Olives (29 page)

Nour met me
at the door, dressed in a light blue and gold
kandoura
.
She had been crying and I took her in my arms. She patted my back,
her touch on my bruised body was agony.

‘
Thank God
you’re safe, Paul.’

‘
Have you
heard anything about Daoud?’

‘
No,
nothing.’ She held my shoulders as she looked at me, her eyes moist
again. ‘I believe God will take care of him. I have to believe
this. I have lost all my lovely men, I cannot lose him, not Daoud,
not the last of them. God wouldn’t let that happen.’

Her fierce
smile collapsed as she turned to lead me into the house. Aisha sat
in the living room and tried to get up when I came in, but she
wasn’t strong enough. I went to her and settled her back down on
the cushions.

Nour said
something about dinner and left us. Aisha’s cheek was bruised
terribly, her arms too. I kissed her gently on the lips, the pain
from my own damaged mouth mingling with the pleasure of wrapping
myself up in Aisha’s softness.

My phone
rang. Ibrahim.

‘
Paul. How
are you?’

‘
Well,
thanks, Ibrahim. A lot better.’ Aisha raised an eyebrow at me and I
shrugged my shoulders back at her.

‘
Can you come
to the Royal Automobile Club? It is perhaps a little
urgent.’

‘
Why, what
gives? Have you heard from Daoud?’

‘
Ask Mohamed
at the front desk for me. Thank you, Paul.’

Aisha looked
troubled. ‘What’s happening, Paul?’

‘
I don’t
know, Aish. Ibrahim wants to meet me at the RAC. I’d better
go.’

We kissed and
I touched her breast but she winced so I let her go and left her
lying on the sofa. I said goodbye to Nour who had been crying
quietly in the kitchen and made my painful way to Ibrahim’s club,
established by King Hussein bin Talal, long may he rest in peace,
and a favoured meeting place of Jordan’s terrible, wealthy old
men.

Mohamed at
the front desk was used to confronting all manner of odd things,
his fifty-year tenure evident in his formal greeting as he studied
my beaten face. ‘Welcome,
seer
.’

‘
I am meeting
Ibrahim Dajani.’

‘
Certainly. This way please,
seer
.’

We walked
through the oak-panelled reception area and up the red-carpeted
stairs as they curved gracefully up to the first floor. Mohamed
stopped by the double door and knocked gently.

Ibrahim
opened the door, thanking Mohamed and ushering me in before closing
it swiftly behind me and turning the key.

I stepped
forward and Daoud Dajani rose from the heavy, studded club chair
and took my hand.

‘
Thank you
for coming, Paul.’

TWENTY-ONE

I sat down
with a little difficulty and looked across at Daoud. He seemed
exhausted, moving with an injured precision similar to my own.
Ibrahim made me a coffee from the flask on the sideboard. I stirred
sugar into it as I looked across at Daoud.

‘
Nour’s very
worried about you.’

‘
I can
imagine. I’m sorry for her, but I don’t have many options right
now. The bomb at the nightclub was meant for me, Paul.’

I sat back.
‘Why do you think that? Who would want to bomb you?’

‘
I don’t
think it, I know it. As for who, I know that, too. I’m not safe
right now, Paul. They would actually bomb a busy nightclub just to
target one man. These people are not normal, they don’t care for
life. At least not Arab life.’

The coffee
tasted stewed. ‘What people?’

Daoud stared
grimly at me over the rim of his cup. His gold signet ring
glittered in the light from the chandelier.

‘
Mossad. The
Israelis.’

‘
Oh, no. Come
off it, Daoud. Sorry, that’s just mad. I’m not buying
it.’

I got to my
feet, but didn’t really know where to go. Daoud motioned with a
finger.

‘
Sit down,
Paul. We have proof. Here.’

He reached
across to me with a slim, stapled document. I took it.

‘
What is
it?’

‘
It’s the
Mukhabarat
report on
the Nai bomb.’ Daoud glanced across at Ibrahim, who sat quietly on
the sofa to the side.

I remembered
the story of Daoud’s capture on his way back from trying to stop
his suicide bomber brother. Ibrahim had engineered Daoud’s rescue
from the feared
Mukhabarat
, the
secret police.
Wasta.
Ibrahim gazed benignly right back at
me and I turned back to Daoud.

‘
So what does
it say?’

‘
It says the
bomb did not explode properly,’ said Ibrahim in his smoky rumble.
‘Only half the charge went off. It is not sure whether by luck or
design. These people do not tend to make mistakes. We believe it
was meant as a signal, that we were meant to find what we
did.’

‘
And what did
you find?’

‘
The
explosive is American. It is from a batch shipped to Kuwait for use
by the American forces when they liberated the country from
Saddam’s army. A large amount of materiel was ‘“lost” and made its
way from Kuwait to Israel. There are many documented instances of
this. The detonator is from the same era.’

‘
But it
doesn’t mean the bomb is Israeli.’

Ibrahim
ignored me. ‘The explosives were placed in a bag underneath the
seat Ghaith Mcharourab had reserved at the club. Daoud was to meet
him.’

Daoud’s voice
cut in. ‘Ghaith died in the explosion.’

I had been
gazing into my coffee. I looked sharply up at Daoud but his face
was remained impassive.

‘
I’m sorry,
Daoud.’

He nodded at
me as Ibrahim’s sonorous voice continued.

‘
The explosives were arranged with great precision, using
military grade tape. It is quite difficult to make a bomb that will
not quite explode. It is very easy to make one that will not
explode. It is quite easy to make one that will explode. But to
make a bomb that does not
quite
explode. Now
this is quite an achievement.’ Ibrahim pulled deeply on his
cigarette. ‘At least so I am told.’

I’d been
flicking through the English half of the document and stopped at a
diagram which showed the spread pattern of the explosion. Its full
force had been directed upwards, but the periphery of its outward
arc was a few feet from where Aisha and I had been standing when it
happened. There were ten crosses marking, presumably, the dead, all
in the arc. I put the report down on the coffee table.

‘
Okay, say
for a moment it was them. Why?’

Ibrahim
grunted as he leaned forward to stub out his cigarette. ‘Someone
called the police claiming responsibility, a group naming itself
The Jerusalem Martyrs. The police treated it as a crank call. The
group has never been heard of before.’

‘
And you
think they meant it as a reference to the company’s name. That’s
pretty circumstantial, isn’t it?’

‘
They left a
one-word message. The caller was most particular it be heard. The
word was “water.” The police are puzzled by this. Are you puzzled
by this, Paul?’

And, of
course, the only possible answer was no.

‘
It’s all a
bit histrionic, though Ibrahim. Why not just warn Daoud? Why try to
kill him? Why involve innocent people?’

Daoud
chuckled bleakly. ‘There’s a lot at stake with the water projects,
Paul. They’ve gone to war over water in the past. Now they’re going
to war again. Did you read the document I gave you?’

‘
Yes, I did.
And that’s the big question it left me with. How will your proposal
affect Israel’s water supplies? It’ll reduce them, won’t
it?’

‘
Yes, it
will. There would be a significant reduction in the flow of water
out of Lake Tiberias.’

Daoud paused,
his eyes scanning my face in a manner disconcertingly similar to
Aisha’s habit of looking from eye to eye when she was uncertain. He
sat forward, cupping his hands.

‘
The volume
of water flowing into Tiberias from the three feeder rivers is
actually significantly less than the volume flowing out. It has
long been known there are a number of underground springs rising up
into the lake from underground seas. We believe tapping these will
yield something like a hundred million cubic metres of fresh water
a year, mostly during the winter months. That is water Jordan
desperately needs.’

‘
And so does
Israel.’

‘
The
difference is, Paul, this water is flowing through Jordanian land
into a lake that is rightly Jordanian.

‘
So, if
you’re draining a freshwater spring into Tiberias, the water
flowing out of the lake to Israel will be more saline.’

‘
Yes. Yes, it
will.’

‘
So the
Israelis don’t just end up with less water, they end up with
saltier water. Less useful water.’

Daoud didn’t
answer, his hands clasped together and his knuckles white. As I
looked across the table at him, I finally understood how much was
at stake in this tug of water – the Jordanian fields would blossom
as Israel’s gardens withered. Standing in the middle of them would
be a great statue of Daoud, Ozymandias with an amphora on his
shoulder, tipped to pour sparkling water into a giant irrigation
ditch.

I put my cup
down. ‘And so you think they want you dead.’

Daoud stood,
wheeling to walk across the room away from me, Ibrahim ready to
push himself up as Daoud turned again and came towards me,
shouting.

‘
I fucking
know they want me dead, Paul. This is the third bombing, the third
time we have been targeted.

I blinked,
stupid in the face of Daoud’s passionate outburst.

‘
Third
time?’

Daoud towered
over me counting on his fingers, his hands shaking with furious
tension.

‘
Ibrahim’s
nephew, Rashid, died in a truck carrying tomatoes through Jericho
and we all thought he had got involved with the militants, the same
way my brother had. He was ten minutes away from our warehouse.
Ibrahim and I were waiting for him to arrive. We didn’t realise,
Paul. You know that? We didn’t realise it’s about us. We actually
thought the poor boy was a bomber. Even when the Hamas people told
us he wasn’t with them, we didn’t believe them. His father went
through hell and we still didn’t realise.’

Daoud spat
the words at me and I dropped my gaze, letting his anger wash over
me.

‘
Then they
put a car bomb outside our offices in Haifa. That is the reason I
couldn’t get a call through to them at the time. The lines had been
cut for good. They killed the office boy. You know why, Paul? You
know why they killed him and not me? Because I had spilt coffee on
my jacket and would have thrown it out, but the office boy wanted
it. So I gave it to him just before I left. I had to leave early,
before I had planned to and so he walked out of the office onto the
street the next morning wearing my jacket when they were waiting
for me to appear. And you know what? We still didn’t realise. You
must think we’re really stupid, Paul, no? To cause all that
destruction and not even know it’s all about us. Not to realise.
Well, now we do realise because yet more people have died for no
reason and this time they thought to leave us a message. They
finally realised, didn’t they, how stupid we are. Too stupid to
understand the language of violence. The language they thought we
understood above all else. Their language.’

I shook my
head as I looked up at Daoud. ‘But they killed Israelis. Innocent
Israelis.’

Daoud had
walked away to stand by the ornate dinner table under the
chandelier, his back to me.

‘
What? And the infallible Mossad never makes mistakes? The
wonderful Israelis would never harm civilians? Have you never heard
of The Stern Gang, Paul? The Haganah? Ain Helweh? Sabra? The
history of Palestine since the
Naqba
has been of
Israeli killing, of Israeli cruelty and Israeli callousness.
Thousands died in Gaza, Paul. Do you think they lost a second’s
sleep over a couple of bombs and a few dead Arabs? Do you? Killing
is a potent drug, Paul. Kill a few Arabs and you’ll maybe have less
of a conscience at sacrificing one or two of your
own.’

A knock on
the door silenced Daoud as Ibrahim got up and unlocked it. It was
Mohamed, his face apologetic and servile and his hands waving
ineffectually.

‘
Sidi
, please. The
noise.’

Ibrahim
ushered him out and locked the door. Daoud filled his glass from
the sideboard and returned to his seat by the coffee table. He took
a long drink, gazing at the glass before putting it down and
looking up at me, sweeping his hand back over his red-rimmed eyes
to his forehead.