Our Man in Iraq

by Robert Perisic

  That was the first piece of good news for me in a long while. And so we sat there, confidently manning our defensive position. The lawyer said we were squeaky clean in legal terms because we hadn’t forced anyone to go to Iraq; Boris had signed an employment contract like everyone else. Our mistake—which we were only to concede if they cornered us—might have been that we didn’t raise the alarm soon enough; in other words, if they really cornered us, our mistake would be mine. But here I had a counter-argument, namely that Boris could still get in touch: the deadline hadn’t yet expired, and all the fuss was based on speculation, although we too were worried. Our PR lady assessed that we were in a relatively good position; we just had to avoid engaging in spats with Milka because she was a mother and that would not go down well. We all agreed that Milka should be given a wide berth, and our PR damsel continued that we had to be sympathetic with his mother, smooth over the misunderstanding, promise her hills and valleys, offer help and legal protection for our employee’s family so as to win it over to our side. She also told us to come out straight away and say that GEP wanted to destroy us, so that later everything would be interpreted in that vein, and change the conversation to that topic—say what the foes had done to us so far because they hated a respectable paper like ours; in that way we could do a little advertising as well.

  But alas, as soon as I saw Milka in the regional studio via videolink I knew that the jig was up. She was sitting there in berserker mode; her head thrust forward like a dog straining at its chain. It was clear that she couldn’t sit still in the camera’s glare: she squinted and could hardly wait to start. She’d prepared her tirade without solicitor or PR consultant, her head was full, and you could tell she was bursting to vent her fury.

  As soon as the host had greeted the viewers and briefly outlined the problem, she swiftly gave the floor to the missing journalist’s mother, naturally, and Milka struck at me via videolink. She addressed me as “wee Toni.” This confused the host, who requested Milka not to call me that, irrespective of the situation, to which Milka replied that she’d always called me that. From there our whole plan went pear-shaped.

  “I’ve known ’im since ’e was knee-high to a grasshopper,” Milka said. “Of course I can speak to my snotty-nosed nephew like that.”

  “Just a minute—you mean to say you’re related?”

  “We sure are,” Milka replied.

  The host glanced at me and couldn’t contain a taunting laugh. “Is that true? You sent your own cousin to Iraq?”

  At that point everything went to pieces.

  The president of the journalists’ association laughed loudly.

  The system of nepotism had had a stranglehold on the country for a whole decade; war had created openings for the hill tribes to enter the system; warriors and outlaws infiltrated it, brought along their relatives, created networks, and built up para-structures. Our urbane intelligentsia had been combating the hill tribes for a decade already, mocking their clannish culture and kin-and-kith morality because they were a millstone around our necks, a mafia in government. We’d never have a modern state until we civilized them. They had to realize that the world was not about relatives. They had to refuse the call of the tribe and become individuals.

  “Let’s be perfectly clear,” the host said. “This journalist you employed—who then disappeared—he’s your own cousin?”

  I’d long pretended to have become civilized, emancipating myself from the call of the tribe, but this was it: now they’d seen through me. There I was on prime-time television.

  The Chief looked at me, bewildered. Everything we’d discussed in the briefing fell through.

  “He is my cousin,” I said, “but he knows Arabic.”

  It was no use. My words sounded ridiculous even to me.

  I must have phased out because for a while I didn’t even follow what was said; little pictures went round and round inside my head and I saw the flat I’d been to see that morning. I knew the show was now on TV there and everywhere, it was going all round the world via satellite, and, I don’t know why, I thought of Charly watching me on the screen, gaping at me with a bottle of locally-grown olive oil in his hand and cooking his slow food that he wouldn’t invite me to eat.

  After a while someone in the studio audience asked to be able to speak. They passed him the microphone.

  None other than Icho Kamera.

  “I ’appen to know Milka, an’ all. I know the situation an’ I can say it ain’t all black and white, like. Milka oughta realize that they found ’im work, after all ’e was unemployed an’ wanted a job. An’ this guy, the journalist, found work for ’is cousin. I reckon that deserves a bit’a respect!”

  Bloody hell, he spoke as if he’d been briefed by my old ma.

  A short round of applause from the studio audience. The host then gave the floor to the sociologist with the beard, who proceeded to deep-end the audience into the phenomenon of tribal relations, of regional differences that were extra-institutional. They hindered the functioning of institutions by creating a parallel system. That was our particular problem, he stressed. The strongest states were those that had destroyed tribal relations and weakened the extended family. “The stronger the family, the weaker the government,” he concluded.

  The host called on me to comment. I said I agreed with the gentleman from the audience, and with the sociologist.

  “Only you don’t get on with your aunt?” she asked with irony.

  “No, I can’t get on with her.”

  After that they switched back to Milka in the regional studio. First she replied to Icho Kamera, saying that everyone knew he was crazy, and as well as slamming me she also came down on the sociologist for what he’d said against the family. Basically, Milka had been poorly briefed and seemed to have forgotten to cry and talk touchingly about Boris, so in the viewers’ telephone voting she received a much smaller percentage of support than expected. We had thirty percent, just like my old ma said.

  After the show, everyone instinctively edged away from me; only Icho Kamera came up in his somber old jumper. “I see ya’re gettin’ popular, kid. I remember you.”

  “I’m gettin’ anti-popular.”

  “’T’s all the same: popular, anti-popular.”

  “You’re in Zagreb pretty often.”

  “I got me sons to look after the crop,” he said. “I sell a bit at the market ’ere, an’ I also go to things like this. Livin’ down south is borin’ for me—this ’ere is the center of things. I mean, what can ya do down there?”

  I listened to him with a tad of admiration. Icho Kamera talked like young people who don’t want to squander their life in a backwater where nothing was going on. He wanted to be in the flow of things. In the focus. If he could speak English he’d definitely be off to New York. If he wasn’t such a pleb, no one would notice he was mad, I thought.

  Pero the Chief came up to us. First he spoke to Icho and shook his hand. “I think we ought to thank you. Your support means a lot to us.”

  “As a man in the street I had to say something’,” Icho Kamera said.

  Then the Chief turned toward me. “The boss called me just now. You’re fired.”

  “Fucking hell.”

  “That ain’t right,” Icho Kamera said.

  “I get the impression he’s going to sue you as well.”

  “Ooh, that ain’t nice,” Icho Kamera commented as we headed for the bar. “To sack someone like that—to jus’ toss ’em out.”

  “It’ll raise the motivation of the others,” I said.

  “That’s why I never wanted to be employed. Just farmin’ and a bit’a TV—I’m me own boss!”

  While I was drinking with Icho in the bar, Sanja called me. She had three minutes before she needed to be back on stage. She’d seen the beginning of the show and a bit near the end.

  “After rain comes shine,” she said awkwardly.

  “Get on with your stuff, don’t worry about it anymore,” I said.

&
nbsp; Afterward I went to Limited. Everyone looked. Markatović arrived to console me with the story that he was doing even worse: Dijana was gone and the bank’s shares were still falling.

  “I’ve heard reliable information that the Germans are giving up. They’re offering the bank to the government for one kuna,” he said. “But, on the positive side, Dolina rang today and he’s angry.”

  Dolina had apparently also seen me on TV. He was convinced I’d tarnish his image and demanded that Markatović, who hadn’t started on Dolina’s campaign yet, find someone else.

  “He says you’re compromised,” Markatović said, imitating Dolina to try and sound snappy.

  I didn’t have the strength to smile, so Markatović stared at me hypnotically. “That pretender of yours is going to come back alive and well.”

  “That’s the drugs talking,” I said.

  “No, really: it’s always like this when it’s to do with someone else. With these shares I have, if someone else had them I could predict without error. He’ll come back, really—we can bet on it.”

  “Let’s not. You’ve gambled enough already.”

  Then Markatović started talking about his old man, who’d turned to drink soon after entering his son’s employ. “He probably feels humiliated. He’s spiteful all the time. In his head, I probably represent capitalism. It’s the same with your guy. They both feel we’re on the other side: we’re part of the system, in their eyes, and they need someone to blame. Since they don’t have a political agenda they take it out on us via the family.”

  We boozed till closing and then went back to his place. If nothing else, Markatović finally had the apartment to himself.

  I sent Sanja a message that I was going to Markatović’s and that I might sleep there. I sort of wanted to avoid her, as if I felt ashamed in front of her.

  We sat there in the mortgaged flat. It really was a super apartment. I took the remote and turned up the volume a bit when I saw the Rolling Stones on TV. It was a press conference prior to a concert in Munich.

  “Look at them,” Markatović said, hunched slightly and staring at the screen with open mouth and bloodshot eyes.

  “What’s the secret of your timelessness?” journalists asked them. Keith Richards, still looking like he'd grown up too quickly, answered, “That’s a secret,” and roared with laughter.

  “Just look at him, will ya?” Markatović said.

  “He must be sixty already,” I said.

  “He drinks the most expensive wines, models line up to get into bed with him, and he still manages to be a rebel,” Markatović marveled. “Man, he'd go mad if they put him in a down-market hotel.”

  “Yes, when he’s rebellious,” I said, and sniffed a line of coke from the chess board.

  “Two hundred thousand people were there, and tomorrow all of them will be going to work,” Markatović said.

  “Of course, they work.”

  “Every day they repress what they admire about Richards. Every single day they repress everything they admire.”

  “Of course.”

  “It started way back with Jesus.”

  “Do you also get a strange feeling when you mention a big word like ‘Jesus’ or ‘revolution,’ like a weariness comes over you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  We fell silent.

  Footage of people who’d been to the Munich concert was now being shown. They claimed the Stones were the same as before. Indestructible.

  Markatović and I were destroyed. We’d grown up in strange Eastern European systems and placed too much hope in rock’n’roll. We lived with that therapy for years and thrived on hope. Just let things settle a bit, we thought, and we’d all be like Keith Richards.

  “Hillary Clinton isn’t bad either,” I suggested.

  “Just think of little Eminem,” Markatović said. “I saw a documentary about him. The guy grew up in a trailer park and was really fucked up. He rapped around in a few sheds, but then he recorded an album, sold a few million copies, and got rich! And what’s he going to do on the next album? Y’know, he’s gotta be rebellious and have that face for another fifty years.”

  “Yeah, he’ll have to get pretty drugged up so they don’t see through him.”

  “First you’re fucked because you’re fucked up, and then you’re fucked because you’re not fucked up. That’s the life of a rebel for you.”

  “There’s no going forward and no going back.”

  “You’re not allowed to sort yourself out,” Markatović said.

  “Why would you want to sort yourself out?”

  “I don’t know, that’s just the way things go. You sort yourself out, and along come the problems.”

  We laughed.

  The Stones played on, indestructible. Markatović snorted more coke.

  “Did you really want to get yourself sorted out?” I asked. “Or . . .”

  “Or what?”

  I shrugged.

  “Hey, I got married, bought an apartment, had kids—When did you ever do any of that?”

  “OK, so you’re more forward-looking,” I conceded. “And you stayed a rebel.”

  “Right. Even Iggy Pop goes to the gym. Red Hot Chili Peppers go to the gym. Not me.”

  “I used to go before I had a bathroom, to use the showers.”

  Markatović puffed up his chest proudly, making no attempt to hide his beer belly.

  Who knows what it means to be rebellious nowadays.

  “Now I’ll be going without a bathroom too,” he said, referring to the steep drop in RIJB-R-A shares.

  It might sound nasty, but I felt better being with Markatović. The whole problem with Boris didn’t seem so terrible to him. He was knee-deep in shit himself. I assured Markatović that everything would be OK and that he’d get out of it in the end. I told him it was good that he was waiting because the government would intervene sooner or later and sort things out. He just needed to be patient a bit longer.

  “It’s different when it’s your own dough that’s inside and when it’s about saving your own neck,” he sighed. “Then you’re not so sure of things.”

  I don’t know how things got to this point of me having to reassure him all the time. I mean, he’d been expecting that of me from the beginning, so why was he now opposing so vehemently? Now I had to be even more convincing. That’s how it works. Someone gives you a role and you do your best to hold onto it. You forget how things began.

  “Come on, man, Rijeka will be going up tomorrow. The government has to intervene. It’s as clear as daylight if only you look without fear.”

  “OK then, you’ve consoled me,” Markatović said.

  I snorted another rail of coke.

  “Life is a song,” I said, breathing deeply through my nose. “The song creates feelings. Words in your mouth take you over.”

  DAY FIVE

  I woke up on Markatović’s couch; my mouth was dry, my legs were stiff, and my head hurt like hell. The TV was still on and two psychologists were talking with children about good and evil.

  “Bad is when one kid builds a sand castle and another comes and knocks it down,” a boy said.

  The coffee table resembled a waste dump. We’d polished off the hard stuff by the looks of it. I leaned my elbows on my knees, put my head in my hands, and tried to be wise after the battle by accessing the damaged parts of my memory. A little bird hopped along the balcony railing. It didn’t sing. The children went on about good and evil, they understood that in the morning. On the evening program everything looked more complicated.

  I got up and inspected Markatović’s shelves, opened the drawers, and peered into decorative bowls full of knicknacks until I found a tablet and took it.

  I looked at my mobile: 11:21.

  A text message from Sanja: “Had a roaring night out? Take it easy. Call me when you wake up. xoxo”

  I called her to say that everything was OK except that my head hurt.

  “Come on, take a tablet or two and make
some coffee. Have you got a lot of work today?”

  “I got the sack.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No. It’s as real as it gets.”

  “When?”

  “Last night after the broadcast.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, as if I’d broken some rule.

  “You were at the play. It’s all the same whether I told you last night or today.”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “I don’t know, I’ll see. I don’t know. Sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize.”

  I felt I’d let her down. There were probably a few expectations of me somewhere in the cosmos of our relationship. I think it was taken for granted that I’d move up in the world and not go down. “Sorry.”

  “Oh no, no,” she said. “I’m sorry. I don’t know, I’ve just got to the theater. Go home now. Don’t keep drinking.”

  “What would I do at home?”

  “Don’t keep drinking now, OK?”

  “I'll be OK. Don't worry.”

  I made myself some Turkish coffee, went out onto the balcony and sat in the wicker chair. It was a nice day, I looked at the greenery and the city far below. Fresh air. A little blue tram skimmed along down below. People were driving places. I had no idea what to do. The day lay spread out before me.

  Should I keep drinking? Or go home? Into town? For a walk? Should I go to the zoo, perhaps? Take Markatović and go to see the elephants?

  I opened Markatović’s bedroom door a crack. He was lying diagonally in the double bed. He blinked his eyes.

  “Sorry, just you sleep,” I said and closed the door.

  My mobile rang. Unknown number. It was a journalist. She asked if she’d reached me.

  “I hope so,” I said.