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man.
What’s your mobile number?’ I told him and he left me a missed
call. ‘There. Lars as in bras, not as in arse. Call me
anytime.’
    I saved the
contact, shook hands and went indoors to brush up for dinner. I
felt apprehensive about meeting Aisha’s people, despite the
prospect of getting an update from Ibrahim about my police
case.
    I’d never met
a suicide bomber’s family before.

FIVE
     
     
     
    Aisha arrived
at half seven to pick me up. She wore a white woollen dress under a
red coat and a rich, spicy scent. I had managed to scrape together
an open-necked shirt, jeans and a favourite, perhaps slightly
over-worn, linen jacket — pretty much all that remained of my clean
clothes from the hotel. I stank of supermarket
deodorant.
    ‘ So who’s
going to be there?’ I asked as we walked down to her car. I’d
thought we were having a family tea at the kitchen table, not a big
dinner party.
    ‘ Oh, just
family. Uncle Ibrahim and Aunt Nancy, Mum, my brother Daoud and my
sister Mariam.’
    I’d never
thought to question the relationship between Ibrahim and Aisha
until Lars mentioned her father dying. I stared at her, startled.
My seat belt clicked into the clasp. ‘Oh. I thought Ibrahim was
your father.’
    Aisha laughed
at my confusion. ‘No, Paul, Ibrahim is my uncle. My father died a
little over five years ago.’ Her face darkened and her voice became
gentle and sad, her eyes following her finger as it traced a path
on the top of the steering wheel. ‘I still miss him. I sometimes
feel I miss him more each day rather than less.’
    ‘ I’m sorry.
You sound as if you were very close.’
    Her mouth
tightened for a second before she raised her chin and smiled sadly
at me. ‘Oh yes, I was very much Daddy’s girl. He used to call me
his ‘ Ferriyah. ’ It means
“little bird”. He was always spoiling me. All my life he was there
for me, close to me. And then one day he just wasn’t there
anymore.’
    ‘ How
—’
    Aisha reached
out and touched my arm before turning the engine on. ‘Come on,
Paul, let’s go. Leave the past for now, it’ll just make me
sadder.’
    I nodded and
sat silently as we drove across the Abdoun suspension bridge,
looking at the houses in the wadi below and
thinking about Aisha’s father and the loss she still felt. I had
never missed my own father, although he wasn’t technically dead,
just gone from our lives. Dad was still around somewhere, messing
up some other woman’s head the way he messed up Mum’s. I wasn’t
sure how I’d feel to be told of his death, especially now I had a
stepfather I actually admired.
    Ken had
stepped into my mum’s life a few months after my dad had stepped
out. He ran a small engineering company. A decent man who doted on
her, he had insisted on paying for Charles’ university place and
had quietly slipped me a thousand pound cheque ‘to help you settle
down’ when I’d left home, making me promise not to tell my mum
about the gift: ‘She’ll only fuss, lad.’
    If I’d
accepted the two grand Ken tried to give me to help me settle down
in Jordan, I might never have taken the little house near the Wild
Jordan Café. For the second time, for all the right reasons, I was
glad I had refused his kind generosity and made my own way. And yet
it made me more grateful to him, I think, than if I’d
accepted.
     
     
    The Dajani
house was in Abdoun, the wealthy part of West Amman. Aisha stopped
the car at the top of the long, sweeping driveway and I tried not
to stare at the huge villa with its pillared entranceway and
imposing double doors. I felt like a slob.
    A woman stood
in the doorway. ‘You must be Paul. Welcome. I’m Nour, Aisha’s
mother.’
    She was in
her late fifties, slim, elegant and pretty and I liked her
instantly. Nour slipped her arm into mine and walked me into the
house to meet the family, her manner easy and intimate. Aisha’s
sister Mariam was giggly, just seventeen and studying computer
science at a private