Brendan’s phone goes off; he answers it and turns away, saying, “Jerry, what news from the Isle of Dogs?”
“If this Bremer’s doing such an appalling job,” asks Peter, loosening his white silk tie, “why isn’t he recalled?”
“His days are numbered.” I plop a lump of sugar into my coffee. “But everyone, from the president to the lowliest staffer in the Green Zone, has a vested interest in peddling the bullshit that the insurgents are just a few fanatics and that the corner is always being turned. The Green Zone’s like the Emperor’s New Clothes, where speaking the truth is an act of treason. Bad things happen to realists.”
“Surely,” asks Sharon, “the truth must be obvious when they set foot outside the Green Zone.”
“Most staffers never do. Ever. Except to go to the airport.”
If Austin Webber wore a monocle, it would drop. “How do you run a country from inside a bunker, for God’s sake?”
I shrug. “Nominally. Sketchily. In a state of ignorance.”
“But the military must know what’s going on, at least. They’re the ones getting blown up and shot at.”
“They do, Austin, yes. And the infighting between Bremer’s faction and the generals is ruthless, but the military, too, often acts as if it wants to radicalize the population. My photographer, Aziz, has an uncle in Karbala who farms a few acres of olive orchards. Well, he did farm a few acres of olive orchards. Last October, a convoy was attacked on a stretch of road running through his land, so the coalition forces asked the locals for information on the ‘bandits.’ When none was forthcoming, a platoon of marines chopped down every last tree: ‘To encourage the locals to be more cooperative in future.’ Imagine the cooperation that act of vandalism earned.”
“It’s like the British in Ireland in 1916,” says Oisín O’Dowd. “They repeated the ageless macho mantra ‘Force is the only thing these natives understand’ so often that they ended up believing it. From that point on they were doomed.”
“But I’ve been visiting the States for thirty years, on and off,” says Austin. “The Americans I know are as wise, compassionate, and decent a bunch as you could ever hope to meet. I don’t understand it.”
“I suspect, Austin, that the Americans you’ve met in the banking world aren’t high school dropouts from Nebraska whose best friend got shot by a smiley Iraqi teenager holding a bag of apples. A teenager whose dad got shredded by a gunner on a passing Humvee last week while he fixed the TV aerial. A gunner whose best friend took a dum-dum bullet through the neck from a sniper on a roof only yesterday. A sniper whose sister was in a car that stalled at an intersection as a military attaché’s convoy drove up, prompting the bodyguards to pepper the vehicle with automatic fire, knowing they’d save the convoy from a suicide bomber if they were right, but that Iraqi law wouldn’t apply to them if they were wrong. Ultimately, wars escalate by eating their own shit, shitting bigger and eating bigger.”
I can see that my metaphor has overstepped the mark.
Lee Webber’s chatting with a friend at the neighboring table.
His mum asks, “Can I tempt anyone with the last slice of cake?”
MY FREE EYE, the one not pressed into the dust and grit, located the black marine and I found myself endowed with lip-reading powers as he told Aziz, “Here’s a shot for you, motherfucker!”
“He’s working for me!” I spat out grit.
The soldier glared my way. “What did you say?”
The Chinook was moving away, thank God, and he could hear me. “I’m a journalist,” I mumbled, trying to twist my mouth upwards, “a British journalist.” My voice was dry and mangled.
A midwestern drawl above my ear said, “The fuck you are.”
“I’m a British journalist, my name’s Ed Brubeck, and”—I did my best to sound like Christopher Hitchens—“I’m working for Spyglass magazine. Good photographers are hard to find so, please, ask your man not to point that thing at his head.”
“Major! Fuckface here says he’s a British journalist.”
“Says he’s a what?” A crunch of boots approached. The boots’ owner barked into my ear: “You speak English?”
“Yes, I’m a British journalist, and if—”
“You’re able to substantiate this claim?”
“My accreditation’s in the white car.”
There’s a sniff. “What white car?”
“The one in the corner of the field. If your private would take his knee off my neck, I’d point.”
“Media representatives are s’posed to carry credentials on their persons.”
“If a militiaman found a press pass on me, they’d kill me. Major, my neck, if you wouldn’t mind?”
The knee was removed. “Up. Real slow.” My legs were stiff. I wanted to massage my neck but daren’t in case they thought I was reaching for a weapon. The officer removed his aviator glasses. His age was hard to gauge: late twenties, but his face was encrusted with grime. HACKENSACK was stitched under his officer’s insignia. “So whythefuck’s a British journalist dressed like a raghead partying in a field with genuine ragheads round a shot-down OH-58D?”
“I’m in this field because there’s news here, and I’m dressed like this because looking too Western gets you shot.”
“Looking too fuckin’ Arabic almost got you shot.”
“Major, would you please let that man go?” I nodded towards Aziz. “He’s my photographer. And”—I found Nasser—“the guy in the blue shirt, over there. My fixer.”
Major Hackensack let us dangle for a few seconds. “Okay.” Aziz and Nasser were allowed to stand and we lowered our arms. “British — that’s England, right?”
“England plus Scotland plus Wales, with Northern Ire—”
“Nottingham. ’S that England or Britain?”
“Both, like Boston’s in Massachusetts and the U.S.”
The major thought I was a smartass. “My brother married a nurse in Nottingham and I never saw such a rancid shit-hole. Ordered a ham sandwich and they gave me a slice of pink slime between two pieces of dried shit. Guy who made it was an Arab. Every last cabdriver was an Arab. Your country’s an occupied fuckin’ territory, my friend.”
I shrugged. “There has been a lot of immigration.”
The major leaned to one side, hoicked up a bomb of spit, and let it drop. “You live in the Green Zone, British journalist?”
“No. I’m staying in a hotel across the river. The Safir.”
“Up close and personal with the real Iraqis, huh?”
“The Green Zone’s one city, Baghdad’s another.”
“Lemme tell you the deal with real Iraqis. Real Iraqis say, ‘There’s no security since the invasion!’ I say, ‘Then try not killing, stabbing, and robbing each other.’ Real Iraqis say, ‘Americans raid our houses at night, they don’t respect our culture.’ I say, ‘Then stop shooting at us from your houses, you fuckfaces.’ Real Iraqis say, ‘Where’s our sewers, our schools, our bridges?’ I say, ‘Where’s the shrinkwrapped billions of dollars we gave you to build your sewers, schools, and bridges?’ Real Iraqis say, ‘Why don’t we have power or water?’ I say, ‘Who blew up the substations and tapped the fuckin’ pipes we built?’ Oh, and their clerics say, ‘Hey, our mosques need painting.’ I say, ‘Then get your holy asses up a ladder and paint them your-fuckin’-selves!’ Put that in your newspaper. What is your newspaper, anyhow?”
“It’s Spyglass magazine. It’s American.”