Free Olives by Alexander McNabb

thrives on the salty ground here.
This path was the one Jesus took.’
    I was
surprised. ‘You believe in him?’
    ‘ We believe
he was a prophet. He’s revered in Islam. The Prophet Mohammed took
the last word of God from Gabriel, but we believe in the same one
God. Many of our names come from the Bible. Daoud is David, Issa is
Jesus, Sara is Sarah and so on.’
    ‘ What’s
Aisha?’
    She grinned
at me. ‘It means healthy and alive. It was the name of the wife of
the Prophet Mohammed. His favourite wife. Aisha bint Abu
Bakr.’
    We walked
along the pathway, the tamarisks binding together to form a shady
bower. We came out into the open by the bank of a river. There was
a stone church to our left and decking that stepped down to the
river.
    ‘ This,’ said
Aisha, dramatically, ‘is the River Jordan.’
    I’d expected
something big and Cecil B. DeMille, but the river was narrow and a
dull green, slow-moving and lifeless. A white building on the
opposite bank impressed me more than the small wooden structure we
were standing in. Decorated with crosses, the white complex had
stone steps running down its side to the far bank of the
river.
    ‘ What’s
that?’
    ‘ That’s the
Israeli side and the old Christian baptism place. This is the new
one.’
    I dipped my
hand into the font, the cool water bringing goose bumps to my
forearm. I dried it on my jeans, reflecting how typical it was that
the Israeli side was so much more impressive than the
Jordanian.
    ‘ We built the
other side, of course,’ Aisha said, ‘but the Israelis took it over
in 1967. It hasn’t been used much since then.’
    I looked
again, more closely, and saw the gun emplacements on the hills
behind the building and noticed that the stone was breaking down,
that the steps were covered in debris. She had a point. It looked
like a wreck, while the Jordanian side was obviously being used a
lot.
    ‘ Why don’t
the Israelis use it?’
    ‘ They don’t
like Christians any more than they like us.’
    I’d never had
much time for religion, let alone the intolerance and bigotry that
invariably comes with it.
    ‘ That’s
playground politics, Aisha. Nothing’s that simple.’
    She turned
away from me with a ‘tut,’ the sound the Arab World uses to denote
all shades of denial.
    I noticed
Abdullah wasn’t with us. ‘Where’s Abdullah?’
    ‘ Abdullah?
Oh, I don’t know. Maybe he’s gone to see if the church is open.
Come on, let’s go up there.’
    We strode up
from the river towards the little stone church, but the door was
closed. We waited in the shade of the door for our guide to
reappear. A couple of minutes later, he arrived, walking
purposefully from behind the building and spoke to Aisha, who
turned to me and laughed nervously.
    ‘ A call of
nature, you say?’
    ‘ We
say.’
    We wandered
back silently through the tamarisks and said our goodbyes to
Abdullah. I wanted to give him some money, but Aisha would have
none of it. We drove back out and through the checkpoint, then up
towards Amman. The sun sulked low on the horizon and a slow orange
light filled the hills with a luxuriant play of contrasts and long
shadows. I stopped at the top of the climb and got out to take some
pictures looking back over the Dead Sea. I sat in the car and saw
the empty back seat.
    ‘ Your bag.
Your bag’s gone.’
    Aisha looked
worried for a second before relaxing. ‘It’s okay, I’ve got my
mobile with me and there were just a few books in it. I’ll call
Ibrahim. Some of the guides are, how do you say, opportunists.
Abdullah will get it back.’
    I was
surprised at how cool she was about it. I remembered locking the
car.
    ‘ They must
have picked the lock.’
    She laughed.
‘And got a couple of books on potash and a few rough sketches for
their troubles. Don’t worry Paul, I’ll get the bag
back.’
    She called
Ibrahim and was still talking to him when we joined the Amman
highway to go home. It was clear something was wrong, the tone