Our Man in Iraq

by Robert Perisic

  Published by Black Balloon Publishing

  www.blackballoonpublishing.com

  © 2013 by Robert Perisic

  Translation © 2013 by Will Firth

  All rights reserved

  ISBN-13: 978-1-9367-8706-7

  Black Balloon Publishing titles are distributed to the trade by

  Consortium Book Sales and Distribution

  Phone: 800-283-3572 / SAN 631-760X

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2012919026

  Cover art by Joanna Neborsky • joannaneborsky.com

  Designed and composed by Christopher D Salyers • christopherdsalyers.com

  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  BY ROBERT PERISIC

  TRANSLATED FROM THE CROATIAN BY WILL FIRTH

  BLACK BALLOON PUBLISHING • NEW YORK

  CONTENTS

  DAY ONE

  DAY TWO

  DAY THREE

  DAY FOUR

  DAY FIVE

  PART TWO

  DAY ONE

  From: Boris

  To: Toni

  “Iraky peepl, Iraky peepl.”

  That’s the password.

  They’re supposed to answer: “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  No sweat.

  Yeah! What a view—endless columns on the road from Kuwait to Basra.

  The 82nd Division’s Humvees, armored vehicles, tankers, bulldozers.

  The place is full of camouflaged Yanks and Brits, the biological and chemical carnival has begun, and me, fool that I am, I haven’t got a mask. They’re expecting a chemical weapons attack and say Saddam has got tons and tons of the shit.

  I dash around with my camera and ask them all to take my photo. It’s not for keepsakes, I keep telling them, it’s for the paper.

  The columns pour along King Faisal Road toward the border. Dust is always coming from somewhere.

  “Iraky peepl, Iraky peepl.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  We continue on our way.

  I keep looking to see if there are any pigeons. I’ve heard that the British biological and chemical detection team allegedly has pigeons.

  There were none in the Land Rover Defender. They set up an air analyzer there that registers the smallest changes in the composition of the air. It’s a simple, soldierly device. You don’t need to think: when the indicator goes red, things are critical.

  That’s what they say.

  Things would be critical anyway, even without it.

  Things are critical with me.

  I see all those pieces of iron, pieces of steel, and I’m shut into a piece of metal myself. I can hardly breathe in here.

  The 82nd Division’s Humvees. I watch them. They don’t know I’m inside.

  Or do they? The British soldiers don’t want to introduce themselves. They say they’re not allowed to.

  For security reasons.

  This job is fucked. I say I’m a reporter from Croatia.

  I tell them my name and ask if they’ve got pigeons.

  I ask if it’s true that the NBC team (short for nuclear, biological, chemical), if it’s true that they’ve been given cages with pigeons.

  No reply.

  I tell them I’ve heard about it. Birds are apparently the best detectors of airborne toxins because they’re more sensitive than humans.

  Then they reply. They say they’ve heard the story too but they’re not sure if it’s true.

  They’ve got masks, like I said. But sometimes they take them off and show themselves.

  I don’t know if they’re hiding the pigeons or if they really haven’t got any.

  Do what you like with this. I think the bit about the pigeons is interesting.

  A good illustration: pigeons or doves in Iraq, the symbol of peace and all that.

  I made up the bit with the passwords.

  It wasn’t New Year’s Eve, but never mind. I entered the flat carrying some plastic bags and called out in a deep voice from the door: “Father Time is here!”

  She held her hand coyly over her mouth.

  I put the bags down next to the fridge.

  “But that’s not all,” Father Time said, standing up tall and proud. “I’ve brought some drugs too!”

  I hadn’t really, but never mind.

  “Oooo, lucky me, lucky me,” she chirped. “I can see you’re already smacked up.”

  “Just a bit.”

  “Naughty you,” she said.

  “That’s just the way I am, Miss.”

  She gave me a loud kiss on the cheek.

  “Hey, Miss, where were you when I was shooting up? In Biology, learning about the birds and the bees?” I said to remind her who's older here.

  “And pneumonia,” she said.

  “Where does pneumonia come into it?” I asked.

  But we were already laughing, breaking character. Not that I really knew why. Part of our love thrived on nonsense. We could talk about non-existent drugs or whatever. I guess that element of the absurd helped us relax. One of us would say something silly and the other would laugh. We enjoyed exchanging insults.

  I think she started it, long ago.

  Her name was Sanja. I’m Toni.

  We met after the war, under interesting circumstances: I was Clint Eastwood and she the lady in the little hat who arrived by stagecoach in this dangerous city full of rednecks. I watched as she climbed out, a fag between her lips, and the smoke and sun got in my eyes. She had a whole stack of suitcases, bound to be full of cosmetics, and I saw straight away that she’d missed her film and I’d have to save her in this one.

  All right, sometimes I told the story this way because I was tired of telling the truth. Our first meeting never ceased to fascinate her. Whenever she got in a romantic mood she made me tell the story again. The beginning of love can never be recaptured. That self-presentation to the other, putting yourself in the best light, striving to be special. You play the game, you believe in it, and if it catches on, you become different.

  How do you tell a story if everything is full of illusions from the beginning?

  I had several versions.

  One went like this: She had a red strand in her hair, green eyes, and was punkishly dressed. It’s the domain of bimbos with certain deviations in taste. And that’s how she behaved too, not quite upright, boyish, deviant; she looked a bit wasted, a look that trendy magazines called heroin chic. I took note of her when she first came to the Lonac Café, but I didn’t go up to her because her pale face revealed apathy and pronounced tiredness from the night before. You know those faces that still radiate pubescent contempt and the influence of high school reading lists. People like that don’t want to live in a world like this, they can’t wait to cold-shoulder you when you approach—as if that’s what gives their life meaning.

  At this point Sanja usually thumped me on the shoulder—“Idiot!” she would say—but she loved it when I wrapped her in long sentences.

  “Anyway, I didn’t go up to her. I just watched her out of the corner of my eye and blew trails of smoke into the night.”

  She liked to listen to how I eyed her from the side. That refreshed the scene, a bit like when the country celebrates its independence and patriotic myths as retold through history and official poetry ornamented with lies.

  “It was in front of the Lonac Café one day: I remember her crushing out a cigarette with a heavy boot, and then she turned in her long, clinging dress, with a little rucksack on her back, and looked at me with the eyes of a young leopardess. She stalked up to me as if she’d sighted a herd of gnus.”

  Basically we were so cool that this crossing of paths was almost inconsequential.

  Wotcher Ned, how’s them parsnips comin’ along? Ho
w’s the harvest goin’, cuz? Hey bro, where ya been? That’s how city kids mess around with mock swagger and rural ethos! We had no idea if we fitted any of those roles. At home you’re someone’s child and you roll your eyes; you study at uni and you roll your eyes; then you go out into the world and become your own film star and you roll your eyes because no one gets your film, and you pine away unrecognized in these backwoods of Europe.

  I acted in many films before they took me for my role in this serious life: I worked as a journalist and wrote about the economy. She managed to become an actress with a capital “A,” just like she always dreamed.

  “How was the rehearsal?” I asked.

  She waved dismissively as if she wanted to take a rest from it all.

  “Is there anything in there for us?” I asked when I saw the classifieds lying open on the coffee table.

  “There are a few we could call.”

  She read out loud about refined apartments with charm. I closed my eyes and listened to the square footage and the location of the flats, the descriptions of amenities and neighborhoods. Peaceful, quiet street, air conditioning, lift.

  And soon we were climbing up into the clouds, up above that quiet street. We imagined that life, looking down at everything. But it wasn’t one hundred per cent definite that we needed that peace and quiet. Or amenities like close to the tram line and schools. That made us think of our children growing up too quickly, moving from kindergarten to high school and then onto university.

  Refurbished attic flat, right in the heart of the city center, with parking space.

  Immediately we saw ourselves coming down from that penthouse, going from café to café with everything close by, like when you go out to get cigarettes and meet a whole load of people and breathe in the tumult of the street, with its boundless life.

  We did this every day. Hovering in weightlessness and reading the listings, we felt life was light and variable, and we thoroughly understood people who added the word “urgent” after the description of the flat.

  “Come on.”

  “You do it.”

  “I called last time,” I said

  “Give me the phone then.”

  It was nicer to read those descriptions in weightlessness than to descend into the lower levels of the atmosphere and talk about actual places with actual people, hear their business-like voices. There was something draining about those conversations.

  Still, we had to ring that number. The one with “urgent” next to it.

  We’d been in our flat for a bit too long, that was for sure, and were starting to get sick of the furniture, which the landlord had dumped there. My friend Markatović and his wife Dijana had bought an apartment on credit and furnished it futuristically: it was spacious and spacy. When we visited they cooked slow food for us, we drank Pinot Grigio from Collio Goriziano and in that light, roomy designer apartment felt part of a new elite. Each time we returned from their place our rented flat looked like a charity shop. They had boldly moved into a new world, while we dwelled among the dark wardrobes of aunts long dead.

  We didn’t talk about that openly, but I sensed the disappointment in the air. I even found myself wondering if I was successful in life. I mean, what sort of question is that? I’d only just begun to live after the war and all that shit. I’d only just caught my breath again.

  But there we were, one time when we’d returned from Markatović’s and that fatal organic food. It was heavy in my stomach and I couldn’t sleep, so I got a beer out of the fridge and looked around at the cramped ugly flat. Why don’t you take out a loan too, whispered a bewildering voice. Just look at Markatović, the voice said, he’s your generation, and he’s got such a fancy place, and even twins. Why couldn’t you have that too?

  Hmm, me and a loan, a loan and me.

  At my age, my old man tells me every time, he’d already . . . .

  And at my age my ma had already . . . . What can I say when I think how they lived back then? They didn’t have enough money to buy shoes, but they still had children and even built a house. So, naturally, they wonder what Sanja and I are thinking. I looked at our Bob Marley poster on the wall. What does a Rasta think? But he just holds his joint enigmatically between his lips. We have Mapplethorpe’s black male torso on the other wall, which motivates me to do sit-ups regularly. That’s what we’ve invested in.

  When I slept here the first time, Sanja’s rented flat seemed quite chic: situated on the fifteenth story of a tower block, above a tram loop. Standing by the window, the view was so good that I was afraid of falling out of it.

  Of course, we came back drunk that first night. We were careful not to be loud because of her flatmate. I couldn’t come. She tried to give me a blow job. It was nice that she tried, although her teeth scratched. We kept on screwing; the condoms dried out quickly and kept bunching up around the head of my dick. I finally came in the third round.

  I dropped by again the next day, but skipped it on the third day so it wouldn’t look like I’d moved in. I tried to stick to some kind of rhythm, so my moving in was never officially confirmed. I’d visit in the evenings, spontaneously, as if I’d heard there was a good film on TV. I haven’t organized anything and I don’t have any expectations, I wrote to her on a postcard that I sent from Zagreb to Zagreb just for fun. She liked that. She liked everything I said.

  At breakfast I made jokes, as fresh as morning rolls, and also entertained her flatmate. It wasn’t hard to make Ela laugh, and it seemed she didn’t object to a guy hanging around the house in undies. So she slept in the bedroom, while Sanja and I curled up on the couch in the living room. When we made love we’d lock the door with a quick, quiet turn of the key. Later we’d quietly unlock it and run to the bathroom.

  For the first year I kept on paying rent for my basement bedsit in another part of the city so as not to lose my independence. My things were there, I’d say. When I went there I’d lie on my back, all independent, listen to my old radio and stare at the ceiling.

  Once Ela found a little pile of my laundry in the washing machine and said with a look of mild disgust, “Aha, so you two are in a serious relationship then.”

  I said to Ela by way of apology, “I haven’t got a machine, you know.”

  They both began to laugh. They laughed long and hard.

  “He hasn’t got a machine,” they repeated, started giggling again, and were soon hooting with laughter.

  But Ela soon found herself a new flat.

  Our sex became louder. The ladies down in the shop started calling me “neighbor.”

  It all ran by itself, without any particular plan. We enjoyed that experiment. We went on our first summer holiday together, then there were autumn walks in Venice, the Biennale, Red Hot Chili Peppers in Vienna, Nick Cave in Ljubljana, a second summer holiday, a third, Egypt, Istria, and so on. Mutual friends, parties, organizing things. Everything rolled along nicely as if nature were doing the thinking for us.

  Now and then I asked myself: What now?

  Now she was calling about flats. She was trying hard to make a serious impression.

  “Yes, I know where the Savica market is. Yes, I know we need to come and look at it, but could you please tell me the price?”

  She just wanted to finish the conversation.

  “We’ll probably drop in. I’ll have to see when my boyfriend gets back from work.”

  “Say ‘husband.’”

  “What?” she cocked her head as she put down the receiver.

  “Why did you lie that I was at work? Do you think it makes us sound more serious?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If you’re going to lie, say ‘my husband’s at work.’”

  From: Boris

  To: Toni

  Baghdad is burning, the Allied bombing has begun, yoo-hoo!

  You saw it, and what can I tell you, the Allied bombing tore us out of our depression, life has become sportive, dynamic, everyone is fighting to get a
word in, everything is in motion.

  The Allied bombing, like when you pour sugar into coffee, night and white crystals, attractive images you see again and again. I watch the Allied bombing from the Sheraton Hotel in Kuwait City and am looking for a way to attach myself to the troops, to be embedded, but for some reason they don’t trust me, which doesn’t surprise me. I don’t trust myself. They can probably see it in my eyes: I emit it like radiation or it comes out of me like bad breath.

  I hear the alarm sirens, in Kuwait City they take them seriously, you know how it is at the beginning: people call their families, all the lines are busy, suddenly everyone hurries home, and the traffic jams cuz, long lines of waiting cars, and all in big cars, everyone honks their horns from inside, out from everyone’s metal box, the windows are rolled right up, everyone is afraid of poisonous gas, people just breathe the air in their vehicles, they sweat and stare out like fish, and I don’t know what to do with myself, so I go out roaming in the gloaming in that city of tall, shining towers by the light of the silvery moon.

  OK, it’s not silver, but never mind.

  Everything here now depends on which country you’re from, and Croatia’s decided to be against the war, so Lieutenant Jack Finnegan, the officer liaison with journalists, doesn’t believe me when I say I’m on their side, he won’t give me a press ID card because in his eyes I represent Croatia. So I go out walking around Kuwait City in the name of Croatia; I look at the shop windows in the name of Croatia. They say several missiles came down in the sea, and the government has closed the schools for seven days.

  On TV kids yell in the streets, they party in front of the American embassy somewhere in Europe, I see them as they enter the public eye, they present themselves, everyone has a chance to be someone as long as the Allied bombing lasts. Gravity increases, everything gains weight, your voice gains character, and character means enjoyment.

  Otherwise I guess I’ve become punked in Kuwait

  City—I’ve lost weight and developed dark circles under my eyes. Do you remember the first sirens? You think something’s going to happen up there, right at that moment, things will be resolved, you think it’ll soon be over and last no longer than a war film. But it turns out more like a boring TV show. You dash down to the shelter, stand around until the episode’s over, later you run there a second time, and wait for it to happen. Here people rushed to the shelters three times today, nothing’s happened and they’re crazy already.