Kath and Ruth walk up, glowing from their Latin dance action. “You two have been sat here thick as thieves for ages.”
“Eilнsh has been telling me about her Arabian adventures,” I say, still wondering about the old woman’s last line.
Ruth asks, “ Didyou see Kath and Dave dancing?”
“We did and fair play to ye both,” says Great-aunt Eilнsh. “That’s a mighty set of tail feathers Dave’s sprouted—at his time of life, too.”
“We’d go dancing when we first met,” says Kath, who sounds more Irish in the midst of the tribe, “but it stopped when we took on the Captain Marlow. No nights off together for thirty-odd years.”
“It’s almost three o’clock, Eilнsh,” says Ruth. “Your taxi’ll be here soon. You might want to start your goodbyes.”
No! She can’t go all paranormal on me and just leave. “I thought you’d be around for tonight, at least, Eнlish.”
“Oh, I know my limits.” She stands up with the aid of her stick. “Oisнn’s chaperoning me to the airport, and my neighbor Mr. O’Daly’ll meet me at Cork airport. Ye have your invitation to Sheep’s Head, Ed. Use it before it expires. Or before I do.”
I tell her, “You look pretty indestructible to me.”
“We all of us have less time than we think, Ed.”
CLOUDS CURDLED PINK in the narrow sky above the blast barriers lining the highway into Baghdad from the southwest. Traffic was chocka and slow, even on the side lanes, and for the last mile to the Safir Hotel the Corolla was moving at the speed of an obese jogger. Overladen motorbikes lurched past. Nasser was driving, Aziz was snoozing, and I slumped low behind my screen of hanging shirts. Baghdad’s a dark city now in all senses—there’s no power for the streetlights—and dusk brings a Transylvanian urgency to get home and bar the door behind you. We’d seen some ugly things and Nasser was in a bleaker-than-usual mood. “My wife, okay, Ed, she had good childhood. Her father worked at oil company, she go to good school, money enough, she smart, she study, Baghdad a good place then. Even after Iranian war begin, many American companies here. Reagan send money, weapons, CIA helpers for Saddam—chemicals for battle. Saddam was America ally, you know this. Good days. I a teenager then, too, Suzuki 125, leather jacket, very cool. Talk in cafйs with friends, all night. Girls, music, books, this stuff. We have future then. My wife’s father have connections, so I don’t join army. Thank the God. I got job in radio station, I work at Ministry of Information. War is over. At last, we think, Saddam spend money on country, on university, we become like Turkey. Then Kuwait happen. America says, ‘Okay, invade, Kuwait is local border dispute.’ But then—no. UN resolution. We all think, What the fuck? Saddam like cornered animal, cannot retreat with face. In Kuwait war my job was verrrycreative—to paint defeat like victory for Saddam. But future was dark, then. At home, we listen to BBC Arab Service at home, in secret, my wife and me. So, so, so jealous of BBC journalists, who is free to report real news. That Iwanted to do. But, no. We wrote lies about Kurds, lies about Saddam and sons, lies about Ba’ath Party, lies about how Iraq future is bright. If you try write truth, you die in Abu Ghraib. Then 9/11, then Bush say, ‘We take down Saddam.’ We happy. We scared, but we happy. Then, then, Saddam, that son of bitch, he gone. I thought, God is Great, Iraq begin again, Iraq rises like … that firebird, how you say, Ed?”
“Phoenix.”
“So I think, Iraq rise like phoenix, I become realjournalist. I think, I go where I want, I speak who I want, I write what I want. I think, My daughters will have careers, like my wife had career once, their future good now. Saddam statue pulled down by Iraqi and Americans—but by night looting begin from museum. U.S. soldiers, they just watch. General Garner said, ‘Is natural, after Saddam.’ I think, My God, America has no plan. I think, Here come Dark Ages. Is true. My daughters’ school hit by missile, in war. Money for new school was stolen. So no school, for months and months now. My daughters not go out. Is too danger. All day they argue, read, draw, dream, wash if there is water, watch neighbor TV if there is power. They see teenage girls in America, in Beverly Hills, go to college, drive, date boys. TV girls, they have bedrooms bigger our apartment, and rooms just for clothes and shoes. My God! For my girls, dream is like torture. When America go, in Iraq, only two future. One future is place of guns, knives, Sunni fight Shi’a, it never end. Like Lebanon in 1980s. Other future is place of Islamists, Shariah, burkas. Like Afghanistan now. My cousin Omar, last year he escape to Beirut, then he go in Brussels to find girl to marry, any girl, old, young, any who have EU passport. I say, ‘Omar, in name of God, you fucking crazy! You not marry a girl, you marry passport.’ He say, ‘For six years I treat girl nice, treat her parents nice, then plan careful, divorce, I EU citizen, I free, I stay.’ He there now. He succeed. Today I think, No, Omar not crazy. We who stay, we crazy. Future is dead.”
I didn’t know what to say. The car edged past a crowded Internet cafй, full of slack-jawed boys holding game consoles and gazing at screens where American marines shot Arab-looking guerrillas in ruined streetscapes that could easily be Baghdad or Fallujah. The game menu had no option to be a guerrilla, I guess.
Nasser fed his cigarette butt out of the window. “Iraq. Broken.”
I’M POSSIBLY A bit drunk. Holly’s over by the silver punch bowls, among an asteroid belt of women talking nineteen to the dozen. Webbers, Sykeses, Corkonian Corcorans, A. N. Others … Who the hell areall these people? I pass a table where Dave’s playing Connect 4 with Aoife and losing with theatrical dismay. I never play with Aoife like that; she giggles as her granddad clutches his head and groans, “ Nooooo, you can’thave won again! I’m the Connect 4 king!” Wishing I’d responded to Holly’s frostiness earlier less frostily, I decide to offer Holly an olive branch. If she uses it to hit me across the face, then we’ll clearly establish who’s the moody cow and who occupies the moral high ground. I’m only three tight clusters of poshly attired people away from the woman officially known as my partner—when I’m intercepted and blocked by Pauline Webber, wielding a gangly young man. The lad’s dressed for a teenage snooker tournament—purple silk shirt, matching waistcoat, pallid complexion. “Ed, Ed, Ed!” she crows. “Reunited at last. This is Seymour, who I told you allabout. Seymour, Ed Brubeck, real liferoving reporter.” Seymour flashes a mouthful of dental braces. His handshake’s a bony grab, like a UFO catcher’s. Pauline smiles like a gratified matchmaker. “Do you know, I’d stab someone in the heart with a corkscrew for a camera right nowjust to capture the two of you?” Though she does nothing about commandeering one.
Seymour’s handshake is exceeding the recommended limit. His brow is constellated with angry zits—see the squashed W of Cassiopeia—and the drunken feeling that I’ve already dreamt this very scene is superseded by the feeling that, no, I only dreamt the feeling that I’ve dreamt this very scene. “I’m a big fan of your work, Mr. Brubeck.”
“Oh.” A wannabe newshound, seduced by tales of derring-do and sex with Danish photojournalists in countries suffixed withstan.
“You said you’d share a few secrets,” says Pauline Webber.
Did I? “Which secrets did I say I’d share, Pauline?”
“You devil, Ed.” She biffs my carnation. “Don’t play hard to get with me—we’re as good as family now.”
I need to get to Holly. “Seymour, what do you need to know?”
Seymour fixes me with his ventriloquist’s creepy eyes and wiry smile, while Pauline Webber’s voice slashes through the din: “What makes a great journalist a great journalist?”
I need painkillers, natural light, and air. “To quote an early mentor,” I tell the kid, “ ‘A journalist needs ratlike cunning, a plausible manner, and a little literary ability.’ Will that do?”
“What about the greats?” fires Pauline Webber’s voice.
“The greats? Well, they all share that quality Napoleon most admired in his generals: luck. Be in Kabul when it falls. Be in Manhattan on 9/11. Be in Paris the night Diana’s driver makes his fatal misjudgement.” I flinch as the windows blast in, but, no, that’s not now, that’s ten days ago. “A journalist marriesthe news, Seymour. She’s capricious, cruel, and jealous. She demands you follow her to wherever on Earth life is cheapest, where she’ll stay a day or two, then jet off. You, your safety, your family are nothing,” I say it like I’m blowing a smoke ring, “ nothing, to her. Fondly you tell yourself you’ll evolve a modus operandi that lets you be a good journalist anda good man, but no. That’s bollocks. She’ll habituate you to sights only doctors and soldiers should ever be habituated to, but while doctors earn sainthoods and soldiers get memorials, you, Seymour, will earn lice, frostbite, diarrhea, malaria, nights in cells. You’ll be spat on as a parasite and have your expenses questioned. If you want a happy life, Seymour, be something else. Anyway, we’re all going extinct.” Spent, I push past them and get to the punch bowls at bloody last …