Breakfast with my father is uncomfortable, in two ways.

First, physically. I have always been an anxious and reluctant traveller, and this morning, although we arrived in Jerusalem only 24 hours ago, my body is already informing me, through a variety of signals, that it would greatly have preferred to stay at home. My lower back hurts quite badly (probably from the restrictive rigours of the four-and-a-half-hour flight). My head aches, and my eyes feel tight and gritty, after an almost entirely sleepless first night in an unfamiliar hotel bed. And my stomach – always the first part of me to sound the alarm when wrested from its comfortable routine – is unmistakeably far from happy; queasy, skittish, ready to take offence.

And then there is the discomfort I feel at the situation I find myself in: having breakfast with my father, and no one else. When was the last time this happened? Never, as far I can remember. It’s possible, I suppose, that there may have been one far-off Sunday morning, back in my early teens, when my mother was indisposed, my older brother still in bed, and my sister sleeping over with a friend, resulting in us eating breakfast together, alone. But I have no recollection of it. And I can say with confidence that, since my parents separated quarter of a century ago, my father and I have never previously enjoyed breakfast à deux. Hardly surprising, then, that conversation is not exactly flowing.

“I’m pretty sure that’s Fisk,” murmurs my father, a little more loudly than he probably intends, gesturing with his head.

I glance in the direction he indicates, and see a bespectacled grey-haired red-faced fellow-guest, a few tables away, who could indeed be the celebrated Middle East correspondent. In fact, it’s more than likely to be him. Our hotel – the American Colony – is, after all, renowned as a politically non-partisan sanctuary, owned by neither Jews nor Arabs, where visiting dignitaries, media types and other celebrities can stay comfortably, and without fear of anyone taking exception.

“Yes, I think you’re right,” I say. “I’m almost certain that’s Fisk.”

And then I try to think of something else to say about Fisk. I admire his writing, but I’m aware this is of no use to my father. What he wants at this point in his life, almost to the exclusion of any other kind of conversation, is to be fed juicy titbits, the more discreditable the better, about people (men) he perceives to be more distinguished and successful than him. I’m wishing I was privy to knowledge that Robert Fisk is a wife-beater, or that he narrowly avoided a cottaging charge in his youth. But I know nothing about him, except what I’ve learned from his journalism, so I say weakly, “It always impresses me that he actually lives in Beirut – which is why he really understands the Middle East”.

This is hopeless. My father sighs. I’m conscious of being a desperately disappointing younger son to him. I cast around for something to say that will catch his interest. Peter Mandelson! I’m sure I have heard a scurrilous rumour? And my father cherishes a special hatred for him, on account of his having become a household name as a Labour spin doctor, while he, my father, who has some claim to having invented that role, is known only to a handful of ageing political anoraks.

But before I can dredge up whatever it was (some kind of financial impropriety?), my father is on his feet and making his way, surprisingly nimbly for a man who will soon need both hips replaced, to the breakfast buffet, which runs almost the entire length of the dining room’s opposite wall.

If I have remembered correctly when this trip took place, my father is now 69, and has fairly recently been diagnosed with the cancer that will kill him early in 2002. He is a British citizen, and has lived in the UK all his adult life. But he grew up here in what was then Palestine, and although his mother and father were, respectively, Lebanese and American, he has in recent years increasingly come to think of himself as Palestinian. His boyhood home has become the nation of his heart. He visits several times a year, and has started to involve himself in Palestinian causes. Through his fund-raising efforts on behalf of the newly created Al-Quds University Medical School, and the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians, my father will help to save many lives and much suffering among his spiritual-compatriots.

Why am I with him? I think I may have come under some pressure to accompany him, on the grounds that he isn’t good at travelling alone, but has run short of companions because of the frequency of these trips. But the main reason I have agreed to this unprecedented adventure is because – with my 40s, and his 70s, coming into view – I have persuaded myself that it represents “one last chance” for my relationship with my father.

Surely, I have reasoned in advance, if we spend a whole week in each other’s company, in this place of ancestral significance for us both, we will have no choice but to move beyond the mundanities and bitchy political gossip that have made up the entirety of our conversation for as long as I can remember. Surely, some new level of intimacy will be reached; some sense of our knowing each other, as two men who just happen to have very similar DNA? I suspect that, on the outward journey, I have a picture in my mind of my father and me sharing some kind of epiphany; turning to each other, embracing, and shedding manly tears together. Now, sipping my coffee, wishing I was at home with my family, my stomach in turmoil, that picture is already softening to a fantastical blur.

My father returns bearing two plates piled high with assorted breakfast foods; miniature croissants, bread rolls, slices of cheese and cold meat, fruit, hard-boiled eggs, and more. I wonder for a moment if he is expecting to share this feast with me.

“Well, I spoke to Mrs Vester,” he tells me, animatedly. “And she says we can go, whenever we want.”

“Great,” I reply, with minimal conviction.

I know what he is referring to, because he has talked at length about this on the journey. My father, having stayed at the American Colony on numerous occasions, is – or, at least, imagines himself to be – on friendly terms with the hotel’s octogenarian proprietress, Mrs Vester. She is, my father has impressed upon me, a legendary local figure; a friend and confidante, as well as a purveyor of accommodation, to generations of distinguished visitors to Jerusalem. She is also the owner of some kind of dwelling in a remote part of the Jordan valley, which favoured members of her circle are allowed to visit. She describes this dwelling as a shack, and it’s unclear whether she means this in its conventional sense (flimsy, dilapidated), or as a kind of self-deprecatory nickname for something architect-designed, complete with pool and twin garages. My father is desperate to go there.

“I thought we might drive up there today,” he says.

“OK,” I mutter, non-committally.

I am a lot less keen than my father to visit Mrs Vester’s shack. This is partly because I will have to both drive and navigate, since my father is capable of doing neither – and I feel anxious about driving an unfamiliar hire car on foreign roads, even without additional map-reading responsibilities. Also, the shack itself, and the highly prized invitation to visit it, have none of the allure for me that they hold for my father. Also, my gastrointestinal tract is in serious distress now. I’m fairly sure I won’t be leaving my hotel room today. But how I am going to break this news to my father? He is not a man who deals well with disappointment.

“It’s not far,” he says, perhaps sensing my misgivings. “Mrs Vester says we can be there in 90 minutes. And look, we can take a picnic!”

Now I realise why my father has assembled such a gargantuan breakfast. Rather ahead of his time, he carries on his travels a stylish leather and canvas shoulder-bag, which is hanging on the back of his chair. With schoolboyish enjoyment of the subterfuge, he is cramming it with almost all the buffet items, the more fragile and perishable of which he first wraps in man-sized tissues.

I do my best to look amused, and slightly shocked, by this – but fail dismally. My father doesn’t notice. He is entirely focused on getting our trip underway.

“Come on, if you’ve finished….” he says, getting to his feet. He hasn’t noticed that I have eaten nothing. “I’ll introduce you to Mrs Vester on the way out.”

He does.

She is sitting alone at a corner table; a tiny frail bird-like figure, her head bowed over a plate of fruit, cut into small pieces.

“Mrs Vester,” says my father, loudly. “This is my son; my younger son – the one I told you about.” And he mentions my name.

She looks up, with a vague smile on her face. It’s hard to tell whether or not she knows who my father is. If I had to choose, I would say “not”.

“He’s very much looking forward to seeing your shack!” my father continues, turning to me. “Aren’t you?”

A massive wave of abdominal pain surges through me.

“Yes, very much,” I gasp, through gritted teeth.

Mrs Vester is still looking at us in a blearily benevolent manner. She raises her hand, palm outward, in something like a papal blessing, and our audience is over.

“Thank you so much, again, Mrs Vester,” says my father, as we shuffle from her presence.

*

About 20 minutes later, my father having completed whatever preparations he considers needful for a visit to Mrs Vester’s shack, he knocks on the door of my room. I am lying on the bed, with my knees drawn up to my chest, groaning with each shattering peristaltic spasm. Somehow, bent-double, I manage to hobble across the room, and open the door, before collapsing, bathed in sweat, back onto the bed.

Even my father can see that I’m in no fit state to drive. But he hasn’t quite given up hope yet.

“I have some Alka-Seltzer in my room,” he says. “Which might be worth – “

“Nnnngggh!” I cut him off, with a rending animal groan.

“Well, that’s very disappointing,” he says, belatedly accepting that our day’s expedition is a non-starter. “But I’m sure Mrs Vester wouldn’t mind if we went tomorrow, instead. She said any day.”

“OK,” I sigh, hoping that I may, in fact, have died before then.

“I’ll just go and check with her,” he says.

And he goes.

*

The following day, I am, amazingly, well enough to drive – thanks, probably, to some powerful unidentifiable drugs kindly sourced for me by the hotel. I still feel very far below my best, but not quite ill enough to deny my father his visit to Mrs Vester’s shack.

We drive there. I find the directions difficult to follow, and we get lost, twice. My father becomes irritable, and drunk. (He travels with a hip-flask.) When we eventually arrive, it turns out that Mrs Vester’s shack is, in fact, a ruin; a small stone-built shepherd’s dwelling, with broken down walls and no roof. Its only attractive feature is a sun-dappled terrace, alive with the skitter of lizards, and furnished with a rusty cast iron table and chairs.

My father is enraptured. He is visiting Mrs Vester’s shack. No one can take that away from him.

“Let’s have our picnic,” he says. “It’s in my bag, in the car.”

I go to fetch our picnic. It almost certainly is in my father’s bag. But his bag is not in the car. It’s in his hotel room.

*

On the drive back to Jerusalem, I am feeling a little better, and, despite the picnic débâcle, my father is in good spirits. (He has visited Mrs Vester’s shack!)

I briefly consider laying before him something in my life that is troubling me. Or asking him a question that will compel him to reveal some truth about the man he really is. But nothing comes to mind, and the moment passes. And for the remainder of our journey – and the rest of my father’s life – our conversation does not move beyond mundanities and bitchy political gossip. We do not reach any new level of intimacy, nor share any epiphany. We do not turn to each other, and embrace. And no tears, manly or otherwise, are shed.

*****

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