Olives Page 4
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; Gioconda. ‘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.
A man and boy walked hand in hand through a shabby street, the washing hanging out of the windows and cables strewn between the rooftops. It had an air of tragedy; there was a fierce pride in the man’s bearing that contrasted with his battered, desperate air.
‘It’s stunning. You’re an inky-fingered genius.’
She laughed. ‘Right. Come on, let’s get back to the family.’ She turned by the door, a serious look on her face. ‘I’m really glad you like them, Paul.’
I followed her out of the studio. To tell the truth, I was really glad, too.
I guessed the man who walked into the living room just after Aisha and I rejoined the family was her brother Daoud. Nour stood as he came in and so did I. He was in his late thirties and handsome, but there was a quiet intensity about Daoud Dajani that dampened the mood in the room briefly. He wore a tight polo neck and I could see his build. He moved like a boxer.
His eyes bored into mine as he took my hand. ‘Welcome. You are Paul Stokes.’
A statement of two facts, unsmilingly delivered. I could feel myself tripping over my words before I spoke them. ‘Yes. Thank you. You must be Daoud.’
He held my hand, a grip of steel. His temples carved deep incursions into his slicked-back hair, his dark eyebrows and strong chin carried an air of belligerence. He wore a slim gold chain on his neck and another, thicker one on his wrist which rattled when we shook hands. He continued to hold his grip after mine had relaxed, looking into my eyes with a force that brought heat to my face. There were only two of us in the world, a moment of paralysis, then he smiled and took my arm in his other hand, squeezing it in a fleeting gesture that could be friendly. Or not. I knew uncertainty showed on my face and forced a smile I suspected looked more like a salesman’s grin. Nour was standing with us, her light touch on us both and her voice gentle.
‘Come on. Dinner’s ready.’
I found myself back in a space filled with laughing people. Ibrahim had finished another story and Nancy’s voice was mock-shocked.
‘How can he say these things? He is a fantasist. Thirty-five years married and not a word of truth in all of them.’
Dinner was a procession of dishes brought in by the maid from the kitchen, each introduced to me and piled on my plate by Nour: stuffed courgettes, vine leaves, houmos flecked with grilled lamb and toasted pine nuts, roasted chicken on saffron rice, salads scattered with pomegranate seeds, shards of fried Arabic bread and tiny purple grains of bitter sumak. Nour insisted I try it all, pressing second helpings of everything on me. We talked about England and Iraq, about Jordan and the punishing Royal travel schedule and, of course, about the peace.
It was like a mantra, everywhere I went. Eventually all conversations turned to it — the peace, the peace, the peace. The new deal the Americans had finally brokered between a reluctant, right-wing Israeli government and the tired, broken down remnants of the Palestinian administration had at least brought the hope this would, against all the odds, be the one peace. The deal to lead to the long-awaited ‘two-state solution,’ the first hope since the disastrous collapse of the jury-rigged Heath Robinson compromise of Oslo.
The conversation turned to Palestine in the past, to Al Naqba, ‘the catastrophe’, the formation of Israel in 1948 and the end of the British Mandate in Palestine. When I asked Ibrahim whether he had ever gone back there, his bushy eyebrows shot up in astonishment.
‘Go back? Of course we go back! As often as possible. It is not always easy.’ He laid his forearm on the table as if he were about to give blood, palm up. He looked across at me. ‘Sometimes they are like this on the border. Sometimes like this.’ He balled his hairy hand into a fist. ‘When it is like this you are turned back or made to wait for hours while they play with you. Sometimes before they make me kneel on the path in front of them. That is hard for a man like me. I am old, I have become used to having the dignity, you know?’
The hubbub around the table died down as Ibrahim’s voice rumbled on. ‘Mama Mariam is too old now. She keeps our farm alive with Hamad, my brother, because she is too damn stubborn to leave it. We are all grateful for her. We know what will happens if you leave your land there. They will take it. There are many families in Jordan and Lebanon who still have the old iron keys to their farms, but they cannot return. We still have it, the place where we all came from. She keeps it alive for us. We all do what we can to help. Some money, some supplies when they will let us take them across. The power there is bad, the water is hard to get sometimes – especially for the trees. We often have to use wasta to get things through the border. You know wasta?’
I nodded, ‘Yes, yes I do. It was the second Arabic word I learned in Jordan.’
Ibrahim grunted. ‘Our tragedy that this should be the case. The first word, Paul?’
‘Insh’Allah.’
Ibrahim’s laughter boomed around the table, infectious and all-consuming before he finally descended into a fit of coughing, wiping the tears from his eyes.
‘My God, Paul, but you know us in two words!’
Nour smiled at me, her arm around her younger daughter. ‘Mama Mariam is certainly some lady. We named Mariam here after her.’
I caught Aisha’s sad, small smile. The maid brought coffee.
‘Paul, Paul,’ Ibrahim grinned. ‘Here you are just arrived in Jordan and we are boring you with our problems.’
‘No, no. Please. It’s not boring. I understand so little about it all. I’ve only seen the violence in the Middle East on TV. It’s always there on the news. You know, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Pakistan. I’d never thought about it all in terms of people living in farms trying to get by. We miss the humanity of it when we just take in the headlines.’
‘Ah, but this is all we all are. Farmers. Before we had over two hundred dunums of olive groves on the farm. Now there are less than twenty. The others are on the wrong side of the wall. Hamad crosses over when he can, but they always close the gates when it is time to harvest so the olives become spoiled or the settlers take them. Now they are even limiting the water we are allowed to keep the trees alive. Our family used to live on the money from the olive oil, like so many others in Palestine. Now they make it too hard for us. We live on trading instead. We will be the people who pay for this peace with our land, and yet what else can we do?’
And so you bomb them whipped through my mind, a momentary and unworthy thought shaming me as the light over the table caught the moisture in the old man’s eyes. A feeling of being watched made me steal a glance at Daoud who was, indeed, gracing me with a steady, neutral gaze.
Aisha broke the silence. ‘One day Insh’Allah we’ll have our farm safe, Uncle.’ Everyone around the table murmured, ‘Insh’Allah.’
Daoud stood. ‘Have you ever seen an olive tree, Paul? Come with me, I’ll show you the grove of olives we keep here in Abdoun.’
Nour pushed back her chair, taking Mariam’s plate and beckoning for Aisha’s. ‘Yes, go on. We’ll clear up the table. Aisha, give me a hand in the kitchen.’
I followed Daoud, hoping my reluctance didn’t show. We stood together on the veranda looking out over the dark garden – a couple of acres of prime Abdoun real estate. He flicked a switch by the kitchen door and I saw part of the garden was laid to lawn, but the hilly rise to one side accommodated a small stand of olive trees.
‘Ibrahim and my father brought these trees from our farm in Qaffin and planted them here over thirty years ago. Back then it looked like we were going to lose everything from over there, so they thought they’d keep at least this much.’ He led the way down the steps to the trees. ‘Smoke?’
‘No thanks, I don’t.’
He grunted, then lit up a Marlboro Light. ‘These trees are everything to the farmers. They are tended like fine grape vines, the olives are pressed like wine. The first cut is
virgin, the finest. The olives weep the purest oil when they are first squeezed. We press them until they can weep no more, then we feed the remains back to the land, to the animals. We still press oil over at the farm on the old stone press. It is not much, it is not enough to keep the place running, but we help out, as Ibrahim said. It is the finest oil you will ever taste. It is a symbol for us too, you understand. Of hope.’
I held a bunch of the smooth, silvery-green leaves in my hand. I didn’t know what to say to him. He stood in among the trees, the faint pall of smoke from his cigarette making my nostrils widen.
‘Ibrahim said the security wall cuts the farm in two. Will the peace uphold that?’
‘Yes. The wall is the new border, not what we hoped, the 1967 border. We demonstrated against the wall, like the other farmers. But there was nothing anyone could do. Some of the hot-headed ones got themselves beaten and arrested. The world looked the other way. Always it looks the other way. And so they built settlements, they took land, they burned crops, they inched their way into the water. Now the peace gives us the absolute minimum and gives Israel the absolute maximum. Of our land.’
I didn’t know what to say, surrounded by these trees and the family’s loss. ‘I suppose at least you still have the farm.’
Daoud shook his head. ‘Now, after all these years, they are starting to cut the water to the farmers, both over there and here in Jordan. The olive groves are starting to die. These trees are the heritage we must take with us into the future. My company is investing in the water because we believe it will be critical for the future. Not just for the trees but for our people to live. We are bidding for the privatisation of Jordan’s water resources. You have heard of this?’
‘Yes, the Minister told me about it. Is it really such a problem, the water shortage?’
‘We are already suffering from the lack of water. We will suffer more, our crops will fail and our farmers starve. It is critical to our future to find a better way to share the water. The Israelis steal the water from us every day. I want to steal it back.’