Olives by Alexander McNabb Read Free Book Online

on his neck and another,
thicker one on his wrist which rattled when we shook hands. He
continued to hold his grip after mine had relaxed, looking into my
eyes with a force that brought heat to my face. There were only two
of us in the world, a moment of paralysis, then he smiled and took
my arm in his other hand, squeezing it in a fleeting gesture that
could be friendly. Or not. I knew uncertainty showed on my face and
forced a smile I suspected looked more like a salesman’s grin. Nour
was standing with us, her light touch on us both and her voice
gentle.
    ‘ Come on.
Dinner’s ready.’
    I found
myself back in a space filled with laughing people. Ibrahim had
finished another story and Nancy’s voice was
mock-shocked.
    ‘ How can he
say these things? He is a fantasist. Thirty-five years married and
not a word of truth in all of them.’
    Dinner was a
procession of dishes brought in by the maid from the kitchen, each
introduced to me and piled on my plate by Nour: stuffed courgettes,
vine leaves, houmos flecked with grilled lamb and toasted pine
nuts, roasted chicken on saffron rice, salads scattered with
pomegranate seeds, shards of fried Arabic bread and tiny purple
grains of bitter sumak . Nour insisted
I try it all, pressing second helpings of everything on me. We
talked about England and Iraq, about Jordan and the punishing Royal
travel schedule and, of course, about the peace.
    It was like a
mantra, everywhere I went. Eventually all conversations turned to
it — the peace, the peace, the peace. The new deal the Americans
had finally brokered between a reluctant, right-wing Israeli
government and the tired, broken down remnants of the Palestinian
administration had at least brought the hope this would, against
all the odds, be the one peace. The deal
to lead to the long-awaited ‘two-state solution,’ the first hope
since the disastrous collapse of the jury-rigged Heath Robinson
compromise of Oslo.
    The
conversation turned to Palestine in the past, to Al Naqba , ‘the catastrophe’, the formation of Israel in 1948
and the end of the British Mandate in Palestine. When I asked
Ibrahim whether he had ever gone back there, his bushy eyebrows
shot up in astonishment.
    ‘ Go back? Of course we go back! As often as possible. It is
not always easy.’ He laid his forearm on the table as if he were
about to give blood, palm up. He looked across at me. ‘Sometimes
they are like this on the border. Sometimes like this.’ He balled
his hairy hand into a fist. ‘When it is like this you
are turned back or made to wait for hours while they play with you.
Sometimes before they make me kneel on the path in front of them.
That is hard for a man like me. I am old, I have become used to
having the dignity, you know?’
    The hubbub
around the table died down as Ibrahim’s voice rumbled on. ‘Mama
Mariam is too old now. She keeps our farm alive with Hamad, my
brother, because she is too damn stubborn to leave it. We are all
grateful for her. We know what will happens if you leave your land
there. They will take it. There are many families in Jordan and
Lebanon who still have the old iron keys to their farms, but they
cannot return. We still have it, the place where we all came from.
She keeps it alive for us. We all do what we can to help. Some
money, some supplies when they will let us take them across. The
power there is bad, the water is hard to get sometimes – especially
for the trees. We often have to use wasta to get things
through the border. You know wasta ?’
    I nodded,
‘Yes, yes I do. It was the second Arabic word I learned in
Jordan.’
    Ibrahim
grunted. ‘Our tragedy that this should be the case. The first word,
Paul?’
    ‘ Insh’Allah .’
    Ibrahim’s
laughter boomed around the table, infectious and all-consuming
before he finally descended into a fit of coughing, wiping the
tears from his eyes.
    ‘ My God,
Paul, but you know us in two words!’
    Nour smiled
at me, her arm around her younger daughter.