Talking of Olives

Emirates Airline Festival of Literature supremo Isobel Abulhoul kindly invited me to join her Talking Of Books radio show on Dubai Eye, the UAE's leading talk radio station yesterday and spend an hour talking of Olives, which the Talking of Books team had selected as their Book of the Week. Which was something of a yay, to say the least!

We chatted about self publishing and the merits of Kindles for a while, before moving on to talk Olives. Everyone had enjoyed the book (hence book of the week, I guess!), which is always nice, although Isobel considered Paul Stokes to be a coward. I pointed out, as I often do, that Paul's not supposed to be a likeable character as such (Look at Meursault in L'etranger or Pinky in Brighton Rock. Likeable? Not). Paul represents, to a great degree, something in all of us we'd prefer not to think is there. We'd prefer if we were better than that, made better decisions than that. But I suspect there's a bit of Paul in all of us.

One of my hosts was interested in why Paul, a passive character in the main, lashes out at the policemen at the start of the book, which was a good point but then Paul has a tendency to lash out - he does at Anne later in the book, at Aisha as well after Daoud ticks him off with a 'hands off my sister' chat in the garden and, indeed, at Lynch which is, of course, a mistake on Paul's part.

Co-host John MacDonald seemed to find Lynch more interesting, which is really how it should be. I was fascinated to find myself charged with giving Brits a hard time in the book, between Paul, Lynch and Anne, and even poor old TE Lawrence, it was felt that I had trotted out some very flawed people to represent perfidious Albion. I did what any sensible author in my position would have done and pleaded guilty.

Everyone found the water issues raised in the book fascinating and hadn't been aware of the scale of the problem, which was great to hear as one of my aims with Olives was to heighten awareness of that very issue as well as that of humanity and identity in the face of glib news headlines.

Amusingly, the team had previously interviewed self-publishing poster child Amanda Hocking and had found her monosyllabic, disinterested replies shocking, cutting short the interview. I can just see her replying to every question with, like, 'whateverrrr'...

It’s going to be a busy week for Olives, with a review published today in Read Magazine, while later in the week I have two readings in Beirut. Before then, I have a brace of interviews about the book.

I do feel sorry for authors who would rather focus on their writing and not have to get involved in the relentless mill of publicity. I’m no shrinking violet and I’m finding the constant attention-seeking wearying at this stage. And yet I’m grateful for each new opportunity, not only to talk about my work (which will never pall, I’m sure) but to get word out there about, hopefully interesting people enough to get them to pick up a copy, either online at Amazon, B&N or iBooks or at their local bookshop where they can now order Olives under its Createspace ISBN-13: 978-1466465718

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 Twitter Book Club

There are many book clubs in the UAE, of which the most interestingly structured must be the Twitter Book Club, which organises itself around, you guessed it, Twitter. @TwitBookClub or #TwitBookClub are the places you'll find 'em lurking and growling bookishly.

Olives was 'read of the month' last month and so yesterday I sat down at Wild Peeta, Dubai's famously social gourmet shawarma joint (@WildPeeta to you) and faced the Twits in attendance as well as one who had to travel to India but who had left behind a review and some questions she wanted to ask.

The conversation started with a review of the club's other picks for the month (Olives was 'mandatory', there were a number of other reads also recommended) and I started to get a dry mouth when club members weighed in. Virginia Woolf took a couple of particularly hefty kicks to the literary derrière and even Umberto Eco's semiotically inclined behind got a drubbing.

And then the searchlight was on me, the sirens going off and the dogs barking. Olives has some similarities to John Le Carré's The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, observed one member, in that it is about a fool who falls in love with a local girl and tries to save her from herself and/or the baddies. While I am always delighted at any comparison with Le Carré (well, obviously apart from 'has less talent than Le Carré's discarded thumbnail'), I couldn't quite get this one.

The conversation, as I have learned it usually does, really kicked off with how everyone thought Paul was a sap although, as the session went on, it was observed that perhaps part of the reason everyone thinks that is the book is written in the first person so we are privy to Pauls' thoughts, feelings and doubts and perhaps pick up more of his vulnerability than we would if it were written in the third person and, therefore, were perhaps a slightly more dispassionate account. We talked about Aisha, her place in society and her role in the book and about how Olives would go down in right wing America (not well at all, apparently. In America, I am assured, this book would be highly controversial, which rather had me raising the old eyebrow). Everyone was surprised Gerald Lynch goes on to be the main character of my next novel, Beirut (I did a short reading of Beirut, which is a very different book indeed to Olives) because they all hated the drunk, blackmailing SOB. Well, who wouldn't?

We talked about the controversies - the Jordan blocking name thing (general agreement that it's, errr, fiction) and also the issues of alcohol and sex in the book, as well as the research behind (and very reality of)  the water crisis in the Eastern Mediterranean, the history of Palestinian families and Palestine and other questions the book raised with readers.

Three hours went by in subjective minutes, at the end of which they thanked me for coming. I was amazed. You spend three hours talking about my work with me and thank ME for coming? The thanks, as always, are fervently from me to you.

I have to add, There Were Cupcakes, thanks to @TheRegos...

In short, it was a blast. I do like book clubs!

The Magazine

Image: Willi Heidelbach

   A box of advance copies of the magazine’s first issue arrived from the printing press. I scanned a copy. It looked good. It smelled good too – there’s nothing quite like the smell of fresh print in all the world. I picked up a handful of them and made my way up to Abdullah Zahlan’s office. I sat down with Zahlan and waited for him to go through the magazine. He flicked through the pages, nodding appreciatively.
Olives, Page 119

It’s an oddly fresh smell, yet pungently chemical. If the print job was a rush, your fingers will slide on a powdery dusting of china clay – printers use it to dry the ink faster and stop pages sticking together. You pull the pages open and thrust your nose into the gutter and there it is, magic marker meets trichloroethylene, a hit of solvent abuse that comes alongside the feeling of achievement, as your efforts are rendered concrete. You scan the pages one last time for 'literals', a little fearful thrill to make the satisfaction that bit more complete. Tragically, new novels don’t smell half so good.

It’ll only be so long the reek of a new magazine will be commonplace. Perhaps five years, perhaps ten. The idea of a print only publication already feels a little archaic and, certainly, Paul’s reason for travelling to Jordan for a year in Olives is already a minor area of conflict in the book as ‘new guy’ at the Ministry of Natural Resources Abdullah Zahlan wants more of a web play than a paper magazine. But his ‘old school’ predecessor Shukri (we never find out Shukri’s first name) has signed the contract with TMG for a print magazine only. Paul’s git of a publisher, Robin Goodyear, stands by the contract but Paul, the guy stuck on the ground tries to help out and at least give Zahlan some help in creating a more online property.

Jordan is one of the most advanced contributors to the Internet in the Middle East, the region’s most competitive telecom market and a major source of innovation, investment and IP development – thanks in no small part to the REACH process kickstarted by King Abdullah in 1999/2000.  And yet there are still more Shukris than Zahlans. The Middle East, generally, lags the West and Asia in its adoption of Internet technologies and even the boost the ‘Arab Spring’ has given to Internet and social media adoption hasn’t quite driven the region to truly embrace online.

Which is lucky, really. Otherwise my callow young journalist friend would never really have had a reason to go and live in Jordan at all...

Olives

If the Olive Trees knew the hands that planted them, their oil would become tears. 

Mahmoud Darwish

   I followed Daoud, hoping my reluctance didn’t show. We stood together on the veranda looking out over the dark garden – a couple of acres of prime Abdoun real estate. He flicked a switch by the kitchen door and I saw part of the garden was laid to lawn, but the hilly rise to one side accommodated a small stand of olive trees.
   ‘Ibrahim and my father brought these trees from our farm in Qaffin and planted them here over thirty years ago. Back then it looked like we were going to lose everything from over there, so they thought they’d keep at least this much.’ He led the way down the steps to the trees. ‘Smoke?’
    ‘No thanks, I don’t.’
   He grunted, then lit up a Marlboro Light. ‘These trees are everything to the farmers. They are tended like fine grape vines, the olives are pressed like wine. The first cut is virgin, the finest. The olives weep the purest oil when they are first squeezed. We press them until they can weep no more, then we feed the remains back to the land, to the animals. We still press oil over at the farm on the old stone press. It is not much, it is not enough to keep the place running, but we help out, as Ibrahim said. It is the finest oil you will ever taste. It is a symbol for us too, you understand. Of hope.’
Olives, Page 46

“The olives weep the purest oil when they are first squeezed. We press them until they can weep no more...” the line about olives weeping was actually part of the first draft of Olives, it was years later I discovered the words of Mahmoud Darwish which are the frontispiece of the book – “If the Olive Trees knew the hands that planted them, their oil would become tears.”

This, of course, is why the book is called ‘Olives’ or, in Arabic, ‘Zeitoun’ – the symbol of the fictional Dajani family’s identity, the farm in Qaffin maintained by Mariam. One early reviewer, IMHO, nailed it: George Emerson: “The image of the lonely farm, with its olive trees, and a woman who has spent a life of hardship trying to protect it, is the strongest image of hope, but also of volatility of human existence that will be coming back to me long after the last page of the book is turned over.”

There is something fine about the taste of great olive oil and some of the finest I have tasted has come from Palestine and Jordan, a pure flavour that is fresh and somehow ‘green’.The struggle to keep the olive groves alive is a daily one for many Palestinian farmers and the olive trees, some hundreds of years old, are constantly being torn out of the ground by Israeli forces and settlers.

Oxfam used to have an olive tree as part of its rather brilliant gift catalogue, Oxfam Unwrapped. For those of us who have too much, to be able to gift someone else a goat for a village in Africa or an olive tree for a Palestinian farmer is, to me, a really cool way to show that we care without simply wasting money on a gift that nobody really want. I discovered this a couple of years ago and loads of friends and family got olive trees instead of stuff they didn't need.

You can buy aid for Palestinian olive farmers as a gift here.

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.

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.