Into The Light - Remembering the 2005 Amman Bombings

The names of the 57 victims of the 2005 Amman bombing remembered 

We have got into the habit of collecting a poster from all the places we visit and there's a very big, very white wall in our villa which is hung with many of these. It's full now, so we've started using the floor. So Bohemian, dahling.

Two of special significance (I've mentioned 'em before) come from an exhibition held in Amman to protest the 2005 Amman Bombings. One of the sponsors of the show was the PR company wot I used to work for, Spot On PR, which was one of very many reasons I was deeply proud of said company.

Our Jordan office was in the Zara Centre, connected to the Grand Hyatt Amman - one of the three hotels targeted by Al Qaeda/Daesh in the attack. We had organised a large number of, often very large scale, events there over the years and we knew the staff of the hotel very well indeed. A great number of them were cut down by the bomb, a 'dirty bomb' packed with nails and ball bearings, which ricocheted around the stone-walled lobby lounge in an evil fusillade of high speed projectiles that tore through flesh and smashed glass and furniture.

A friend was at the front desk in the lobby at the time of the blast, thankfully for her it was set in a dogleg away from the main lobby and she watched the glass walled entrance of the hotel shatter as the concussion wave and deadly hail of projectiles passed her by. She was entirely unharmed by the whole thing.

The bomb scythed through them, an awful parabola of concussing violence, bodies flung against the screaming living, glass flying and tearing cloth, biting flesh. The bar in pieces, bottles smashed. Drink streamed down the broken wood.

The force hit me, shards flying in the air, tossed me back against the wall. I saw Aisha’s hair thrown up in a surreal halo as she jerked backwards and hit the bar with a sickening force that distorted her fine features.

Faux beams falling, a woman crawling towards me as I staggered to my feet, deafened. An awful silence, mouths open, soundless screaming. A man walking, his hands to his ears and blood running down his face like rain, the falling drops spattering on the dusty floor in a steady flow like a broken gutter. I felt wetness on my cheek, saw the blood on my fingers. Aisha. Aish.

A woman lay on the floor, her head thrown back and her eyes impossibly wide, her hair fanned out on the wooden boards, her hips jerking obscenely, nostrils flared. The iron tang of blood.

Dust, coughing, thick dust. Ring a ring of roses. I turned, alone. Small fires as the drapes burned up, smoke and dust, choking me. Silence as I turned, gaping, torn flesh around me, open wounds, tangled limbs and open mouths, dresses torn and dead eyes blurring as I turned around, brown flesh, white flesh, red flesh. Brown, white, red. Children playing and mother calling us in from the sun for tea. A pocket full of posies. Whirling madness. Choking smoke and stillness, except for a single dark figure, spinning in the middle of the deadly tableau.

Aisha. Aisha. Aisha.

I’m somewhere white and beautiful, the breeze caressing my skin and she calls out, answering me as I come to a standstill, screaming her name as I double up in pain.

The olive trees are her courtiers, the olive princess.

I actually first wrote Olives - A Violent Romance in 2004*, and the idea of a bombing in an Amman hotel back then was inconceivable. Despite being in a very tough neighbourhood indeed, Amman had been a peaceful haven for decades. When the actual bombings happened, I never thought of my fictional bombing for a second - it was later, much later, that I went back to that manuscript and saw the bomb I had imagined and made the connection to the one that actually took place.

When I checked into the Grand Hyatt on my trip to attend the show, the week after the bombings, I was one of sixteen guests in the 311-room hotel. The lobby had been completely blocked off with plasterboard. Behind it was wreckage and dark bloodstains - the cleanup and reconstruction hadn't even started. There was a gift-wrapped book waiting for me in my room and I thought it was a 'Thanks for being a brave little guest' present. It wasn't - it was to mark my 40th stay in the hotel. I hadn't been counting, but the Grand Hyatt team had.

I added my stays in other hotels and started keeping track myself. Now, when I land in Jordan and the airport pick-up asks the inevitable, 'Is this your first time in Jordan, Seer?' I can happily tell them, 'No, it's my 74th.'

It does tend to rather take the wind out of their sails, bless 'em...

*Oh, God. 19 years ago!

Sajida And The Bomb

There's a wall in our house slowly being covered with posters. We like neat poster art, and they're from places and artists that have amused us, art deco from Prague and communist era posters from Estonia rub shoulders with Swedish drinks adverts and monochrome calligraphies of the names of the dead from the 2005 Jordan bombings.

These are two of the images on that wall: stark and yet beautiful pieces I bought on the night when 'Into the Light' was staged, an art exhibition protesting and defying the 2005 Amman bombings. It took place the week after the atrocity.

My agency was one of the event's sponsors (I was, and am, terribly proud of that) and I flew in to attend it, feeling a little bit brave. My wee Britty snoot-cock at Al Qaeda. I can perhaps be forgiven: there were 16 guests in the Grand Hyatt at the time, most of the lobby was plaster-boarded off, behind the white plaster wall was still a scene of carnage. Bloody walls, smashed glass, wrecked furnishings and burned carpet.

There was a book on 'Jordan from the Air' in my room with a note from the GM. I thought it was to say, 'Thanks for being a brave wee bear and coming to our hotel even though it's a bomb site' and it was actually 'Here's to your 40th stay, Mr McNabb.'

Damn.

What was perhaps odder was that I had written the foreword to the book. It was sponsored by Jordan Telecom and they were a client. A couple of months before, I got a 'We've sponsored a book and we need a foreword from the Chairman for it' request. So I sat in that quiet room and read my own words written in another man's name in a book gifted to me by a bombed out hotel. I still have it. The book, not the hotel.

I was running an office in Amman at the time, based in the Grand Hyatt's Zara Centre. I didn't live there, but was travelling a couple of times each month and staying at the hotel. A lot of the hotel staff I knew from working on events there, having evening drinks in the lobby lounge or my morning reads of the Jordan Times over breakfast were killed in the bombing. Sixty people died in a terrorist incident that stunned what up until then had been - oddly enough - one of the safest and most stable countries in the region. A friend was standing by the reception desk, protected from the blast wave, and watched the glass doors of the hotel shatter and blow out.

For some reason, I wrote a bombing in an Amman hotel into Olives - A Violent Romance, which at the time I scribbled the scene seemed a little preposterous. The book was written before the Amman bombings...

So it's strange to see Sajida, the bomber that didn't quite go off, on my TV again. She always seemed a little confused, a little simple. Her pals detonated bomb belts packed with ball bearings, an evil payload that turned three hotels into massive games of deadly, high speed pinball. They were killed, she was caught.

ISIS (Daesh, whatever) want to swap her for a Jordanian pilot and, possibly, a Japanese guy. Jordan's said yes to the swap. A muddled, silly woman for a war hero. Deal.

But it's brought it all back for me, a strange time - one of fear for the safety of friends and a renewal of the feeling of grief for the senseless loss.

UPDATE: As we now know, this didn't end well. That confused, silly wee woman was hanged at dawn today (the 4th February) and we all watched (or in my case refused to watch) a pilot get burned to death in a killing that has pretty much united the world in revulsion.

Book Research Is SUCH a Drag...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There comes a time when some form of reality has to intrude into writing novels, usually when you feel someone with access to the Internet is going to bother to work out if a fifty metre luxury yacht with such and such engines would take three days to go from Northern Spain to Malta, whether turning left from the main Dead Sea to Amman highway would take you to Bethany now there's a dual carriageway in place and you'd actually have to take a U-turn or indeed if you can actually buy terminal cancer drug Roxanol over the counter from a Lebanese pharmacy.

Researching Olives - A Violent Romance took huge dedication and involved drinking Martinis in the Four Seasons Amman, sploshing about smoking Cohibas in the Dead Sea and necking red wine in conservatories overlooking the rain-swept streets of an Amman winter. I had to eat sunny Mezzes overlooking the Golan Heights and wander around the warm spring streets of Madaba before lunching on pan-fried potato, eggs and Mediterranean herbs washed down with icy cold beers. It was hard, hard, hard people.

Still reeling from the exertions and huge personal distress I had to invest in Olives, researching Beirut - An Explosive Thriller was breathtakingly difficult. Walking the city's streets with a variety of highly attractive and personable companions, pottering around the Mouawad museum and investing many selfless hours in exploring the labyrinthine bars of Gemmayze, Monot and Hamra were nothing to the long, hard hours of toil drinking in Raouché, wandering the sun-dappled corniche sipping little cups of piping hot espresso from Uncle Deek's and, of course, eating a huge amount of stuff in the name of veracity.

You'll begin to appreciate I have Suffered For My Art. And if that weren't enough, writing Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy took me into the mountains above Beirut for long AlMaza-laced lunches sipping sweet chai nana as my companions sat around puffing shisha in the balmy late afternoon, bees and cicadas competing to provide the soundtrack to our panoramic view of the blue city far below - let alone forays into Aleppo's tragically destroyed C14th Ottoman souk. The sweet days foraging around Tallinn and nights chasing hot plates of rich stock with bobbing islets of pelmeni down with iced vodka were agony, I can assure you. Agony.

So you'll understand the sacrifices I'm about to make in Belfast's pubs and its finest hotel, the endless journeys across Ireland's green sward to possibly the best restaurant in the world and other terrible hardships I'm currently putting into A Simple Irish Farmer. Interviewing an IRA man who did 15 years of a 27-year sentence in Long Kesh, part of the game plan, is probably the nearest thing to real 'work' I'll have ever devoted to researching a book. I'll try not to let the platters and pints distract me. Honest...

Writing Inspirations: I Stole This From Roba

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I first met Jordanian blogger, trouble maker and Converse-loving spectacle rack Roba Al-Assi at the inaugural ArabNet Beirut. She's a sweetie. She was never to know that I am a habitual thief and stealer of people and souls.

Like wot I said, I'm doing a series of workshoppy talky things at the Canadian University in Dubai on the subject of writing, editing and publishing books. That, along with the WIP, has Mr Head pretty solidly in Bookland. And the writing workshop had me yowling manically at my audience of mildly concerned-looking students about writing scenes as if you're there: the feeling of a cold key in your pocket, the smell of summer barasti, the crackle of logs on a fire. That kind of thing.

Which took me right back to 2010, when I was writing Beirut - An Explosive Thriller and stumbled across a post on Roba's mighty blog, And Far Away. It was to become the soundtrack to the whole scene between Nathalie and Maalouf in the Casino du Liban. The post is linked here for your viewing pleasure. Roba's blog, incidentally, rarely fails to charm and delight.

The idea was basically to get you to open three tabs on your browser with three links. One here, the second one here and this here one here. I'm a simple bear, the whole thing delighted me and I had it playing as I started tapping out the characters that would form the words that would become my characters. It was still playing as I smacked the last full stop of the scene and shoved back my chair with a happy sigh.

Incidentally, it was also Roba who introduced me to Bar O Metre, the packed (and engagingly skanky) student bar on the margins of AUB which I didn't hesitate to steal for the scene where Lynch nabs the evil 'Spike'.

But it was the soundtrack thing that got me. I've posted before about how music is such an influence for me when I'm writing. And right now I'm doing an awful lot of Afro Celt Sound System and The Frames. For what it's worth...

Red/Dead Gets Go Ahead

Lynch smiled. ‘Do you actually like her? She doesn’t seem your type.’
‘That’s none of your business.’
He leaned forward, his smile fading fast.‘We need your help. Dajani’s confirmed to a journalist from one of the Arabic rags he’s going to be bidding for the water privatisation and he’s claiming he has the solution to Jordan and the West Bank’s water supply problems. We’re deeply concerned about what he’s up to, Paul. The West Bank’s none of his business and it isn’t part of the privatisation as far as we are aware. The Izzies are screaming blue murder already and asking the Jordanians for clarification – and they’re saying nothing, not confirming, not denying. Your Minister has clammed up tighter than a shark’s arse at fifty fathoms.’
From Olives - A Violent Romance

It's been on what Gulf News likes to call 'the anvil' for something like 20 years now, but the infamous Red/Dead Canal is now set to commence. The problem is the Dead Sea has been shrinking at an incredible pace, its level dropping by up to a metre a year. Maps of the sea's outline over the past five decades look like maps of the Palestinian territories since 1948. It's inexorable and the scale of the great sea's decline is mind-boggling.

There simply isn't enough water to go around - I looked at the regional water crisis in my first serious novel, Olives - A Violent Romance because it's such a big (and unexplored) topic in the region. Israel and Lebanon almost went to war over Lebanese plans to dam the Litani river and there have been squabbles aplenty between Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria as everyone tries to get more out of a well that is near dry. The River Jordan, which feeds into the Dead Sea, has been reduced to a sad trickle. You can stand on the shores of the great gloopy body of ultra-saline water and look up the shore-side cliff to see hooks let into the stone that were used to tether boats forty years ago. It's an unnerving sight.

The Red/Dead Conduit (or even the "Two Seas Canal") aims to address the problem by piping water from the Red Sea up to the Dead Sea. It's all part of a multi-billion dollar project involving water desalination at Aqaba to feed the Israeli city of Eilat and the Jordanian capital Amman. Alongside this, 100 million cubic metres (MCM) of saline water will be diverted to feed into the Dead Sea. The deal's a complex one and involves Israel selling water to the Palestinian Authority as well as releasing more water from Lake Tiberias (The Sea of Galilee if you prefer) to Jordan. Israeli opponents of the scheme have criticised it as a water swapping deal dressed up as an environmental deal.

Part of the problem is that this all represents, literally, a drop in the ocean. Back in the 1960s, the Jordan and Yarmouk rivers used to push some 1900 MCM into the Dead Sea. Today that flow has reduced to something like 2-500 MCM depending on the season. Another 100 MCM is unlikely to make a huge difference. The original Red/Dead project called for two billion MCM to be pumped into the Dead Sea. Worse, the companies extracting potash and other minerals from the Dead Sea are themselves evaporating anything up to an estimated 350 MCM. The World Bank's feasibility study into the whole project estimated an inflow of a billion MCM per annum would stabilise the Dead Sea. So 100 MCM ain't looking like 'the solution'...

Alongside that are concerns about the environmental impact, as well as quite where all the power to feed the huge pumping stations the project demands - water is being pushed 230 metres uphill before flowing down to the Dead Sea - and the pipeline to Amman is an incredible 178 kilometres long. Part of the project plan includes hydro-electric power plants, but it's not known how much these will offset the overall consumption of the pumping stations and the project's two desalination plants.

What is clear is that it's likely going to be a mess. Few of the news stories covering the project agree on the numbers - and there are so many of them it's hard to work out quite what's what here. It's not yet been clarified how the project (which appears to be a scaled back version of what the World Bank's $16 million feasibility study called for) will be funded. And the concerns of environmentalists - both at what feeding seawater into the Dead Sea will do and at how pumping large volumes from Aqaba will affect flows around the sensitive Red Sea coral reefs - appear to have been largely sidelined.

What's sort of cute is how the water scarcity that drives Olives has remained relevant. It was all a huge mess when I first sat down to write the book in 2004 and it's no less of a mess almost ten years later, despite the Wadi Disi project being completed and the Red/Dead Project finally being agreed...

Olives - A Violent Romance On Sale In Jordan

Now! Buy the book Jordan's bookstores didn't want you to see!

Thanks to the embargo busting online superheroes at Jordanian bookseller Jamalon, the shameful year-long block of Olives - A Violent Romance in Jordan, the country the book is set in, is over. Olives is now on sale and available for anyone in the country to buy with FREE shipping.

Buy Olives - A Violent Romance from Jamalon here!

The first ten copies are signed and numbered, too. Jamalon will be putting these on promo. On sale alongside them, at the same time as it launches in the UAE, Jamalon will also be selling Beirut - An Explosive Thriller.

You can find out more about Olives at the book's website, linked here for your link-following pleasure. It's about a British guy going to work and live in Jordan who is blackmailed by British intelligence into spying on the family of the Jordanian girl he's falling in love with. A lot of people have said kind things about it, which is nice.

Olives was originally prevented from going on sale in Jordan because distributors wouldn't handle the book - it never got as far as the government's censor. The one distributor who gave a straight reason cited the book's use of the Dajani family name in a fictional context:

"...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..." 

This here post over on the Olives blog explains all. After some silly talk about honour killings and a rather vibrant shitstormette on Facebook, the whole affair struck me as so ludicrous as to warrant no further effort on my part. And so things lay until Jamalon's CEO Ala' Alsallal and I got chatting a few weeks back and he basically waved his arms around and exclaimed, 'Tish and fiddle! They're fools. Of course we'll sell it!"

I knew of Jamalon from my involvement in ArabNet, where Ala' and his team presented two years back. I found their plans for taking the region's publishing industry to the 'e-age' exciting - and I still do. Jamalon's online bookstore is just the first step - the company now lists over nine million titles in Arabic and English and has tied up with Aramex to support regional shipping of books at competitive rates. There's a whole load more in the pipeline.

In the meantime, though, anyone in Jordan can now just point and click and, Hey Presto!, freely buy a copy of the book Jordan's traditional booksellers didn't want you to see.

So what are you waiting for? Click away! :)

Jordan! Buy Olives - A Violent Romance from Jamalon here!

Into The Dark

Many years ago, in 2005, I was proud to be one of the sponsors an artshow called 'Into the light', which protested the Amman bombings. Today, Jordan's internet was plunged into the dark in a very different, but just as important protest.

Bloggers and website owners in Jordan are protesting the amended Press and Publications Law, putting up a black 'interstitial' page which reads, "You may be deprived of the content of this site under the amendments of the Jordanian Press and Publications Law and the governmental Internet censorship."

You can take a look yourself by popping over to pal Roba Al Assi's blog here - one of hundreds of sites in Jordan that have gone 'dark' for the day. You can click through to a pretty pissed off post behind the tarpaulin.

They're not kidding, either. The law appears to make the classic mistake, not unlike ongoing Lebanese efforts to bring the Internet into a media law, of confusing the web with print media. Under the law, websites (so badly defined it could include social media, blogs or any other online property) would be forced to join the press association, appoint an 'editor in chief' (a role with some very defined responsibilities) and also opens the door to blocking websites, something Jordan has very laudably avoided doing.

A moderate country with the most competitive telecom market in the region, tremendous intellectual capital and an important regional centre for ICT, IP and software/web development, Jordan's smart and technically capable young people deserve better than muckle-headed legislation hewn from granite by politicians who wouldn't know a website from a wombat.

Let's hope someone noticed how dark it got today...

Fact From Fiction

I thought long and hard before posting this, but I think there are some issues around it that really strike to the heart of our region and some of the attitudes that shape it.

A lady has taken exception to the use of the family name Dajani in my novel Olives, which is set in Jordan and which deals with some of the issues faced by many people of Palestinian origin. This has also been a reason cited to me by distributors in Jordan who have declined to handle the book.

Olives is a novel, a work of fiction. It features a number of characters who are Jordanian and all have 'real life' Jordanian names. It would be patently ridiculous to give them Scottish names, but you would expect to see Scottish names in, say, Monarch of the Glen. And, in fact, we can see that indeed Archie MacDonald, a Scottish name, is the main character's name.

The MacDonalds are a great old Scottish family, or clan. As, indeed, are the McNabbs. But I think we can all accept our names could well be used for characters in a Scottish fiction. My own has been used, in fact, as a pseudonym by another author, a certain 'Andy McNab'. For the record, McNabs, MacNabs and McNabbs are all the same thing. It's just we're a particularly dyslexic clan. Most of the clan chieftans have been called Archibald over the years, a particular disappointment to me when I found out.

There is no malice in the act of naming characters in a book and no intent to harm or defame. It's simply something you do in the process of creating your fiction. Each and every book published in fact carries a piece of text standard in the publishing industry that asserts the fictional nature of the work which neatly hedges against a mild-mannered librarian somewhere called Hannibal Lecter taking it personally.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

 
And that text duly appears in Olives. Because Olives is fiction.

There is no intent to malign or otherwise slur the name of Dajani or cause any harm or hurt to the name or anyone who bears it. Because Olives is fiction. There is no reflection of my personal view of the probity, decency or indeed history of the family. Because Olives is fiction. It features a lawyer called Emad Kawar, a spy called Gerald Lynch (an Irish name for a Northern Irish character) and other Jordanian names - Arafi, Mchouarab and Shukri, for instance. I could make up 'alternames' for the characters, names that sound like Jordanian names but aren't, but it'd be a rather silly book for it and still wouldn't guard against coincidence.

I picked Dajani because it sounded right for my characters. It's a Palestinian name and the family is spread throughout the Levant (and, indeed, world), so it's common enough for this particular fictional offshoot of the family to avoid being identified as any particular 'real life' Dajanis. Because I had considered that, something that few other authors elsewhere in the world would have to give two seconds' thought to. And yet for them to 'live' in the fiction, they have to be realistic, they have to have a history like so many other Palestinian families, they have to have suffered loss and tragedy, because that's what Olives is about. Many, many families have suffered like the family depicted in Olives. Because it's about all of them, not one family's name. And.it.is.fiction.

The thing that struck me more than anything else was the objection was lodged before the lady had read the book. That, with so many forms of censorship and repression, is so often the case. It's the very idea of it all that's bad enough to call for a cry of 'down with this sort of thing'.

Libro Non Grata

Image via Wikipedia

As I shared over on the Olives blog last night my debut novel, Olives - A Violent Romance, is not to be available on sale in Jordanian bookshops after distributors have declined to stock it.

The reason for their reticence appears to be my choice of name for the female character in the book, Aisha Dajani. The name is a common one all over the Levant, and the name of a large family originally from Jerusalem. The name was appropriate to the character for that precise reason, given the book itself is set in Jordan and deals with a Palestinian family and their history.

I've been shut down before, in a former life as a publisher of magazines (for a negative review of a computer in a PC magazine. The computer company CEO turned out to have 'wasta'). I've spent countless hours in various Ministries of Information (before they were all given more 'user friendly' names). I've been passed by numerous censors in one form or another but I have never actually been censored, in print or blog. I learned early on how to do that for myself. This would appear to be one instance where I've got it wrong.

As Kamal BinMugahid points out in his thought-provoking post today, honour is paramount in the Arab World. A family's good name is taken very seriously indeed, sometimes to the point where the mania spills out into murder, the so-called honour killings which tarnish the whole Arab World's good name to save the 'good name' of single families.

I have seen my work rejected by many people over the years, for a variety of reasons. But never before has someone knocked me back because of fear. Fear of the reaction of people with the same family name to a character in a work of fiction.

Olives is, indeed, libro non grata in Jordan...

Olives and The Book Club

Image via Wikipedia

The Expat Women's Book Club meets regularly at Paul Café in Jumeirah's Mercato shopping mall and had decided to 'do' Olives - A Violent Romance as their book choice having scanned through a list of the books that are to be at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature. We made contact on GoodReads.com and before I knew it, the day had come when I was to 'Come at 8.45 so we can meet at 8.00 and have some time to dissect your book before you arrive.'

That sounded ominous...

I duly rocked up to find a group of about 12 ladies in a secluded corner of Paul (I didn't actually count, I thought it might have looked rude, you know?) with copies of Olives strewn around the table. I pulled up a chair and got ready to hear The Verdict.

'Right,' said Mary-Anne, who had organised the meeting. 'First I should tell you we really enjoyed it, so you can relax on that score...'

The rest of the meeting was bliss - an hour talking to people who had read my book, enjoyed it and wanted to ask questions about it. What more can life offer someone who's written something? Why did this character do this? Why did that happen? Why does Aisha wear red underwear? Who are the baddies? Why doesn't Paul flee the country? What's the publishing process been like? What will I get up to next?

The time flew and I found myself having to think about my own book in a way I hadn't before, seeing it through other people's perceptions of the characters and the plot. It was a strange and very rewarding experience, I can tell you. On one occasion I got caught out not knowing an event had happened in the book one eagle-eyed reader had asked me about. Oh, blushes!

Here, as a result, are five things you likely didn't know about Olives:

1) Paul is mildly OCD
Paul's got a touch of obsessive compulsive disorder in his makeup. He's always counting steps to see if they'll be an even number, because if they are this or that thing will be alright. There's a slight echo of that in Aisha, the girl who thinks of olive trees as serried ranks of courtiers as she walks through them. One reader suggested I might have been better calling the book, 'The Olive Princess' which I actually fervently agree with - it was a decision I nearly took at the very end of the process (the book's working title has always been Olives) and didn't.

2) Paul becomes a smoker in the book
As the book progresses, Paul takes up smoking. The Jordanian member of the club was hugely amused by this, knowing how prevalent smoking still is in Jordan. It's also symbolic of Paul's increasing 'Jordanisation' in the book.

3) Anne is Merrie Englande
Paul's girlfriend Anne is a metaphor for England and its pull on Paul as he adjusts to a new life in a strange country. One club member looked at Anne's part of the story from Anne's perspective which, I confess, I hadn't been conscious of doing myself before. Lucky, then, it all worked for her! Anne's role towards the end of the book really represents Paul's determination to follow his course and finally take sides once and for all.

4) Paul's dilemma is TE Lawrence's dilemma
To love what you betray and betray the thing you love - Lawrence tried to balance loyalty to his country with loyalty to the Arab cause, whilst the conflicting purposes of each ensured he betrayed both. It's one reason why the book references Seven Pillars of Wisdom and, specifically, the dedication. I actually contacted Lawrence's estate and got their blessing for the quotes, by the way. They're out of copyright. Similarly, the Mahmoud Darwish quote is fair do's, qualifying as 'fair use'.

5)No, I don't identify with Paul

I think as 'the Brit' in the book, there's a tendency for people to ask if there's any of me in him and my answer is invariably 'I hope not'. There's been quite a lot of 'I don't like Paul' feedback, but I think that might be missing the point a little as you're not actually supposed to like him - I know this was me making life difficult for myself. Paul, as blogger Sara pointed out with a precise nail/head occlusion, Paul is the side of all of us that we know is there, but would prefer to think isn't - that we'd be braver, wiser and more true to ourselves than we actually are. He's young and callow and emotionally a little inept. There's actually a lot more of me in 'bad guy' Gerald Lynch. My reader for Beirut (my next book, which is a much 'harder' thriller and whose main character is our Gerry) complained, calling Lynch 'A violent, unpredictable drunk'. My response was 'yes... and?'.

Mary Anne was evidently somewhat perplexed by the juxtaposition of the evil Lynch with the witty, urbane and charming* young man sat beside her. What can I say?

I'm not going to make such a big fuss about every book club meeting, don't worry (oh, long-suffering reader), but this was my first. And I owe everyone there a huge vote of grateful thanks.

* Would you be sick quietly, please? Thank you.

Fakhreddine

Image via Wikipedia

I flew to Jordan this week to speak and also gave a workshop on digital communications at the MediaME Digital Summit. In my humble opinion, MediaME - together with ArabNet and Click - is one of the region's critical digital events and this year's conference featured some great speakers (present company etc etc) and much thought-provoking opinion and debate.

It was slightly odd to be back in Jordan after having hit the 'go' button on the Middle East print edition of Olives (A Violent Romance) - somehow the book has become solid, concrete now. The King's Highway (the road from the airport to Amman, but also the Kingdom's core arterial route from Amman to Aqaba) is being rebuilt and is apparently to become a privatised toll route. The new airport will be ready by summer next year. And Amman nightclub Nai has been refurbished and rebranded. Just as well, after the incidents recounted in Olives! Did I mention you can now buy Olives as a printed book at amazon.com, BTW? I did? Ah, okay then...

During the workshop at MediaME, I used this silly wee blog as an example of SEO, pointing out how mad it was that I 'owned' Amman's delightful Fakhreddine restaurant on Google. If you Google 'Fakhreddine Amman' you don't get the restaurant itself (as you rightly should - it's a must visit if you're staying in Amman and want to eat some of the best Arab food the Levant can dish up), but you do get me.

This is not a good thing. It's a compelling reason for the restaurant to invest some money in SEO and grabbing back its ownership of its brand.

I got a comment from the audience - "Actually, we're their agency and if you Google just 'Fakhreddine' you get our client!

No you don't. You get Fakhr Al Din, various Fakhreddines, the restaurant in Broumana (Lebanon) and me. You don't get Amman's famous Lebanese/Arabic/Levantine (delete as your preference dictates) restaurant Fakhreddine. If you Google 'Fakhreddine restaurant' you get Fakhreddine Broumana, London and me in that order. You don't get Fakhreddine Amman. And that's mad, because the place is famous and generally celebrated for its excellence.

I wish I'd stopped the workshop to look it up then and there. If Amman's Fakhreddine had a website (if it does, I can't find it), I'd do a post specifically to right the wrong and redirect hungry Googlers to the right place, because I really do appreciate and support this most excellent of restaurants and wish it nothing but the very best.

But it does, like so many Middle Eastern businesses, need to get smarter about its online presence and search parameters.

Olives - The Book Goes To Print

It's an odd feeling, there's a strange finality sending my novel Olives to the printers. I've sent dozens of magazines, yearbooks and other projects to print over the years, but nothing quite equals sending something so personal off to print. And a book's somehow different to a magazine - a 'literal' in a magazine is an annoyance, but usually something that you live with because it's transitory. I once printed a yearbook with the immortal words 'Midddle East Buyer's Guide' across two pages in 24 point print and it was two years before anyone noticed. I put this down at the time to the SEP field (first proposed by Douglas Adams, the SEP field renders objects invisible by the sheer scale of the incongruity they represent, therefore making them 'Somebody Else's Problem. In Adams' case, a spaceship that looked like an Italian bistro).

But it's different with a book. A book is graven, as it were, in stone. This particular book, Olives, has been edited to death. It's had structural edits, line edits, readers' edits, a professional edit and then I finally got my author's proof from Amazon's Createspace and, to my horror, managed to dot said proof with little red line corrections. Quite a lot of them. Sloppy writing, slapdash phrases, clunky bits. And a few honest to goodness literals in there, too. How did they get through?

But that's it, now. If you buy a copy and find a literal, I don't want to know. I'm done changing it. This is the finished product. This is my statement.

The Middle East edition of Olives launches at TwingeDXB - the first Dubai Urban Festival on the 10th December. It'll be in UAE bookshops from then onwards and I'm working to get it into Lebanese and Jordanian bookshops as soon as I possibly can after that.

If you can't wait, or if you're based outside the Middle East, you can get a print copy of Olives at amazon.com, linked for your clicking pleasure right here.

The Book Slog Blog

Image by vial3tt3r via FlickrActually writing a book is easy as pie. You just take 75-100,000 words or so and put them down on paper. The order in which you place them can be a bit of a bugger, but the principle’s simple enough.

Most writers will knock up an average of around 1,000 words a day, so that’s a good three months to crack off a novel. Allow for procrastination, cunctation and a few other ations and you could easily (and advisedly) take 5-6 months to finish the first draft of a manuscript. You can work faster than that – I wrote the original MS of Olives in just over four weeks, but I’ve been seven years in editing it. Some people will write their book in four weeks and create a work of tear-jerking genius without having invested a second more. These are not, you understand, people to whom I talk.

Having finished the MS, in my case usually with the reward of a snappy Martini or two, you can breathe a sigh of relief before getting down to the real work. Because actually spending months writing a book is nothing. The real work starts when you’ve finished the damn thing.

First off is the editing. Dashing down 80,000 words of story is all great fun, but then you have to review it and make sure you’ve spelled everything right, avoided awful continuity errors, remained consistent to your characters, maintained your storyline and honed your writing so that the dialogue works, the action fizzles and the moments when two people go ‘ping’ actually go ‘ping’ and not ‘splot’. There have been whole books – a great deal of them, in fact – written on this subject. Writer’s forums constantly buzz to questions of POV (point of view), the passive and active voice (oh, puhlease!), characterisation, plot elements and all that sort of stuff. And we haven’t even started talking about sentence structure, ‘showing rather than telling’ and the myriad elements that stalk the furrowed brow of the harried writer editing his/her manuscript (or MS, if you want to use ‘the lingo’).

Now, don’t forget, you’ve just written tens of thousands of words – editing them all over again is a real trial. By the time you finish, you sort of hate those words. The bastards have no right to be so demanding, so imperfect. But finally you’re done. The MS looks good to go. (It rarely is at this point, but let’s not pee in the firework box too early, hey?)

Now you have to write a synopsis of your book. This is a one or (at most) two-page summation of what your book’s about, what actually happens in the thing. Any agent or editor wants to see a synopsis to find out if the thing makes sense as a whole. So your synopsis not only has to represent the key movements of the plot, it should ideally show your ability to write as well. This is a hellish thing to ask someone who has just written a book, then edited it to shining perfection, to do.

But it must be done.

What happens to your character? Who influences the development of the storyline and who is just there for colour? Chances are, by the way, if you can cut a character out of your synopsis, you can cut him/her out of the story and are better off doing so. The synopsis is a straight story-line, a compelling narrative from a to c that validates quite why b was ever involved. Take your story down to five pages, then halve the word count, take it down to a little over two pages. And then you can start playing hardball with those cowering little words. Eliminate, and do it like a Dalek with a really bad hangover.

It’s like swimming through molasses with 10lb weights tied to your bits. It’s an awful, sorry slog of a task.

And we’re not done with you yet, matey. Now we want a ‘blurb’.

A ‘blurb’ takes your synopsis and hones it down to under 400 words or thereabouts. Here’s the blurb for Olives:

[BlurbStart]

When Paul Stokes runs out of choices, his only path is betrayal. 

The fragile peace is holding. Behind the scenes, the Israelis are competing for dwindling water resources as Jordan and Palestine face drought. Daoud Dajani has the solution to Jordan’s water problems and is bidding against the British for the privatisation of Jordan’s water network. 

When journalist Paul Stokes befriends Dajani’s sister, Aisha, British intelligence agent Gerald Lynch realises Paul offers access to Dajani - the man threatening to drain Israel’s water supply and snatch the bid from the British. Blackmailed by Lynch into spying on Dajani, his movements seemingly linked to a series of bombings, Paul is pitched into a terrifying fight for survival that will force him to betray everyone around him. Even the woman he loves.

[EndBlurb]

That’s not the only blurb for Olives, but let’s not complicate things. Note it’s not a contiguous description of events in the book – it’s a summation of the action and points of action that are intended to evoke interest in what the work’s about. (You can judge whether it works in the comments, and please be my guest!)

Now you have a ‘blurb’ you can work it into your ‘pitch’. A blurb and pitch are two different things, although they are necessarily interrelated. The blurb is the text you’d slap on the back of a book. A pitch is what you’d say to a top London literary agent if you got one minute of his/her attention. The best way to do this is crash their lunch at the Athenaeum holding a Scalectrix controller wired to a lumpy belt around your waist and screaming ‘I’ll take you bastards all with me’ before you start pitching. This might seem extreme, but don’t worry. Agents are used to authors doing this. The worrying trend emerging is agents are now doing this to editors as the world of conventional publishing slowly collapses into itself like Michael Moorcock's Biloxi Fault.

Not even the Athenaeum, it must be said, is a safe haven these days...

Anyway, now you have a book, a synopsis, a blurb and a pitch. You've also likely got RSI and a rocky relationship. Next comes the hard bit. I'll come on to that tomorrow...

Nostradamus

Image via Wikipedia"A Facebook group on the conflict between the army and Fatah Al Islam in Lebanon grew a membership of 8,000 in a single week: an average of two new members every minute. The movement of people, of opinions and debate in the new social networks can take place with incredible rapidity. This debate is taking place in a region where public debate, assembly and the mass publication of opinion have traditionally been discouraged. There is a new egalitarianism in the air and it’s a heady scent for many.

A flash survey of 100 Middle East based Facebook users tells us that 93% of them are using broadband connections. And 89% of them have laptop computers. 73% of those Facebook users are between 25 and 35 years of age. The survey took less than 1 hour to conduct.

There is a strong and growing Arab community using broadband technologies to move video content across the Internet, often as part of participation in social networks. The video featuring King Abdulla II of Jordan produced by the One Voice organisation, calling for peace and understanding between Palestinians and Israelis, has drawn over 279,000 views in Youtube. Video clips on Lebanon have consistently drawn above 150,000 views, while other topics and productions from the Arab world have consistently driven between 60,000 and 1 million views. Few FTA channels in the region could claim such viewership.

Social networks, the core aspect of the thinking that has been characterised as Web 2.0, are driving the adoption of broadband services in the Middle East. Perhaps interestingly this is not a technical audience of technology early adopters. That the growth in adoption has not been stronger is almost undoubtedly a product of prohibitive pricing strategies among the region’s operators."

That was all written early in 2007. Not bad, huh? I recently had reason to revisit a white paper I'd written together with Spot On bright spark Mai Abaza to support my presentation at the Arab Advisors Convergence Conference in Amman. The above text is part of the argument we were making that regional telcos needed to bring down the price of broadband and stop considering it a service for shifting big files and start looking at it as a way for many people to shift many files quickly.

I recall asking the conference how many had heard of the phrase Web 2.0 or social media and getting a show of eleven hands from an audience of hundreds of operators. That's telcos for you.

Re-reading this reminded me there's a line that connects Nahr El Bared with Occupy Wall Street - those Facebook groups that sprang up contained debate and discourse we had never before seen in the region - passionate and sometimes violently abusive, the adoption rate of these groups and the way they brought people together were stunning to watch. Of course, Mai and I were so busy examining the implications for the broadband market we missed the wider implications that here was a new platform for discourse and organisation that would grow to have the ability to bring down governments.

Those groups showed people in the Middle East, for the first time, that they could not only talk to each other, but broadcast opinion to tens of thousands. It took four years' growth in adoption, but the seeds sown as the Lebanese army blasted the Nahr El Bared camp using helicopters carrying bombs in home-made cradles would lead to something a great deal bigger...

More Jordan

Image via WikipediaDaoud stood. ‘Have you ever seen an olive tree, Paul? Come with me, I’ll show you our little grove of olives we keep here in Abdoun.’

Nour pushed back her chair, taking Mariam’s plate and beckoning for Aisha’s. ‘Yes, go on. We’ll clear up the table. Aisha, give me a hand in the kitchen.’

He led the way and I reluctantly followed. 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 that part of the garden was laid to lawn, but the hilly part to the 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. At that time 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 still press it 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 peace and hope.’

I held a bunch of the smooth, silvery-green leaves in my hand. I didn’t know what to say to him. He stood in among the trees, the faint pall of smoke from his cigarette making my nostrils widen.

‘Ibrahim said the security wall cut the farm in two.’

‘We demonstrated, like the other farmers. But there was nothing anyone could do. Some of the hot headed ones got themselves beaten up, arrested. The world looked the other way.’

I didn’t know what to say, surrounded by these trees and the family’s loss. ‘At least you still have the farm.’

Daoud shook his head. ‘Now, after all these years, they are starting to cut the water to the farmers, both there and here in Jordan. The olive groves are starting to die. These trees are the heritage we must take with us into the future. My company is investing in the water because we believe it will be critical for the future. Not just for the trees but for our people to live. We are bidding for the privatisation of Jordan’s water resources. You have heard of this?’

‘Yes, the Minister told me about it. Is it really such a problem, the water shortage?’

‘We are already suffering from the lack of water. We will suffer more, our crops will fail and our farmers starve. It is critical to our future to find a better way to share the water. The Israelis steal the water from us every day. I want to steal it back.’

I dropped the bunch of leaves I had been holding and glanced across at Daoud, who was looking down to the glowing tip of his cigarette.

‘How?’

He looked up and I could feel the intense physicality of the man, feel his eyes burning in the darkness. I shifted uncomfortably and so did the conversation.

‘You like Aisha?’

I tried not to react to the abrupt question, taking my time and listening to the faint traffic noise carried on the cold night air. I replied cautiously. ‘She’s been great to me, Daoud. The Ministry’s lucky to have her. I couldn’t have settled in the way I have without her. She’s a smart girl.’

A crowd cheered in my mind. Just right. My breath was coming out in misty puffs.

‘She was my father’s favourite.’

The cheering died down. ‘She’s a very fine artist. You must be proud of her.’

‘Yes. Yes I am. I would not like anything to happen to her. She took his death badly, as I suppose we all did. She is still perhaps,’ he searched for the word, ‘vulnerable.’

Fucking hell. Enough already. I kept the smile going, but it was getting hard to maintain. My cheeks hurt from the effort. ‘Jordan is a beautiful country, Daoud. I’m glad I came here. I’m sure my girlfriend will like it here, too. She’s a lawyer. She practises international contract law, actually.’

Not strictly true, the line about Anne liking it in Jordan. I hardly expected her to turn up. Workaholic Anne never took leave and we didn’t anticipate seeing each other until I went home for Christmas.

Daoud seemed lost in thought, leaning against the trunk of an olive tree and drawing on his cigarette. Finally he spoke.

‘The Israelis have taken everything from us, Paul. Our land, our dignity. They took my father, too. Now they’re taking the water. We’ve lost too much.’

He pushed the cigarette butt into the sandy soil with his heel, then put his hand on my shoulder, a quick squeeze and a pat, a very Arab gesture of finality and yet, somehow, accepting. ‘I won’t let the olives die. Come on, let’s get back inside. I’ll get you a bottle of our oil. At least when the olives weep, we are enriched.’

#

And so Paul Stokes embarks on his betrayals, betraying Aisha's brother Daoud even as he suspects Daoud of betraying human decency. Olives is prefaced with a quote from Mahmoud Darwish: "If the olive trees knew the hands that planted them, their oil would become tears."

In unrelated news, the reason I'm here - The MENA ICT Forum - is a triumph of an event, it's been marvellous meeting so many old friends and catching up with new faces. The quality of debate and feedback has been excellent. The King spoke brilliantly and his support for this industry clearly continues to be extraordinary. It's good to see Jordan once again striding strongly on its road to building a truly great ICT industry.

Jordan

Image by APAAME via FlickrAisha 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 Aisha pulled the car to a stop in front of a flight of stone steps leading up to a house that stood 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 Aisha’s hips as she led the way up the steps from the road. She stopped abruptly at the top, turned to catch me looking at her bum and raised an eyebrow. I felt my face reddening. She pulled a pack of cigarettes from her burgundy handbag and offered them to me.

‘I don’t, thanks.’

‘Suit yourself,’ she said, lighting up and inhaling hungrily, her lipstick leaving a dark red mark on the white filter and her head raised to let the smoke go. I noticed she had ink on her fingers, like a naughty schoolgirl, an incongruity in someone so sophisticated. ‘It’s owned by a lawyer and his wife. It’s on two floors, there’s a Swedish guy who rents the upper floor. You would get the ground floor and the use of the garden area.’ She opened the door and waited for me to go in. It wasn’t huge, a traditional house built maybe in the thirties or forties and clad in pale Jordan stone. A green painted door led straight into the cool, terracotta-floored kitchen. I wandered around the echoing rooms before going back outside and standing in the lush little garden.

I looked out across to the Jordanian flag flapping merrily atop the Citadel, the central hill of the seven that Amman was founded upon. The buildings carpeting the city around us glowed deep orange in the sunset. I listened to the sound of a cricket in the bushes, taking in the fresh breeze and wishing time would stop and leave me with these feelings for ever. All thoughts of police charges and cells were gone, chased away by my joy at the little house. I heard Aisha’s step behind me and caught a whiff of her cigarette smoke, looking round and seeing the glow of the setting sun on her skin.

‘I want to live here.' I said, 'This is beautiful.’

‘Alhamdulillah.’

‘Sorry?’

‘It means thanks to God. Why do you look so worried if you like it?’

‘How am I going to furnish it?’

‘I can get the landlord to defer the first three month’s rent if you agree to leave the furniture behind you when you go.’

I glanced at Aisha, her brown eyes alive, gauging my reaction. I looked around the garden again, at the trellises and the wooden table and chairs under the vines. She ground the cigarette out under her foot. ‘Who’s the landlord?’ I asked.

Aisha walked back to the car. ‘Come on, I’ll take you to your hotel.’

I laughed and persisted. ‘Who’s the landlord?’

She stopped and turned, grinning. ‘My cousin.’ Then she flicked her hair at me and carried on down the steps.


Wasta.

#

And so, in the first serious book wot I wrote, Olives, Paul Stokes settles down into life in Jordan, where he is betrayed and in turn betrays because betrayal is all he eventually has left. I'm back in Amman, the country where the book is set, for the first time since I finished re-writing it and I'm grinning like an idiot to be back. The drivers always ask, 'Is this your first time in Jordan, seer?' and I enjoy the reaction to my, 'No, the sixty fourth' almost as much as I enjoy talking about petrol prices with London cabbies. I have spent a lot of time in this country and have many friends here. It's a sort of third home.


I called my pal Ra'ed and told him how very much I loved his country. His reaction, instinctively Jordanian, was 'Why? What's the problem?'


It's great to be back!

Exploring Jordan

Channel 4 DJ Neil 'Jay' Grayson asked what there was to do in Jordan. And here's an answer. It's not necessarily the answer, but it's an answer!

I do miss the place, you know... probably why I ended up writing this rather long post.

Jordan provides the setting for Mr Unpublishable's second book, Olives, and is also somewhere I have spent a hell of a lot of time and where I have many good friends. Here are some of the many excellent reasons why it's well worth taking a long weekend break, at the very least, and exploring the place for yourself. And yes, thank you, if you're from the Jordan Tourist Board, you can send the envelope with used 10JD notes. Thanks.

Oh! Talking of which, do make sure you get there with 10JD per person in your pocket in local currency for your visa otherwise you'll just have to leave the visa queue, change money and rejoin it - which ain't fun.


AMMAN

I stay at the Grand Hyatt for preference, but the Four Seasons is also a great hotel. The Kempinski in Shmeisani is cheaper and not bad. Martinis in the Four Seasons is a famous Alexander treat, taken in the Square Bar in the summer and the downstairs lobby lounge by the fireside in the winter. The Hyatt's fish restaurant 32 North is expensive but stunning, its Italian is also famously good and Indochine downstairs is also excellent.

The Citadel
The Citadel is the central of Amman's original 7 hills (it sprawls over 22 or so now, apparently) and contains important Roman, Islamic and Byzantine remains. Brilliantly, the government has excavated to the most important era in each case and it's a great place for a wander.

The Ampitheatre
Still used for live performances, Amman's ampitheatre is a brilliantly preserved piece of Roman architecture. Standing on the brass button centre stage and talking in a normal voice not only lets you be heard at the furthest seat but you also feel the pressure of your own voice on your ears. Spooky. To the right side of the stage there's a small but wonderful museum of bedouin things which you should not at any price miss.

The Motor Museum
King Hussein was an avid car collector and this museum is based around his personal collection. Well worth a visit.

The Eastern City
I like to wander around the streets in the Eastern City, particularly around the bird market, and just soak it all in. It's pretty full-on and don't for the love of God keep your wallet in your back pocket.

North of Amman
See the castle at Ajloun and the Roman ruins at Umm Queis. There's a smashing Arabi restaurant at Umm Queis around the back of the ruins and overlooking the Golan with a quite marvellous view and I recommend it most highly.

Do not leave Jordan without seeing Jerash. Simply don't. It's a huge Roman city, preserved with amazing streets and buildings - also called the city of 1,000 pillars, it rivals Petra in its wonderfullness but doesn't get as much attention as the Rose Red City. You can do Jerash, Umm Queis and Ajloun in one day, but you'll just end up rushing things. Better to take two days over 'em IMHO.


Eats
You can eat really well in Amman these days. Arabic restaurant Fakhreddine is one of the great restaurants of the Levant. Vinaigrette is popular with the beau monde, as is Whispers, both near Shmeisani. The Blue Fig is a great place to have drinks with friends.


THE DEAD SEA AND ALL THAT

I love driving down to the Dead Sea and my preferred hotel has always been the Movenpick, although the Kempinksi and Marriott are preferrd by Jordanians in general. The spa at the Movenpick is great, we found the staff and treatments at the Marriott Spa were better. The Marriott can get very noisy with families. The Dead Sea itself is obviously a treat - and always significantly warmer than Amman.

The Baptism Site
A few kilometres north of the hotels on the Dead Sea, tucked away on a left hand turn off the main road back to Amman, is the site where John the Baptist baptised Jesus and a lot of other people. It's also legendarily where Elijah ascended to heaven on a chariot. You can see the sad remains of the River Jordan here and also look out over the tamarisks to Jericho. A must-see.

Madaba
Madaba is the site of the oldest and most important Byzantine mosaic in the Levant and also the location of Haret Al Jdoudna, one of my favourite restaurants in the Middle East. Dunno why, just love the place.

Mount Nebo
It was here that Moses showed his people the promised land and on a clear day it's some view. The mosaics preserved here are simply beautiful and Nebo is a must-visit, even if you're the Pope. Popes like Nebo.

Kerak
The crusader castle in Kerak, on the escarpment overlooking the southern Dead Sea, is important and worth visiting. There are Christian families living here descended from the Crusaders, which is pretty bonkers if you think about it. TE Lawrence was here.


PETRA

We are very fond of driving down to Petra from Amman on the King's Highway (criss-crossing the railway line that old TE spent so much time trying to blow up) and then looping back up using the 'old road' and travelling through Tawfileh (the butt of Jordanian 'dumb person' jokes), past Wadi Dana (where microfinance projects have created an ecoresort and also jewellery makers whose fine silversmithery can be bought here and at the Wild Cafe in Amman) and Kerak then up the Dead Sea to the spa hotels. It's a fantastic drive that will take you through the deep country, past escarpments, hills and bedouin encampments. It's deliciously Mediterranean countryside and you'll go through a range of small townships where the rural poverty can be a tad 'in your face'. Poor people in Jordan are very poor indeed and rich people are very rich. Everyone you meet will delight in telling you that Jordan has no middle class, and although that's no longer quite the case, it's not a bad model as they go.

Stay at the Movenpick in Petra. It's the closest to the old city and it's a dandy hotel. Drinks and shisha on the rooftop are a big treat.

You should really give Petra a couple of days and the night-time tour down into the 'Rose Red City as Old As Time Itself (TM)' is popular and visually incredible. The 3,000 year-old Nabatean city is every bit as impressive as you'd think and then some. You walk quite a way down into the Siq (yes, I'd take one of the carriages but haggle) before coming to the Treasury and then down into the city built up into the hillsides around you. There are a bunch of hawkers and gee-gaw sellers here and that's just fine. Further down the track, you'll come to the Roman ruins and at the bottom there's a museum that's worth a trip. From here, you can walk up in every direction, trekking through the hills back up to find side streets and bits n bobs all over the place.


THE SOUTH

Wadi Rumm is famously beautiful and can take days to explore. It's something of a schlep from Amman, so I'd suggest staying over at Aqaba, which is the Red Sea resort town of Jordan, home to the ASEZA free trade zone and hotels with famously indifferent service. If you thought you'd be rediscovering the little down in Lawrence of Arabia, forget it. Aqaba itself is about as charming as Gordon Brown.

I am quite sure I have missed out thousands of things to see and do in Jordan, but then you can have fun discovering them for yourselves.

I hadn't realised I had made so many trips here over the years until a couple of years ago when I was staying at the Hyatt just after the Amman bombings. I actually went over to attend an art exhibition protesting the event, which we sponsored. I still have two of the prints from the event and they are very dear to my heart, tragically both are calligraphies of the 60 victims' names. There were only 16 guests in the hotel and I went to my room to find a gift-wrapped book on my bed. I thought it was a kind of 'thanks for staying with us because the lobby's a wreck and nobody else will come here because of the bombing' gift, but when I opened it I realised that it commemorated my fortieth stay at the Hyatt! In all, I must have made over 60 trips to Jordan and they have left me with an abiding fondness for the country and its people. I like the country so much, I wrote a book about it...

Boycott

Uncelebrated by the region's English language media, a spat of some considerable proportions has been going on in Jordan, where the Jordan Festival, an intended celebration of music, culture and art, has been struggling in the face of calls for a boycott by Arab artists being raised by the Jordanian Artists Association.

The reason for the boycott was that French advertising agency Publicis was alleged to be retained as part of the organisation of the event and Publicis was further alleged been behind the organisation of Israel's 60th birthday celebrations. At least two artists, including Lebanese superstar singers Assi Hillani and Ellissa, had pulled out as a consequence and the viability of the event was starting to be questioned.

His Majesty King Abdullah of Jordan weighed in yesterday in an interview carried by Petra News Agency. Publicis Groupe has also categorically denied any involvement in the arrangements for the Jordan Festival in a piece carried by Arabic Daily Al Hayat yesterday and also denied any involvement in the arrangements for the Israeli 60th anniversary celebration beyond its CEO's attendance as a private individual.

But it might have been too little, too late. The boycott, according to a report in today's Jordan Times, continues. A letter's gone out from the JAA to five other national artist's associations calling on them to support the boycott. A boycott which would appear to be based on very little evidence indeed, but a great deal of emotional response.

Worst of all, take a look at the last line of JT's story: JAA's president has called for a boycott of Algerian Cheb Khaled (AKA 'Khaled didi') because he once played a concert with an Israeli artist in Rome.

I once had dinner with an Israeli. Should I worry?

Nakba

Gulf News carried a series of spreads today marking 'Al Nakba', which is Arabic for 'the catastrophe', the Palestinian day of mourning for the loss of the land in which they lived. Al Nakba is generally marked on the 15th May, so it's slightly unusual for Gulf News to have gone so heavy on the 14th. They were alone: everyone else has been waiting for the day itself.

Nakba is marked on the 15th because it was the day that the British Mandate in Palestine expired. The declaration of the State of Israel was made on the 14th.

The tales of dispossession and loss contained in the paper are heart-rending - and I have been reading and hearing similar tales for something like 20 years now. They never lose their ability to make me profoundly sad. I am sure we will see a great deal more tomorrow as other newspapers publish pieces marking the day.

Al Nakba is particularly poignant this year, because this is the 60th year since the Palestinians were forced off their land. They left carrying their house keys because they thought they'd be back soon once the fuss died down: Robert Fisk's brilliant Pity the Nation starts with his attempts to understand and come to terms with the people in the Lebanese camps who still kept their keys. And people still keep them today, a symbol of the right to return to their land.

It's a strangely beautiful land, too. All around the Dead Sea, the stony soil is home to olive trees and the land is green in winter, dry and arid in the summer. Farming it manually must have been back-breaking work. But it gave birth to a people and culture that is vibrant and deep: today some 70% of Jordanians are originally Palestinian and their art, poetry and design are a huge part of Jordan's richness as a nation.

I think there will be a lot of grief around the Middle East tomorrow. I only hope that people can share their sorrow and are allowed at least to grieve in peace just for one day.

Poetic Justice

I do hope you remember the story of Jordanian expatriate blogger Husain (Who-Sane) and his father, who was so appallingly treated in an Amman hospital that he is still recovering over a month later.

Husain's blog post on the affair started a hue and cry that made it to many other blogs and so to the daily newspapers and eventually resulted in such significant word of mouth and consequent broad public awareness of the tragic plight of his father and his ill-treatment at the hands of the hospital's staff that the King himself became involved.

Well, the director of the hospital has now been sacked.

Which is by no means the end of the story, but probably an appropriate stepping point.