‘I deserved this.’
The words fell out of my mouth onto the ground. ‘I deserved this.’
That was the new sense, the mood of my new and future womanhood, a guilt and a responsibility associated with this anger on the streets and with that young boy, Breeze.
*
There was a knock at the door and when I opened it there was a uniformed member of the hotel staff standing there with a courteous smile and a tray at his shoulder. I thanked him and took the tray to the bed and uncovered the plates to find a mountain of hot stew chicken and rice and two different salads and bread rolls and fruit. My stomach rejected even the sight of the food. I sat down on the bed again and poured myself a glass of Coca-Cola from the bar and coughed on its fizzy sweetness. A large television sat on a table in the room and I switched it on and flicked to the local news and found nothing but a cartoon film about a little mermaid.
I flicked to other channels, quickly finding CNN, to see what looked like a line of armoured tanks in convoy rolling in the middle of a desert. Sand dust billowed from the tank treads. I could barely guess what I was looking at. Tanks? A desert, somewhere in the Middle East, far away? I found the control panel and turned up the volume.
A young, fresh-faced white male reporter in a flak jacket was saying something about an invasion. Tanks. Where was this? I picked up a bread roll from the tray and began to tug at it.
Apparently an invasion was taking place. The tanks were rolling in to a small fortress by the sea in the Arabian Gulf. The fortress was being bombed and the line of tanks were from a much bigger country nearby, a desert country ruled by a violent dictator. This much bigger country was invading its tiny neighbour, suddenly and without warning or provocation. One massive country was invading its neighbour by land and by air. Bombs were landing on a fortress by the sea . . . the young, fresh-faced reporter was saying that the fortress had been well defended once, from invasions by sea, but now the residents were helpless. People from another state were arriving to claim this smaller ancient fortress city for itself. An old dispute. There was news footage of lines of men praying in a masjid and a young boy saying something in Arabic, something about God. He was about the same age as Breeze. I stuffed some of the bread roll into my mouth and found myself chewing on cloth. What had Hal said to me? Something big.
I was stunned. Surely the two invasions weren’t connected? They couldn’t be. One was a bungled and spectacular failure on a tiny island in the Caribbean sea; and this . . . this was an altogether bigger bid for power. This involved the world: superpowers, jet fighters, NATO. I wondered about the news teams staying in Sans Amen; if they were already booking their tickets to fly out. Did any of these journalists notice a connection between the last six days and this bigger attempted coup d’état?
I coughed on the roll and swigged some Coke to get it down; I stared at the line of tanks and then I didn’t want to see anymore. I turned the TV off. I lay back on the bed. I closed my eyes and it was only then I could hear it again, the noise in my ears, the sound of distant shrieking, the sound of an inner screaming.
V. The Hilltop
MONDAY AFTERNOON,
THE HOUSE OF POWER,
THE CITY OF SILK
Violence is man re-creating himself, said the psychiatrist Frantz Fanon. Ashes took this to mean that somehow violence could be a positive thing. But when he looked around at the empty and destroyed chamber of the House of Power, he felt despair. Their valuable hostages were now free, people had been killed. The place was shot up – and yet Fanon was suggesting this had some higher meaning, that there was a grander pattern, historic and purposeful, to this violence; it had been significant in the great scheme of things. It could lead to new creation. But Ashes didn’t feel the least bit positive. He had lost track of his spiritual growth and his sense of selfhood had been crushed. He was going to be imprisoned or publicly executed over this. His children were now fatherless. No. He didn’t feel any sense of purpose, any resonance with Fanon’s words. He didn’t want to die for others to grow. He was a stupid man. He had read too many books, too many words. He felt no pride and no vindication in what he’d been part of the last six days. And now there was no slipping away, no getting off lightly. No way out of the House but on the bus waiting for them outside.
It was their turn now to walk out. None of them could even talk to each other. Ashes knew he was no one special or important to his country. All those notions were ill-begotten fantasies of six days ago. He wanted none of this business with guns and bullets. He bet Frantz Fanon had never held a gun in his hands. He had said things that needed to be said. He was a black Caribbean man and he was only twenty-seven when he wrote it down: the white man does not see the black man. This was a revolutionary thing to say, then, in the 1950s. But Fanon had never held a gun. And now that Ashes had held a gun, fired it and shot someone, he felt it was irresponsible to write revolutionary literature and to stir people up.
When the PM was freed he’d felt abandoned. As the hostages disappeared he had felt relieved for them . . . and envious. Now it was his turn. He took his gun and didn’t look around too much as he walked from the chamber. He didn’t say anything to Hal or any of the other men. He took his turn in the line of those surrendering. Slowly he walked down the steps, and soon he came to the body of the security guard he’d seen Arnold shoot dead on the way in, years ago now. He nodded to the body in respect and for a split second he was caught in the blur of the chaos of those moments: Arnold screeching and shooting him dead, spraying the man with bullets. Now the man lay bloated and rotting and covered in caked blood. The stench made him gag.
He stumbled a little and then forced himself down towards the sun. At the bottom of the steps he was quickly surrounded by armed men.
‘Put down your gun,’ said a voice through a megaphone. Ashes did what he was told, placing the rifle a few feet in front of him. He took a large step backwards, to show obedience.
‘Now put your hands in the air,’ said the megaphoned voice. He did this too. Two army men wearing balaclavas came forward, gesticulating with their rifles for him to keep walking. He did so, the sun pounding on his back. Now he was captured, now he was helpless. His body was rigid and everything seemed to be happening a few feet away from him.
‘Turn right,’ they said, and he turned to see the bus, aware that the snipers had their guns now inches from his head and back. One quick movement and they’d shoot him dead. The long white bus floated in the heat. His legs didn’t seem to touch the pavement. He had his hands in the air, two guns at his back. He couldn’t hear what the megaphone voice was saying; the men behind him were shouting orders for him to spread his arms and legs across the side of the bus. He did so, his body trembling. They patted him down and wrenched his head backwards. They were cool and mean and efficient in their manner. They found nothing on him and so he was marched to the front of the bus. Keep your hands on your head, one of the snipers barked. He kept his hands on his head as he mounted the stairs and walked to one of the seats at the back. He looked through the window to the left and he could see other men coming out now, also frogmarched by armed soldiers.
It all seemed to happen without sound. He lifted up his face towards the sky and then he closed his eyes and relaxed his chest. His heart slowed and then yes, a small feeling of peace came into him from outside and he breathed it in deeply. He fell quiet.
Then the other men were coming on to the bus, some still looking bad and serious, others with their faces closed and shut down. All of them stank and they were dirty and worn down from fatigue and hunger; they all sat with their hands on their heads and some of them stared straight ahead in a stupor and some watched what was happening with a curiosity as to their own fate. Ashes sat with his hands on his head and felt open in his chest and heart and he prayed for himself and for them. He thought of his wife Jade and his sons. His small lie, I’ll be back for dinner. Regret wasn’t quite the word for the way he felt. He’d read too much; he’d
taken it all too seriously. None of these books came close to describing the way he felt now.
Every brother was searched, some against the flank of the bus, some spread-eagled on the ground. Ashes watched as the soldiers found and confiscated the photocopied pieces of paper some of them kept in their back pockets, the proof of a so-called amnesty; a piece of paper signed by members of the government under duress days ago. The world had moved on. There was a wall of press and photographers not far way and Ashes felt himself to be the object of much attention. It was humiliating; could Jade see him now, on TV?
Then almost all of them were on the bus. And then he saw Breeze come round the corner of the House, thin and wiry, and he had his hands in the air too and his face was full of contempt and there was a bound-up energy in his step. Breeze, the young boy, was angry to have been so caught out. Angry that he hadn’t been told who the Prime Minister was. Breeze came out holding his mouth shut tight and Ashes could see he was full of a new fight. Breeze had snipers behind him, shouting orders. He was spread across the side of the bus, just under Ashes’ window, and he could see the army men now patting him down and one of them brought a piece of white paper from the back pocket of his pants. They jeered and took it from him and said, Yeah, nice try young man.
Breeze looked upwards and when he saw that Ashes was looking down he couldn’t meet him eye to eye. The young boy had far from surrendered. Ashes wondered if he was only just beginning to think for himself.
*
They were driven through the ruined streets. Everything had been destroyed by the people; town was chaos, the rubble so bad it was hard to recognise where he was. His mouth hung open with the sight of it all. Books: he’d read too many. Books didn’t talk of this happening; looting wasn’t discussed in Fat Clay’s handbook of revolution. Or if it was, he’d missed it. Books didn’t say enough about lying to wives about dinner, about satellite dishes being so easy to dismantle, about cleaning a human tongue off the carpet. About the sounds captors make, some as young as fourteen, tiny whispered whimpers, like cats crying . . . and the sounds their hostages make too, some of them women, the soft moans they make at night as they call for their children. Books didn’t talk of the smell of a ruined city. He could speak of that now and write it down if need be.
A ruined city smelled of ashes. And it looked cratered, like the moon. It had no sound. It was quiet, like guilt. And it tasted of bitterness and the shame of its own citizens, those who’d plundered the city while revolution happened only a few feet away. If he could reach out and touch it, a ruined city would feel rough and ramshackle, like broken bitumen, like burnt tyres; it would shred the hands that tried to explore and caress it. A ruined city was already a haunted city; Ashes could sense thousands of extinguished moments in this dead space. It was a city of leftover impressions. He could still feel the things that had disappeared: arguments, love affairs, street deals, games of cards, moments of revelation, bargains lost, friendships made, the pulse of everyday human endeavour and frustration somehow hung in the air.
His throat coiled into lumps and his eyes burned at the sight of the scarred streets. There was a supermarket which looked like a cave. There was a pile of rubble inside it and outside it too. He couldn’t understand what had been done to it. Everything seemed to have been taken outside and then rubble seemed to have been brought inside; or had walls been knocked down by the looters? What had happened? One or two of the brothers let out a low whistle. There was an old gingerbread wooden shop on the corner of two main streets, a shop he knew well; it sold hardware. The windows had been pelted with bricks. They were all smashed and the shop looked like a face with many broken eyes and many broken teeth. Had the people in the street hated the shop so much they had abused it?
Trucks full of army soldiers were trailing them and the air was heavy and humid. Ashes felt hated. He felt stared at and guilty and hated. The bus was half full of brothers. Breeze had come towards the back to sit down. Sixty men sat with their hands on their heads. Sixty freedom fighters. Sixty mistaken men. There was no longer the stench of the House but there was now an overwhelming feeling of dread and an inevitable feeling of the power of the universe mounting its revenge. There would be severe recourse towards them and it was already happening. He had threatened life. They had abused and taken life itself. Death still followed the bus around on its tour of the City of Silk. There was sun and air and the feeling of being let out and yet also deprived of freedom, forever. He would actually never see the sun again. The army were everywhere on the streets watching the bus. Every man on the bus stared out into the City of Silk which they had personally destroyed. Ashes uttered his mantras to his God, begging for forgiveness, to be given another chance. He could start again, very humbly, again, again, dear God up there in the skies. He would start again on the ladder upwards.
*
They were being taken to the television station, Ashes guessed, to pick up the other brothers. They would be reunited with the Leader and the other men. They travelled some more and the hollow streets and their charred ugliness blurred and he remembered a time when he first came to the commune and met the Leader and felt he had met a teacher, a man who could add to and enhance the enquiry he was already making about his spiritual existence on earth. Maybe this was a man who could be of some special consequence on his path. He understood, immediately, the Leader would change his life. Very quickly he had been swept up. It felt like he had at last, on earth, found a band of like-minded souls, this was where he fit in. He had felt kinship, a sense of brotherhood, for the first time since his brother’s death. He had felt a sense of belonging, at last. It had been a good time, early on, when he’d submitted to the Leader in the commune on the outskirts of town. His mother had named him Ashes and this, she said, was because she had a feeling about him, when he was first born, that he would live and die many times during this one life, and always survive from the ashes of himself.
*
Soon, the bus stopped again, in the street. The day was overcast and the grey-purple clouds in the sky squashed the heat down onto the tarmac. The steel-framed bus cooked them all slowly as they waited for the men in the television station to come out, again, one by one, laying down their weapons in the street. It was embarrassing. Everyone was watching, CNN, BBC, the local media, literally everyone in the world; journalists with cameras everywhere. This was their heroic failure, their shining mistake. This was their learning. How many of them would learn anything? How many of them would live, actually survive after this? How many of them had now felt the power of the gun and now had a taste for guns and for death? Ashes didn’t like any of it at all. What would Jade make of this? She had married a man who had made this huge mistake. Could she ever love him now? He was out alive, and yet he had been part of this and it was shameful.
Each brother who filed out of the television station was searched; each one was marched at gunpoint to the bus with their hands on their heads. Ashes didn’t even know who had gone to the television station with the Leader, and now faces of brothers he recognised came onto the bus . . . some looked utterly lost and defeated, others appeared sullen and closed. All were tired, none looked too scared. Many looked as if they had been having similar thoughts to him.
Ashes waited for an hour, at least, in the hot bus. Eventually, all the brothers came out of the TV station. It was like watching a procession of concrete men, each brother looked grey and hard. He guessed that, as in the House of Power, a few brothers had been shot dead. He guessed that they had killed others too. Nothing was speakable. There were now almost the same amount of men on the bus as there had been last Wednesday afternoon during prayers at the compound. Hal was with them. Greg Mason was at the front near the driver, resting his leg which was turning purple in the heat. They were a band of brothers who had been rounded up after a war and there was no love in them at all. These men he had prayed with on a regular basis for years; they’d all attended the meetings at the compound, listened to what the Leader and h
is men had to say. There was much they had in common and had shared over time: the community school, the medical centre where he volunteered, the community shop. They had tried to self-organise. There was the dormitory for the young street boys like Breeze. He knew these men and some of their wives. They were family men; they were his brothers on earth.
It was all coming back to him, now they were together. Why they had done this thing called insurrection. It had been for a New Society, one like theirs.
*
The army weren’t giving much away. There was a quiet, tense atmosphere to the way they were conducting their affairs and this felt frightening. What were their plans?
The Leader would be giving himself up last. And now it was his turn. Every brother in the bus watched the entrance of the television station for his well-known figure. Everyone wanted to see him again, if he was defeated or if, like them, he was having closed and quiet thoughts which involved regret. Cameramen and news teams were stationed all along the street. There were snipers on rooftops and Ashes wondered if they might shoot him.
Then he appeared, huge, dressed in robes of grey. Familiar. Family. ‘Papa’, some of the young boys called him. He was their Papa, their Leader and their spiritual guide. Ashes felt his heart lift from his chest. The Leader appeared like an angel, his clothes hardly creased, like he had been out for his daily stroll. Ashes saw his teacher come out into the sun, holding his gun tightly by his side, like a soldier. No army man came forward to frisk him or search him; it was as if even they were taking a good look, as though they were impressed at who he was and what they’d caught. The Leader walked like a general with his gun under his arm and his grey robes still immaculate through the centre of the hot street. He walked like a noble dignitary, a man who’d done justice to himself and his men, had even succeeded in his intent.
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