How It All Started

‘We are already soaked. How can you get wetter than this?’ she retorted, pirouetting in the rain and laughing, her face held up to the sky so the droplets glistened on her cheeks in the streetlight. She span, dancing to her own rhythm, laughing and beckoning to me. I grabbed her hand and tried to pull her towards the house. She held back, her face radiant with laughter.
Olives, Page 125

This is where it all started. Listening to George Winston’s stunning Winter into Spring one night made me think of a girl dancing in the rain. Why a girl, I don’t know but the track, either February Sea or Rain brought the image clearly to my mind (both of the tracks are linked above - take a listen, they're really worth it, believe me). And somehow I knew she was walking down a street in Amman’s First Circle, or Jebel Amman, area.

The next morning I had a book in my head, all laid out like blacktop in the desert, possibilities snaking out of sight among the dunes and shimmering in the sunlight. I dashed it all down in four weeks and then started the long haul of learning how to write books (which, you could argue, I have by no means finished), rewriting Olives as I went, adding bits and taking bits away as I added and deleted characters and whole scenes.

The book was always around the core theme of Paul and Aisha and his journey to discover whether she and her brother are the good guys or not – and it always had that core element of Paul trying to find out if he was somehow linked to the outbreak of terrorism that seems to follow him around. But it was in many ways, and has been through several iterations, a very different book.

All the way through the changes, that girl dancing in the rain has been in there – not on purpose, but just ‘there’. It wasn’t until the book was finally done and I started to think about its genesis I realised how important she was to the book and also discovered that her dance takes place pretty much in the middle of the book – a complete coincidence.

Why would you dance in the rain? Because perhaps you’re happy, just a little crazy or just too wet to care anymore.

And, of course, in so many ways Paul and Aisha have also reached that point in their lives...

Arabian Nights

   His voice was matter-of-fact. ‘There are many blue cars in the world, Paul. There are many meetings between men at night in Palestine, because the Arabs love the night. They like to plot and scheme, to talk about ideals and the perfection of the world. Now and then their talk turns to action, but rarely. Mostly they talk and dream, drink tea and smoke argileh. It’s their tragedy, the Palestinians, to dream like opium eaters while their leaders fail them. They leave it to others to act and build better houses around themselves.’
Olives, Page 193

“The Arabs love the night.” I do like that, Father Vahan the Armenian Orthodox Priest being perhaps a tad harsh in his assessment of his neighbours and countrymen. It’s true, though – the Arabs do love the night, a time for families and gathering in places such as pleasure parks and corniches, small children staying up until all hours, running around and squealing as they play.

It’s a habit born, in part, of the hot summer months, when the evenings are cooler. And perhaps it’s a habit accentuated by the customs of the month of Ramadan, when the day is given to fasting and, properly, religious contemplation - as is the night, with prayers through the early hours. But the night also becomes a time of house visits, of food gifts and gatherings, the breaking of the fast at sunset giving way to the ‘suhoor’, a meal that takes place at varying times from about 9pm onwards, depending on who’s throwing it. Here rich foods are eaten, argileh smoked alongside endless custard glasses of chai suleimani and games of tarneeb, the card play that is a passion for so many across the Arab world, battles fought, won and lost every night. Some play for money, but We Don’t Talk About That.

In Jordan, Ramadan nights also become the occasion for performances – I shall never forget walking with friends into a burlesque by Lebanese female impersonator Bassem Ferghali in Amman, entranced by the sheer naughtiness of it all to a boy used to Ramadan in the Gulf, where the evenings are perhaps a tad less riotous.

I thought Father Vahan’s summary of the Arabs would get me into more hot water, but so far it’s just elicited rueful head-shakes. Then I hadn’t predicted any of the elements of Olives that would be controversial in the Arab world (never intended as the book’s original target market, I must say), so what would I know? The name of a fictional family, the morals of a fictional girl and actually talking about the alcohol that is so frequently consumed behind closed doors – these have been the biggies, not passages like the one I quote today.

Which, I suppose, is part of what I love about the region. It’s so bloody Quixotic...

Sex and Olives

    Leaving the bar at the end of the evening, we stood on the pavement and waved Aisha’s friends goodbye, our faces reddened by their rear lights. I could see my breath in the air.
   Aisha turned to me. ‘Do you want a lift?’
   Her shawl had slipped, exposing the small mole on the rise of her right breast. I looked up to find her eyes on me. The uncertainty on her face amplified the little thrill in me, the urge towards her broken only by an instant’s thought of Anne.
   ‘No, no thanks. I’ll walk down,’ I gabbled. ‘It’s only a few minutes away and I could do with clearing my head. Will I see you at the Ministry tomorrow?’
    ‘Of course, bright and early. Look, you don’t even have a fridge in the house yet. Why don’t you come around to my place tomorrow and have dinner? My mum’s been dying to meet our new Englishman.’
   ‘I’d like to very much. Thank you.’
Olives, Page 29

Could Paul and Aisha ever have loved each other?

Talking to book clubs and readers, I have found a few people mentioning the unlikely scenario of a nice Jordanian girl being allowed access to an English boy. I've also been asked whether I thought it likely a Jordanian family would take a stranger in as readily as the Dajanis of Olives do Paul.

Having been brung up proper, I always try and hide my incredulity behind a polite smile and nod acknowledging the question/point. The truth of the matter is not only are both scenarios entirely realistic and possible in real life, they are based on a number of experiences and observations from real life.

Abdoun is the wealthy area of Amman which, although a small capital, is nevertheless a capital city with a sophisticated, wealthy population alongside its masses. The city is enormously rich and diverse, with both tremendous wealth and crushing poverty. It hosts an amazing array of people, traditions and beliefs and has remarkable culture and history stemming from the coming together of those many different influences - both in syncretism and, under the surface, a degree of conflict.

A wealthy, secularly minded family of Palestinian origin whose daughter works for a government Ministry and whose two sons are a successful businessman at the helm of the family business and a radicalised Muslim respectively is by no means far fetched. For such a family to behave hospitably to a foreigner, in fact for any Arab family to behave hospitably to a foreigner, is only natural. For them to do otherwise would be almost inconceivable. Paul is already in Ibrahim and Aisha's debt, he is already known to the family. Daoud makes it quite clear that Paul's on a 'short leash' and Paul resents the warning deeply. But "Aisha's Englishman" is also a touch of the exotic - Paul being quite as exotic to Aisha as she is to him.

Aisha and Paul are careful to behave well in public. But there's no escaping their growing feelings for each other, something the family comes to accept - the women more readily than the men, perhaps. By the time this question starts to become an important one, events have overtaken the question of an 'appropriate romance'.

For the record, I have known many relationships between Arab women and Western men. Some have been successful and resulted in marriages, some have foundered on religion and family pressures. Some have just moved on as we always sometimes move on. I never for one second thought to doubt the viability of an Englishman's welcome into an Arab home or the likelihood that love could bring together two people of very different backgrounds. In fact, that the difference in their backgrounds could spark the attraction that could lead to something deeper - with those very differences providing the basis for doubt and alienation, a constant need to reconcile differences in opinion and cultural background. It's Paul's very need to try and believe in Aisha and the culture she represents that causes him to pry too deeply and push her away. By opening to each other totally, they can accept each other.

But would a great beauty like Aisha fall in love with someone as racked by self-doubt and indecision as Paul? There are a few clues in the book as to why they share a deep commonality, least of which is the fact that Paul's English hedgerows play the same role in his lonely childhood as the olive groves do to Aisha in hers.

Besides, I've seen odder couples, I can tell you.

The Reading

I woke, disoriented, to the insistent chirruping of the bedside phone – Aisha was waiting down in the hotel’s reception. I told her I’d be ten minutes, splashed water over myself and shaved, a puffy-eyed thirty-something gawping back at me in the mirror. The misty apparition nicked me in his haste. By the time I was done, three or four dots of toilet paper decorated my face.
Olives, Page 13

The Great Author prepares for The Reading by getting rid of the five o'clock shadow and brilliantly cutting himself in the process. Grappling for the styptic pencil, I remembered the passage in Olives where Paul cuts himself before going to meet Aisha in the hotel lobby.

Don't get me wrong, I love doing readings. But you always feel you could have done it better, could do it better next time - get the pace right, interest people in the book. I rummaged through the jostling Sharjah traffic thinking over the scene I'd picked (after much deliberation), where Paul's girlfriend Anne comes to Amman to visit him, a visit that goes horribly wrong as Paul and Anne discover they've grown apart and Paul, in particular, has changed.

TwingeSHJ is being held at the Al Maraya Art Centre at Sharjah's Al Qasba leisure area. The week-long festival of arts and culture will feature a total of 50 artists, performers, poets and writers. It got off to a fine start last night with a recital by poet Abdulla Kassim, in Arabic. He was followed by Emirati writer Noura Noman, who read from her debut novel, a YA sci-fi adventure. Noura wrote the book in Arabic and then, amazingly, did it again in English, translating the work herself. It's a rare thing to find science fiction in Arabic, let alone created as a native language work and Noura, who had been nervous all week about giving a reading, breezed through it with panache. She'd even brought copies of the passage in English for any English speakers in the audience!

I wish I'd thought of that, because by now I had realised the vast majority of the fifty-odd people in the audience were Emirati. The reading I'd picked just felt, well, wrong. It was too European, the conflict between Paul and Anne, too centred on a type of relationship that would be alien to the audience. I grabbed a copy of Olives and started flicking through the book, trying to find a passage that would have more resonance for a predominantly female Emirati audience. And there, I had it. The passage where Paul talks to Aisha's grandmother Mariam on her little farm on the West Bank, the land split by the Israeli 'security fence', the 450-odd mile long mix of wall and chain-link fence that carves its way greedily around the West Bank, taking detours to leave the 1967 border and slice rich land or water resources out of the Palestinian Territories. Mariam, who only appears in a couple of scenes in Olives, still resonates as a character - a strong, matriarchal woman who has kept going despite the tragedy and loss around her.

The substitution left me reading a passage for the first time and squinting at the small print in poor light but it was undoubtedly the right decision. A lively Q&A followed, kicked off by the Tweeter At The Back, Monsignor Rupert Bumfrey, and then, seemingly in a flash, the first night of TwingeSHJ was over and I was walking out into a great soupy cloud of fine atmospheric dust, the harbinger of strong winds and storms predicted for the UAE today.

Next stop: The Emirates Airline Festival of Literature...

The Crossing

   We crossed over at the Sheikh Hussein Crossing, a drive North from Amman through the green-flecked beige expanse of rocky hillsides. Daoud’s man Selim came with us to smooth the process of crossing the border. The queue at the Jordanian checkpoint snaked back from the barbed wire fences and the scattering of low buildings and concrete barriers marking the crossing point. The Jordanian soldiers were thorough and suspicious as they searched the car and checked our documents. We were finally waved through. I found the whole process unnerving, bracing myself for the infamous Israeli checkpoint. I was already jittery passing though the Jordanian side, fear making me gabble nervously and point out silly things around us. I looked across at Aisha, but she seemed lost in her own thoughts. I noticed she was gripping the door handle.
   ‘Are you okay?’
   Her smile was taut as she shook her head. ‘I never like this very much. Sorry.’
Olives, Page 155

Today, I’m very proud indeed to welcome a guest post by the woman behind the delightful Ussa Nabulsiyeh (A Nabulsi Story) blog, Sara Refai. A volunteer teaching in Nablus, Sara is a former colleague and dear friend. She also writes like a dream. Here are her thoughts on ‘the crossing’...

Click, clack, click, clack. My foot bounces from side to side and I mirror its movements with my head.

Bored. Change it up. Clickety clack clack, clickety clack clack.

Seven hours at Allenby Crossing will do that to you. 

I hoped it would be easier the second time around. Maybe it was. I was nauseous for weeks before I left Amman for the West Bank the first time. This time I was less apprehensive; knowing what to expect, but just as anxious.

My teaching position in Nablus was my livelihood. I had no plan B if I didn’t get in.

Some people are turned away because they are known activists. Some are turned away because of their Palestinian roots. Others, because their IDF soldier-cum-customs agent had a bad day.

Roll the dice, smile big and hope they don’t pay too much attention to your Google search results.

I look longingly at the recently vacated seats beside me. They were probably half way to Ramallah now. Surrounded by bare walls and an uninteresting floor, you notice if the people originally behind you in the queue are allowed through as you watch them with envy. 

On the Jordanian side the process is boring, but it’s not intimidating. Nicotine stained Jordanian officials smile and chat with you despite the tedious waiting around. You pass your luggage through sagging X-ray machines and face the difference between the foreigners’ terminal and the vastly more crowded and chaotic terminal for those only holding Arab passports.

The bus ride through No Man’s Land could be considered picturesque with its dry, expansive, wasteland appearance. The Jordan River will literally trickle under the non descript bridge that takes you out of Jordan.

My head snaps up as I hear someone call my name. An agent from the Israeli Ministry of Interior is waving my passport and looking around the waiting area.

I jump up – forever optimistic that this could be the last round of questions.

The questions never change, but the faces do. A different person for every round. Polite, probing and questioning your presence. Looking for the lie, waiting for the mistake.

You first present your passport at the entrance of Allenby after being relieved of your luggage by the Arab baggage handlers. It’s like the scene of a fish market – loud, crowded, hot and confusing. A long winding line leads to the first security check. You approach the window and are questioned by the IDF soldier that sits behind it.

What are you doing here? How long will you stay? Why are you here?

On to  x-rays for hand luggage and extra searches.

Do you speak Arabic? What religion are you?

Another soldier points you to the appropriate queue.

The queue is interminable. Soldiers take their time and investigate every potential question mark. Their job is not to smooth over the process and save time;  their job is to examine every detail of every story they come across.

If there is the slightest question mark, you are sent to the waiting area. Where I am currently sitting. To wait. Maybe an hour. Maybe 10. 

I focus my now tiny attention span back to the sun glassed face in front of me.

“So, are you less nervous this time?” mid-thirties and tanned. In another life he could be a surfer.

“Why?” I respond, wrong footed.

“Last year you were very nervous. At least that’s what you said on your blog.”

“Ah…yes, well… no, not really.”

Lovely…

More questions and another  two hour wait before I am questioned again and reseated.
It takes literally 30 seconds to cross Allenby. To talk it from entrance to exit. It was seven hours before I was wordlessly handed back my passport.

I open it. Stamped.

Safe. Until next time.

(Thanks to @youseftuqan for the snap of the Israeli side of the crossing)

Amman's Roman Amphitheatre - And A Hidden Treasure

   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.
Olives, Page 105

Paul’s girlfriend Anne comes to visit him in Amman for a few days, an event that interrupts the growing intimacy between Paul and Aisha and reminds Paul that he already has a relationship with his lover and landlady. Anne’s a high-powered international lawyer, a contrast to Paul who’s a journalist and, if truth be told, a bit of a slob compared to Anne’s smart-set friends.

They go out on a day’s sight-seeing in Amman and no such trip could be complete without a visit to Amman’s Roman Amphitheatre, a marvellously preserved artefact that does, indeed, have the quality of acoustic perfection described in Olives – as do the other Roman amphitheatres you can find dotted around Jordan.

There are a number of Roman remains in Jordan, some of which haven’t even been excavated yet, but the most significant sites to visit are in Amman, Petra, Jerash and Umm Qeis. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Roman Baths in Amman are stunning but still haven’t opened to the public as far as I can tell. We managed to sneak our way in a few years ago thanks to a friendly member of staff, who took us for a private tour around the site, which was undergoing a very leisurely looking dig/renovation at the time.

Jerash has not one, but three amphitheatres. This huge city, the most important Roman ruin in the Near East, is remarkably preserved and has been the subject of excavations for much of the past century.  Every summer it’s transformed by the three-week Jerash Festival, a major cultural event in the Jordanian calendar.

But the Amman Amphitheatre conceals a little secret. The Folklore Museum of Bedouin Life is a tiny but fascinating display of artefacts, textiles and weaving from the remarkably rich Bedouin culture of the Jordanian desert.  It’s a neat little wonder, this place, I never tire of wandering around it and admiring the intricate, colourful kandouras and the head-dresses of jangling silver coins and tokens, the goat-skin water carriers and camel-hair tents.

The Amman Citadel

   Lynch picked me up when I walked into the Citadel, Amman’s central hill topped with the ruins of ancient civilisations and one of its big tourist attractions. The guide hassling me to take a tour melted away when Lynch appeared. The Irishman strolled casually beside me as if he’d been there all along.
   We walked up the hill until it flattened out onto the top of the Citadel, stopping by the Roman columns that overlook East Amman in its blue, hilly haze. The Roman amphitheatre was below us, the colourful shops and tenements of the Eastern city spread out crazily around it, stretching up into the hills beyond.
   We stood together in the warm breeze. Lynch lit a cigarette. ‘You been here before?’
   ‘No. Never got around to it.’
   He puffed out smoke. ‘They’ve done a good job here. They excavated it in layers, preserving the best of each age. Roman, Byzantine, Muslim. It’s all here. Thousands of years of history on a single hilltop.’
   ‘Can we get down to brass tacks?’
Olives, Page 74

Paul and Lynch wander around the Citadel, bickering as Paul is unwillingly recruited to spy for the British intelligence agent, Lynch stopping to highlight occasional sightings of ancient monuments, something the Citadel has aplenty, from Roman Cisterns and columns to Byzantine churches and even ancient stone olive presses.

Paul is surprised at Lynch’s knowledge of the history around them, perhaps because he’s a bit of an intellectual snob and saw Lynch as something of a boorish drunk. Lynch, of course, has a couple of surprises up his sleeve, but isn’t going to be taken in by a load of history and doesn’t miss out on the opportunity to shock Paul, either.

The Citadel is one of the most ancient sites of continuous human occupation in the world, with evidence of Neolithic occupation running through into ancient Philadelphia, the Roman era and through the Byzantine and Ottoman empires to the present day. It’s an L-shaped hill (you can just make out the shape on Naeema Zarif’s cover art for Olives, it’s one of the elements she combined to form the multi-layered pattern) that forms the central tumulus of Amman’s seven hills, the Jordanian flag inevitably flapping on the flagpole at its crest.

Amman itself was originally named for the Ammonites (and we’re not talking prehistoric crustacea here), the people who settled the city in the twelfth century BC and who referred to the city as ‘Rabbath Ammon’, or ‘great city of the Ammonites. Their lack of hubris was to lead to their downfall, as the city was taken by the Israelites under David, then the Assyrians some two centuries later.

One of history’s unlucky women, Amman was to be taken many more times – by the Babylonians, the Ptolemies (it was Ptolemy Philadelphus who named the city ‘Philadelphia’), the Seleucids and then, nine hundred years after David, by the Romans in the first century BC. Two hundred years later, the Roman emperor Trajan incorporated Philadelphia into his province of Arabia.

Philadelphia was a prosperous Roman city, the great cistern on the Citadel just one of many important Roman artefacts in Amman and greater Jordan – Amman’s amphitheatre is a remarkable achievement, yet there are others to be found at the remarkable city of Jerash and also in Petra (always celebrated as a Nabatean site, but actually an important Roman one, too) which remain as remarkable testaments to the Roman’s feats of acoustic engineering. Amman also had an extensive and luxurious Roman baths which were, at least last time I visited them and sneaked my way into the site, jaw-droppingly impressive and not open to the general public.

With the decline of Rome, Amman became part of the Eastern Empire, Byzantium, then in the seventh century BC, the tired remains of the once majestic Roman city were wrapped into the Islamic empire of the Ummayads (and renamed with its ancient name, ‘Ammon’). Briefly a part of the Crusaders’ ‘Outremer’, the city entered a long period of decline until the late Ottoman era when the Turkish/German Hejaz Railway transformed the ruined city. Viable once again, Amman saw its final awakening as the capital of the new Kingdom of Transjordan under Abdullah I, part of the settlement of the Arab Revolt that redefined the Middle East after World War One.

Perhaps oddly, the tracks of the old Hejaz railway still traverse Jordan and you can (as I did above) stand and photograph the very railway line that TE Lawrence gave so much time and effort to blowing up.

Much of this history is evidenced on Amman’s Citadel, excavations have so far unearthed very little of what those layers of time still conceal and yet the site already feels almost impossibly rich in history. It’s a fascinating place to wander around, exploring each layer of history even as you gaze out at the vista of Amman around you. It’s all the more enjoyable if you don’t have a British spy with a strong Northern Irish accent and a heap of attitude badgering you...

The Dead Sea and the Water Crisis

   We drove along the coast of the Dead Sea.
   ‘What was all the checkpoint stuff about?’
   ‘Security. That’s Palestine over there across the water. And Israel. So Jordanian security here is tighter than usual.’
   ‘I thought you were at peace with the Israelis.’
   She looked askance at me, an eyebrow raised. ‘Jordan is.’
   We passed a tall, square metal tower overlooking the flat expanse of lifeless water. I gestured toward it and asked,  ‘Lifeguard?’
   ‘Gun position. They’re not usually manned these days, but when they are they turn the guns away to face inland. So does the other side. Peace, you see?’
Olives, Page 57

It wasn’t until the ‘noughties’ the gun positions on the Dead Sea were turned to face symbolically away from Israel. These days there aren’t even guns on the towers, but there are still military checkpoints as you drive down to the Sea, the remarkable expanse of super-saline water four hundred metres below sea level.

The Dead Sea is almost miraculous, a great expanse of water so saline you just float around in it, a meniscus of mineral oil floating on the surface. You really don't want to shave just before going in, I can tell you from bitter experience. The Jordanian side of the sea is home to a cluster of resort hotels, my personal favourite being the Movenpick Dead Sea. Further down the coast from Amman, the road snakes back up the escarpment, giving a view of the extensive moonscape created by the potash extraction operation, at one time Jordan's principle source of income - the country has never been a wealthy one. At the top you'll find the town of Kerak, home to a great crusader castle - and one of many places where TE Lawrence reported spirited gun battles with the Turks.

But the Dead Sea is under threat. The constant draining of the Jordan has reduced the river to a fragment of its former self and so the Dead Sea is literally dying, its levels slowly dropping to the point where you can actually see moorings something like thirty feet up in the cliffs around the current sea. There has been extensive discussion of remediation measures, including the 'Red Dead' project which would see Jordanian/Israeli co-operation to pipe salt water from the Red Sea.

A similarly visionary scheme is actually under way, seeing water pipes laid from Wadi Rumm right up through to Amman, one of the measures being taken to try and address the very real water crisis Jordan faces - the very water crisis that forms the backdrop to Olives, in fact. Jordan is actually the world's fourth most water challenged country.

In Olives, Daoud’s preoccupation with the water shortage is founded squarely in the story of the regional conflicts born out of 1948 – the Levant (Syria, Palestine, Jordan and Israel, although the term ‘the Levant usually refers to the Arab countries of the Western Mediterranean) is desperately short of water. Israel’s annexation of the Sea of Galilee (known as Lake Tiberius on the Arab side) in the 1967 war (the ‘six day war’) ensured a major source of precious water for Israel – fed by rivers and aquifers from surrounding Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

Part of the background to Pauls’ dilemma in Olives is that the book's Daoud Dajani is a wealthy Arab businessman with major business interests and connections across the region who is mounting a bid for the forthcoming privatisation of the Jordanian water network. Daoud’s consortium is being opposed by a British-led consortium which is focusing its bid on conservation and efficient distribution. Daoud’s bid is based on a brilliant and dangerous scheme – to tap the deep seasonal aquifers feeding Lake Tiberius, bringing more water to Jordan at Israel’s expense. Worse, by depleting the fresh water supply into Tiberius, he will ensure the remaining water is more saline – saltier and therefore less suitable for agriculture and drinking water.

Daoud’s bid obviously cannot be tolerated by the Israelis and unites both Israeli and British interests. The question Paul has to resolve is whether Daoud is a businessman acting within the law and meeting unlawful state-sponsored opposition to his brilliant scheme to benefit Jordan or whether he is a fanatic hell-bent on flinging the region into war.

“There can be no peace without resolving water problems and vice versa... it is water that will decide the future of the Occupied Territories and, what is more, whether there is peace or war. If the crisis is not resolved, the result will be a greater probability of conflict between Jordan and Israel, which would certainly involve other Arab countries.”
Jacques Sironneau, quoted in the NATO 2002 Report, ‘Water Resources in the Mediterranean. 

The battle to secure supplies of ‘the universal solvent’ in the Eastern Mediterranean is insoluble. There are too many people living off the land, distribution networks are often creaky and wasteful and the struggle to gain control of resources is constant.

The research on the water crisis that forms the backdrop to Olives is solid – there is, indeed, a major humanitarian crisis brewing in the area and Israel has indeed annexed a large number of water sources by constructing its security wall to encompass them, carving strategic tracts of land from the ‘1967 border’. Each twist and turn of the wall is a bargaining chip at best, a fait accompli at worst. Carving farms in half (as, indeed, the Dajani’s farm in Qaffin has been carved), the wall makes the most of the scant water resources in the West Bank. The source of Lake Tiberius’ wealth (or the Sea of Galilee) is, as outlined in Olives, a mixture of rivers flowing down from Syria and Lebanon and aquifers that rise up into the bed of the lake. According to NATO, 90% of the West Bank’s water is used by Israel and the distribution of water in the area is ‘unfair’ and ‘restrictive’.

The Amman Bombings

   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.
Olives, Page 23

The Four Seasons Hotel in Amman is the city’s poshest hotel and also its most expensive. They make a smashing Martini and rare is the trip to Amman where I don’t find an excuse to sink a couple with friends. It’s a wee performance, the cocktail is made in an individual shaker, then brought over on a little silver tray with a napkin, the drink shaken and poured at your table.

In the wintertime, a rare treat is afforded by the open fire in the lobby lounge, sitting back on the comfy sofas and munching on the Four Seasons’ homemade potato crisps.

The oddness with the diving rod actually takes place, cars are stopped by security on the approach to the hotel and a guard does the ‘scan’, I have never been able to work out quite what science is behind this performance with a little black divining rod.

Security at all of Amman’s hotels was stepped up after the Amman bombing, the terrible night when sixty people lost their lives. It took place in 2005, which seems odd now because it feels like a million years ago. Amman reeled under the impact of the bombs, Jordan had lain in the middle of one of the world's most dangerous, conflicted regions for decades without having seen bombings like this. The country is safe and secure - the Jordanians are a hospitable, welcoming people and Jordan has long had a thriving tourist trade - in fact, it's a major earner for the country's economy.

A pal was in the reception area of the Grand Hyatt when the bomb went off and described how, in that moment, her life and world changed as the windows blew out. She was around the corner from the lobby lounge where the bomber killed seven hotel staff. The bomb at the SAS Radission, a short walk down the road from the Grand Hyatt, was detonated in the middle of a wedding party, killing many guests including the fathers of the bride and groom. The bomber must have known he was walking into a wedding. I still find his actions incredible, even considering the fact few of us can truly imagine what goes on inside the head of a suicide bomber.

The company I work at was one of the sponsors of an art exhibition held the week after to protest it and raise funds for the families, called ‘Into the light’. I flew in to attend the event. I remember checking into the Hyatt as one of sixteen guests in the hotel, the lobby area blocked off by plasterboard. Many of the staff I had known for years (our office was based in the Hyatt's Zara complex) were no longer there. Their names, along with the others, still hang in my house, two treasured monochrome calligraphies from the exhibition, each one starkly detailing the sixty names of the fallen.

Amman And Circassia

Image via Wikipedia

I posted the other day about how the village of Amman was settled by Circassians in 1878 following the Russian pogroms which killed something like 1.5 million and saw millions marched out of their homes in the Caucasus.

Every now and then you’ll meet fair-skinned, blue-eyed Jordanians. These are the ‘alsharkasee’, the descendends of those Circassians. A small but important part of the Jordanian community, they have a remarkable history. Originally a people of the Northern Caucasus, the Adyghe, they were conquered (with considerable effort) by Russia. Originally monotheistic, with their own religion, they converted to Christianity and then, in the 15th Century, to Islam. Most of the Ottoman Mamluks were in fact Circassian and from the 13th -15th Century, Egypt was actually ruled by Circassians.

Today there is actually a Republic of Adygh, a tiny statelet under the Russian Federation and located in the Northern Caucasus. Most of the population are Russians, but some quarter of the people are ethnic Adyghes, the few survivors of the massacres.

The Circassian genocide is not officially recognised, although there are groups currently lobbying for that recognition. Apparently the 2014 Winter Olympics is causing some controversy as construction of facilities in Sochi on the Black Sea coast is disturbing one of many Adyghe mass graves.

TE Lawrence reconnoitred the city of Deraa in disguise as a Circassian, to explain away his blonde eyes and blue hair. This turns out to have been something of a mistake as the Turks rather fancied him. The rest, as they say, is history.

Amman's Seven Hills

    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 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

From Olives, page 19

Amman’s not only built on seven hills, it’s also built around seven circles (although there are more than seven of them these days), the first circle being ‘old Amman’, the late Ottoman era houses and leafy, sometimes steep, hilly streets tumbling down to the wad- beds and to East Amman.

The area around the first circle, Jebel Amman, is home to a collection of cool cafes and restaurants, many of which are scattered along Rainbow Street. The amazing Arabic restaurant Fakhr El Din is probably the most celebrated eatery in the Jebel Amman area. Eating at Fakhr El Din should be compulsory for everyone who visits Amman – it’s in one of the larger Ottoman houses and serves a legendarily rich mezze (including delicacies like sheep’s spinal cords and 'assafir' plates of tiny birds intended to be eaten whole) alongside heaving dishes of Levantine delicacies and, of course, nargileh, or shisha. Sitting outside on the terrace in the summer chatting with friends and drinking a madly strong Turkish coffee with the smell of apple shisha on the breeze is one of life’s little delights.

The picture above, by the way, shows something Quixotic and wonderful you'll never see again - the 'Thieves' Market' in East Amman. This was where you'd go to buy back the video recorder or mobile phone that was stolen from you last week. I kid you not. Everything the local crooks had blagged in the preceding week was on sale here, a sort of public display of outrageous fencing. The Powers That Be have since closed it down, but it was a wonderful, odd, crooks' car boot sale experience.

Olives Is Blocked In Jordan

    ‘The Dead Sea’s some place. You’ll like it. Who you are working with at the Ministry?’
    ‘Aisha Dajani? She works with the secretary general there, Emad Kawar.’
    ‘Yah, I’ve heard of her. Her family owns this place, you know?’
    I soon realised Lars had a massive network of friends and followers and was totally plugged in to the beating heart of Amman’s social scene. ‘Yes, she found it for me.’
    Lars nodded sagely. ‘Makes sense. It’s a big family, spread across this whole area. They’re Palestinian. A lot of money. She’s the pretty one? Drives a Lexus?’
    I shrugged. ‘I guess so.’
    He raised his can, his index finger pointed at me. ‘That’s big trouble. Big family, big money. I tell you, Arab men are crazy jealous. Stay away.’
    Olives - Page 37

I've just had the news. Olives - A Violent Romance won't be going on sale in Jordan. The first distribution company that turned it down didn't give a hard reason, just a lot of corporate weasel words about them being 'currently overloaded with existing distribution projects'.

As someone who writes corporate weasel words, I can spot 'em a mile off. And these said to me, 'Your book's as hot as a Fukushima fuel rod and we're not touching it.'

The second distributor has just confirmed that Olives is to, at least in Jordan, be a victim of some of the very attitudes and issues it touches upon.

"...it would not go through censorship as it mentions, although in fiction, the family name Dajani which is an existing family and all over the Middle East. they are of Jeruslamite origin, and quite influential. I therefore have to decline..." 

Imagine any book in the UK being blocked from distribution because the main character is called Smith or perhaps Rothermere. Or Rothschild. Imagine not being able to separate truth from fiction.

Please note I'm not saying 'banned' because it never got as far as the censor. The booksellers have blocked it out of fear that someone from a big family will take umbrage from a work of fiction using the family's name.

So I'm sorry, Jordan, but you'll just have to order your copies of Olives from The Book Depository (the link's on the right next to the links for Kindle, Nook et al). The good news is it'll ship within 72 hours, shipping is free and the book'll cost you just the same as buying it from a local bookshop.

Amman's Rich History

   I crossed the room and snatched open the curtains. The sight of the city spread out in front stilled me for a moment, the ragged ribbon of cars glittered in the early morning sunlight, snaking between the stone buildings stacked on the hillsides. A wave of vertigo forced me back. The realisation this was my new home made my stomach churn.
Olives - Page 13

Amman is built, like Rome, on seven hills and the buildings clinging to their sides are split by stairways that form a strange snakes and ladders-like network.

The city is built on the site of the ancient city of Philadelphia and contains some remarkable Roman ruins. It’s home to almost three million people today, but after the collapse of the Roman city was a village among the ruins until it was settled in the late 19th century by Circassians following their expulsion from the Caucasus by the  Russians.  King Abdullah I decided to make Amman, a small town by then, his capital following the Arab Revolt, when the Emirate of Transjordan was established. Or, as Newt Gingrich would likely have it, invented.

It’s a little known historical footnote, the expulsion of the Circassians, but it possibly ranks up there with its Ottoman cousin, the expulsion of the Armenians. Both expulsions can only be seen as genocides, with estimates of over 1.5 million Circassians killed by the Russians either in pogroms or in the forced marches that saw the majority fleeing to the Ottoman Empire in scenes that would be echoed a generation later with the Armenian genocide.

And Amman also has an Armenian community, Orthodox Christians whose churches and services of worship are so rich and so very different to the rather indifferent Christianity I was brought up with. Pal and former colleague Lena was a member of this community and eventually married a gentleman from Aleppo, also known as Halab. The wedding was in a C14th Armenian Orthodox church buried deep in Aleppo's labrynthine Ottoman covered souk. It was like going back in time: a wonderful, rich place, dark and mysterious, with ikons and chandeliers glittering, patinated wood and worn stone floors.

Like Beirut, then, Amman is somewhere you can hear both mosques and church bells. And that is a wonderful thing, believe me.

(BTW, as we're celebrating Amman, today is the birthday of His Majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan! Happy birthday, your Majesty!)

No Middle Class

"I followed him, the slam of the door and chink of keys echoing with our footsteps along the corridor. We burst into the bright neon light of the reception area and a woman in her late twenties rose to her feet, her kohl-accented eyes flickering uncertainly."

Olives - Page 9

And so we meet the character Aisha Dajani in Olives for the first time, a young Jordanian woman working for the Ministry of Natural Resources in Amman. From a wealthy family living in the West Amman district, Aisha is from an unusually liberal family that has, however, some murky connections.

The unusually liberal aspect of her character and background has occasioned some comment, with some readers wondering why I chose to make the Dajanis non-practicing Muslims. This was a conscious decision on my part to minimise the unfamiliarity of the environment and create more empathy with readers - bear in mind the original audience of Olives was intended to be British.

However, it's not an unrealistic portrayal - particularly within wealthier circles. Like everywhere else, Jordanian society encompasses a wide range of attitudes and behaviours, in belief as in everything else. In general, Jordanians are conservative - a conservatism to be found in Christian as well as Muslim communities - and yet at the same time generally tolerant of others. As in much of the Middle East, this tolerance is an attitude that goes hand in hand with respect, so people will generally pass things by if they feel at least some attempt is being made not to force it in their faces.

It has long been said that Jordan has no middle class. You're either very well off or desperately poor, the latter being by far the majority. That is less true today than when I first heard it in 1988. But the streets of East Amman are still a very different place indeed to the wealthy pale-stone mansions that bedeck Abdoun, where many families have links to fortunes made in the Gulf.

The funny thing about this deeply conservative Muslim society is they never censored the Internet. And society didn't collapse. Something I like to point out to UAE based telcos when I get the chance.

First Post

"Amjad asked if this was my first time in Jordan, a question I remembered from my last trip, along with the familiar honorific ‘seer’ and the faint reek of cigarette smoke. He was delighted when I replied no, I had been before. The stands of trees flashed past, the brown land dotted with pale stone-clad houses and patches of cultivation. Every few hundred metres, someone at the roadside hawked steaming canisters of coffee or great bunches of radishes, rows of gleaming beef tomatoes and stacks of huge, green and yellow mottled watermelons."

Olives - Page 3

When I arrive in Jordan, I'm invariably met at the airport by one sort of driver or another. They're usually hotel transfers, occasionally have been more exotic (once a Royal Court silver Mercedes with a soldier in attendance - it would have been more impressive if the rear wasn't filled with particularly voracious mosquitoes) but always ask the same question.

"Is this your first time in Jordan, seer?"

The seer is 'sir' as she is pronounced. My answer is currently, "No, my sixty-ninth". That does for 'em, I can tell you.

It's not really my fault - I wasn't counting. The Grand Hyatt was - and presented me with a wee book and letter from the GM to celebrate my 40th stay. That was the week after the Amman bombing, when the hotel contained the grand total of 16 guests and the lobby was blanked off, the appalling damage and bloodshed behind the plasterboard left to the imagination - and to those of us who had been sent the thoughtful viral Powerpoint that did the rounds, at the time, of the carnage the Hyatt bomb had caused.

Olives was originally written before that bombing, in 2004 and yet almost presciently predicted bombs in the one country in the whole Eastern Mediterranean to have enjoyed security since the tumultuous events of 1948. It's a grim thing to have predicted.

And yet nobody knew of that prediction, precisely because nobody wanted to publish Olives. Today, I can agree with the early refusals. The late ones, I find harder to take.

Olives is, ultimately, about Jordan. About the Jordanian people, about the place they live in and the events around them that shape their lives. And if you're interested in those things, or want to find out more about the background to the book itself, this is my attempt at fleshing out the question marks it raises and also at answering questions readers raise.

So, from a foreigner, this is a blog about Jordan.