by Will Self
of the photograph he cyber-shot in Al-Afrika Street: it shows the
whitest and most pristine of the garden chairs the Kiwis tried to
liberate from the Sheik. Askew tips his glasses to the very end of his
Wensleydale nose and examines it. What do I really know about Islam
and Muslims? A fragment of their burial service one of the ’terps translated
for me: How can you reject Allah, when you were dead and then
He gave you life, then He will make you die and then give you life
again, then you will be returned to Him? But sir, Asif insists, you
must be careful, I do not know what these friends are … Gawain
looks critically at the ’terp – he’s sporting a red Sunderland EffSee
tracksuit top … close to the boys, then, and with his hawkish profile
and tight cap of blue-black curls he’s … almost good-looking. Asif
has a pack of Marlboros poking from his back pocket – his shaking
hand rests on the edge of the kitchen island. A fly dashes towards
it … so sure of themselves in the air, Gawain thinks, dog-fighting
over dog shit – but once grounded they lose their war-fighting
spirit … Everyone in the kitchen hears the clatter of the helicopter
passing overhead … Uther’s to the rescue! and Bessemer’ll soon be
gone. It’s time for the rest of them to withdraw as well – Trimmer
had been perfectly clear: Stick around for too long, Greeny, and the
mucky lot – the Badr boys … well, takes ’em a while to clear their hash
heads and sort their shit out, but when they do they’ll get on the blower
and scare up a mob … Cause you plenty of bother – and provide them
with plenty of … cover. You, Gawain orders Asif: get over there,
duck down for cover … some cover – chipboard versus semi-automatic
fire, and call out to the Sheik’s friends. Tell ’em they’re to push their
weapons out first with their feet, then follow on with their hands
high. Asif queries: In Arabic or English – or … Farsi? All bloody
three, Gawain replies, retreating to the kitchen doorway, from
where he believes he’ll be able to cover all eventualities … barring
explosives. The troopers give their SeeOh tight smiles and thumbs-ups,
and he notes important details: all three have spare magazines
duct-taped to the stocks of their rifles for … speedy reloading.
On the point of no return … Gawain feels his wife’s workmanlike
hands on his shoulders: Because that’s the way we touch each other
nowadays, with cursory efficiency – measuring each other up for a
carpet … or a coffin. What’d Fi said? It’d been when the coaches
were arriving – drawing up in front of the mess hall, and the young
men were tipping their heavy bergens from their shoulders into the
open luggage compartments … what did she say? There’d been
the thin, watery sunlight of a late March afternoon in northern
latitudes, and, mounting up behind her the moors all tawny big
cats up there … kill sheep so they say – what did she say? Looked
Gawain in the eye, she did, and said … But no, it doesn’t return to
him … While I, he thinks, can never return to her, not with blood
on my hands … What d’you fancy ? Jonathan sat grinning toothily,
across from him in the Royal Oak – an efficient rather than an olde
worlde pub, with pool table and jukebox towards the back of the
bar, while they were plonked down by the front window, either side
of a large fake-wicker basket full of individual sauce sachets …
English mustard, vinegar, tartare, brown, gory tomato … It’ll have to
be a steak, is what he always says. Fish’ll be frozen – pies’ll be processed.
Steak’ll probably be shit, too, but it’s got more in its favour,
so, saignant ou à point? Ou entre saignant et à point? Alors …
peut-être entre à point et bien cuit, ‘cause you’ve always struck me as
a well-cooked kinda guy, Gawain … And the well-cooked kinda guy
had replied: Don’t be facetious, Jonathan, you’re not in some trendy
London restaurant now. Worst luck, he’d muttered … the butcher!
And Gawain had an impulse to grab the cutlery, tightly wrapped in
a thick red paper serviette, unwrap the steak knife, plunge it in his
complacent neck and watch the fucker bleed out on the carpet … His
wife’s words at last return to Lieutenant-Colonel Gawain Thomas
as he toggles the Sig Sauer’s safety, which is just the latest entry on
the long list of everything I’m doing wrong: I don’t need to tell you to
be careful, she’d said. Gawain snaps his fingers – Asif coughs out.
A pause. He coughs again. A nasty hiatus – then mutterings audible
from behind the door. The damned door – the six-panelled Georgian
door: not dissimilar to the ones Gawain sees every morning back
home, when he sets off for work … ranged round the cul-de-sac. Tell
’em they’re surrounded, Gawain calls to the ’terp … ‘cause there’s
no butcher here who’ll cry cliché! Do it! And Asif dutifully translates
this into … bronchitis. Another pause, then sc-sc-sccrrrraaaape the
door scrapes over the tiled floor … He’d driven off down Church
Lane without so much as a backward glance. Cruel, really, and
unnecessary – could’ve given me a peck on the cheek … entre à
point et bien cuit. But then we’ve never been able to talk about the
physical side of our relationship much – any more than we’ve been
able to talk … shop! The men who emerge blinking into the hard
light of the kitchen are grey-faced and furtive. There’re one … two
… four of them easy-peasy … nice and … neat beards, black robes
and white clerical-looking turbans. They stand, stranded on the far
shore of the kitchen island, and Asif coughs at them: they cough
back, and he leaps up swinging the muzzle of his AyKay in an arc
which traverses … their bellies. Sokay … click-click sokay, Asif says
… his teeth won’t obey his jaw: So-click-click-kay … no guns … so-click-kay
… Gawain gestures with the Sig Sauer and the two
troopers rise up, move forward and pat the beards down … they’d’ve
enjoyed this in Bardney, where Gawain had in point of fact resisted
the impersonal farewell, hung on to Jonathan’s gloved hand and
asked directly: Why Kuwait, is the balloon about to go up? Up –
we both looked up … ‘cause I thought that he’d want what I want …
Yes, they’d both looked up, and witnessed a similar meterological
phenomenon up there in the Lincolnshire sky – an unusual one,
certainly, but by no means unprecedented: a single, puffy-white
cloud hanging maybe four or five thousand feet … away from the
flock. Jonathan had slowly removed his overcoat, then his jacket,
folded each in turn and laid them on the Merc’s back seat. When he
eventually replied it’d been in the most official of drawls: Ye-es,
we-ell, Dicky-dearest has got it into his head there’s a viable asset
in that neck of the woods. Utter bullshit, I’m sure – prob’ly just
some Ba’athist cadre who’s weighed up the odds and decided since
his life is effectively worthless under the regime he may as we
ll cash
it in with us – the Firm’s always been a cash-on-demand business,
as the epithet would suggest … In bed, as they post-coitally
slumbered, Gawain’s lover was tender and vulnerable, but with each
successive layer of expensive material he sheathed his body in, he
grew more and more condescending. Only an hour since, Gawain
had been revelling in his two-up promotion: Top cover! Best possible
position for a tank commander – he can scope out the terrain
ahead … the clonking mahogany headboard, the striped wallpaper …
that butcher’s bed-head buried in … the pillow … Yet there he was,
shuffling his merely serviceable shoes on the frozen bitumen, racking
his brains for the meaning of … epithet. Kindly escort these, ah,
gentlemen outside, Colonel Thomas instructs his men – then to
Asif: Tell them we’ve reason to believe they came over the border in
the night, so we’re going to take them back to Camp Val for
preliminary questioning … and … if they can’t satisfy us as to the
legitimacy of their, ah, business … well, we’ll have to send them
down to the DeeDeeEff at Shaibah … As he speaks Gawain falls
in behind the troopers, the ’terp and the mysterious mullahs – and
when he’s finished they’re all standing, sun-struck, back in the
high noon of Al-Afrika Street. Fresh sweat bursts from Gawain’s
armpits and crotch, soaking through each successive layer of cheap
material … Only the previous week he’d come upon some Rams
just back off patrol: they were sitting in the shadow of the compound
wall, frying eggs on the ceramic plaques they’d removed
from their body armour. The Colonel had stood in silence and
watched while the full screw who was doing the frying took
the orders: Easy-over, lads, or sunny-side up? Whistling while he
worked – until, that is, he became aware of this … deeper shadow
looming over him: Good to see you lads aren’t cooking in your
Guccis, Gawain had begun easily enough, bantering away. You
wouldn’t want to have egg on your ties – might put off those
well-born Arabian virgins we hear so much about … But then
the seriousness of their situation had begun to bear down on
him. Heavily: Small piece of advice, though. Down in Basra, where
things’re a fuck of a lot hairier, our comrades are dying for want of
adequate armour – you’re aware of that, are you? Aware of the
wider-bloody-picture? There’d been a surly silence – they looked at
the father of the regiment with the sheepy, shame-faced expressions
of … the naughty boys they still are. Naughty boys who took the
Duke of Edinburgh’s challenge seriously, struggling up the scree
of Scafell Pike, wishing, hoping, dreaming all the way … I wanna
go to war. As he’d walked away, the responsibility of command
heavy on my shoulders, Gawain heard the men burst into excitable
chatter – the way schoolboys do when they’ve been told off by a
hated teacher whose authority is rapidly waning … my fault, I fear.
He should’ve hung on to Jonathan’s hand forever, on that frosty
March morning – hung on to it and pressed it to my lips … Then
confessed that: all things considered, rather than fight the coming
war with the weapons, the tactics and the skill-set designed for
another conflict altogether, he’d far prefer it if his own skin were to
be sheathed in silk … not sweat. Should’ve admitted he couldn’t
forgive his lover for not shaving off his beards and making his
own … public avowal. And, most sheepily and shame-facedly of all,
should’ve told Jonathan that the only time he’d ever enjoyed a trip
to the theatre was when they were at the Academy, and he and
Tizer went on a double-date. Tizer nearly lost his nut – ‘cause his
girl had booked them all tickets to see … some gay-fucking musical!
Okay, everyone? Gawain says, glancing to the end of the street,
where the cracked concrete minaret wavers in the super-heated
air … admonishing me. The Rams nod their helmets as their SeeOh
does a quick head-count: with the five Iranians added into the
mix, there’re eighteen suspects – then there’re the Kiwis and their
Force Protection, and of course the brick he arrived with – fuck!
Ruddy-fucking fuck-fuck! Fuckety-fucking fuck! Fucking Pythian –
Arbroath … Hodges! He’s lost control of the battle-space, and the
confirmation of this comes immediately, in the form of … popcorn
being made on a massive scale! – an automatic rifle firing a burst on
the rooftop above. Then, all hell breaks lose … When it’s over – and
it’s over in seconds – the trooper on top cover in the Wimmik is
screaming … more clichés: None of youse move a muscle! I’ve got
you all covered! Which he does: the evil eye of the geepee-emmgee
swings back and forth, from one crumpled bedspread to the next.
Gawain shouts out, Anyone wounded? And Pythian appears up
above, silhouetted against the hurting sky, his arm raised and
waving: Man down, Boss! He shouts, It’s Hodges … Great! Fucking
great the way he spoke to me – so unbelievably patronising:
Things’re ramping up, Gawain – who knows how much time we’ll
be able to snatch from the jaws of war? Balloon’s definitely going up
before the summer – of that there seems little doubt: TeeBee’s so far
up Bush’s bum they’re using the same toothbrush – and when they
run out of toothpaste, either Dicky or John’s on hand to oblige. You
Rams’ll get your precious deployment sooner or later, while as for
me? We-ell, let’s just put it this way: there’re people I care about out
there in the sandpit – kiddies, some of ’em, really – and I’d as soon
they were all tucked up in beddy-byes before you lot start playing
with your toy tanks … Ye-es, playing with toy tanks, indeed.
A month or two later Gawain had been sat at home – their new
one, exclusive to EmmOhDee personnel – and watching the advance –
as he had so many of the critical conflicts of the era – on fucking telly.
The platforms that’d been Herced into Kuwait headed north in a
cloud of dust. How had the brave boys looked on their toy tanks?
Not terribly ally – some of them didn’t even have desert camos, and
were potentially going to their deaths in crappy, standard-issue
battledress. A cup of tea balanced on his emerging paunch, Gawain
goggled as infanteers moved along the rutted roads into Basra – and
how did they look then? Eccentrically overdressed when compared
with the Basratis, who trotted past them, lolling across the shafts of
their donkey carts, the sleeves of their tartan shirts rolled up, one
hand casually supporting a looted air-conditioner unit or a teetering
stack of … white plastic garden chairs. Then there’d been more
footage, taken at an intersection where two roads crossed on their
way to … nowhere: a noisy crowd of Basratis doing their best to
ignore some skinny-necked boys from Pwllheli, prob’ly – or …
dunno, Daventry – who were taking a fag-break in a nearby ditch.
&n
bsp; Stretched out in a Barcalounger Fi sweetly believed would help him
with his bad back, Gawain had been further transfixed, as all the
brand-new fixtures and furnishings vanished from around him:
the watercolours of Snowdonia slipped their hooks, the spotlights
slid off their tracking, the fitted carpets pulled out their own staples
and rolled themselves up – then all of it reappeared, on-screen,
piled high on the back of a Toyota pickup which was being driven
at speed along … the Via Dolorosa. In those first few weeks of the
conflict Gawain experienced the sort of tense exhilaration Jonathan
displays every time … he pops one of those bloody pills. Walking on
Sundays after church parade, with the children up by Fylingdales,
he visualised the electro-magnetic waves pulsing from these
humongous golf-ball-shaped installations – and thought of those
who received them: the spooks and EssEff bods, the selectively
briefed policymakers … This exalted community partook of the
wafers, threw back the wine and so were transformed, becoming
completely aware of the wider picture. But he … he’d strode on,
Gore-Tex boots slipping and sliding through drenched gorse as the
children whooped and skipped beneath a high, wide moorland sky:
he strode on, towards a horizon he never reached, all the while
muttering this very plain chant: We have to go … We have to go …
We have to go … Had to go because: They need us there … Just as
the Rams had been needed in Sierra Leone and Kosovo – at Imjin
and Inkerman. He strode on, g-g-grinding his teeth – and was
g-g-grinding them still! Was it two hours, or two years later? Sat
back in the Portakabin, as he types up his report prior to emailing
it down to aitchqueue, his jaw clenched and … aching: Double-youOhTwo
Pythian surprised the two suspected fighters, who were hiding
on the roof, and in the exchange of fire Trooper Hodges was wounded.
Down below, in the street, A Squadron’s interpreter, Asif al-Sayyab,
assuming his comrades and their detainees were coming under fire,
attempted to return fire. Unfortunately, his weapon jammed, and he
was shot and killed by one of the detainees who had secreted a weapon
… Weapon-weapon … Under fire – return fire … These clumsy
repetitions bother the Colonel – at Sandhurst he’d endless difficulties
