Olives (20 page)

I waited in
the courthouse, my head in my hands, listening to the undisciplined
noise of the place, low voices, shuffling feet and doors banging. A
mobile went off somewhere in the public gallery and its owner left
the room with it to his ear.

Tariq Al
Bashir and the prosecution’s counsel, the fussy little man I had
shouted at the previous morning, had been called to the judge’s
chambers, the court session suspended pending the result of
whatever they were discussing. All I could do was wait. Ibrahim had
gone outside for a smoke and had just returned, reeking of
aftershave, hair lotion and cigarettes, when Al Bashir came back.
He was elated.

‘
Okay, here’s
the deal, Paul. Khasawneh has offered a plea bargain. If you plead
guilty to an attempted assault charge, he’ll throw out the drugs
one. He won’t press for the full penalty and will accept
extenuating circumstances.’

‘
But that
makes me guilty. I’m not guilty.’

Ibrahim’s
smoker’s rumble cut in. ‘Paul, this has not gone as well as I had
expected. Someone else is pulling the string here and I cannot do
much about it. I think you are best to accept what they have
offered.’

‘
What’s the
implication, Tariq? What’s the sentence?’

‘
The drugs
charge carried a ten-year term. An assault charge against an
officer would have meant at least two years. Attempted assault
would be a maximum of three months, extenuating circumstances would
maybe not even be a custodial sentence. We’ll have to see when this
gets to sentencing. But he was signalling pretty strongly back
there that he just wants this out of his courthouse
quickly.’

‘
So what
happened to the hanging judge?’

Tariq
shrugged, rubbing his chin. ‘I don’t know. There’s something about
this case he doesn’t like and he just wants rid of us.’ He laughed
grimly. ‘And we want rid of us too, no?’

‘
But what
about the Ministry? The papers will carry the sentence, won’t
they?’

Ibrahim shook
his head. ‘I can deal with it, trust me. Accept the deal and this
will finally all be over.’

I felt
stupid, naive and trapped. I cast around me for some sort of
inspiration, something to help me. I found Lynch, sitting in the
public gallery. He nodded, the briefest dip of his head. Every man
has his price and I had just found mine.

‘
Okay. Let’s
do it.’

Al Bashir
disappeared into the door at the back of the courthouse again.
After a full ten minutes spent watching the motes of dust in the
sunbeams penetrating the gloom of the courthouse from its high
windows, I watched him re-emerge, followed by the three judges. Al
Bashir joined us as the judges took their places, the courtroom
sitting on Khasawneh’s signal. He started to talk to the room in
general, his voice rising.

Ibrahim’s
smoker’s breath was on me as he whispered. ‘He says this case
should never have come here. You should never have been arrested
originally.’

He paused as
the judge went on, his voice ringing out, his staccato Arabic
sounding more like a Friday mosque than a judge summing
up.

‘
He says the
police work on this case was sloppy and he has, is it censored?
Censored the public prosecutor?’

‘
Censured.’

‘
Yes, like
this. Censured. He says valuable court time has been
wasted.’

Dominating
the silent court, Khasawneh turned his attention to me and I was
caught in his bushy-browed, furious stare. I caught
‘
Inglez
’ but little else as the judge gestured at me,
his hand chopping the wooden surface in front of him.

Ibrahim’s
throaty rasp again. ‘He says you were foolish and had been
drinking. He does not like to think foreigners can behave just as
they like in Jordan. There is a law here and it has to be upheld.
Even if you are English
khawaja
. He is being
sarcastic here when he says this.’

Khasawneh’s
voice rose in pitch, poised and dropped as his hand scythed the
air.

‘
He says you
must face the consequence of your actions under the law. You can
not behave in a foreign country as if you own it. He says these
days have gone for you.’

I whispered
back to Ibrahim through the side of my mouth. ‘These days have gone
for me?’

‘
For the
English, Paul. He means the English.’

There I sat,
tried by a judge for being English while the British government
pulled his strings. Ibrahim broke in on my impotent introspection.
‘He says the court will sit next week to decide
sentencing.’

I turned,
alarmed. ‘But the plea bargain.’

Al Bashir
shushed me, his hand out, palm down as we stood for the judges to
leave the noisy courthouse.

‘
Don’t worry,
Paul. It’s going to be okay.’

I’d heard it
before. And was fast learning it was Arabic for ‘You’re
fucked.’

FIFTEEN

It was
raining Thursday morning as I left the house, negotiating my way
carefully down the slippery steps to my car. The sky was a uniform
dull grey.

I stopped in
horror. The windscreen was smashed. The driver’s side front wing
had been crushed against the tyre, which was flat. I couldn’t tell
whether it had been done by another car or a tyre lever. The
interior was soaked. A battered yellow taxi came along the street
and I flagged him down.

At the
Ministry, Aisha came down for coffee and I told her about the
car.

‘
Shit. I was
hoping you’d drive tomorrow. My car’s in the shop. Let me call my
cousin.’

She laid the
sheaf of papers she was carrying down, pulled her mobile from her
pocket and made the call. I made coffee for us both and, by the
time I came back, she was mid-way through an impassioned burst of
Arabic. She winked at me, listening to the reaction on the other
end of the line before she returned fire, waving her free hand in
the air as she described what I could only imagine would be the
globally disastrous consequences of not having a replacement car
from Hassan’s car hire company.

My eye fell
on Aisha’s papers. The thick document on the top of the pile was
titled in English: ‘Jordan Water Privatisation. Draft
Recommendations of the Evaluation Committee.’

She finished
the call and sat at the side of my desk, sipping her coffee and
pulling a face at the taste. ‘Fixed. He’ll have a replacement car
over at your place tonight. It’s older, but it’s a Mercedes. And
he’ll do the same price. They’ll take the damaged car away, too.
It’s fine, it’s properly insured so there are no worries about
that. He’ll deal with the police.’

‘
Cool.
Thanks, Aish. You’re a wonder,’ I said, touching her hand, then
holding it in mine. She smiled down at me.

‘
Ibrahim told
me it went well yesterday.’

‘
As well as
could be expected. I have to go back for sentencing next week but
Tariq thinks it’s likely to be a fine. I’m not happy accepting a
guilty plea, but Ibrahim and Tariq both insist it’s the best
course. We’ll see. At least they sorted out the drugs charge. I
can’t work out where that whole lie came from.’

She frowned.
‘What about the press? Won’t they report the judgement?’

I smiled.
‘Ibrahim says he’s fixed it. The court reporter for Petra is a
lifelong buddy of his. I can only assume it means Ibrahim’s spent a
lifetime in court.’

Aisha’s soft,
throaty laugh was a provocation in itself, her soft, full lips
parting like an invitation to heaven. She growled at me.

‘
Down,
ya
Brit.’

I changed the
subject, pointing at the pile of papers she had been carrying. ‘So
they’ve evaluated the bids? It’s a done deal?’

She looked
down at the documents. ‘Nearly. It just needs to be signed off by
the Minister, but he’s travelling right now. And then they go to
the financial bids. That’s where this whole process will be won or
lost.’

‘
Travelling?
When’s he back? He asked to take a look at the article I’ve been
doing about the privatisation and the whole water
issue.’

‘
I don’t
know. He’s out this week, though. Why don’t you show the article to
Abdullah Zahlan? He’ll be able to sign it off.’

I shook my
head. ‘It’s more a courtesy. Never mind, perhaps next week. I’ve
got time. Dinner at mine tonight?’

Aisha played
with the silver coins dangling from her Bedouin necklace. ‘Can’t,’
she whispered. ‘I have salsa class and then I have to pack and get
stuff ready to take over to Mariam. Will you come to ours in the
morning so I can load up the car?’

I hadn’t
thought we were going to be acting as a private aid convoy, then
felt unworthy as I remembered how the family sent little luxuries
over whenever they could. Luxuries I had come to think of as
everyday things – candles, toothpaste, fine soap, English tea and
liquorice allsorts, the latter a particular weakness of Mariam’s,
apparently.

‘
How much
stuff are we taking over?’

‘
A couple of
bags. We won’t take too much in case it doesn’t get through. The
Israelis sometimes just confiscate the lot.’

‘
Okay, I’ll
come to yours. Nine? Can I bring anything for them?’

‘
Nine’s fine.
And yes, it’d be a nice idea to bring Hamad some sweets, maybe.
Zalatimo? He’s crazy about them.’

Amman’s
famous Zalatimo Brothers, a shop in the bustling
Shmeisani
district packed with huge trays of fine, butter-soaked
filo pastry parcels filled with nuts and honey, tubes of fried
vermicelli packed with pistachios, little rich cakes of cracked
wheat and nuts and date-filled crumbly
maamoul
pastries, all ready to scoop up and be tightly arrayed into
their distinctive dark red and gold tins.

‘
Done. I’ll
pick some up later on the way home.’

Aisha slid
off the desk, her dark denims tucked into knee-length leather
boots. She glanced around to make sure nobody was looking our way,
then stooped and kissed me.

She walked
away and I watched. She turned as she rounded the desk at the end
of the row, caught me looking at her bum and stopped for a fleeting
moment, hand on hip and wearing a mock-scandalised expression. I
laughed, but after she had left I sat brooding. The Jerusalem
Consortium water bid would be my last betrayal, my parting gift to
Gerald Lynch and his spooky pals at the British Embassy. I’d stay
in Jordan somehow, for Aisha, but not by sacrificing her and her
family to Lynch.

I looked at
my screen, seeing nothing but a blur of text and images as I mulled
over the water bids and my new career as a stealer of things and
professional liar. I was amazed the sister of one of the bidders
could wander around with the results of the technical evaluation.
And ashamed that my first thought on seeing the document was how I
could steal it.

People were
starting to leave for the day and I was still turning things over
in my mind and gazing at an empty screen. I waited a good fifteen
minutes after the last cheery, bustling figure had shouted a
goodbye across to me before I went up to the Minister’s office.
Harb’s secretary worked late when he was in town, but invariably
skipped for home and quality time with her two children when he was
travelling.

Sure enough,
the office suite was open with nobody there. The bid evaluation
document was lying on the secretary’s desk and I sauntered over to
it, treading softly, my laptop bag bumping my thigh and my heart
hammering painfully in my chest. Silence, a clock, my blood rushing
in my ears. I heard a creak as I picked up the document. Abdullah
Zahlan’s puzzled voice came from the doorway behind me.

‘
Paul. Hi.
What are you up to?’

Oh fuck. Oh
fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.

I stood
still, the bid evaluation held in place against my chest by my
elbow. Thank God I faced away from him: my shock must have been
written across my features like a billboard. Worse, if I turned,
he’d see a sheaf of papers in my hand held together with a binding
bar and clearly, oh so clearly, marked ‘Confidential’ across its
top.

I heard
Aisha’s voice in greeting. ‘Hey, Abdullah.’

I caught his
movement away from me in the corner of my eye and, quick as a
flash, unzipped the side pocket of my bag, slipped the bid
evaluation into it and pulled out the copy of the water article I
had printed out earlier. I was facing Zahlan, gesturing with the
printout by the time he’d turned back to me.

I walked
towards him, smiling and trying to sound airy, ‘I was just dropping
this piece for the Minister to review when he comes back. I didn’t
think his secretary would have left by now. Perhaps you’d care to
take a look at it for me?’

He was
dressed as ad agency man again today, all black and a polo neck,
carrying his heavy jacket in his arm. He took the document from me,
his face still carrying an echo of puzzlement. ‘Certainly, Paul.
Can I come back to you Sunday? I’m just on my way out
now.’