I was feeling sorry for myself but I could expect little sympathy from Robin. It was one thing for him to get drunk after signing the Ministry contract on our last trip and set fire to my hotel room as he blundered around with his stinking cheroot but quite another to have the editorial staff punching coppers. If Robin had to deal with the consequences of my brush with authority, I’d be standing outside The Media Group’s smart Richmond offices with my final pay check minus deductions in seconds flat.
I knew he’d hear the resignation in my voice. ‘Yeah, okay.’ My final obeisance: ‘Thanks, Robin.’
‘Anytime. Give big tits a kiss from me.’
Bastard.
Aisha was chattering away in Arabic on her mobile as she navigated one-handed through the jostling traffic. I tried to mask my anxiety, but I’m not a good passenger at the best of times. I aligned my laptop bag with the seam of my jeans.
The radio was tuned into Sawa, the American-funded station that mixes funky beats with skewed newscasts in an attempt to win over the ‘Arab street’. The Jordanians listen to the music and turn it down during the news. She finished her call, waving the mobile at me, her attention charmingly diverted away from the road and the random, lane-swapping traffic all around us. I focused on the seam/laptop occlusion.
‘My cousin. He’s been helping me to look for houses. He has some good ideas, maybe.’
I managed to look up. ‘Where are we going?’
‘To a place near the first circle. Amman is built on seven circles, they are roundabouts. The first circle is the old area of the city.’
I was in her debt, no doubt about it, but I worried about my passport. I had trusted Ibrahim when he had told me the case wouldn’t go further and I had signed that stupid form without really knowing what it was. I felt ungrateful pushing it, yet I had to know. I pressed my hands together and looked across at Aisha. ‘Has Ibrahim got any idea about where my passport is?
She smiled as she drove, her eyes on the road. ‘Don’t worry, Paul. Ibrahim can manage these things. It will maybe take a little time is all.’
I gazed out at the rainbow mosaic of shop fronts flashing by, immersed in the bustling strangeness of it all and wondering how much ‘a little time’ is. I checked the seams of my jeans and the laptop bag were still aligned.
We stopped at a traffic light and I was startled by a tap on my window. A small, dirty-faced child stood by the car, tears carving pale streaks down his cheeks as he held up his hand in the Arab gesture of supplication, his thumb and first two fingers pressed together in a little bunch. He pulled an exaggerated needy face.
If his appearance had taken me aback, the outburst from the seat next to me threw me even more. Aisha dropped the electric window, barking a stream of violent, guttural Arabic. He backed away sullenly. The lights changed and we pulled off, leaving him glaring at me in the wing mirror.
I shook from shock and anger, glaring sightlessly out of the window before twisting to face her.
‘There was absolutely no need for that.’
Her eyes stayed fixed on the road ahead. ‘He’s begging. They’re a problem.’
‘I’ll ask if I need someone screamed at. He was just a poor Palestinian kid.’
I caught the paleness of her knuckles on the wheel. ‘We are Palestinian, but we are not beggars. Whatever we lose, however desperate it becomes. It is bad enough we have to beg the world to understand we have had our land stolen from us, to beg to be allowed to return to our houses. Better we save our begging for these things than wandering the streets for pennies.’
We drove too fast and in silence down a tree-lined street dotted with embassies, passing my hotel before turning right and dropping down into an area of older, more ornate buildings. Everything in Amman is clad in the same pale stone, the older buildings exuding a quaint colonialism.
Aisha finally spoke. ‘Look, Paul, there are a lot of these beggars in Amman and they’re organised. They are gypsies, Bedu. You’ll get the picture; they hassle people. Life here can be harsh sometimes. We’re not all wealthy and settled in nice middle class homes.’
I talked to my hands. ‘No, look, it’s my fault. I’m sorry. I just got a shock, that’s all. I’m a bit nervy right now. There’s a lot of strangeness to get used to.’
‘It’s okay. Forget it.’
Aisha took us downhill into a leafy avenue of fine old houses before she gestured, her wooden bangles clacking. ‘This is the First Circle, the centre of old Amman and it’s becoming fashionable for cafés and bars. There’s a place here that may be within your budget, but it’s unfurnished. It’s just up the street from the Wild Jordan Café, quite a popular place that the Americans built as a gift to Jordan. They like to give us little gifts.’
I stayed quiet as she pulled the car to a stop in front of a flight of stone steps leading up to a house standing apart on the hillside, ornate wrought-iron railings protecting its windows and a vine trailing on the pergola in the garden to the front of it. I found myself following the swing of her hips as she led the way up the steps from the road. She turned abruptly at the top, caught me looking at her bum and raised an eyebrow. I felt my face redden. She pulled a soft pack of cigarettes from her burgundy handbag and offered them.
‘I don’t, thanks.’
‘Suit yourself,’ she said, lighting up and inhaling hungrily. Her lipstick left a dark red mark on the white filter. As she raised her head to let the smoke go, I noticed she had ink on her fingers, like a naughty schoolgirl, an incongruity in someone so sophisticated. ‘It’s owned by a lawyer and his wife. It’s on two floors, there’s a Swedish guy who rents the upper floor. You would get the ground floor and the use of the garden area.’
She opened the door and waited for me to go in. It wasn’t huge, a traditional house built maybe in the thirties or forties and clad in pale Jordan stone. A green-painted door led straight into the cool, terracotta-floored kitchen. I wandered around the echoing rooms before going back outside and standing in the lush little garden. I looked out across to the Jordanian flag flapping merrily atop the Citadel, the central hill of Amman. The pale stone buildings carpeted the city around us, glowing deep orange in the sunset. I listened to the sound of a cricket in the bushes, taking in the fresh breeze and wishing time would stop and leave me with these feelings forever. All thoughts of police charges and cells were gone, chased away by my joy at this little house. I heard Aisha’s step behind me and caught a whiff of her cigarette smoke, looking round to catch the glow of the setting sun on her golden skin.
‘I want to live here,’ I said. ‘This is beautiful.’
‘Alhamdulillah.’
‘Sorry?’
‘It means thanks to God. Why do you look so worried if you like it?’
‘How am I going to furnish it?’
‘I can get the landlord to defer the first three month’s rent if you agree to leave the furniture behind you when you go.’
I glanced at Aisha, her brown eyes alive, gauging my reaction. I took in the garden again, the trellises and the wooden table and chairs under arches of vines. She ground the cigarette out under her foot. I blurted, ‘Of course I will. Christ, it’s ideal. Idyllic. Who’s the landlord?’
Aisha sashayed toward the car. ‘Come on, I’ll take you to your hotel.’
I laughed, persisting. ‘Who’s the landlord?’
She stopped and turned, grinning. ‘My cousin.’ Then she flicked her hair at me and carried on down the steps.
Wasta.
THREE
My first job the next morning was to finish the editorial plan and get it approved. I had a meeting with Zahlan to go through the update and he complained bitterly once again that The Media Group wasn’t providing a microsite, blog or even an online newsletter version of the magazine. I resolved to talk to Robin about how we could get around what was obviously going to be a big problem for us unless we could find a way of addressing Zahlan’s digital inclinations.
Scanning email got me a travel warn
ing from the Yanks for Jordan: present danger despite the peace deal, terrorist threats against US and other allied nationals, extreme caution, yadayada. Great. Looking up the Foreign Office resulted in, as usual, the suggestion that Brits might like to wear a hat if walking through Gaza at midday as the sun can be tiresome. The website suggested, in a mild sort of way, British nationals in Jordan might want to drop into the Embassy and register if they fancied. I fancied, deciding to do just that later in the week.
I did my online rounds and scanned Facebook, Twitter and Gorkana but my heart wasn’t really in it and I settled down to working on planning the magazine to escape from the nagging thoughts of police charges. They filled my every quiet moment, driving me to constantly seek out noise, activity and bustle.
The magazine was intended to highlight Jordan’s resource issues and look at the initiatives the Ministry of Natural Resources was putting together to try to make the most of what little the country had to offer. Although I’d done a lot of online research, I had conversations with as many people as possible to try to understand the Ministry’s work and give myself a grounding in the issues. I wanted to create a magazine that truly reflected the Ministry’s work with quality and insight. Robin, of course, was only concerned with revenue, his reading never going further than spreadsheets and expensive restaurant menus.
At four in the afternoon I surfaced, blinking, to find Aisha standing against my desk wearing a fitted black dress with a wide, burgundy belt that brought Robin’s comments back to me. He might be a sexist bastard but he did have a point: Aisha was a very shapely girl. She looked every inch the Arab. Her nose curved slightly, her eyebrows were heavy and her lips full with unnerving sensuality.
She smiled. ‘Who is Robin?’
‘The guy with me last time I was here. My boss, my publisher. Why do you ask?’
‘You were growling his name under your breath.’ She clicked her fingers softly. ‘Oh, wow, I remember. Him. Are you actually friends?’
‘Robin? No, he’s my boss, not my friend. Actually, he’s the bane of my life.’ I remembered him trying to make a clumsy pass at Aisha during our last trip to Jordan. Robin only did clumsy passes, although usually drunk at parties and in front of his weary wife, Claire.
Aisha shot me a quizzical glance. ‘Bane?’
‘Bane. Problem, irritation. Obedience, bane of all genius, virtue, freedom and truth, makes slaves of men. Shelley.’
‘Shelley,’ she deadpanned.
‘Nineteenth century English poet. Percy Bysshe Shelley. The Revolt of Islam and all that.’
‘Right.’ She rolled the ‘r’ and crossed her arms. Her right hand bore an expensive-looking ring and a schoolgirl ink stain but her left was bare. The fine hairs on her brown arms were dark.
I sat back in my chair. ‘Zahlan said you’d be fixing contacts for interviews.’
‘Yes, I spoke to the Secretary General about it. Do you have an idea of what you want to focus on? I’ve already got interviews lined up with a couple of key players the Minister told me about, one of them is the potash extraction company.’ She laughed. ‘They’re Brits, so I thought that’d be a nice easy start for you.’
‘I’ve just finished the contents, actually. You want to grab a coffee and have a look over it?’
‘Sounds good. Let’s do it after work.’
‘Starbucks?’
She shook her head. ‘No. God, no. Anything but that. Starbucks is the bane of coffee. Is that right? Let’s meet at the Four Seasons. Five?’
‘Done.’ I smiled at her, inwardly quailing at the thought of what five-star Four Seasons coffee at five would cost me.
I took a cab to the Four Seasons, where we were stopped by security scanning the car with what seemed to be a divining rod. The cabbie chuckled throatily at the performance.
‘This little stick he find bomb too much, seer. Too much.’ He gestured with his thumb at the uniformed guard walking up and down balancing his little dowsing stick. I was still shaking my head at the strangeness of the whole rigmarole as I walked through the airy lobby, past a huge display of flowers and grasses arranged in ranks of tall glass vases. I found Aisha in the sumptuousness of the yellow-carpeted piano lounge, sitting at a big round table and tapping away at her MacBook.
She smiled up at me. Her bag covered the seat next to her, so I took the next available space and took out my own machine.
She pulled a face. ‘A Dell?’
‘Don’t start. It’s a tool, not a religion.’
A waiter came over and we ordered coffee. I pulled up the flatplan and we started going through the magazine contents and discussing how we were going to set up interviews and shoots with the people I needed in the Ministry and in the big world outside. The coffee came, a little theatrical presentation of porcelain on silver trays with cafétieres and dainty biscuits. By the time we reached the end of the planning, two hours had passed and we were on our second round of coffee. Aisha’s bag had moved and we were sharing my computer.
Aisha pushed her chair away and stood, stretching. She leaned on the back of my seat. ‘This is really good, Paul. People are going to love this.’
I grinned. ‘Thanks. I hope so.’
‘Zahlan’s concerned it’s all on dead trees. You know that, right?’
I nodded. ‘Yes. He made it abundantly clear. He wants an online version as well as what he calls “more interactivity” but that wasn’t really part of the plan. We did discuss that carefully with Mr Shukri when we signed the deal.’
Aisha sat back down, this time sideways with her legs crossed towards me and taking sips of coffee, her red nails rich against the white and gold porcelain. ‘Yes, but Shukri’s old school. He wouldn’t know the Internet if it came round and bit him on the ass. I think your Robin sort of took advantage of it. But Shukri’s gone now. Zahlan’s in charge and he’s shaking things up. He’s very good you know, Paul.’
I leaned back, stretching my tired muscles. ‘I’ll talk to Robin. I’m sure we can spin out a PDF version of the magazine and I can certainly put the content up for someone to use it on a website, but I can’t see him agreeing to a whole social media program. The Ministry’s going to have to resource that.’
She frowned. ‘You’re the ones making the money out of this.’
‘Not enough to start building whole online campaigns. That’s not fair. We signed up to a magazine, not to a whole Web campaign.’
She paused, thinking, the cup to her mouth and the dark coffee lapping against her lips. ‘Well, I guess it’s not our problem, anyway. Zahlan and your Robin can work it out.’
I snorted. ‘He’s not my bloody Robin.’
She put her cup down and pressed her napkin to her mouth, a little smear of red on the crisp cotton. ‘So tell me, why did you volunteer to come to Jordan?’
‘I didn’t volunteer. Robin gave me the choice of this or the doghouse. I’ve done a couple of short term overseas secondment jobs with TMG before and I fancied the challenge of something completely different. I’m not sure I was ready for how different this has been.’
‘Are you worrying about the police thing still?’
I shrugged. ‘Of course I am. I can’t get it out of my mind. Why wouldn’t I worry? I’ve just made the biggest move of my life and started it with the biggest blunder of my life.’ I checked myself. ‘Well, almost.’
She was fast, her face a picture of innocent enquiry. ‘Almost?’
I kicked myself mentally. I hadn’t even told Anne about my career-ending screw-up at the Herald and here I was telling an almost complete stranger. For some reason I couldn’t hold back or evade the enquiry in Aisha’s brown eyes. Her mouth was turned up in a quizzical smile.
I took the plunge. ‘I made a mistake once when I worked on a local newspaper in the UK. I had just started my first stint as a reporter. It cost me the job and meant I could never work on a newspaper again. And newspapers is all I ever wanted to do since I was a kid.’
Her smile faded and she lea
ned forward. ‘That sucks.’
‘It’s a while ago now and I enjoy the stuff I do at TMG generally. It’s not hard news journalism, but it’s writing and writing is what I do best. Well, apart from screwing things up.’
‘You shouldn’t beat yourself up about it, Paul. Ibrahim will take care of it. Look, what about we finish up here and grab something to eat?
‘Sounds good. Where?’
She grinned. ‘Anywhere.’
*
It was past midnight when I opened the door with my key card. I lunged for the chirping hotel phone, flashing red in the darkness.
‘Paul? Is that you?’
‘Hey, Annie.’
‘Paul, your mobile’s been off all day. I’ve been worried.’
Oh no. ‘I swapped out the chip for a local one this morning, Anne. I didn’t have time to text you the new number, I’m really sorry. It’s been busy here.’
‘How are you settling in?’
I tried not to think of the police cell and ‘our good friend Captain Mohammed’ pushing his charge sheet across the scarred desktop for me to sign. ‘Really well. I’ve got a few problems with one of the big bugs at the Ministry who wants us to do more online stuff, but it’s nothing that can’t be handled. I’m sure golden boy Goodyear will talk him round. I’ve found a house to rent here, a really nice one in one of the old parts of the city and I’ll be out of the hotel at the weekend if everything goes to plan. It’s nice here, Annie, you’d like it.’
‘I’m glad it’s going well. How’s your mum?’
‘I haven’t talked to her since I arrived. I’ll give her a call tomorrow. How’re things with you – do you miss me?’
‘You know I do Paul. It’s cold here without you. I sort of don’t know what to do with myself in the evenings. It’s been raining and I’ve got the fire on, but I need a glass of red wine and a warm Paul.’
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