The Illuminations (17 page)

‘Black liquid?’ said Flannigan.

‘Oil. The general’s advisers said it was a bad omen. The advisers. They said it warned of troubled times.’

‘Did they get rich?’ Lennox asked.

Scullion ignored him. It was a sign of leadership: knowing exactly when to ignore people and for how long. ‘It’s the first mention of oil in literature,’ he said, and Luke, the younger officer, his former pupil, turned briefly out of interest but let his interest die. Luke lay on his back with a hand over his face, palm open to the sun, and felt sure that whatever happened after the tour he might never again see a day like this. An entire version of himself was moving into the shade and he experienced the mild distaste that comes before a change, the fear of nostalgia.

‘They don’t build them like this any more,’ said Flannigan. He looked at the ruin and spat in the dust.

‘We don’t build anything,’ Scullion said. ‘That’s part of the problem out here. Even the Soviets built apartment blocks. All we do is help bring in metal containers. Drop them from the sky, promise to helicopter them out at the end. Life’s complicated, boys. Look over there: the ancients had windows, ventilation. You won’t see that in a shipping container. We’re all just part of a transit area nowadays.’

A WEDDING FEAST

The elder had a fistful of gambling chits and he squatted down with his brothers to flick quails. They all looked up when the soldiers came into the village in their loud jeeps. Scullion drove to the end of the only road and stopped on a humpback bridge, next to a school where children could be heard chanting in a study circle. The CD stopped when Scullion turned off the engine. He rolled down the window. They could hear the water running. A woman spread a light blue burqa on the grass.

The village was fresh, Luke said later, green like an oasis, and after the hilltop the air seemed soft. Maybe it was the children’s voices and the noise of the quails, a life not to do with heat. Everything in the desert emerges from heat and goes back to heat, but in Bad Kichan there was water and activity and tins with labels on them. ‘Keep your eyes open,’ Scullion said. One of the local men came to the vehicles with his hands up. He spoke rapidly and Dooley released the catch. The major turned to find Rashid. ‘Is he speaking Dari? Tell him to fuck off.’

‘A wedding today,’ Rashid said. ‘The man offers you blessings.’

‘That’s some crazy-ass mumbling,’ Lennox said.

Scullion looked nervous. ‘Tell the old fox to back off. I can speak a little Pashtun if he wants to bless.’

‘He is younger than you,’ said Rashid.

‘I don’t care if he’s sweet sixteen, Rashid. I want him to get the fuck back from this squad. That’s an order.’

‘An order, sir?’

Rashid’s good eye was clear. He was the only one of the group not feeling nervous and his sense of command, his entire presence, had altered when he spoke, and it altered further as he stepped
through and touched the shoulder of the local man. Whatever he said made the man tap his chest and walk down the track to where the villagers had gathered. Rashid turned to the boys and put out his hands and smiled. ‘Welcome,’ he said. ‘This is a feasting day and custom says you must join to celebrate.’

Children followed them and Scullion handed out packs of coloured pencils from his thigh pockets. He laughed as they grabbed them and he gave them sweets when the pencils ran out. He was feeling good because you only get worried when there are no children, when the place is quiet and the people are inside. Luke had the same thought. As they walked up, Scullion could see past rickety doors into the low mud dwellings. One house revealed a huddle of eyes, men sitting on a red carpet, and he stopped at the door to examine them. They were around a television set, watching an old tennis match between Borg and McEnroe.

The street was busy and there was music outside the
hujra
, the guesthouse, where three chickens’ heads lay in a puddle of blood. Rashid handed a case of water to Scullion to give to the elder and as he placed the water at the man’s feet Scullion said, ‘
As-salaam alikum
.’

‘
W-alikum-as-salaam
,’ the man said.

‘
Khair Yosay,
’ Scullion said. The ANA captain turned to Scullion and a smile creased the contours of Rashid’s short, dark beard as he said, ‘Your accent is very strange.’ Luke peered into the pomegranate grove at the side of the guesthouse and saw a group of boys there, all dressed in brown. Some of them touched their breasts as he looked and he did the same. There was a wall around the grove and Luke could see a cart loaded with fruit. Silently, he heard co-ordinates and radio crackle in his head and he imagined an aerial shot of the village. Calm the fuck down, he
told himself. Stay on it. He counted heads. He couldn’t be sure but he thought one of the boys in the grove, the one in the long waistcoat, was holding a mobile phone. Luke tried to work out what was going on and he wanted to be friendly but he hated the phone and how they all stood still.

‘Let’s not hang about here,’ Flannigan said.

‘You’re fine,’ Scullion said. ‘Listen, guys. It’s cool. This is how we bring peace to these people.’

‘What, by barging into a private wedding?’ said Luke.

‘Showing face,’ Scullion said. ‘Taking an interest. A wee bit of civilised banter. A glass of tea.’

Luke saw a heap of cartons against the wall labelled Nestlé Fruita Vitals. ‘We need to get out of here.’

Rashid stood still. Scullion looked again at the leader of the village
shura
and bowed to him and wished he had a cigar he could offer him. Whatever Scullion said, the sweat was pouring off him and his mouth was dry, yet he believed, deep at the centre of all this rising alarm, that something existed in faith or memory that would serve them well. Whatever it was, he believed in the code. He was from County Westmeath and he knew about gangs and he knew about boys who wanted to be the big man. He’d known them for thirty years and they didn’t piss on their own doorstep. He looked over at the soldiers in his party and felt they were each a version of himself. ‘Let’s not insult this gentleman’s hospitality,’ he said.

Mark looked at a low wall where a row of skewered kebabs were cooking on a grill. Beside it, on the dusty ground, were several basins of stew and rice. A bowl of almonds caught his eye as he stood up straight and looked at the sky and thought of a Chinese restaurant back home. He and Lisa Nolan used to go
there for curry and chips and he thought of good times and a trip they made with their friend Father David. He never expected to see a sky this blue or almonds in a copper bowl.

The young bride came down the road wearing a white headscarf and a dress of many colours. Dooley thought of his sister’s wedding in Skibbereen. Lennox moved out of the way and followed the sound of clapping into the house where the people danced. For a moment, standing there, Private Flannigan felt that everything tilted in the direction of these people, because of their happiness and the young groom’s way of looking at his wife. The soldiers went in and out of the house with their rifles up and Luke noticed the boys in the orchard had stepped closer to the road. Scullion was clapping his hands to the music, beaming and nodding, and when he turned he saw Luke moving towards him and swiping the air, saying, ‘We have to get the fuck out of here right now.’

The boys in the orchard started throwing rocks. One of them struck Scullion in the chest and he turned open-mouthed to see a smear of men shouting and flailing in the first seconds of panic. He grabbed Rashid’s arm to stop the gun but Rashid held it straight out and it was pointing at Mark, the Scottish soldier, who was standing in the middle of the road facing them, shouting
‘Come ahead ya dirty bastard!’
Rashid shot him point blank in the face, blood gushing from the man’s mouth. Rashid shouted a name and instantly the kid with the mobile phone rushed forward screaming and Luke turned his rifle and shot him dead. At the same time, Dooley lunged out with a bayonet and stabbed Rashid in the neck. Lennox saw the Scot fall in the road with his face covered in blood and he saw Rashid collapse on top of him, then he turned and opened fire into the orchard. In a second
or two they were all shooting into the orchard, and Luke joined them, his heart going mad as he shouted over the noise.

An old man wearing pink came out of the
hujra
with his hands clasped together in supplication, crying. Was that crying, thought Dooley, or was he laughing? The bowl of almonds seemed to explode next to him as Dooley opened fire again and the old man spun and fell backwards through the door where the screaming seemed to swallow him. Scullion dragged the body of Rashid along the road and fired into him. Then he took out his service revolver and shot him in the eye, standing over the body and staring down. By now the Canadian colonel was bent over Mark, the young lance corporal, blowing into his mouth and after a minute or so the colonel looked up with blood on his face and shook his head because it was no use.

At the edge of the orchard, among shattered pomegranates and grey rocks and blood, the boys of the village lay in a heap. One wasn’t yet dead and he opened and closed his mouth. Luke would remember the whiteness of the boy’s teeth as he opened his mouth to breathe and dropped his small hand to the ground. The women wailed. They wailed everywhere. Scullion was now bent over the mangled body of Rashid, speaking to him, asking him why. Flannigan dragged Scullion off the body, shouting, ‘Got to go, sir. Luke, take charge. We’ve got to get away from here.’

‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ Lennox said, looking at the mess on the ground.

‘Luke!’ shouted Flannigan. ‘We’ve got to get Charlie out of here. We’ve got to go!’

‘Bosh!’ Dooley said. ‘Fucken killed the bastards. Dirty Taliban scum. See ye! Fucken see ye!’

‘Holy Christ,’ said Lennox.

Scullion was looking at the dead ANA captain and Flannigan tugged him by the arm. ‘Just leave it, sir. A no-use traitor bastard.’

There were rose petals on the road. Luke saw them and the blood running into the dust at the edge of the orchard and his eyes were stinging with sweat. Suddenly he came up and pushed Scullion nearly off his feet. He grabbed his shirt and pulled him in and locked eyes with him. ‘You caused this. You fucken caused all of this.’

‘Leave it, sir,’ Dooley said, pushing the captain back and separating the men. ‘Let’s go.’

Scullion was wild in the eyes. ‘This is
yours
,’ Luke said, walking away from him. ‘Good fucken work.’ He waited a moment. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Moving out!’ There was screaming coming from the
hujra
and the women appeared in the road beating their chests, raising their hands. Dressed for the wedding, they cried for their sons.

The Canadian and Private Dooley walked ahead to secure the retreat and Luke ordered a couple of the others to carry Mark’s body. The dead soldier’s hair was matted with blood and white dust and his pal from the regiment was holding his hand and weeping. Dooley opened the passenger door for Scullion and he got in without a word. He wasn’t there, Dooley said later. ‘The lights were on but nobody was at home.’ Luke and Flannigan walked back up the road from the
hujra
, their rifles pointing at the village. And when they reached the bridge Luke cast his eyes at the school and saw a line of children’s faces at the open window.

‘Charlie base. This is call sign 722. Over.’

AIRLIFT

Beside the whop-whop of rotary blades, Luke stood with the commander at the edge of the convoy. ‘There will be a full investigation,’ Emory said. ‘Questions. Big fucking questions.’ But Luke wasn’t listening. The camouflaged underside of the Lynx lifted away, creating a wind that blew the dust into a dense cloud. ‘You chose to leave his body,’ said the commander. ‘He was Afghan National Army.’

‘He was not one of us.’

‘We are all one of us, Captain.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘We are forging on. Nobody’s going back. We are fifty-nine miles from the delivery point and that is where the action is. Major Scullion will stick with the platoon and we can discuss his jolly outing into bandit country back at the base.’

‘As you wish, sir.’

‘It’s not as I wish. What I wish is that the British army did not harbour such fucking idiots.’

‘Yes, sir.’

BANN RIVER

The operation had to be completed that night and they were in the Vector moving towards Kajaki. They said little, feeling everything, eyeing one another and hanging their heads as they breathed in the hot aftermath. They would remember Scullion sluicing himself with sterile water, but was it fury, confusion or regret that dimmed his eyes and made him grunt and rub his
sodden hair until it tufted into spikes?

The old life was over and Scullion knew it. As the vehicle bumped along and then rejoined Highway 611, he recalled that he’d once imagined the world could be put right and made whole. He had been a man who liked the era he lived in and was well suited to it. He loved the metaphysics of the new wars, where one spoke of freedom, of delivering security, but as he put down his head and meshed his trembling fingers he pictured slain Bosnians by a shopping precinct in Srebrenica. He saw corpses in burnt-out cars on the Basra Road and rebel soldiers lying dead by a runway north of Freetown, their eyes open to democracy. He saw those boys in the orchard. And it was all a mystery to him now, all at an end, the resolutions, agreements, interventions, because the people who police the world are never ready for the world’s ingratitude. Eight construction workers in Teebane, blown to pieces by the IRA. His first acquaintance with gore. A culvert bomb on the Drum Road. His platoon got to the crossroads in minutes from the barracks in Omagh. That’s what the journalists don’t see. That’s what the politicians and the mothers never see.