He laughs. Quite loud.—Who? Who is coming?
I flick on my radio and make the call. Still nothing but static. I give him a cold stare.—Where are you from?
Again he looks around him, all points of the compass. Though there is still nothing to see beyond the twenty-yard radius to the dust curtain.—I don't know.
—You don't know. Dark when you left, was it?
—Pardon?
—Never mind. Joke.
—Ah! Joking is good . . . in your predicament.
—Where did you learn to speak English?
He rubs his chin.—I can't remember.
—Funny fucker, incha?
—Inshallah.
I'm only asking questions to establish the upper hand, to show him that I'm in control. Given the situation, I don't feel in control and he seems to know that, too.—Name. What's your name?
He looks at the sky.—You couldn't pronounce it.
—Try me.
—It's many. And many don't like to repeat it.
He turns his one eye on me when he says this, and I don't know why but my skin flushes. I mean my skin ripples like the sand does when the wind moves it.
—Funny fucker, I say again.
We spend the next half an hour staring at each other in silence. My wristwatch tells me I've been there with my foot on the mine for seven hours. Soon it will be nightfall. The Arab makes no movement. But something about him has me scared. And I'm the one with the gun.
He breaks the silence.—Perhaps you should tell another joke.
—What?
—To improve your situation. Perhaps one of your jokes.
—Perhaps I should put a bullet through your head. That would be a good joke.
—Then how could I help you? I'm thinking of how to help you, but this is all I have come up with so far. And you should not underestimate the power of levity. Your situation is grave. You must work against it.
—Excuse me, I don't know why but I don't feel like telling any jokes right now.
—The war you are in the middle of, the Arab states casually,—is only part of a larger war: which is the war declared by levity on gravity. Indeed gravity is what placed your foot in this difficult situation. Levity is what will raise you out of it.
I twist my lip into a sneer.—Are you taking the piss, you fucking rag-head?
He blinks at me with his one eye.—I don't understand this expression.
—No? Well, fuck off.
I try the radio again. I'm starting to suspect the batteries are failing. The useless static makes me want to toss my radio into the sand, but I keep my head, and I keep my gun trained on the mocking Arab. I'm thirsty. My throat is choked with dust, and I need a piss pretty bad.
My cramping leg by now is in a desperate state. I can't feel my foot at all and I'm afraid that the slightest gust of air will lift my foot off the mine and release the spring underneath it. Worse, a kind of involuntary tremor has set into my calf muscle. My shirt and my combat trousers are saturated with my own sweat. For the first time I actually begin to speculate how long I can hold this position. At some point I know I'm going to lose concentration and remove my foot. I keep my full weight on the mine, tapping the sand with my free left foot, bouncing lightly, just to work some feeling into my leg.
It's no good. I have to manipulate my cock out of my combat pants and take a piss on the sand. All while keeping the weight of one foot on the mine and levelling my machine gun at the Arab. He watches this operation with great interest. My piss foams and sizzles on the sand. Finally I manage to put my tackle away. I'm exhausted.
—It's very difficult for you, he says.—Very difficult. I really think a joke would help.
I raise my machine gun and aim it right between his eyes. I'm very close to pulling the trigger. I want to. But it's against my principles, though he doesn't know that. He doesn't seem the slightest bit worried. He just keeps talking.—You know, God laughed this world into existence, my friend. He saw the night and he laughed. His very last snort of laughter created man. We were made from the snot in His nose, from His laughing too much. Do you know that the prophet said,
Keep your heart light at every moment, because when the heart is downcast the soul becomes blind.
Even now in your difficult situation, this is good advice.
—And you see, levity is the only thing we have in the face of the absurdity of death. Laughter is the cure for grief. But you know all this because you are a soldier and you have seen death. You have also killed. I know this. I can see into your heart.
He talks this way for an hour or more. I listen because it takes my mind off my situation. And after a while his voice becomes a kind of murmuring. I don't know how it happened, but without me seeing him get up he's on his feet and he's whispering these things in my ear. I must be tranced-out because I didn't see him get up—wouldn't allow him to get up. But there he is, an inch away, whispering, and I can feel his breath in my ear as he speaks. The sky has turned dark. Dusk is coming to the desert. I look at my watch. I've been standing on the mine for over ten hours.
—I've decided I'm going to help you, he says,—if you'll let me.
—Who are you?
He steps back, shakes his head.—I don't know. I've been trying to remember. All I can tell you is this: there was a white flash in the desert, an explosion and a terrible wind and there I was, wandering. And then I found you. I can give you a wish.
—Yeah, you're a fucking genie.
He claps his hands and jumps, laughing. The laughter takes over him for a moment. His black
dishdasha
flaps as he laughs and in a split-second of dizziness I hallucinate him as a black bird hovering near me.
—There, a joke! A good one! It will help. If I am a djinn I can summon up a wind. But if I help you, you will never be rid of me. You understand that?
—Get me out of here, I say.
This next part is the hardest part to write. The Arab is gone and in his place is the fluttering Red Admiral. The butterfly settles on the sand where the Arab has been, and within a second a black crow flies down from the sky and eats the Red Admiral, and I know it is the same crow that I hallucinated a moment ago, and the same crow that had come into my room that Christmas Day before I left for the Gulf. It eats the butterfly and it grows before my eyes, twelve foot, thirty foot in the air and I can smell the stink of its hot, black feathers and its birdshit and I see its yellow claws scrabbling the sand near my foot on the mine; I wants to shout: No! But already a screaming is coming across the sky.
—Incoming! I shout to no one. It's a mortar or a rocket and it lands maybe thirty feet away and the blast lifts me up high into the air and blows me clean across the desert. I'm already flying backwards when I hear the mine detonate safely, and then I'm dumped on the desert floor.
I don't know what happens next because I come round in a field hospital with about two hundred beds. I wake up and look around me and say—Where's my boys? Get my boots, I have to look after my boys.
Medic comes up to me and snatches a clipboard hanging on the end of my bed.—For you, Tommy, ze var is offer—
—Fuck off. Where's my boots?
—I'm serious, it's over. And not just for you.
He is serious, too. I've been unconscious for nearly three days and the fighting is done and dusted. I didn't know, but the Iraqis had retreated and we'd torched their entire fleeing army on the Road of Death. I've missed it all.
I get a visit from the brass and later that day Brewster comes by.—I'd heard you were awake.
—Brewster! Who brought me in?
—They said you'd stepped on a mine. The whole unit was out looking for you. We lost radio contact. The unit had to press on but the major left three of us behind to try to find you. Hours it was. Then some friendly fire came in. After that we found you.
—Friendly fire?
He smirked at me.—Yeh. It blew half your uniform off. We found you on your back giggling like a fucking drain, Colour.
—I don't fucking giggle.
—You was giggling like a fucking loony wiv no sister. There wasn't a scratch on ya but your tongue was 'anging out and you were giving it the big tee-hee-hee.
—Fuck off, Brewster.
—I'm tellin' you, Colour. And you had this rag on yer head.
He turns away and steps over to a cabinet at the end of the tent. Takes something out of the cabinet and brings it to the bed. It's a neatly folded, red-checked
shemagh
. I take it from his hand.—What happened to the Arab?
—Arab?
—The one who was wearing this? What happened to him?
—No,
you
was wearin' this.
I sink back into my pillow. The last thing I can remember is the Arab whispering in my ear, and then the blast of the incoming. That was it. Lights out.
Brewster is looking at me strange.—What happened? Where'd you get to?
—My fucking head is killin' me, Brewster.
—You want the medic, Colour?
—Nah, just a bit o' peace. All the boys sound?
—All present and correct. All relieved you're okay.
—Good boys, good boys.
We clasp hands and Brewster leaves the medic tent. Leaves me holding the scarf. I still have it. The scarf. The
shemagh
.
I didn't know it then but my army days were already numbered. It was true that the blast hadn't left a scratch on me—physically. But after what had happened I couldn't sleep properly and never have been able to since that day. I've taken all kinds of medication. Useless. And the lack of sleep led me to have headaches. I took even more medication for the headaches, and that led me to have bad dreams; so bad that I didn't even want to sleep.
My job relied on me being as fit as a flea. I couldn't ask any boy to do what I couldn't do. I hid it from myself for a while, but I suppose inside I knew it was all over. Then about a year after the Gulf War the colonel called me in one day and started to talk to me about career counselling and all the wonderful opportunities that can lie ahead of a man when he leaves the forces. There was counselling; there was retraining; there was a house-purchase scheme. This wasn't like the old days when you used to get dumped out of the army with nowhere to go, he told me. I remember listening to it all in stony silence. When he'd had his say I stood up, saluted him and marched out of his office.
I wasn't discharged or cashiered or anything like that. I retired with full honours and with an army pension. I got work. Mostly in security. I had a job with Group 4 Security for about three years. I was happy to take on night work since I couldn't sleep anyway.
I don't know how many times he visited me before I dropped to who he was. And anyway, that was his way: he would take over someone, maybe for just for a few hours, or maybe just for a minute or so. But he'd let me know. There would be something in what he said to me. Sometimes he would be quite open; sometimes he would give just a little hint, or a word or two to remind me of our moments together in the desert. Sometimes he would play games, you know, fuck with my head. He liked to wink. That would be like a reminder of his one eye, the wink. The trouble was of course that you do get people who like to wink at you in the middle of a conversation, and I would think: ah, he's here. But I might have got it wrong, and it was just someone winking. He knew that. He knew he was fucking with my head. It was his sense of humour. But for that reason I didn't like people winking at me, which I think is fair enough, given what I had to put up with. But other people just thought I was being cranky.
That day in the desert when I had my foot on the mine he'd told me that he'd always be with me. That was the price I paid.
I'd be in an interview for some shitty job as a night watchman for this or that corporation and the suit interviewing me would say I looked suitable or whatever and then he might wink. And I would have to look behind his eyes. But I'd have to make sure they couldn't see me staring.
It wasn't just winking. I'd go into a bar and there might be someone drinking alone there, you know, leaning against the bar, staring straight ahead, pint half-supped, fags and lighter lined up just so and he'd say,—Red Admiral.
Or something that hearkened back to our desert encounter.
—What? I'd go.—
What?
And the fucker would look at me and then look away. And I'd know it was
him
. See. But I couldn't challenge the drinker at the bar because it would be his way to leave immediately. Go from behind the eyes. Because they are in and out as fast as you like.
Sometimes he would stay long enough though to have a conversation. But I could never be sure. The thing I could never work out: was he riding these people, or was he riding me?
I went to a shrink. My headaches were getting worse, my sleep was a mess, I had pains in my liver and other problems. When I told my quack about the sleep disorders and the nightmares he arranged for me to see the shrink, but it didn't go well. The first thing I said to the shrink was,—Don't wink at me, I don't like being winked at.
—Why ever not?
—It don't matter why not, just don't wink at me and we'll be all right.
—I assure you, I'm not the winking kind of psychiatrist.
—Good. We'll get along fine. What are you writing down?
—Notes. We make notes, it's one of the things we do.
—Listen, I'm not an uneducated squaddie, right? I'm a colour sergeant. Was. So stop with the notes, because if I tell you what's on my mind I know exactly what you'll say, so there's no point to any of that, right?
—Oh? And what will I say?
—Don't fuck me around—you know, I know, we all know.
—Seamus, how can I help you?
—Just give me the medication. Just give it me.
I wasn't going to tell him. It's a short road from telling what happened to getting sectioned and put away. I'm not stupid. I never told him, never told the army doctors nor the quacks on civvy street. This here in writing is the first time I've mentioned it. There are some things you do not talk about.
My piss started to burn. Well, I hadn't had a girlfriend in a long time but I went down the GUM clinic anyway. Embarrassing thing was the doctor was a good-looking bird, sort of Arabic herself, I don't know. She shoved that metal cocktail umbrella down my pipe and I nearly hit the roof. She winced herself, closed one eye, and I thought:
Is it you?