The Olive Tree (The Olive Series Book 2)

by Carol Drinkwater

  And then, miraculously, as though a muslin curtain had been swept aside, the sun burst through and I was gazing upon a distant harbour. From there on, my approach was serene, illuminated, flanked by tumbling groves of twisted centurial-trunked olive trees. I wound down my window. Damp scents of morning gatecrashed the boneshaker that was our transport. Flowering asphodel, images of Spain flooded back. It seemed like a million years ago and as many kilometres. Yet it was merely weeks and but a hop across the turquoise sea glistening as I approached.

  Bejaia was a port town of narrow streets, uninviting beaches, brushstrokes of French watercolours yet, ironically, the French never really settled here. So many on the streets were swathed in rags. Several of the shabby hotels we drove by were offering ‘water 24/24’. I needed to clean my teeth. I was tired. My skin was crying out for hot water, soap. Achour’s chauffeur deposited me at the bustling bus station where I was collected by two beekeepers whose task it was to escort me out of town to the ITAF, the Olive Institute.

  I called Hamzoui in Blida.

  ‘How are you getting on?’ he shouted.

  I begged him to cancel whatever arrangement had been conceived for this upcoming night’s accommodation. He was alarmed.

  ‘Please, Hamzoui, just for one night, I’d prefer a hotel.’ I did not add that I needed a bath and quiet time to reflect on all that I was seeing, speeding through.

  ‘You are due in Sétif tonight. I have good friends there. They will take care of you. Has somebody insulted you?’

  I tried to reassure him, feeling culpable now for this plea of independence. What I had not yet learned, but both Hamzoui and Hocine had, was that the US State Department had issued a travel warning, declaring Algeria a danger zone. Three suicide-bombers had been responsible for the recent murders, death toll now at thirty, and, as a consequence, US citizens had been advised against entering the country. The statement warned of personal safety issues, false road blocks, detonating vehicle-borne explosives and more: ‘The US Department of State recommends that foreign visitors avoid overland travel in the mountainous northern part of the country, and particularly in the area stretching from Algiers east to the Tunisian border.’

  I was sitting in that territory. Every destination I had planned from hereon was ‘overland’ and located within that relatively confined section of the Algerian map. What I also did not know was that Al-Qaeda had strategically placed pods, suicide-bombers, along many of the desert settlements I was soon to visit. Aside from the invaluable assistance I was receiving from Hamzoui’s network of beekeepers, I was on my own. My travel insurance was now invalid: no one would be rushing to airlift me out, should it become necessary. But I was unaware of all this and pigheadedly continued to insist that I needed a night alone. Without further argument, Hamzoui agreed to notify the Sétif apiarists of my request.

  The Director of the Olive Institute, when we finally managed to talk our way past reception, greeted us with the air of a pompous cavalry officer, a bureaucrat with attitude. I was fascinated to learn his lineage. His face struck me as more Turkish than Berber. He, so dapper in navy-blue, double-breasted blazer and suede shoes. More French than the French.

  ‘You have no appointment,’ he announced when we arrived at his door. We did not. It had been a beekeeping oversight. He looked me up and down with disdain, as though I’d slept in my clothes.

  ‘Where are your invitation papers?’ he quizzed.

  I had none. Still, I must have eventually appeased or flattered him because, after glancing at his watch and sighing theatrically, he agreed to a tour.

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Your institute produces a white olive,’ I began tentatively. ‘I learned of this variety in Malta.’

  He nodded impatiently, confirming that white olives were being cultivated in his groves. Originally from Italy, it was the French who had introduced them to Algeria in 1950. They were described as ‘white’ because they ripened only to deep yellow.

  ‘But, surely,’ he cried dismissively, ‘this is not why you are here?’

  I took a breath. ‘I am interested in the potential role of the olive tree in the battle against global warming, soil erosion, pesticides … to know whether you and your team of scientists know anything about its remarkable root system …’

  ‘Ah-ha! You want to know about the work we are carrying out in the south, in the desert?’

  I nodded. I knew nothing of it. This was all new material to me and I was excited.

  ‘Six hundred thousand square kilometres of subterranean water exist in the Sahara, a substantial aquifer.’

  I was astounded to hear this information. ‘Can this be used?’

  ‘We are sowing many young plantations and the saplings are thriving. Their presence will prove a vital asset in the regeneration of the desert. It is an experiment in arid-region production but one that I believe will reap fine results. If you have no time to go south, then you must, at least, visit El-Oued. There, they have planted over thirty-five thousand olive trees and are creating green belts. Their aim is to have over a million seeded by 2010. It is extremely heartening.’

  His theme was thrilling even if he spoke as though he were lecturing me. Chemlal was the dominant variety in the fertile north. Now it was being transported south. He accompanied us into a laboratory with peeling walls and dearth of equipment. It struck me as sad, underfunded, understaffed, given the crucial nature of its work.

  ‘Picture Texas, multiply it by three. Almost 90 per cent of Algeria’s land mass lies south of the Atlas Mountains. Today, desert zones. That is the expanse we have to play with. Imagine if we can transform it to productivity. The areas of El-Oued, Biskra and Khenchelea have clearly demonstrated that the olive tree can adapt comfortably to life in zones that have not been traditionally considered theirs. Well, not since the Sahara was savannah land.’ The director picked up a small jar of large green olives and proudly presented it to me. ‘These were grown in the desert,’ he smiled.

  ‘Are you suggesting that potentially this could stanch the advancement of desert, could transform the Sahara back to the savannahs that once existed?’

  ‘If we succeed, yes. Of course, this cannot happen overnight, but the olive has the wherewithal to help us. Most trees can stimulate a certain level of humidity but the olive goes further. Its roots are an excellent water pump and they create channels for rainfall to reach into the ground and replenish reserves.’

  We followed him outside. Adjoining the institute were hectares of groves crowded with a multitude of olive varieties.

  ‘Impressive, eh? I like to believe that what we have here is a substantial olive library,’ grinned my host. ‘Worldwide mother stocks,’ he explained, ‘are fast disappearing but at this institute we hold examples of almost every variety known to man. For example, the Italians have been having problems with their Lecchino,’ he said. ‘They came to me. I supplied cuttings from originals.’

  ‘And with the cuttings?’

  ‘They can propagate new trees.’

  Thin black piping was suspended like telephone wires between the canopies. Drip-fed irrigation is in use all across the northern Mediterranean, goutte à goutte, drop by drop, but I had never seen it suspended like washing lines.

  The director must have caught my puzzled expression.

  ‘Regulating the water fed to plantations rather than glutting them is one of the great advantages of drip irrigation. Feeding trees moderately creates a balanced soil. Drowning them with excessive water in order to reap bigger yields is shortsighted and dangerous for the future of the planet.’

  ‘But why are the pipes threaded through the branches?’ I asked.

  ‘It leaves the earth round the roots free for maintenance and it stops predators from chewing the cables. Wild boars are a nuisance in these matters,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I laughed. ‘We know all about wild boars.’

  Still, I found the hanging pipes unsightly.

  When we r
eached the greenhouses, Monsieur directed me to a six-month seedling. Amazingly, it was in flower. They were aiming to propagate grafted trees that no longer required fifteen years of growth before fruit production. They also aimed to create an olive variety that produced a third more oil than our cailletier back at the farm. I was keen to discover the process, but an assistant was calling Monsieur le Directeur to the telephone. Disappointed not to learn more about grafting, I took heart from the fact that soon I would be in Italy where such skills had been honed for millennia. The director bade me a hasty au revoir, advised a visit to Tébessa, where I would find the oldest olive mill in North Africa, as well as to Ferkan, a village where the women pressed olives by foot. With that he disappeared. Tébessa was on my list, but El-Oued and Ferkan were new to me.

  Entombed in the city of Sétif lay the body of Scipio Africanus, one of the outstanding military commanders of ancient history. It was Scipio who finally defeated Hannibal of Carthage and brought to an end a millennium of Phoenician domination of the Mediterranean Sea. But it is not for Scipio’s great exploits that Sétif is remembered today. On 8 May 1945, as the Germans surrendered World War II, a parade by Algerians to celebrate victory (their soldiers had fought with the French) was launched in the city. Some used the occasion as a demonstration against more than a century of French rule, but matters got out of hand and the day ended with clashes between marchers and the gendarmerie. More than a hundred Europeans were killed, others wounded, and several, it was reported, mutilated or raped. Order was eventually restored by the French police but reprisals were ugly. During the ensuing days over a thousand Algerians lost their lives and several remote Muslim villages were flattened by French aircraft. What the French did to suppress the pro-independence voices was not France’s finest hour and the cruel massacres had a significant impact on the country’s determination to unshackle itself from French dominance. My reason for Sétif was neither Scipio, though his military ‘achievements’ undoubtedly had an impact on Roman and North African olive history, nor was it to ponder the damage caused by the French. My reason was Timgad.

  Sétif. A taxi deposited me back in the Atlas Mountains at yet another sprawling, seemingly chaotic bus station, milling with Berbers in brown-hooded djellabahs, protection against sand and grit. There was no one to meet me. To reach the centre of town involved yet another taxi ride. This I was negotiating when two men, an Arab and a Berber, pulled up alongside me: Basil, a bear of a man, and Mahyouz, slight and concerned, the Laurel and Hardy of the beekeeping world.

  ‘We hear there’s been a change of plan …’

  ‘a change of plan …’

  ‘you want a hotel …’

  ‘… a hotel.’

  ‘Not so easy …’

  ‘… not easy.’

  We checked me into the ‘best’ hotel in town, in the central square alongside the principal mosque, but now I was obliged to register at the police station. Security had escalated to high red alert. My insistence on a hotel had changed my status. We stood around for some time while a group of police officers in mirrored sunglasses smoked and chewed the cud with this person and the next. A photocopy of my passport was taken and I was requested to list my destinations from here on. A formality, nothing untoward, but should anywhere ‘blow up’ a record of my whereabouts was held. Basil and Mahyouz expressed their disappointment that I would not be dining with one or other of their families.

  ‘A fine couscous has been prepared …’

  ‘… in your honour …’

  ‘Fine couscous in your honour.’

  After a coffee at the best pâtisserie in eastern Algeria on rue 8 Mai 1945 where we guzzled almond cakes, talked through my itinerary and then discussed God, I was to be left to my own devices for the evening. However, first, to pay my hotel bill because no credit cards were accepted, I needed to change money. At every previous destination the beekeepers had made the exchange themselves because they welcomed the illicit euros, but here I was directed to the black market economy.

  ‘Thank you, I’d prefer the bank.’

  ‘No, we’ll go to la bourse, Wall Street, right now.’

  ‘Wall Street?’

  The double act led me a block from my hotel, along a French colonial arcaded avenue of lacy verandahs. Once the market district, today a free-for-all falling apart at the seams. There, a host of shifty-lookers lined the pavement’s edge waving wads of bills at every passer-by. There were police officers patrolling, milling in and out of the throng, and I grew nervous, but broad-faced Basil, who seemed expert in these dealings, reassured me, while Mahyouz beetled off.

  ‘My colleague lacks bottle. Not switched on, a rural type,’ my lumbering guide explained.

  A moustachioed merchant in long navy overcoat was chosen. He and Basil disappeared inside an open doorway where a great deal of whispering took place. I, hovering in the gutter, was beckoned over. An exchange rate was proposed.

  ‘But that’s the bank rate,’ I pointed out.

  ‘The black market has fallen due to the bombings’ was Navy-Blue Coat’s argument. Basil urged me to accept it, to hand over my not inconsiderable sum of euros. Diffidently, I obeyed whereupon the rogue disappeared, leaving me with nothing.

  Basil calmed me. ‘It’s routine. He’s an intermediary, not the dealer. He’ll sniff out cash, do the business and be back.’

  Having negotiated a more profitable rate for himself, I was thinking, but remained silent.

  Basil and I hung out endlessly behind the solid, imposing door in a high-ceilinged hallway where cracked tommette floor tiles led to a broad, curving staircase. Aside from the general disrepair and naked bulb, we might have been in Paris. Some time later, another fellow materialised, dawdling suspiciously in the busy street. Sallow-skinned, left eye squinting, burning cigarette between amber-stained fingers, stooped and coughing. A great deal of sideways glancing and furtive bobbings went on. Basil popped his head out, peering this way and that as though expecting a raid. I had never seen anything so openly fishy or plain daft. A wink brought the man to our sides. He pulled creased bills with trembling fingers from an inside pocket of his worn leather jacket. These were counted one by one into my palm. Everybody shook hands. The moneychanger slipped away, swallowed within a crush of shuffling djellabahs and peasant bodies while we held back for yet another five minutes.

  My time alone was less amusing. My chosen hotel was rigidly Muslim. A diagram with arrows pinned to the wardrobe pointed towards Mecca, offering guests the direction to kneel for prayers. The deep drawl of the muezzin called like a sickening cow from the imposing neighbouring mosque. I asked at reception for the opening hours of the restaurant and whether it served wine to non-Muslims and I was practically asked to leave. The lobby was peopled with bearded mullahs, clerics in flimsy beige cotton gowns, sandals and socks, seated on the sofas cradling umbrellas and briefcases.

  I took a dusk stroll about the once-Roman city, where all females bar me were behind closed doors, and I was hit on by every male between the ages of fourteen and ninety. At boarded kiosks, I read the headlines on French-printed newspapers, ‘L’Alerte Rouge’, ‘Kamikaze Bombes’. I was hoping to chance upon a welcoming bistro but was definitely out of luck. The hustlers were driving me to distraction so I retreated to the hotel.

  The clerk, a miserable specimen with rodenty teeth the colour of sandpaper, beckoned me over and gave a formal warning that alcohol was not served in his establishment and any guest caught sneaking one drop to their room would be asked to leave. I nodded and made my way to the lift. The entire town was dry so he had wasted his breath.

  Algeria drove out their French colonisers, but while they were not paying attention the extremists had penetrated deep into the foundations of their territory, I was thinking. Only as I reached the fourth floor did I remember that I was in possession of a quarter bottle of red wine. It had been offered to me in the guest lounge at Casablanca airport. Too early in the day to imbibe, I had vaguely thought I might be gratef
ul for it in Algeria and had popped it into my rucksack where it had lain, forgotten. ‘This is its moment,’ I smiled. I ran myself a hot bath and sank into it, luxuriating in suds while sipping my wine, which went straight to my head. I was deliciously happy, getting thoroughly clean and, just a tad, illicitly intoxicated.

  The next morning before setting off I had the wherewithal to take my empty bottle with me, but what to do with it? It was early. Breakfast over, as drab an affair as dinner had been the previous evening, I took a stroll in the rain with my guilty evidence in my shoulder bag. I was intending to deposit it in a bin. However, this being Algeria, I could not find one. Eventually, round the back of the hotel, opposite the mullah’s guarded entrance to the mosque, was a monumental pile of rotting garbage. I withdrew the bottle, slipped it within the detritus and strode on along the lane.

  ‘Arrêtez, s’il vous plaît!’ The ringing cry of authority.

  I froze and turned. Two soldiers, boys, with guns trained upon me, had exited from behind the mosque’s dark green iron gates and high-walled courtyard. I clocked the sentry box for the first time. A man with beard and black suit appeared.

  ‘What were you doing?’ he yelled.

  I shook my head inanely, unable to speak.

  ‘You have just disposed of something. What was it?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Approach! Hands up!’

  Several retraced steps, hands above my head, found me back alongside the shoulder-high mounds of rubbish.

  ‘You threw an object there. What was it?’

  I was trembling, staring at the deposits, scanning bags, desperate to see if the blasted bottle was visible. I, a lone foreign female, had sinned against Allah (and, what’s more, had revelled in the act). To admit the truth would be folly. Then it dawned upon me. Given the nation’s security concerns, these soldiers probably suspected a hand grenade or bomb, set to destroy the religious heart of this city.

  ‘What did you dispose of?’ Another soldier had joined the group.