Free Lion Heart by Justin Cartwright

obsessively on her small television.
    Haneen guides me through these dishes and tells me that the family cook has been here for forty years; some of these recipes are family secrets. I am unable to distinguish them one from another very clearly, but the family hummus, the aubergines with rose water and yoghurt, the zatar-flavoured flatbreads and the greenish-yellow olive oil are all wonderful, particularly when I compare them, disloyally, with the meals in the École Biblique’s refectory, which has now assumed a retrospective dullness.
    I make dutiful remarks about how good Haneen’s food is. But my words sound hollow and formal, even to me; I don’t have the ease of manner or the language of hospitality or enmity, or the everyday courtesies or the talent for intrigue and the taste for ambiguity required in the Levant. I am treading the stranger paths of banishment to which Richard condemns Mowbray in Richard II .
    ‘Richard. Richard, there is something I must tell you.’
    I find that sentences which contain the words ‘I must tell you’ often bear unwelcome information.
    ‘Is it about my father?’
    ‘No. I am sure we will talk more of him. The reason I asked Prosper to send you here is because Jerusalem is a small place. I know that you have been seeing Noor. There was no reason for her to tell you, but she is my niece. The daughter of my younger brother. He went to live in Canada after some trouble here. Our family was regarded as being too close to the Israelis. You should know that Noor has been staying here. I feel responsible for her. My driver was always close by.’
    ‘Did she tell you about me?’
    ‘She spoke to me frankly, because you young people think that women of my age are harmless. You can’t imagine that we were ever in love, or beautiful or carefree.’
    ‘Did you tell her about my father?’
    ‘Of course not. I didn’t know who you were when Noor and I spoke, but then Prosper called to say you would like to meet me and he told me you were Alaric’s son. It was easy to put two and two together.’
    This is where Noor retreated every night – to her auntie’s home, driven by her auntie’s chauffeur and bodyguard. I have walked sleeping into the Levantine world; I wonder what else I don’t know. Haneen waits while the servants remove the dishes and platters. She gestures imperiously for them to hurry up. They give the impression that they would be honoured to move faster, if only they could. Still, they scurry quietly, looking to her for approbation.
    ‘Do you love Noor?’
    The servants can only be heard faintly now, by way of a light clattering of plates from the steps below. The breezes from the desert are now quite cool. I find it difficult to answer.
    ‘I have never met anyone like her.’
    ‘You are infatuated. Sous le charme , as the French say. Do you think she is beautiful?’
    ‘Yes, I think she is beautiful.’
    ‘What I want to say to you is for your ears only.’
    She lowers her voice, so that the deepish, Turkish-cigarette-rasped tones become a whisper.
    ‘Noor sees herself as a campaigner for human rights. Around here this is dangerous. “Human rights” ’ – she adds a little ironic emphasis as if to indicate that they are an illusion – ‘are seen as a kind of tactic by the West. The idea that everyone has human rights is mistrusted. I have rights, my family has rights, my religion has rights, but other people don’t automatically have rights. I have tried to explain this to Noor, but she is too much a Canadian. She thinks everyone in the world longs for the benefits of human rights, except the leaders, who are, of course, all evil tyrants. Here anyone could kill her. Muslims because she is a Christian, Jews because she is pro-Arab, the conservatives because she is too modern – actually the list is a long one. She is in Egypt now, reporting, but the truth is it is cover for a human rights organisation she works for. Already I hear rumours. She must go home