Olives (14 page)

I had turned
away but now I rounded on her. ‘What about her? What the hell’s got
into you, Anne? She’s just a girl who works there. What would I
tell you about her?’

Anne got up
from the sofa and struck out towards the bedroom. She paused in the
doorway. ‘Lars said she had found this house for you and that it
belonged to her family. There’s a picture in the kitchen signed
Aisha. Is she the same person?’

‘
She helped
me to settle in here. I’m sorry, but I don’t get your problem with
that, Anne.’

But Anne had
closed the door. It was almost nine o’clock before she came out
again, taking me by the hand and leading me back to the darkness
where she made silent, desperate love to me. After a time we both
stopped trying and I felt her tears dropping onto my
face.

I got up as
silently as I could to avoid waking Anne. The sunny weather had
held and I went outside to drink my coffee and read the newspaper.
I listened to the susurration of the city below. Lars had left a
packet of cigarettes and a disposable lighter on the table the
night before. The pack was damp but the moisture hadn’t penetrated
to the Marlboros and the lighter worked, so I lit one and
luxuriated in my coffee and the perfect morning. I gazed at the
blue tendril of smoke rising lazily from my cigarette.

Anne slid
open the patio window from the bedroom and stepped into the garden,
sleepy-eyed and blinking in the warm morning light. She shaded her
eyes and started to walk towards me. She stopped, her hand dropping
to her hip.

‘
Paul, what
the fuck do you think you’re doing?’

I looked
around me, the newspaper on my lap, my mobile on the table next to
my still-steaming coffee, the paved area around me scattered with
brown leaves. Too late, I realised. I grinned weakly. Anne hated
smoking. I snatched my hand behind my back, a reflex that made me
feel like a naughty schoolboy, but Anne had already turned on her
heel. She went indoors without a word.

I stubbed out
the cigarette and followed her into the kitchen, anxiety pricking
at me and making my heart pump. If my voice was over-bright, then
Anne’s was dull and lifeless.

‘
Fancy some
toast?’

‘
Fine.’

She was
sitting on one of the kitchen chairs, one leg tucked under the
other and her hands cupped protectively around a glass of orange
juice.

I made coffee
and toast, the kitchen filling with breakfast smells. Buttering the
slices, I remembered I didn’t have any marmalade. Anne only ever
had marmalade on toast. I had meant to go down to FineFair and buy
some for her.

‘
Um, there’s
no marmalade. Jam?’

She didn’t
look up. ‘No, I’ll just take it plain, thanks.’

Her toast
stayed on the
plate as I ate
mine. She finished her orange juice and left the kitchen and I
heard the shower as I sat, looking at the sunlight on the tiled
floor and feeling sick.

I stood
centre stage in Amman’s Roman amphitheatre feeling the pressure of
my own voice reverberating from the stone seating circled around
me. I watched Anne as she walked in the flat arena, called out to
her. ‘Come up here and try it. It’s so acoustically perfect you can
hear a man talking in a normal voice even if you’re sitting all the
way up at the back.’

She looked up
at me and smiled. ‘I’ll take your word for it. What’s the equipment
behind you? Do they still have concerts here?’

I surveyed
the stage behind me. Beyond the speaker stacks I could see the
shabby Eastern city climbing up the hill towards the Citadel,
straight stairways set into the tightly packed buildings, reaching
towards the cloudy sky.

‘
Yes. A big
Lebanese singer played here over the weekend. Not bad to be using a
venue after two thousand years, is it?’

I jumped down
to her and managed to wind myself in the process. Anne laughed and
put her arm in mine, her cheeks rosy with the cool autumn air. She
had zipped her brown leather jacket up, her red scarf tucked into
the top.

‘
It’s
cold.’

I held her
closer. ‘Come on, let’s drive up to the Citadel.’

The
Amphitheatre is on the margins of the Eastern city’s poverty, the
streets choked by jostling, beeping traffic. A line of desperate
people sat along the front wall selling miserable scraps, their
last pathetic possessions laid out by the roadside. Anne stopped by
a small boy, a broken radio, a tape cassette and a pair of worn
shoes laid out on the stained blanket in front of him. My mobile
rang. It was Lynch insisting we meet. I walked away from Anne,
hissing at him.

‘
I can’t. My
girlfriend’s over from the UK.’

I turned to
see Anne staring at me. The boy was imploring. Anne beckoned
me.

Lynch’s
clipped Northern Irish vowels were urgent. ‘This is important,
Paul.’

‘
I can’t just
dump her in the house and go gallivanting around Amman right now,
Gerald. Sorry.’

‘
Call me back
later, so. You’ve got the number.’

‘
All right,
all right.’

I dropped the
line and went back to Anne, who shook her head as I pulled her away
from the boy. ‘Can’t we give him something, Paul? It’s so dirty
here. These people are so poor.’

‘
Come on,
Annie. Whatever we do here won’t change that. And most of the
beggars are actually professionals.’

‘
Says
who?’

‘
Me, Anne.
I’ve been living here, remember?’

She was
silent until we reached the car. ‘Who was on the phone?’

I hadn’t
thought to concoct a reason for the call. What the hell do I say
now? Nobody, dear, just a gentleman from British intelligence. I
opened the door to buy time. I looked across the roof at her,
smiling reassuringly.

‘
Just one of
the people from the Ministry. He didn’t realise I was on
leave.’

Anne’s
reflection on the car roof was framed by dark cloud. I shivered as
her face softened and she smiled. ‘Come on, then. Show me this
Citadel place,’ she said.

My relief at
having avoided another big scene was tempered by the knowledge that
the lie, like getting caught smoking and our disastrous attempt at
copulation the night before, was another little wedge between
us.

The Golan
Heights are both notorious and beautiful, a majestic sweep of green
rising up from the lowlands around Lake Tiberias, a couple of
hours’ drive north of Amman. Exploring the North of the country was
Lars’ idea – he’d made the suggestion the night before at
dinner.

We stood in
the ruins of the Roman City at Umm Qeis and looked out at the green
swell of one of the world’s bloodiest and most hotly contested
pieces of land, and I was humbled into silence. Anne was next to
me, her jacket collar turned up and her hair whipping her face. It
was a day of clear, cool sunshine. The clouds were starting to
gather, drifting across the rich blue sky and casting jagged
shadows across the ruins and the hump of the Golan beyond. I heard
the shouts of the
tamar
man selling his
date juice in the ruins behind me and turned to see him lugging the
huge, brass pot on his back, bright ribbons and pompoms decorating
it.

Lars spoke to
Anne, raising his voice against the breeze blowing across the black
stone skeleton of the city Rome had left behind. The wind gusted
through the centuries and across into Israel. ‘The Israelis took it
from Syria in ’67,’ Lars shouted against the wind. ‘You could stand
here at the time, apparently, and watch the MIGs dancing in the air
as the land shook with the bombs. I know a guy who was here. He was
crazy to have been close to it as like this. He said it looked
beautiful, the explosions and smoke. The border’s down there, in
the valley. The Syrians used to launching the rocket attacks from
the heights down onto the Israelis. Gave them more
range.’

Anne
shuddered. ‘I think it’s horrible. Why can’t they just live
together?’

‘
That is a
long story, Anne,’ said Lars. I could imagine him thinking ‘stupid
cow’ as he smiled at her because, to be honest, I was thinking
something like it myself.

Lars’
exposition into the wind continued. ‘The Arabs tried to fight
against the Israelis ever since the country was founded in 1948.
But they couldn’t work together, the Egyptians, Syrians and
Jordanians. They took the beating in ’48 and took another one in
’67, the six-day war. The crazy Syrians lost the Golan, tried to
take it back in ’73, the Yom Kippur war, but the Israelis threw
them out again. Back and forward all the time, you see? It’s all
about the water – that’s Lake Tiberias you can see over there – the
Israelis took it in ’67. It’s the cornering stone of their water
supply now.’

I was
impressed. Lars had the history down pat. Although Anne and Lars
seemed cordial enough over our dinner together the night before,
they were not exactly destined to be star-crossed lovers. Lars had
brought a pal of his along to the restaurant, a privatisation
consultant. Privatisation Man and Anne had spent most of the
evening swapping London stories and I hadn’t even noticed she
wasn’t drinking until we got back to the house and she gave me a
hard time for being pissed.

A real comedy
of errors, except I couldn’t hear anyone laughing.

We wandered
through the maze of ruined buildings to eat lunch at the Lebanese
restaurant hidden away around the back of the Roman city, a few
wrought iron tables topped with marble mosaic scattering a patio
overlooking the Heights. We ordered
mezze
and
arak
and sat, shielded from the breeze. Anne didn’t like
the
arak
so I ordered her a glass of dry local white wine
she liked little more.

As Lars
chatted to Anne, I watched the clouds chasing the sunshine across
the Golan, my thoughts drifting to Daoud, driving up through here
into Syria and Lebanon in search of his fanatical younger brother.
Daoud must have watched Hamad changing and becoming angrier, more
politicised. I could imagine his concern, his growing reservations
about the company his brother was keeping, the late night meetings
and the family arguments. One day Hamad hadn’t come home and Daoud
had chased after him, tailing him across the uncertainties of the
Syrian border.

I was there
with Daoud, white-faced at the wheel of the car as he raced to try
and catch up with his headstrong little brother, knowing in his
deepest heart what Hamad was planning. The failure, the
vengeful
Mukhabarat
stopping Daoud at the border on his
way back. Daoud brought low, moaning in the prison cell with the
wounds and bruises from the hourly beatings, until Ibrahim tracked
him down and had him released. No wonder Daoud came across as dark
and intense now.

Of course, I
had eventually given in and watched Hamad’s last testament, the
videotaped statement he had made wearing a green bandana and a bomb
belt. The grainy quality of the recording couldn’t disguise his
strong resemblance to Daoud. I didn’t have the means to decipher
what Hamad was saying on the tape. But I had been mesmerised by the
sight of him crowing before he marched off to kill a busload of
children, his chin raised and his eyes angry and
defiant.

‘
Paul.’
Anne’s voice, sharp, bringing me back to the present, the
marble-topped table cold under my elbow and Lars grinning at me. ‘I
asked if you could get the bill please. I don’t have any Dinars on
me.’

The unkind
thought flashed through my mind,
use your fucking Amex then, dahling
. ‘Okay. Hang on a tick,’ I said, fumbling for my
wallet.

I called the
waiter.
‘Law samaht.
El-fattura, min fadlak.’

He came over
with the bill.

‘
Yislamouh,’
I said as
I handed back the little black folder.

Lars turned
to Anne. ‘See? He’s even speaking Arabic now. He’s bright, your
boy. Half Arab already.’

‘
Yes,’ she
said.

Anne’s face
wasn’t exactly a picture of pride.

We left Umm
Qeis and would have been totally silent on the drive back to Amman
if it hadn’t been for Lars the tourist guide, who kept up a
constant patter from the back seat as I drove. I rather suspected
he was doing it because he knew Anne didn’t like him. My mobile
rang and it was Lynch. I rejected the call before clearing the
received call list on the phone and dropping it back in the car’s
ashtray so Anne wouldn’t pick it up and see the last caller number.
Her eyes followed the phone as I put it back into the slot in the
dashboard.

When we got
back to the house late in the afternoon, Lynch was sitting in the
garden. I introduced him to Anne as a friend who worked at the
British Embassy. Lars took Lynch’s proffered hand.

‘
Nice to meet
you,’ Lars said, making it abundantly clear it wasn’t. ‘Paul, Anne,
thanks for the fun. I am going out to meet a crazy Jordanian chick
who loves me too much, so I have to make myself beautiful.’ He
nodded at Lynch. ‘You’ll excuse me, ya?’