly confidential. It should tell you all you need to know about the problems we’re facing and how I believe we have a unique and revolutionary solution to Jordan’s water crisis.’

  ‘Thank you, Daoud. That’s a lot of trust you’ve put in me.’

  ‘You already have something far more precious to me, Paul,’ he said, laughing. ‘My sister’s heart.’

  I was coming to like Daoud Dajani a great deal.

  We bundled into the BMW’s walnut-trimmed interior. It smelled faintly of cowhide and cigar. The girls sat in the back and I sat by Daoud as he drove through the dark streets. I held the memory key in my right jacket pocket. I’d already decided this wouldn’t be shared with Gerald bloody Lynch and the decision somehow removed a huge weight from my shoulders.

  It
was past eleven o’clock as we sped through the quiet streets before breaking out into the bright lights of Shmeisani and its bustling restaurants. There was music and laughter in the air, the sweet smell of argileh smoke wafting in through my open window as we passed groups of people in the street.

  I shook my head in awe at how these people did it. At a time when any reasonable human being would be digesting their food, sipping a scotch and thinking about bed, these guys were starting the evening. I was seeing a different Daoud tonight: he was laughing and joking, high on the enthusiasm washing over us from the back seats as the girls chatted and messed about. I found myself grinning, talking motors with Daoud in the way only an impoverished journalist with zero ambition can talk to an Arab millionaire about fifty thousand pound cars.

  We arrived at the nightclub. Daoud threw the keys at a valet and we went down the wrought iron stairs into the thumping music below. It reminded me of The Sheikh of Araby’s tent, multi-coloured and hung with beads, drapes and scattered around with oriental lamps and artfully positioned arabesque ‘objets.’ The club heaved, people dancing, shouting across the packed crowd, vying for attention.

  Vodka Red Bull. So many people were drinking it, the place smelled of bubblegum.

  ‘Paul, this is Emma. She works with US AID.’ Aisha’s hand was on the arm of an American with lovely legs in a short skirt who flashed an excited grin at me. Hard to tell whether she was buzzing on bubblegum or E-ing.

  ‘Hi,’ she yelled at me. ‘You must be Aisha’s English boyfriend.’

  Aisha laughed and carried me on through the crowd before I could reply, stopping every few steps to greet a new face, introducing me to a bewildering array of people.

  We finally reached the end of the bar and joined Daoud. Aisha left us, calling out, ‘One second. Don’t move, I’ll be back.’

  She plunged into the thick of the shifting crowd and was instantly lost in the waving hands and flashing lights. Daoud had ordered cigars. I copied him, snipping the end off with his cutter and lighting it from a splint made from the cedar-wood wrapper. It was strong, inhaling the smoke brought a coughing fit.

  ‘I’m not really a smoker,’ I shouted, gasping at Daoud, my eyes streaming.

  His hand round my shoulder, confiding, laughing, ‘Paul, you’re not supposed to inhale the bloody thing. Come, I reserved a table!’

  Tables were hard to get at Nai, a few seats lined up in alcove areas towards the back of the bar were empty, with a ‘reserved’ sign on them. We sat and I people-watched as the crowd moved back and forth to the rhythm of the pumping beats, outbreaks of localised dancing breaking in from the West. Aisha rejoined us, pulling me to my feet and dragging me back into the crowd.

  Laughter. A lot of laughter. Aisha on my arm, Aisha by my side. Aisha dancing, all those salsa classes paying off. Elegantly erotic, she moved to the music as if she were one with it.

  Paul Stokes, the man at the end of his tether talking quietly to an orthodox priest, was left behind somewhere, a shade in the dim and distant past.

  ‘You must be Paul. Nice to meet you. You’re a lucky man.’ This from a tall, thick-waisted young man, maybe in his late twenties. He had teased, curly hair, a precisely cut goatee beard and wore a dark suit and open-necked shirt. ‘I’m Ghaith.’

  Daoud greeted Ghaith like a lost brother. Mariam danced on the bar, Aisha clapping her on with the rest of the crowd. I went to the toilet, met Aisha in the corridor on the way back into the bar. For the first time ever in public, we kissed, a kiss of sheer exuberance. We walked back into the bar holding hands and I saw Daoud standing nearby, talking to the barman as he bought another Cohiba, our seats empty over at the back of the bar, just visible through the excited throng.

  The bomb scythed through them, an awful parabola of concussing violence, bodies flung against the screaming living, glass flying and tearing cloth, biting flesh. The bar in pieces, bottles smashed and drink streaming down the broken wood.

  The force hit me, shards flying in the air, tossed me back against the wall. I saw Aisha’s hair thrown up in a surreal halo as she jerked backwards and hit the bar with a sickening force that distorted her fine features.

  Faux beams falling, a woman crawling towards me as I staggered to my feet, deafened. An awful silence, mouths open, soundless screaming. A man walking, his hands to his ears and blood running down his face like rain, the falling drops spattering on the dusty floor in a steady flow like a broken gutter. I felt wetness on my cheek, saw the blood on my fingers. Aisha. Aish.

  A woman lay on the floor, her head thrown back and her eyes impossibly wide, her hair fanned out on the wooden boards, her hips jerking obscenely, nostrils flared. The iron tang of blood.

  Dust, coughing, thick dust. Ring a ring of roses. I turned, alone. Small fires as the drapes burned up, smoke and dust, choking me. Silence as I turned, gaping, torn flesh around me, open wounds, tangled limbs and open mouths, dresses torn and dead eyes blurring as I turned around, brown flesh, white flesh, red flesh. Brown, white, red. Children playing and mother calling us in from the sun for tea. A pocket full of posies. Whirling madness. Choking smoke and stillness, except for a single dark figure, spinning in the middle of the deadly tableau.

  Aisha. Aisha. Aisha.

  I’m somewhere white and beautiful, the breeze caressing my skin and she calls out, answering me as I come to a standstill, screaming her name as I double up in pain.

  The olive trees are her courtiers, the olive princess.

  TWENTY

  Aisha sat wrapped in the rough blanket, still shaking and barely able to grasp the Styrofoam cup of sweet coffee I gave her.

  The ambulances were still arriving, green-covered forms on gurneys being wheeled past us, but the pace had slowed a little, some four hours after our lives had been transformed by the instant of horrifying force. They were all around us, sitting in groups, lying on the floor, standing by beds or just silently staring. A woman’s wail broke into sobs, the nurses shushing her.

  Aisha sniffed, wiping at her puffy, bruised eye and wincing. ‘How’s Mariam?’

  ‘She’s fine, just a couple of small cuts. She was really lucky. They’ve sent her home.’

  ‘Daoud?’

  ‘Still no news.’

  ‘He’s here, right?’

  ‘I’m not sure, Aish. The woman at reception says they can’t tell who is and isn’t here yet. Many of the people they’re treating still can’t even talk for themselves. And they won’t let me check the cubicles.’

  ‘Mum? ‘brahim?’

  ‘I talked to both. Ibrahim is coming down here. He’s been talking to a contact in the police to try and track Daoud down as well.’

  She gazed into her drink, the neon light shimmering on its surface. ‘And what... what about everyone else?’

  I looked around us. There was no way of knowing how many people had died, how many were injured. The hospital was overflowing, relatives arriving and mingling with the bloodied crowd in the packed A&E. I watched a young man, pale-faced and exhausted, his head against the wall and his hands in bandages, a group near him whispering as they tried to comfort a wide-eyed, violently shivering girl with crimson stains on the bandage around her head.

  A nurse stopped in front of us. ‘Dajani? Aisha Dajani?’

  Aisha nodded. I took the cup from her hand and helped her up. I walked with her, my other hand shut tight on the memory key miraculously still in my jacket pocket along with my mobile.

  By the time Ibrahim arrived, Aisha was wearing a collection of dressings, the glass cuts on her arm and thigh stitched and the powerful painkillers making her woozy. I started shaking, too exhausted to even flinch as the sutures entered the gash above my ear and the pattern of tiny cuts down my left side were probed for glass before being dabbed with antiseptic and closed. Aisha’s hand on my cheek felt cool and soft, her thumb caressing my hot skin as I tensed with the pain.

  Ibrahim wore a beige greatcoat, a scarf around his neck. Aisha caught the desolate look on
his face, standing to bury her head in his shoulder. I tried to sit up, the movement creating a sharp tearing pain in my side.

  Ibrahim motioned me back, his hand on Aisha’s head, stroking her hair. ‘Do not try and get up, Paul. You look very ill. Rest now.’

  ‘Have they found Daoud?’

  ‘No. I do not know. We can find no trace of him. The hospital director has been very kind in helping me look through the admittances from tonight. Daoud is not here.’

  ‘The club?’

  ‘No. Civil defence have cleared it now. There are no more people left there. The police have confirmed this.’

  The pain returned, sharper this time and making me cry out. The nurse started to prepare a syringe.

  I found it increasingly hard to speak, my swollen lips were dry and the stitches painful. ‘How many? How many dead?’

  Ibrahim grimaced. ‘Eight. It is a miracle it was not more, apparently. There are too many injured, some seriously.’

  The nurse slipped the syringe into the canula in my wrist. I was still trying to form my next question, my bloated lips refusing to move properly, when the enveloping lassitude lapped over me and enfolded me in darkness.

  They let me go home the next afternoon. Aisha had gone earlier, tears running down her face, kissing a finger and touching it gently to my lips.

  The ambulance man helped me to make my way up the steps to the house. I went to bed and stayed there through the day until, driven by thirst, I got up and hobbled painfully to the kitchen to get some water. There were missed calls on my mobile from my mother and three from Lynch.

  Aisha’s mobile went straight to voicemail, so I called the house and Nour told me she was asleep in bed.

  I called my mum and told her I hadn’t been anywhere near the bombing, that I sounded funny because I had the flu. She had been getting calls from the newspapers. I told her not to worry and to ignore them. Apparently my brother Charles was ill with flu too. I silently hoped, git though he was, he didn’t have the same flu I did as I listened to her happy chattering.