Operation Scheherazade
by Sinbad
Chapter 3
Roger Taylor returned to his desk in the British Council offices after his week's holiday. As expected there was a backlog of work to catch up on. He was classed as a minor diplomat, though his job had nothing to do with politics or diplomacy. He was involved in cultural exchanges and educational scholarships to the United Kingdom. And the pile of papers on his desk were applications from Jordanian students to study at British Universities, hoping to be awarded scholarship money that was in Roger's gift. He picked the first from the pile and began work.
He was interrupted an hour later by the secretary he shared with a colleague. She brought in a cup of tea, and a message. A phone call had arrived for him the previous Friday while he was on holiday. The caller had left no name, just a cryptic message: “The dinar is important.” Roger's secretary didn't understand it, and neither did Roger, who had forgotten about the dinar his son had given him and the boy's account of the gift from the King. He puzzled over the meaning of the message for a minute. It seemed to relate to the significance of the solidity of the Jordanian currency for economic stability generally in the Middle East. Several commentators were commending the stable economy of the little kingdom and Roger thought perhaps the message had something to do with this. Unable to draw any inference from it, he dropped the matter and returned to his workload.
At the end of his first day back at work he was tired and a little bad-tempered. He returned home to find his son had his school friend Chris with him and they were playing noisily in Ricky's bedroom. He could hear Chris calling at the top of his voice “Ricky's friends with Royalty!” and peals of laughter from both the boys. Roger's irritation, finding that he was not to enjoy a peaceful relaxing evening at home with his wife, was suddenly forgotten as an invisible hand clutched at his heart and he stopped in his tracks. He had remembered “Give this to your father. It's important.” And “The dinar is important.” Could it be? He pulled his wallet out of the inside pocket of his sports jacket. Several Five dinar notes and some Tens, but no One dinar. What had happened to that money? And he remembered: he'd spent it when the family had broken their journey at the Ma'an rest house, the cool, quiet cafe where a weary but wealthy traveller could enjoy a glass of fresh squeezed fruit juice and a welcome rest before continuing the journey. Roger had paid for the family's refreshments and must have used the dinar note his son had given him.
What was important about that dinar? He interrupted his son's play and asked him.
Ricky couldn't remember anything particular about the money except that the King had said it was important, but he did remember it had writing on it. And he claimed his father had not spent the dinar at the rest house, but at the souk in the village buying oranges for the next leg of the journey. That was quite possible – he'd forgotten about shopping in the souk. Roger's heart sank. He had no idea why the King would pass him an important message, but he was now convinced that that was what had happened. It was a difficult concept to assimilate. Didn't the King have a whole government department to communicate with the British? And the British had an Embassy full of staff to receive that communication. So why did he personally send a message in such an odd way to him of all people?
And he knew he'd misjudged his son, too. So, he thought, how was he to recover the situation? One thing he could easily do, and before leaving Ricky's bedroom he turned to him and said “Thank you for telling me about the King. And I'm proud of you. You did very well.” Ricky seemed to grow an inch as he watched, and Roger smiled to himself as he closed the bedroom door behind him.
He promised himself he would try to give his son more of his time and attention. But right now there was a more pressing problem: what was the message that the banknote represented? And if the King wanted to get a message to him, why not just pick up a phone? Clearly someone on his behalf had phoned the second message through to his office. He pondered what he knew. The King had given a banknote to Ricky, and told him to give it to his father and that it was important. Ricky had done just that but Roger hadn't taken it seriously. Then someone had phoned the office with just the message 'The dinar is important'. Perhaps this was to reinforce the original message. But what was the original message? If only Roger could learn what was written along the edge of the money. But he'd spent the note. Would it still be with the market trader in Ma'an? Should he drive down there and try to retrieve it? Yes, there was no alternative.
The next morning he went in to work as usual, but only to officially take the day off. He didn't tell anyone except Daphne, the secretary, what he was planning to do, but he gave her a shortened version of the events and swore her to secrecy. And he left the office leaving her looking bemused.
He filled the fuel tank of his Land Rover at the Petrol Station on the Third Circle, and bought two big bottles of water there. His next stop was at Ricky's school where he took a surprised boy away from the care of his equally surprised teachers without any explanation. He put Ricky in the front passenger seat of the car, then he hung his suit jacket in the back of the vehicle, removed his tie and set off into the desert. The King's Highway is the main road that runs south through Jordan all the way to Aqaba. There are villages on the road but mostly it runs straight through mile after mile of desert. And Roger drove fast.
They arrived at Ma'an mid-afternoon, the hottest part of the day. Both of them were well acclimatised to the oppressive dry heat of Jordan, and had made the journey bearable by opening the vents under the windscreen of the big vehicle, and the ventilators in the roof, and sometimes opening the windows too, although the wind and noise then made conversation impossible. The Land Rover had no radio so much of the journey passed in silence, after the initial conversation initiated by Ricky:
“Where are we going? And why did you take me out of school? You've never taken me out of school.”
Roger was expecting the question but wasn't prepared with an answer so he did the best he could.
“We're going back to Ma'an to try to get back the money the King gave you. I'm sorry, Ricky, I've messed up. I didn't believe you when you told me about it and I spent the dinar, but it probably was important, very important, and I need to try to recover from my mistake. Forgive me?”
Ricky's face scrunched up and he reached across and hugged his Dad's shoulders, avoiding obstructing his freedom to drive. He rested his head on the nearest shoulder and said
“Of course, Dad, It's okay. It is pretty incredible, isn't it?”
Ricky sat back in his seat and Roger turned a relieved and grateful smile on his son. He reached across and gripped the boy's knee. “I love you, Richard.”
“I love you too, Dad.”
They lapsed into silence which lasted the rest of the journey except when Ricky suddenly said “I need to pee!” and Roger pulled up so his son could stand at the roadside and pee against the wheel. When Ricky finished, his Dad took advantage of the stop and took his turn at washing the wheel.
At Ma'an, Roger asked Ricky to lead the way. He knew his son had a way of noticing things and storing them away, and he hoped Ricky would be able to remember the stall from which they'd bought a bag of oranges.
Sure enough, Ricky took them both straight to a table piled high with different fruits, with a rickety canopy protecting the produce from the sun and a man with a big moustache and string holding up his trousers, weighing bananas on a makeshift scale and using stones for counterweights. To Ricky this seemed right and proper, the normal way of buying food. Roger on the other hand wondered how anyone knew what the weight of the stones was, and thus what the cost of the fruit was.
When the customer walked away with her bananas, Roger smiled at the shopkeeper and offered him a cigarette, which in his experience usually broke the ice. Then in halting Arabic he began to try to explain that he wanted a banknote back that he'd spent there the previous day. His Arabic was quite unequal to the task and that quickly became evident to both of them. And the Arab stopped him in good schoolboy English: “Tell me in English, I think I'll understand you better in English.” Roger, whose working life was spent in the Education field, was amazed once again at the high standard of education that village people received, and particularly at their relative mastery of English. The West in general, and Britain in particular, were not held universally in high regard in Jordan but he found once again that this had not prevented schools from teaching English to a good standard, and neither did it prevent individuals from being unfailingly courteous and polite to Westerners.
In English, Roger was able to make himself understood. The shopkeeper's eyes opened wider in surprise and puzzlement at Roger's request to look through his one dinar notes for one particular note that he wanted back, but he made no objection, only watching carefully as Roger flipped through a stack of perhaps fifty notes, turning each one over, looking for the writing. It was Ricky who reached out and slid a note out of the pile waiting to be checked.
“I saw the edge of the writing and I knew that was the one.” Roger ruffled his son's hair and they exchanged a grin. He opened his wallet, took out a five dinar note and offered it to the shopkeeper in exchange for the one. The man's face lit up and he smiled broadly and shook hands with Roger and pinched Ricky's cheek. Ricky offered a faltering smile in response, he knew it was meant as a gesture of affection but it hurt, and he couldn't understand how the Arab children put up with it.
By this time hot and tired, Roger treated his son to a meal at the rest house, where after ordering food, Roger had coffee and Ricky had Seven-Up, and the proprietor brought them a dish of sickly sweet Turkish Delight squares in pink and white, covered in icing sugar. To Ricky it tasted of the smell of violets and he didn't like it, but he knew that etiquette demanded that he eat some and dutifully he did so. He would have much preferred the sweets that the local children ate – the wonderful orange-brown sheet with the texture of leather and as tough as cardboard that you ripped a piece off with your teeth and then chewed. It was made of dried and pressed apricots and it tasted good.
Their food arrived, probably an hour after they ordered it – a whole roast chicken and a big bowl of rice with roasted pine nuts sprinkled through it. Ricky loved the pine nuts in the rice, but as always, he was amazed at being expected to eat a whole chicken between them. His father would have to eat most of it, Ricky only wanted a leg. Roger sliced a leg and a big portion of breast onto Ricky's plate so he tucked in as best he could. His father had the banknote on the table and was puzzling over it and eating at the same time. Neither of them could read Arabic script; Roger was intending to show it to Daphne at the office who was Jordanian and should be able to help.
Ricky remembered a wedding celebration. One of the staff at the British Council got married and the Taylors were invited as honoured guests. It was a village wedding and the whole village was involved. It took place in a field of poppies and all the children of the village were there and wanted to involve Ricky in their games. The language barrier defeated them eventually and Ricky returned to his father's side. A meal had been provided and a whole chicken was roasted for each guest, including Ricky. He remembered being dazed by the whole experience, so foreign, but being greatly impressed by the determination of their hosts to make them welcome and to ensure they enjoyed themselves. It was one of many episodes in Ricky's young life that informed his view that the Jordanian people were kind and hospitable. He always felt very safe in Jordan, safer than he did in England.
After they had eaten as much of the chicken as Roger could manage, they used the rest house's spotlessly clean conveniences and set off on their way home. By this time it was well into the evening and Roger realised they would not be able to complete the journey that night. As he drove he pondered the problem. More than once he almost turned back to Ma'an. He didn't know whether the rest house offered hotel accommodation but he could ask. But he didn't turn back, he wanted to keep going – he was feeling guilty that he hadn't warned his wife about being home late and having Ricky with him. He hoped she would turn up at the school to collect Ricky at the end of the school day, and be told that his father had taken him early that morning. Whether that would calm her anxiety he didn't know. But he wanted to get home as quickly as possible.
He remembered a trip out to the desert some months previously. Guided by one of the Council drivers, he had joined a party heading out to one of the ruined castles in the desert left behind by the Crusaders. And on the way back they had stopped at a hunting lodge overnight. He wondered if he might be able to find that hunting lodge again.
Ricky was asleep in the passenger seat when Roger turned off the King's Highway onto a flint and sand track that he hoped was the one he was looking for. He drove, much more slowly but still fast enough to leave a big cloud of dust behind him, along this track for at least an hour, knowing all the time that if he had chosen the wrong track it would be an hour back to the road before he could attempt another track. He was making emergency plans in his mind about sleeping overnight in the Land Rover. Ricky could lie out on the back seat and Roger would have to sleep sat upright in the driver's seat. But the night would get very cold and they had no warm clothes or blankets. He would have to find the hunting lodge.
Eventually the Land Rover's lights showed a building in the distance and Roger breathed a sigh of relief. He pulled up beside a very large single storey log cabin, built on stilts so that it was a foot off the ground. Ricky woke up disoriented and Roger calmed him by explaining where they were. He helped the boy out of the car and they walked up the steps.
There are a number of these hunting lodges in the Jordanian desert. They are sturdy but basic shelters that are used by hunting parties and unoccupied between times. There's no running water or facilities of any kind, but just a plain wooden structure, table and chairs in the middle and bed frames around the outside, but these lodges were usually stocked with blankets and paraffin pressure lanterns.
Roger and Ricky opened the door gingerly and were relieved to find this lodge unoccupied. They went inside leaving the door open because it was pitch black inside. Roger found a Tilley lantern and a bottle of methylated spirits to prime it. He had his own supply of matches with his cigarettes. Out on the porch in the beam of the Land Rover's headlights, he soaked the priming wick with meths and positioned it on the generator tube below the globe of the lamp. He lit the wick and watched as the flame ran up the generator tube, heating it sufficiently to vaporise the paraffin inside. The flame licked over the mesh mantle of the lamp, causing it to glow erratically. As the wick burned low, the meths exhausted, he pumped air into the fuel reservoir to pressurise it and then opened the valve to allow the paraffin to flow. With a pop the mantle burst into bright white light, then dimmed and brightened again a couple of times until it settled into steady light and a low hiss as the fuel escaped the jet and mixed with air before burning in the mantle. Not for the first time, Roger admired the simplicity and efficiency of the design. He took the lamp inside and hung it on a hook in the centre of the room. Tilley lamps give off a lot of heat and the cold night air was gradually banished from inside the wooden building. Roger turned off the lights of the Land Rover and locked it up. Back in the hut he found the blankets, enough for a party of ten or more, and used a few to make up a makeshift bed for Ricky and one for himself. Ricky tumbled into the bed and was asleep again almost immediately, but Roger, after extinguishing the paraffin lamp, lay on his bed of blankets for some time listening to the silence and occasional sounds of the desert and worrying.
He still had no idea what was going on. He didn't know what the writing on the banknote was, or even if the writing was a message at all. All he did know was that the banknote was important. Important to whom? To him? To the King? To Jordan? To Britain, perhaps? Even to the world? Daphne would be able to tell him what the writing said, perhaps he'd know better then. He fell asleep.