Other People's Houses

by Hilary McPhee

  In Cortona in mid December, I opened the shutters to sunlight bouncing off the snow-covered roof of the church opposite. The lanes and the Via Santa Margherita were deep in snow and impassable even on foot, so I worked and made marmalade for Christmas presents, remembering the recipe my mother and I had followed forever. The apartment smelled like home. When the snow sweepers cleared the steps, I picked my way through the street cats, now fed by old women and puffed up to twice their summer size, and bought many small jars at the charity shop.

  The next afternoon, the snow plough had cleared the way, so I walked in freezing wind with Nella and Livia, the wife of the commander of Cortona’s carabinieri, along the Roman road through chestnut woods and snow drifts. Glorious. We went at Nella’s rapid pace, rugged up in hats with flaps, and heavy snow jackets. I insisted Nella and Livia speak only Italian, so I could listen to them. We sped along for an hour, and Nella fell on the ice twice but bounced back with no fuss. She hated being asked if she was okay.

  The next night the wind was howling, so Nella picked me up in her old car to go down the hill to the Palazzone for supper. There I was to give Lyndall a lesson in using an iPod, which was my connection to the ABC and to all the music I downloaded before I left home. Nella announced she was already out of petrol, so we must roll down to the self-serve. That night, the bowsers would not take cash. Nella collared two ragazzi and ordered them to help. They were courteous, and tried their best and failed. I tried my card and it worked, dammit.

  My daughter Sara and Peter, her partner, visited me on their way to an art residency in a castle in Switzerland. She was to return to Cortona for Christmas. Peter, who doesn’t much care for Christmas, would stay on in the studio. James was somewhere in Colombia, heading for Nicaragua; Ellie was with her family at home. Rupert had arranged for Sophie to return with Lucy, a school friend, for three weeks.

  I met Sophie and Lucy in Rome, and we travelled back to Cortona with the girls practising their Italian, which was much more confident than mine. They took over all the food shopping, bought themselves hats and big scarves at the market, and planned our after-Christmas excursions to Perugia and Siena in the car I’d hired. We were also going to Venice on the train for a few days. When Sara returned to Cortona, we planned a Christmas Eve lunch for friends after discovering that the desk unfolded into a beautiful cedar dining table, which the girls decorated with real holly and ivy.

  Christmas with family in Cortona was as I had imagined; the dream I’d had in hospital when the idea of heading off exploded in my head. Sara and I cooked roast chicken, stuffed vegetables and made tomato pie. Sophie and Lucy made an apple tart and cinnamon cakes, and rang their parents in Australia. On Christmas night, we watched a DVD of the girls’ school play, then all sat at the back of midnight mass in the packed Duomo. Back at the apartment, the girls Skyped and emailed family and friends. Homesickness is not an issue for a generation used to constant communication.

  My husband rang, and spoke to us all in turn—the first time I had heard his voice since February. He sounded grim. His American book was in its last stages, the hot weather, the mosquitos from the lake nearby, Morry’s summer moulting. We spoke of his recent piece in The Monthly, ‘Society of Birds’, and the joy of watching them. Here, I reminded him, the Tuscan hills rang with the sound of gunfire from the first Sunday in September until the end of February. When we walked in the hills, we looked out for yellow jackets.

  Then it was New Year’s Eve and freezing, but the snow held off as the Piazza della Repubblica was set up for a floodlit party, with fireworks and bands and dancing until 1 a.m. Sara had left again for Peter and Switzerland, and Sophie and Lucy dressed up. They looked much older than fifteen, and beautiful, and I was stricken by the need to protect them. We walked down together to the square at 9 p.m. and they promised to check in with me every half-hour. I sat, in my heaviest coat and woollen cap, at a table with several parents, and was offered a glass of wine and a slice of pizza. One of the fathers told me there was strictly no under-age drinking or drugs in Cortona—but I kept getting up to try to catch a glimpse of both girls. They checked in as promised, and waved from the moshpit as I tried to keep their blonde heads in sight. They emerged well after midnight, with several grinning boys in tow who told me courteously they had been practising their English. Many photos and exchanges of mobile numbers later, we made it back to the apartment as the music wound down. I fell into bed, leaving them Skyping friends back home.

  Later, Lyndall lent me a small green car. The thrill of arriving at the top of the hill outside the town where the Porto Colonia opened in the wall, then navigating the Via Dardano and the maze of Cortona’s steep one-way streets to the point where the Via G. Maffei meets the Via Santa Margherita, then down the hill, scattering the cats, and into a car space outside my front door, which was, almost always, miraculously empty. There was nothing like it.

  By the end of January 2008, I was alone again. I had sent off the first, rather rough, drafts to Badiya, Iradj and Adiba. Silence from everyone. I tried not to panic, and printed them off again and went to the café to read calmly. There were still lots of gaps, and texture to be included, more interviewing to do next time—but its shape was there and its voice. What I had set out to do, I very nearly had.

  A week later, and the comments on the book were starting to come in. Nothing that couldn’t be dealt with. I kept watching the US primaries on CNN, praying that Obama wouldn’t get assassinated by the CIA or the crazies. Hillary Clinton’s managerialism and smug certainties lost me. I couldn’t see how peace would ever come to the Middle East with her at the helm.

  Then, under the hoopla on the CNN screen, came news of two bombs exploding in pet markets in Baghdad. Two mentally disabled women fitted with suicide vests were detonated by remote control. Sixty-five people, mainly children and teenagers ‘excited by the birds and tropical fish’ were killed. The women’s heads were found ‘among the debris of feathers, fur and flesh’, said the reporter.

  Back in Amman, there was a new sense of urgency around the project, which I tried to take advantage of. I had been sending more draft chapters through to the publisher, who seemed completely bemused that I should want him to read them at such an early stage—but I badly needed feedback from someone who understood the process. Princess Badiya was on holidays and busy, but she eventually rang me back with helpful comments on two chapters, and suggestions for extra interviews. She wanted me to get her father to speak more about honour killings and women’s rights. So did Senator Ina’am Al-Mufti. So did I.

  It was arranged for the PA and me to go to the Jordan Rift Valley, where the precious water system fed the entire region. Dr Munther Haddadin gave us a splendid lunch at his orange farm, then took us to see the great dam he and the Crown Prince had built and flooded nearby, and on which the health of the agriculture and aquaculture systems depended.

  This was to be included in the book, as a case study of one of the major agriculture and aquaculture projects capable of transforming the great Rift Valley, the elongated depression through which the River Jordan runs from its sources in modern-day Israel, through the Sea of Galilee, the Lower Jordan Valley, to the Dead Sea and to the Gulf of Aqaba. This was a regional project of immense importance as the refugee population expanded. Many small towns and farms were running out of water, which was only turned on for ever-shorter times. The rich stored water in underground tanks, and there was much corruption.

  Then Mahomed Shahbaz, the president of the Badia Project, called for us one morning, and drove us north to near the Iraq border area east of Mafraq, to see the desert plantings that stabilised the fine soil of the badia. There was the impressive Environmental Research Centre, where camels were farmed and jameed made from camel milk, and to which schools went in large numbers. This, also, was a long and inspiring day. The fight was to save the badia by making it productive and ensuring the next generation understood its benefits. Both these national projects of great regional significance re
quired detailed descriptions in Prince Hassan’s book.

  I packed my bags, my notes and files, and copied the interviews and drafts onto a USB stick for safekeeping. And closed the door on a most productive time. I’d planned that the next time I was there, I would have finished the draft, and be starting to circulate copies to readers. In Italy, I could be much more focused, working mainly at a desk where I could concentrate, printing the drafts as the chapters were completed, then emailing them to readers. There the only interruption came from me deciding on going for a walk up the Via Santa Margherita and out the gate, or whatever took my fancy.

  During my second spring in Italy, I decided I needed a motorino, thinking I would buy a second-hand one from Nella, who had several under her house at the top of the town. I really wanted a Vespa, which I’d learned the basics of riding back home. English George, Nella’s son’s father-in-law, was living in her guest house and offered to take me out into the countryside for a lesson on one of Nella’s old motorini.

  We went to a car park, where I was shown the gears and the brake, after which I was out on the open road—not a main road but a narrow strada locale, which farmers used. I buzzed up the road happily, George in the car park rapidly receding in my rear-view mirror. Then a horn was blasting me repeatedly, from an agricultural harvester trying to pass. There was a ditch to fall into, or an unmade side road a good way ahead—which I made for, the furious tooting following me. When I managed to dismount, the immense weight of the old motorino dawned on me. No wonder Nella had fallen off. I decided against buying it, which, George told me, made Nella very cross indeed.

  Undertaking to provide a first-draft manuscript ready for circulation to readers and the publisher by March 2008 sounds ludicrous, but, at that point, the promises of assistance were coming thick and fast. When I returned to Jordan in February, a small team was being assembled: a postgrad student intern to help Adiba with transcribing and checking; readers who had worked with Prince Hassan on some of his major projects; a businessman who regularly travelled with him; and the Prince’s close friend and Adiba’s father, Dr Ahmad Mango. Adiba’s mother, an expert in desert truffles, I had also met by this time, and I had been made very welcome in their house.

  I was particularly pleased to have as a reader Miranda Tal, a magazine publisher with editorial skills, and the granddaughter of Wasfi Al Tal, a towering figure in Jordan’s history and three times prime minister, who had been assassinated in Cairo in 1971. Also reading the draft was Diala Al Jabri, who I had already met and with whom I’d shared my memories of seeing the beautiful Shatt al-Arab before it was blasted out of existence by Saddam Hussein’s Agent Orange. Diala had formidable internet research skills and a deep family connection with the region. She told me that it was she who had read online the Age column I’d written when the Howard government was hell-bent on making Australia part of the coalition of the willing. Both Miranda and Diala were unstinting in the help they gave me: reading the entire draft, making suggestions, both commenting that the text ‘sounded like Sidi Hassan’. This pleased me enormously.

  The men read the sections that related to their work, and made helpful comments and corrections. Only Dr Mango told me that he disliked the draft, saying, ‘We want our Prince to sound like a Prince.’ A comment that was presumably conveyed to the London house where Prince Hassan and Princess Sarvath were now staying for part of the summer.

  This became of great interest to me once I was no longer working for a monarchy. A prince who sounds like a prince is a useful commodity, perhaps. A prince who can be heard speaking from the heart, sounding like himself, could sound political, an agent of change. But I am once again reading behind the lines, sounding a little paranoid even to myself. Or just putting the best spin on what happened next.

  One day that last summer, in June, a member of the London household conveyed to a member of the Jordanian household, who conveyed it to me in my apartment in Amman, that Sidi Hassan was in the London garden with his daughter, sitting at a table going through a pile of paper, looking very depressed. My heart sank. I had visited the London house several times and could picture the scene: a very depressed Prince was going through the most recent draft of the rather extraordinary little book we had managed to do against the odds.

  I was in Amman. It was very hot and the Palace compound was quiet. Most of the foreign staff were on leave while Their Royal Highnesses were away. I had spent the last fortnight taking in changes the four readers had suggested and making corrections. There had been many discussions and emails back and forth with Princess Badiya in London, and compromises made. Now, at this late stage, these were morphing into firm instructions on matters I knew were sensitive and that only the Prince could decide.

  ‘This is your father’s book,’ I said several times. ‘He must tell me himself if he wants this change made.’ But he didn’t.

  So, when her tone changed and she said, I am now ordering you to make them, I walked the long way around to the office, printed off six copies of the text, and left them with a USB stick containing the latest interviews and versions. I then packed my things, and asked the woman in charge of travel to get me on a flight to Rome the next morning and organise a driver to take me to the airport. I was very calm.

  I slept on my decision, and travelled from Rome on the Regionale to Terontola, thinking hard. I sent a courteous email to Princess Sarvath, withdrawing from the project but offering to see the book through to publication in London when the family had finalised the text.

  A week later, I sent a long email to Sitti Sarvath, explaining in detail why I had left the project when I did, and how I regretted that Princess Badiya’s role had not been made clear to me. Only late in the process did I understand that protecting her father from criticism was paramount. Nor had I anticipated that so much I had done in good faith would be undone, and that Sidi would change his mind about things he had been quite firm about—that the family would opt for a ‘diplomatic’, ‘dignified’, ‘appropriate’ book, rather than one that ‘spoke out’.

  That was Prince Hassan’s prerogative, of course. As it was mine to withdraw; sadly, and full of regrets that I had not succeeded in what we had embarked upon. ‘Don’t let them censor me,’ he’d said, when he was speaking out about the pocket-lining and the politics. And I had.

  I resisted emails from the family asking me to reconsider. A book by an independent public figure, a Hashemite no longer constrained by the role of Crown Prince, who could speak his mind about the fractured politics of the Middle East and make a contribution to public debate, was needed. My part had involved me in a round of interviews and conversations with Prince Hassan; a process, as he said, of getting inside his head. But, in the end, protecting him from criticism became the family’s main concern.

  Weeks later, the Prince sent me a charming thank-you letter, with a big red seal, which I treasure, saying that I helped him reflect on the work he had done over the years, as well as to focus on his vision for the future. And that he was looking forward to our next meeting.

  But I should not be writing about what had happened if I were constrained by the ruddy confidentiality clause in the first contract I signed. What it covered was impossible to determine. ‘Everything,’ said the lawyer the Society of Authors referred me to in London later that year. ‘It covers everything. In perpetuity.’ She compared it to writing about ‘the English royals’, in that special voice some English use to speak about their monarchy, and was puzzled as to why ever they had had an Australian ghost writer? Perhaps she thought I couldn’t understand something as special as a monarchy; that Australia’s failed referendum for a republic meant we were colonials still. I could feel myself getting angry, which was pointless.

  So, I could not write about ‘making the book I’d been commissioned to edit’, and also not about the much better second book I had suggested to Prince Hassan, about his role in institution building and dealing with the present crisis of the Middle East. This should, of course, have b
een covered by a new contract, with no confidentiality clause, since I was writing it, and arranging publication and seeking translation. I was too absorbed in doing the book, in the short bursts of time available, to see to it, expecting the family would get around to a new contract later on.

  How could I explain to this English lawyer that I walked away after a fortnight of being treated like an underling, a servant, then instructed to comply in a bullying voice? And not by Prince Hassan, but by a much younger member of his family; very much younger than my daughter, now I come to think of it.

  Then, a few weeks later, I was told that the Hashemite entourage, including Mohanna Durra and Gabriella, was to visit Cortona to have dinner with Nella. I learned that Sitti Sarvath had told Gabriella Durra to tell Nella not to invite me. Lyndall was, of course, invited to dinner, and offered to stand up for me if my name were blackened. I drove to Sansepolcro for the weekend, to sit in front of della Francesca’s Resurrection, Huxley’s ‘best picture in the world’. I imagined the royal guards running around the town, checking for hazards; picturing the cars pulling up at the Porta Montanina nearest Nella’s lovely ancient house, with its rooftop garden where the table would be laid under the enormous old linden tree near the guesthouse.