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- Herausgeber: Orenda Books
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Serie: The Jonny Murphy files
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
A compulsive, searing political thriller set on a kibbutz in Northern Israel, where the discovery of the body of an Israeli-Arab worker sets off a devastating chain of events… `A first-class political thriller´ Steve Cavanagh `A bitingly sharp, pacy thriller. Devilishly good. I inhaled it´ Freya Berry `A powerful political thriller that brims with authentic detail. Clever, compulsive and achingly atmospheric´ Kia Abdullah ––––––––––––––––––––– This is no utopia… 1996. Northern Israel. Lola leaves an unhappy home life in England for the fabled utopian life of a kibbutz, but this heavily guarded farming community on the Arab-Israeli border isn't the idyll it seems, and tensions are festering. Hundreds of miles away, in the Jerusalem offices of the International Tribune newspaper, all eyes are on Israel's response to a spate of rocket attacks from Lebanon, until cub reporter Jonny Murphy gets a tip from a mysterious source that sends him straight into the danger zone. When the body of an Arab worker is discovered in the dirt of the kibbutz chicken house, it triggers a series of events that puts Lola and the whole community in jeopardy, and Jonny begins to uncover a series of secrets that put everything at risk, as he begins to realise just how far some people will go to belong… ––––––––––––––––––––– `A fantastic page-turner and an intriguing look at a complex and dangerous world. Sarah Sultoon creates intelligent, memorable characters and fascinating stories´ Holly Watt `A powerhouse writer´ Jo Spain `An extraordinary piece of writing from a political thriller writer at the very top of her game´ Victoria Selman `Brilliant and gripping´ S J Watson `An immersive and evocative political thriller that thrust me into a unique, razor-edged world, with a plot filled with tension and complexity´ Philippa East `Sarah Sultoon draws on her time spent as a journalist in the Middle East to bring northern Israel, its people, its beauty, and its complexities to life in vibrant colour in this twisting whodunnit…´ Antony Dunford `A compelling thriller that weaves a complex tale … escalating to a shocking finale´ Eve Smith `Unsettling, riveting, gets under your skin´ Peter Hain Praise for Sarah Sultoon: **Longlisted for the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger** **WINNER of the Crime Fiction Lover Debut Thriller Award** `A brave and thought-provoking debut novel´ Adam Hamdy `A taut and thought-provoking book that's all the more unnerving for how much it echoes the headlines in real life´ CultureFly `A tense thriller, a remarkable debut, heartbreaking, but ultimately this is a story of resilience and survival´ NB Magazine `A powerful, compelling read´ Fanny Blake `A powerful story of the brutality of front-line journalism. Authentic, provocative and terrifyingly relevant´ Will Carver
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PRAISE FOR DIRT
‘A first-class political thriller’ Steve Cavanagh
‘Brilliant and gripping, a more than worthy follow-up to Sultoon’s excellent The Shot’ S J Watson
‘An extraordinary piece of writing from a political-thriller writer at the very top of her game’ Victoria Selman
‘Sarah Sultoon is going from strength to strength. Dirt is both a fantastic page-turner and an intriguing look at a complex and dangerous world. Sultoon creates intelligent, memorable characters and fascinating stories. Journo noir at its finest!’ Holly Watt
‘A formidable writer. In Dirt, she crafts a powerful political thriller that brims with authentic detail. Clever, compulsive and achingly atmospheric’ Kia Abdullah
‘Thrust me into a unique, razor-edged world, with a plot filled with tension and complexity. The narrative twists around itself, becoming increasingly claustrophobic and fraught, until it arrives at its explosive dénouement’ Philippa East
‘A bitingly sharp, pacy thriller. Devilishly good. I inhaled it’ Freya Berry
‘A complex tale of political tensions on the Israeli border with volatile secrets in a kibbutz, escalating to a shocking finale’ Eve Smith
‘Unsettling, riveting, gets under your skin’ Peter Hain
‘Yet another incredible book from Sarah Sultoon … full of danger and pulsating characters. I had no idea where it would end up. What a ride’ Louise Beech
‘Immerses the reader in the communal claustrophobia of a kibbutz in this taut and intimate mystery … a masterful reflection of the complexities of real life, I highly recommend it’ Antony Dunford
‘A hard-hitting and suspenseful political/war/crime/domestic thriller/drama that had my little grey cells and my heart working overtime’ From Belgium with Booklove
PRAISE FOR SARAH SULTOON
WINNER of the Crime Fiction Lover Best Debut Award LONGLISTED for the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger
‘You won’t read another book like this in 2022! Raw, authentic, powerful … you won’t see the end coming!’ E C Scullion
‘As searingly an authentic thriller as you are likely to read … Passionate, disturbing storytelling at its best’ James Brabazon
‘Brilliantly conveys both the exhilaration and the unspeakable horror of life on the international news frontline’ Jo Turner
‘Authentic, provocative and terrifyingly relevant. It will stay with you’ Will Carver
‘Sensitive handling, tight plotting and authentic storytelling make for a compelling read’ Adam Hamdy
‘A taut and thought-provoking book that’s all the more unnerving for how much it echoes the headlines in real life’ CultureFly
‘A powerful, compelling read that doesn’t shy away from some upsetting truths’ Fanny Blake
‘Tautly written and compelling, not afraid to shine a spotlight on the darker forces at work in society’ Rupert Wallis
‘A gripping, dark thriller’ Geoff Hill, ITV
‘A stunning debut … a powerhouse writer’ Jo Spain
‘So authentic and exhilarating … breathtaking pace and relentless ingenuity’ Nick Paton Walsh, CNN
‘My heart was racing … fiction to thrill even the most hard-core adrenaline junkies’ Diana Magnay, Sky News
‘Unflinching and sharply observed. A hard-hitting, deftly woven debut’ Ruth Field
‘I could picture and feel each scene, all the fear, tension and hope’ Katie Allen
‘With this gripping, fast-paced debut thriller, it’s easy to see what made Sultoon such a great journalist’ Clarissa Ward, CNN
DIRT
Sarah Sultoon
For Jonny, Samantha, Max and Clara
And Michelle, Joseph and Lola
Contents
Prologue
The chickens were used to pecking. Especially in chicken house number one. It was the most overcrowded of all the warehouses, deliberately constructed on the fringe of the kibbutz to keep the worst of the smell at bay. But wasn’t that of the refet, the cowshed, stationed a little further up the hill, arguably far worse when the wind blew in a certain direction?
It was a topic of constant debate around the communal tables in the kibbutz dining room. You were either inherently in favour of chicken or beef. And most people’s choice had nothing to do with the smell.
The truth of it was that most small farming communities really needed to concentrate on doing one thing well. Put all their eggs in one basket, if you’ll pardon the pun. But the kibbutz is a subsistence farm. A communal enterprise – appealing to both the heads and hearts of its members. So it needs to be all things to all people to ensure it survives. At least, it needs to appear that way.
Those chickens in house number one had to work for their feed. There was always plenty of it, spread low amid the sawdust, away from the pens at the back where they would settle to lay their eggs. But house number one was overcrowded for a reason – the highest ceiling meant the best aerial playground, the loftiest beams on which to roost. Essential for birds that can’t fly very far. It didn’t matter that it was noisiest – especially with missiles flying overhead from the Lebanese border a few hundred yards away. It didn’t matter that it was the dirtiest, covered in the inevitable layers of grime that accompany too many animals in too small of a space.
House number one had the most real estate. As with all animals, it was about ownership. The fight just made the territory in question seem like a more valuable prize.
And so the chickens gravitated to it, skittering across the gravel courtyard between the overflow houses two and three, to lay claim to a little patch of melee. These were the chickens that got fatter faster, laid the most eggs, and met their end in the kitchen first.
Then in flocked the next round of chickens. So much for territorial supremacy.
Even for chickens as practised as these, today there was a feast of irregular proportions. The body steamed gently in the heat as the birds pecked their way around it, the fetid smell of chicken feed mingling with the sulphurous whiff of smashed eggs. The pecking became indecorous as the hardest-working chicken, a champion amongst fowl, found an eyeball. Then another. The used condom, an equally irregular delicacy dropped amongst the sawdust, swiftly filleted and discarded.
Still the chickens pecked, pecked and pecked themselves sick.
By the time the body was found, it was unrecognisable, but there was no mistaking who it was.
And the chickens, they knew what it had been hiding, but had so effectively disposed of the evidence, almost no one would ever understand.
Chapter One
Wednesday, 17 April, 1996
Just before dawn
Lola shades her eyes, chasing any shadows further down the path. The sun is just beginning its aggressive climb over the hills to the east, shooting watercolours through the sky above the sea behind her. The Mediterranean is all flirtatious languor, despite the tensions a few degrees further north, where Israel’s border with Lebanon slopes abruptly beyond the kibbutz’s perimeter fence.
To the uneducated eye, it might seem as if the territory changes hands just past those sharp spikes of razor wire. As if it really is as simple as tracing out a line in the sand. When Lola first arrived, those metal loops and curls seemed to gleam far too malevolently. All the guard posts, all the hardware, it all felt too conspicuous and overblown. Wasn’t the kibbutz just a communal farm? A much-revered socialist idyll that didn’t exist anywhere else in the world? Why was there a fortified perimeter around the fields themselves, encircling nothing but bananas and avocadoes? A watchtower at the heavy steel entrance gates that only opened and closed for known faces or designated visitors? To say nothing of the steep hill of no-man’s land beyond the fence, before the red and white stripes of the Lebanese flag replaced the Israeli Star of David, often hard to pick out against the similar blue of the sky?
Now that buffer zone doesn’t feel nearly wide enough for the current tensions. In the six months since Lola arrived, there have been seismic changes to the political landscape. She remembers the moment round one of their campfires back in November when everyone else on the kibbutz started screaming. The news that the Israeli prime minister himself had been shot dead by an extremist from his own side reverberated not just around the country but around the world. When suicide bombings returned to the streets of Tel Aviv in the spring, it turned out a kibbutznik’s cousin had been one of those killed. And now missiles have been flying into Israel from over the border in Southern Lebanon for more than a week.
Lola knows when this particular round started, but still can’t pinpoint exactly why. There was an explanation – some allegedly accidental deaths on one side necessitated a response from the other. And so the tit-for-tat began. But up here, on her hallowed spot on the clifftop, she is so close to the border it feels impossible that life on the other side can be so opposed. That the simple matter of traversing a hillside can mean the difference between one way or another. Up here, with industrial-scale farming machinery positioned at every turn, the personalised trauma kits they carry at all times just seem like common sense, and not armour in case of attack.
And so it follows that daily life continues on the kibbutz, albeit punctuated by the regular rush to take cover in a bomb shelter. As the kibbutz isn’t just a communal farm. It’s a collective way of life. A successfully functioning community can’t just stop operations at will. The stakes are that high.
Lola sticks out her chin, as if to prove it to herself too. For the story of the land slowly undulating its way east, all the way to the high plains of the Golan and beyond into Syria, can’t fail to be forever part of her story now, even if it isn’t her true ancestral home. But still the white and blue of the Star of David fluttering in the distance remain ephemeral against the dawn light.
The dog noses at her calves, sniffing every available inch of bare skin. Lola reaches down to give her rough head a little pat before hurrying down the path to work.
They call them volunteers, her and others like her, come to live and work in these small farming communities for varying amounts of time while they figure out what they want to do with the rest of their lives. They call themselves that too, even though it doesn’t always reflect why they’re really there. Some believe in the project, some don’t, but none of it matters so long as they commit to the land where they live. Lola isn’t Jewish, but Sam most definitely is. And Sam’s been her best friend forever, through the dog days of puberty all the way to being a legal adult, now allegedly free to do whatever she pleases, so long as it does nothing other than demonstrate her unswerving commitment to the State of Israel.
Of course Lola was going to follow Sam out here, see if she could find a way to belong too. What else would she do? Her mother is completely obsessed with her half-sister, Holly. The only person in her family who ever seems to notice her is Richard. And no, she’s not going to call him Dad, even though her own disappeared when she was a baby. The truth is that Sam’s the only person Lola’s ever felt like she belongs with. Sometimes best friends are more than family. There’s a reason they are also known as soul mates. They’re partners. Especially when your real family is so toxic.
It turns out the kibbutz is a project with international appeal, to Jews and non-Jews alike. The rest of the volunteers come from all over the world and aren’t Jewish either. Dave arrived from deepest, darkest America, carrying two identical sets of clothes and a suitcase filled with books. Tom brought his surfboard all the way from Australia, only for it to become a sofa, propped up by the tree stumps next to their fire pit. And then there’s Andre and Johan. Joined at the hip, even if one is twice the height of the other. Their shared past in South Africa still isn’t clear to everyone, but that doesn’t matter either. Volunteering on a kibbutz is instant membership to a club where the only entry requirement is being in a certain place at a certain time. There’s a level of enigma that no one wants to acknowledge, as to do so would be to ask the unsayable, even the unthinkable. When all you need to do to belong is work, no one wants to give honest answers to questions about where they’ve really come from. Much less what they’re really looking for.
No wonder it’s so appealing. Even with missiles flying overhead. There’s an air of invincibility that comes with being part of a community so entrenched. When you want to belong to something, there’s no better way to do so than picking a side.
In exchange for room and board, the volunteers rise with the sun to tend the banana fields, to cultivate the greenhouses, to harvest the orchards – alongside those who choose this as their way of life forever. There’s indoor work too: washing and folding a community’s worth of laundry, preparing and cooking the three meals a day that are all eaten together in the shared dining room. It’s a window on a particular kind of utopia – can life truly be as simple as communal subsistence farming? As straightforward as a group commitment to the same piece of land, knowing that everyone in the circle has the same rights and rewards, even if they carry out different jobs? The months roll blissfully by while they are convinced that it is – until it’s not.
This is the only part of the thought Lola ignores as she hurries into the heart of the kibbutz. A volunteer who is late, who isn’t totally committed, has a marked card. Hardly a worthy volunteer. The dog trots a few paces ahead as if to remind her.
‘Hey, Lola. Wait up!’
She slows, catching her brow before it furrows. Tom is jogging over to meet her from one of the low-rise housing blocks that line the path.
‘Catching another sunrise, huh?’
She pulls off her bandana to fluff her hair at him. ‘You know me. I’m a sucker for the sunrise. From up on the clifftop too. It’s different every day.’
‘Even with gunpowder in the air, huh?’ Biba shies away as Tom reaches down to pet her.
‘Come on.’ Lola starts to walk again. ‘We’re going to be late.’
‘Like that’s ever bothered you before.’
She shoves him. ‘Listen, I’m never deliberately late.’
‘Right. I tell you what, if we were in Australia—’
‘I’d always be late?’ Lola parrots the end of his sentence. She’s heard this story a thousand times before. They’d all be convinced Tom was here on behalf of the Australian tourist board if it was feasible the Australians needed any more help getting people to visit. But no – Australians all seemed to be looking for a more tactile horizon. Something more tangible than their infinite red centre. Little wonder, Lola supposes, as otherwise they might have to confront the fact that much of their vast land, their so-called terra nullius, was anything but uninhabited when the British arrived to claim it for themselves. She starts to jog past the familiar outlines of the kibbutz kitchens and dining room.
‘Too right,’ says Tom. ‘There ain’t no sunrise like an Aussie sunrise—’
‘And it doesn’t smell of chicken shit either.’
‘Exactly.’ Tom smiles. ‘Hey, check you out. You’ve been listening after all. And there I was thinking I didn’t have any effect on you.’
Lola shoves him again. A small sigh escapes as she notes Biba disappearing in the opposite direction. ‘We can watch the sunset together later, if you want?’
Tom’s smile widens. ‘Like you’ve got anywhere better to be, huh.’
They pause in the courtyard, where the float trucks are idling, waiting for the last stragglers before heading to the banana fields and orchards further inland. Tom always seems to have a way of finding Lola, even though he works in the greenhouse, set back from the courtyard in the opposite direction. Behind him, she can see that Andre and Johan are already heading inside.
‘Don’t work too hard, OK?’ She re-ties her bandana. ‘I’ll see you at breakfast.’
His grin fades at the shouts from the group beckoning to Lola from the far float. She squeezes his arm before jogging away. She doesn’t need to turn to know he’s watching her take Fouad’s hand as he hauls her up on board.
*
Sunscreen is passed around as the float rattles past the orchards. The cherry pickers loom high and frozen between the fruit trees, marked out like hunched skeletons in the dawn light.
‘You miss a little,’ Fouad says, improbably blue eyes glass clear and twinkling in his dark face. ‘Right here.’ He points to his own nose. ‘You want to peel it like a banana?’
Lola stripes herself with a zinc stick, tucking a strand of fair hair behind her ear. She’s the only volunteer who works in the banana fields. In fact she’s basically the only kibbutznik. Moti, who is in charge of the bananas, runs command and control from the dining room rather than do any of the actual manual labour. Apparently he did plenty, once upon a time. Apparently he cultivated these fields from the ground up, when he was part of the group that founded the kibbutz itself many years ago. Now most of his team is made up of Druze Arabs who all come to work on the kibbutz from their village a few miles away. The wage is good – better, they say, than some jobs in the big cities across the north.
The volunteers can see this anomaly. Not everyone who works this land like it’s their own can also live on it. You don’t have to be Jewish to volunteer. But if you are Bedouin or Druze, or any of the other religions that account for the Arab citizens of Israel, it seems like you just get to live to work. Fouad may be an Israeli national, but he’s still an outsider in this particular community.
Lola knew about the friction between Israelis and Palestinians before she arrived. And she thought she understood the wider tensions with the Arab world in general – the only tranquil border Israel seems to have is with the sea. But Lola hadn’t grasped this particular nuance at all. She finds it even harder to understand now she’s living amongst it – up here in the north, there seem to be as many Arab villages as there are kibbutzim. To Lola, the warring sides seem more similar than different. To Lola, all this particular nuance does is prove it.
‘Better,’ Fouad says, reaching for the tube of zinc to mark his own face, bright stripe flashing neon against the brown skin. ‘See? Even I must do this.’
She smiles as the others laugh, cocking her head in expectation of another morning ritual. Fouad can tell the time to the nearest minute just by mapping the sun’s position in the sky on to the ground. It feels impossible, but he always gets it right. Of course it could be an elaborate feint, put on for her benefit – is one of the others signalling to him from behind her back? Lola finds that explanation as appealing as the trick itself.
‘What time is it?’
‘It is…’ He squints past the corrugated tin roof of the float at the shimmering sky. ‘Nine, no … ten minutes after five.’
A whoop goes up from the rest of the team as he beams at her.
‘You make us late again, Miss Lola.’
‘Only by a minute,’ she says, frowning down at her watch. By her count it’s by at least four. Even when her watch is fast she seems to lose track of the time. And she can ill afford to keep being late, much less make others late too. ‘What are we doing today? We’ll easily make that time up.’
‘Petrol,’ he replies, wrinkling his nose as the float turns down the track into the field itself.
She groans, already tasting the acrid smell. ‘Isn’t it too soon for petrol? It’s only April.’
Fouad waves a weathered hand at the thick rows of banana trees, overgrown as jungle canopy. ‘Already the trees are too big. They need more space to make flowers…’
He pauses to answer another question in rapid-fire Arabic. Lola’s mind fills with the purple pendulum flowers that have to form for the bananas to develop higher up the stem. These are plants only worth the fruit they produce. There are no fringe benefits in the banana fields.
‘You must count carefully, Miss Lola. We kill only one tree in five.’
Issam, Fouad’s deputy, jumps from the float with an armful of petrol guns, beckoning with his head that they all follow. He directs her down the nearest line of trees, planted with rigorous precision but now as unwieldy and aggressive as bindweed. Strapping a full plastic tank of petrol on to her back, Lola runs the hose arm with the gun on the end over her shoulder, feeling suddenly queasy. She must inject the chosen trees right at the base to kill them. Once they are withered, there will be more back-breaking work taking their corpses out.
She doesn’t know which is worse. The slow, sweaty administration of poison into healthy, thriving plants, or the bone-crunching excavation of their roots.
Lola turns back to the float for a hopeful moment, the steel of the injection gun already burning in her hand. Sometimes they are allowed to pair up, each walking the length of their allotted row on the inside lane so they can chat. Sometimes they can idle, massaging sore shoulders, giggling as they shake out cramping hands.
A shiver goes through her as she thinks it. It feels as forbidden as it is.
But the trees have closed ranks. Everyone has already disappeared.
Chapter Two
Wednesday, 17 April, 1996
8:30 a.m.
‘Nothing else for you today, Smurfette? Not even a soda?’
Jonny Murphy forces a smile as he hands George a fistful of shekels in exchange for his breakfast kebab. The menu postered on the wall next to the sizzling meat rotating on its spit screams of eighties Hollywood rather than a Jerusalem street-food stand. Knickerbocker glories for dessert. Hotcakes with butter and maple syrup. Even a banana split. Why would anyone choose pudding after eating an entire Jerusalem-mix kebab? It’s like expecting to have room for a whole packet of digestive biscuits after a full English.
‘You know no one in America actually watches The Smurfs at all? It’s that bad. Even English kids are starting to give it up.’
Jonny can’t stop his eyes rolling when he answers. George calls him Smurfette whenever he wears his red cap. Doesn’t matter that it is now bleached a mucky shade of brown. It was box-fresh red when Jonny arrived in Jerusalem last summer. And that seems to be all George can remember. Never mind that Jonny was able to reply to him in perfect Hebrew. The fact is, almost everyone in Israel speaks Jonny’s language as well as their own, even if it’s with the caveat that they’ve all learned it from naff cartoons. The American influence is that pervasive.
Jonny eyes the menu again, its laminate coating shining with grease. Maybe that’s also why George thinks advertising hotcakes with maple syrup after a large kebab seems like a good idea.
‘Does that mean you don’t want your extra English onions?’
Jonny peers over the counter into the steaming paper bag waiting in George’s weathered hand, eyeing the metal containers of chopped-up vegetables and other traditional Middle Eastern condiments in the tray below. He can’t see any crispy onions, either on his kebab or on the drip tray below the spit itself. He’s sure he’s the only customer around here who eats them. Let alone being the only customer around here who eats shawarma for breakfast.
Jonny likes to think he’s as native as they come. He has an Israeli mother. He speaks fluent Hebrew. He’s entitled to Israeli citizenship by birth, even though he was mainly raised in the UK. Not to mention the fact his father was apparently so Irish that his blood may as well have run green. But the truth is that no Israeli starts the day with a kebab. Much less covers the whole thing in onion scraps. It’s only strong Arabic coffee and an even stronger cigarette. The truth is that Jonny is trying just a little bit too hard.
‘Short-changing me and calling me Smurfette—’
‘Just the extra-hot chillies for you, then?’
Both men snort as Jonny reaches over for his kebab, dropping a couple of crumpled bank notes on the countertop.
‘You’ll be back for lunch?’ George fingers the money briefly before dropping it into the till.
‘If you’re lucky.’ Jonny dips his head into the heady aroma wafting from his overflowing paper bag. The slightly burned smell of spiced yoghurt on chicken just the right side of charred. No street corner in this part of Jerusalem’s Old City would smell right without it. He is pleasantly surprised to find a stray dog salivating at his feet rather than the usual cluster of skeletal cats. You deserve an extra piece just for that, Jonny thinks, nudging a couple of juicy morsels over the lip of the bag and on to the ground. Round here, the price of survival is that high.
‘You’ll be the lucky one. I’ll change the sauce just for you.’
Jonny straightens up as George clangs the till shut.
‘Not on my account, buddy. Two shawarmas a day is my limit. I have to draw the line somewhere.’
‘OK, Smurfette.’ George grins. ‘Dinner it is. I’ll make some more onions, too.’
Jonny hides his grimace in his kebab rather than say anything else, touching a finger to his visor by way of goodbye. Smurfette. It’s enough to make him tuck the long strands of fair hair plastered down his neck back under his cap with his free hand.
Jonny would get himself a new cap if he wasn’t so superstitious. But this one has been just too lucky. He’s been wearing it since he arrived, even showing up for his first day on the job with it already jammed on to his head. Israel is a country where everyone’s head is covered most of the time – the Jewish kipah, the Palestinian keffiyeh, and of course, the military-issue hard hat. So what else could a journalist wear other than a completely neutral cap? Especially a cub reporter like Jonny. One who can’t afford to put a foot wrong.
Jonny pulls down the frayed visor as if to prove it to himself. For this cap has successfully helped hide every emotion that has threatened to cross his face in the line of duty. The shock and disbelief when the Israeli prime minister was assassinated by one of his own people. The horror and pain of last month’s terrorist attack in the heart of Tel Aviv. The alarm at the rapid escalation of the Israeli military’s bombing campaign in southern Lebanon since it was announced last week. They are calling it the Grapes of Wrath. Except every single rocket Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia launches into northern Israel seems to elicit an aerial bombardment in response far bigger than just a bunch of fucking grapes.
Jonny yanks at the visor as his own opinions threaten to take hold, reminds himself to remain objective. The journalist’s sacred oath. And Jonny’s had to apply it to plenty of painful personal discoveries he’s made over the last year. He pulls his cap down even lower, tries to block them out, but just succeeds in showering more of his kebab on to the ground. This time it’s the army of stray cats that take the undeserved spoils. By the time he pushes open the swing door to his office just outside the Old City walls, it’s more than his breakfast that’s left a bad taste in his mouth.
The thrum of activity hits Jonny as soon as he walks into the newsroom, crumpling his paper bag into the nearest bin. The Jerusalem offices of the International Tribune newspaper are always busy. The creation of the State of Israel in 1948 was an international matter to start with, and it seems like almost everyone still has a political stake in the place. The Trib set up shop shortly afterwards and has since established itself as the region’s definitive global voice – at least that’s what its masthead would have its readership believe. Jonny snorts softly as he takes in the black letterhead plastered in huge letters above the door. For a profession that lives and dies on objectivity, news journalism’s opinion of itself is about as subjective as it comes.
He pauses, taking in the shiny black lettering as if he’s seeing it for the first time all over again. For someone so young and inexperienced, Jonny was lucky to get his foot in this particular door – but isn’t good journalism always a matter of both luck and judgement? He’s a smart kid, entitled to both British and Israeli citizenship, with associated connections to boot. He speaks fluent Hebrew, a smattering of Arabic, and is brimming with questions about the place, desperate to deepen his own understanding of the complexity of his roots. Journalism is a profession built on getting the right people to answer the right questions. Someone like Jonny is surely the most natural choice that any news editor in this city could make. Activity in this particular newsroom went nuclear when former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was killed late last year. Since the Israelis launched Operation Grapes of Wrath … well, let’s just say Jonny has had an equally intense baptism of fire. And all it has done is made him hungry for more.
Dropping into his chair, Jonny shifts his gaze to the map of Israel and surrounds that he has pinned on the low wall separating his work station from his editor’s. The so-called Green Line, picked out in dots around the perimeter of the West Bank. Disputed Territory, he reads from the map’s key in the bottom corner. He wishes for at least the eightieth time he had brought a few more maps with him from home in London, even though he hardly needs to remind himself that the various factions here would have labelled them with a range of different names. His eyes wander the patchwork of villages and towns, listed in both Hebrew and Arabic. Jonny could lose himself for hours in this map – from the north’s ancient city of Nazareth, where the angel Gabriel apparently told Mary she was going to bear a child, past Jerusalem to the historic town of Bethlehem, where the child himself was born. Once upon a time, the three wise men apparently hiked directly between the two. Not on this map, with all these dots in the way.
Hunching forward, Jonny traces out the solid black line separating northern Israel from Lebanon with a finger. It’s been two weeks since the Israelis began their aerial bombardment, and still the rockets are flying. Israeli firepower dwarfs that of the Hezbollah, yet the missiles continue regardless. This particular paper, with its right-leaning international executive management in America, isn’t going to spend any time thinking about why. So neither is he. Which is a shame, since he spends most of his time wondering about the nuances of exactly that.
Jonny clasps his hands together, folds them into a toy gun. This conflict is so loaded with different perspectives, applying weapons to it feels impossibly crude. Bang bang you’re dead. Like it’s as simple as a game.
‘Shawarma for breakfast again, huh.’ His editor stands up suddenly from behind the low wall.
Jonny jumps, forgetting to apologise for daydreaming in his haste to check his T-shirt for scraps – let alone reply in anything other than English. Since he arrived in Jerusalem, he always prefers to speak Hebrew if he can. But Allen’s English is almost better than his. The Trib is international as its masthead. ‘How did you know?’
‘You stink.’ Allen wafts a hand in the air with a smile.
‘I do not,’ Jonny mumbles, reaching for the half-full bottle of water still open on his desk. He doesn’t stop to consider whether it’s actually his.
‘And that’s mine,’ Allen replies, just as Jonny takes a full gulp. ‘But don’t worry. Looks like you need it a lot more than me.’
‘Sorry.’ Jonny winces as he swallows. The water is warm. The bad taste is still lingering. ‘Thanks, I mean. And sorry. I should have checked.’
But Allen is already concentrating on something else.
‘We need to update all the data. The statistics on the rocket attacks. Who, what, when and where, etc.’
Jonny leans forward, flicks on his computer. ‘I can do that—’
‘No, you can’t,’ Allen interrupts. ‘That’s the problem.’
‘What do you mean?’ Jonny frowns. He knows most of it is hidden under his hat.
‘There have been no civilian deaths as a result of the rocket attacks into Israel. Plenty of damage and injuries, but no one has been killed. While on the Lebanese side of the border…’
‘Ah.’ Jonny sees it now. ‘So won’t the statistics just make that clear?’
‘No.’ Allen’s eyes bore into his. ‘Because that might read like we are making an altogether different point.’
Jonny considers this. The rocket attacks are a problem. Just because they haven’t killed anyone in Israel yet, doesn’t mean that they won’t. To say nothing of the damage and injuries already caused to communities across the north, its many Arab villages included. Israel says its subsequent air raids and shelling are necessary to stop the rockets for good. But at the expense of the dozens of lives they have already claimed in southern Lebanon…? To say nothing of the displacement of thousands of civilians.
‘Well,’ he begins, ‘isn’t that point equally valid?’
Allen snorts. ‘Of course it is. What do you take me for? That’s exactly it. It’s more than equally valid. It’s a story we should be telling. It’s the kind of story that should define the Trib. This particular escalation in the conflict is objectively one-sided. We can’t tell that story in a table of statistics. We need a balanced investigation, with voices from both sides.’
‘Can I at least have a go?’ The question is out before Jonny can stop it.
‘Ha!’ Allen snorts. ‘I should have known those would be the first words out of your mouth.’
‘Please.’ Jonny tries not to sound like he’s begging. But the truth is, that’s exactly what he’s doing. He longs not just to explain the conflict but to truly inhabit its complexities. In many ways, he’s living proof of it – raised in the UK rather than Israel after his mother was disowned by the rest of her family for having the nerve to fall in love with – worse, reproduce with – a Catholic.
Marrying out, she had once explained, with a pained expression on her face – it looked to Jonny as if the words themselves tasted as bitter as they sounded. Apparently one of the many legacies of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust was the urgent need to rebuild the Jewish population as substantively as possible – a load of big numbers and words that Jonny didn’t understand at the time and has never been able to reflect on properly since, due to the equal extremities of behaviour his father was said to have displayed on their arrival back in the UK. Not that Jonny has ever had a chance to ask him about that. There’s still so much Jonny doesn’t know about his past. The need to fill in the gaps, to try to understand, is all-consuming.
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Allen sounds anything but conciliatory. ‘I can’t just commission an investigation into the ethics of this particular military operation when I’ve just been instructed from on high to update the statistics. Much less commission it from a cub reporter. What are you, nineteen? Spare me.’
Jonny pulls at his cap as if it can hide the blush creeping up his neck.
‘Actually I’m nearly twenty-one,’ he replies, immediately wishing he hadn’t. It just draws attention to the fact that if his Israeli passport had actually translated to residency too, he’d still be deep in the mandatory army conscription that awaits all Israeli teenagers when they come of age. The place may be the most militarised nation on earth relative to its size, but it’s in large part made up of kids holding guns.
‘Sorry, anyway,’ he adds hurriedly. ‘Is there anything else I can do?’
‘You can make the calls and update the statistics!’ Allen roars at him, before stalking away towards the graphics desk.
But Jonny is smiling as he reaches for the telephone on his desk.
For he knows exactly who he is going to call. He hardly needs the excuse of another rocket attack. And when Allen finds out about this particular connection, the conversation is going to get a whole lot more interesting.
Chapter Three
Wednesday
8:30 a.m.
Lola wipes banana sap onto her shorts as she climbs down from the float. Almost every item of clothing she brought with her to the kibbutz is indelibly stained by now. But those stains are a badge of honour. This community is only as strong as its connection to the land. Its outsiders need to work doubly hard to prove their worth. Lola’s messy clothes are in her favour.
She rolls her head on her neck, already stiff from lugging her petrol tank around the banana fields for the past two hours. The queasiness hits again with another waft from the jerry cans and guns stacked in the middle of the corrugated floor. They’re back on the kibbutz and supposed to fuel up with a hearty breakfast. But food is the last thing on her mind.
‘Aren’t you coming too?’ She eyes Fouad and Issam, still lounging on the benches to the float’s either side.
Fouad wags a finger at her. ‘Not today. After breakfast, you will see why.’
He slaps a playful hand on his thigh, grinning across at Issam.
Lola stalls. Everyone is invited into the kibbutz’s communal dining room during the working day. That’s the whole point of the place. All meals are eaten together – breakfast, lunch and dinner. It’s one aspect of communal life that takes no getting used to. When is eating alone any fun, much less cooking for one? And on a kibbutz, there are precious few cooking facilities anywhere outside of the main, industrially equipped kitchens. There’s always more food than you can shake a stick at in the dining room. It’s the one location that just screams ‘welcome’.
‘You’re not hungry?’
‘Of course,’ Fouad cackles, rubbing his stomach. ‘But for something else. You will see.’
Issam jumps down from the float with a wink, removing his petrol-stained T-shirt to safely spark up the cigarette dangling from his lips. The flash of his washboard abs sends Lola hurrying away, trying not to look.
She knows all the Arab Israeli workers are welcome during the working day too – she’s eaten breakfast and lunch with them countless times. Except she can’t shake the feeling that they don’t always feel that way.
Tom calls out to her as she pushes open the dining room’s heavy swing doors. He’s already pitched up at their usual table underneath the nearest windows, larking about with Andre and Johan. Those three all work in the greenhouse together – endlessly planting, weeding, sorting and picking. Managing tray upon tray of identical-looking seedlings, the only things flourishing under the sweltering heat of the glass.
The rest of the kibbutzniks tend to sit away from the volunteers. Lola can already see Oren, the manager of the greenhouses, glowering at the boys from his seat a few tables away. Tom and Andre are cackling wildly at something, hands waving in circles over their heads. But Oren doesn’t have much of a sense of humour when it comes to his greenhouses. He’s a founder member of the kibbutz too. And it’s his greenhouses that produce the hundreds and thousands of olives that the kibbutz profits from all over the world. Come to think of it, the only joke Lola has ever heard Oren laugh at is the one about the place being built on olives, not milk or honey. And it’s not even funny.
Nodding back at Tom, Lola grabs herself a plate from the stack next to the battalion of dishes set up side by side in the centre of the room. Industrial-sized trays steaming with heaps of boiled eggs. Vat after vat of fresh chopped salad – a neat dice of tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers, sprinkled with curls of parsley. Large tubs of harissa, both the fiery, red kind and the mellower coriander-green. Bowls of soft cheese and yoghurt. Loaves of sliced bread. Piles of avocadoes. Pyramids of squashy green pomelos.
But Lola’s stomach flips again. The giant kibbutz dining room suddenly feels like a shop window. Its bounty may be on full display, but the reality inside is never quite the same.
She makes herself grab an egg and a couple of pieces of plain, sliced bread.
‘That’s hardly going to get you through till lunchtime,’ Tom fusses, making a face as she sits down. ‘Christ, babe. What the hell have you been doing all morning?’
‘Sorry.’ Lola pulls at her vest. ‘It’s petrol. I know it stinks. We have to inject some of the plants to make sure they actually die. There’s way too many of them already.’
Andre snorts from across the table, fork clattering. ‘Right. It’s that easy, hey.’
‘Not really.’ Lola starts to peel her egg. ‘How’s the greenhouse?’
‘Rancid,’ Andre continues. ‘Hot as balls already. You think you smell bad. Try getting up close and personal with this lot. With a hangover too.’ He jerks his fork at Johan and Tom.
‘Has Sam eaten yet?’ She twists round, searching the open entrance to the kitchens at the front of the room. Sam is the only volunteer who works there. At first, Lola wished they had been placed together. But the relentless cooking and cleaning of the kitchens would be far too claustrophobic for Lola, even with Sam by her side. Lola has spent most of her life waiting on other people. Conforming to their expectations, if only in the hope that they might change. Out in the open air, deep in the banana fields, she feels freer than she ever has before.
Johan shakes his head. ‘She’s still boiling eggs. Like there aren’t already enough on the table. And Farid isn’t even here yet to crack the bloody whip.’
A shiver runs down Lola’s spine at the mention of Farid’s name. The survival of this particular kibbutz is founded on three industries: Moti runs the bananas. Oren is master of the olives. And Farid is in charge of the chicken houses.
But unlike the other two men, Farid isn’t a founder member of the kibbutz. He’s a Druze Arab, the only outsider in charge of a division.
When Lola has asked about it before, Tom has always pointed out that chickens are the subsistence part of this particular farm. They pretty much look after themselves. Which even came first, the chicken or the egg? he laughs. Ha-ha, very funny. The fact is it’s only the bananas and olives that actually turn a profit.
But Lola knows Tom is just being petty – for reasons she’d prefer not to think about too long. He seems to get jealous of every male Lola interacts with other than him. The fact is that chickens produce both meat and eggs, help fertilise the soil too. Lola has already pointed out this is a saving – profit by a different name. To Lola, that just means the chickens are worth far more than crops that are only good for one thing. And Farid manages most of it alone.
Another anomaly it seems only she can see. In a community where everyone and everything is supposed to sit on the same plane, these hierarchies hide in plain sight.
‘He’s not here yet?’ she asks lightly, as if she hasn’t already given the dining room the once-over. ‘Weird. It must be busy—’
Tom cuts her off with a snort. ‘Busy with birds, hey.’
Andre and Johan roar with laughter. Lola tries not to blush, starts to make herself a sandwich, wrapping the bread in between two paper napkins.
‘Babe. Are you alright?’ Tom’s fork stills on the way to his mouth.
‘Fine, fine.’ She tries to brush it off. ‘The petrol has just been making me feel sick all morning. I know I’ll need to eat something later though.’
She shoves the sandwich into her pocket, pushing her chair away from the table. In the same moment she realises Dave hasn’t arrived in the dining room yet either. He works in the cowshed, further up the hill from the chicken houses. All the animal warehouses are deliberately built as far away from the heart of the kibbutz as possible. Their float must just be late picking them up. But she can’t wait any longer. She knows she has to get back to work.
‘Have fun,’ she says, walking away before Tom can say anything else.
*
Fouad and Issam laugh and joke in Arabic as they head back out to the banana fields. Lola smiles even though she doesn’t understand a word, painting more zinc on to her face. Another four hours of back-breaking petrol injections are ahead, but Lola doesn’t mind. Out here, deep in the banana fields, all she really needs to understand are the plants.
She feels disoriented barely two steps back into her lane. The trees loom tall on her either side, their thick canopy overhead acting like a greenhouse, already heavy with heat. More banana sap, cloying and sticky, stains her fingers as she hunches at the base of the next condemned tree, driving in her gun to deliver her poison injection. The stench rises almost immediately. She thinks about how nothing grows properly without its own space.
A sudden crackle of leaves snaps her back to the present as Fouad emerges from the adjacent lane with a bunch of dwarf bananas in his outstretched hand.
‘Bapples,’ he says, beaming at her frown. ‘See? Half banana, half apple. Today, this is our breakfast.’
Lola reaches out for the fruit, turning it over and over in her fingers. A banana so small and fat it could be an apple in a different light?
‘Try it, yalla.’ Fouad takes it back to peel for her. ‘We make as an experiment…’
‘But how?’ Lola wonders.
‘Mix the apple plant with the banana. Why not?’ Fouad munches on her fruit, shaking the rest of the bunch at her to snap off another. ‘Alhamdullilah. Delicious!’
Lola feels herself blushing as Fouad fixes her with those eyes, jewel-bright in his dark face.
‘Eat, habibti, come on. Do you like it?’
She reaches over, plucking and peeling quickly. The banana – or apple – tastes powdery and sharp on her tongue.
‘Very clever,’ Lola replies, swallowing. She can’t bring herself to say delicious. There’s none of the sweetness of a banana, much less the juice of an apple. But the fact he’s brought them for her makes them easier to stomach.
Fouad continues through another mouthful. ‘We are trying out different things to show Moti. These plants, they are smaller, they make flowers even in winter. And they make fruit no one has ever seen before. Think how much he can make from that.’ He cackles to himself.
‘Does he know yet?’ Lola makes herself swallow down another bite.
Fouad wags a finger at her. ‘Only when they are perfect, when we know he can sell them. Otherwise he will just be cross, say we are wasting his time.’
Lola folds the banana skin between her fingers, picturing Moti’s inevitable fury. If it isn’t his idea, it doesn’t fly until he has made it his own. What if it turned out Fouad and Issam were better at turning a profit than Moti himself? That could never be allowed to happen. In a community as tight as this, its commanders can’t afford to be seen as anything other than in complete control.
‘I’m sure he won’t,’ she says lamely.
Fouad’s snort turns into a smile. ‘You are too nice, Miss Lola. You think the best of everyone.’
Her blush fades cold as he cocks his head, searching the glare of the sky, raising a hand to silence her before she can ask him why.
And then she hears it.
A low, unmistakable whistling, keening through the sky with the thrum of a distant jet engine. Lola throws herself face down, instantly terrified – doubly so because of the slosh of petrol against her back. Is she expected to take cover while she is literally covered in ignition fuel? Now comes the dull thud, reverberating somewhere further inland – south, right on the coast, maybe?
Cries dart back and forth overhead in Arabic, but Fouad has disappeared by the time she’s raised her head. She shouts weakly after him, soil gritty in her mouth. He’s going to leave her alone, when that can only have been another Katyusha rocket? Another whistle now, lower. She’s sure she can feel the ground vibrate as the missile swoops and lands, closer this time, the very air around her curiously distended by its thud.
The mantra she’s heard around the dining room every mealtime for the last two weeks clatters round in Lola’s mind. We are too close to the border itself to be hit, the kibbutzniks insist, laughing and pointing at the short, steep hill separating Israel from Lebanon. These rockets, they are the crudest of crude weapons. They can’t be programmed to clear the hill and then land immediately on the other side. What else do you expect from an enemy so weak?
Even when one of these crudest of crude weapons did manage to breach the perimeter, the kibbutzniks were defiant, insisting on escaping the air-raid shelters for hasty smokes on its breezeblock roof. Lola quivers as the mournful wail of the air-raid siren rents the air, suddenly longing to be huddled with the other volunteers in their thin sleeping bags on the concrete floor, as they were just a few short nights ago.
They said it could never happen until it did. And now they couldn’t be more exposed, all alone in the fields in the open air, explosive charge still crackling all around them.
Relief floods over her with the buzz of a radio. Fouad’s face appears between the plants in the adjacent lane.
‘Come, Miss Lola,’ he urges her with an outstretched arm. ‘We go back, now. Come on. Stay on the ground.’
‘I don’t understand,’ she murmurs, shivering involuntarily as a large, cool hand closes around hers. ‘There’s no bomb shelter this far out in the fields, is there?’
‘We have to go back to the kibbutz,’ he repeats, tugging her towards him. ‘It is an order.’
He folds his body around her as a third whistle tears overhead, tangling with the rise and fall of the siren. She tenses for the thud, Fouad’s heart banging against her cheek.
‘We can’t move,’ she mumbles into his vest. ‘If we can’t get to a shelter then—’
‘We must,’ he growls, letting go of her hand to wrap his other arm around her. ‘That is the order.’
