Our Man in Iraq (11 page)

Finally the time had come: normalization, they called it. Democracy. I could still pretend the ones in power were to blame for everything but the feeling was no longer convincing. The terror had abated. It was a shock to my system. The past had been easier, in a way. Now no one assumed responsibility. Where had the establishment terrorists gone? I felt strangely forlorn in my decisions.

Six months after Franjo Tudjman died I ended up at the psychiatrist’s. He was the last one who raved at us, the last one who I was longing to be rid of. After that I took Xanax for a while. I was in transition like the country itself. Hey—I saw the light—now I was supposed to be a subject and be at the center of things. I had to act and choose.

But in my head the ghosts of those old terrorists taunted me: You’re incompetent. You’re gutless. You’re no one. How are you going to live now? Let’s see you choose! Marriage, children, apartment? Drugs, alcohol, macrobiotics? Christianity, meditation? Activism, anti-globalism, hedonism? Thailand, Malaga, pornography? Group sex, glamour? Shares, betting shops, building societies? Cuba, Kenya?

All the options gutted me. Every day on my way to work I drove by the Thailand advert, and I wanted to blow a fuse, keep going, bellowing a rock song to dispel the spirits that tied me to this place. My head was full of all those seas and oases, idyllic places where you could sit and sip cocktails in peace beneath a canopy, in a straw hat, without any trace of this existence, so you could pretend you were someone else.

At the office I sat down at a table covered in newspapers. Headlines:
STUDENT MAKES IT TO A MILLION BUT GOOFS ON THE NAME OF FISH; THE MAGNIFICENT TEN WHO WILL LEAD CROATIA INTO THE EU; JOURNALISTS LEAVE IRAQ; ONE MORE BOAT FULL OF AFRICAN IMMIGRANTS SINKS; GENERATION P: HOW PEPSI WON OVER SOVIET CHILDREN.

I surfed the net, trying to relax by watching a webcam showing the peak of the Mexican volcano Popocatépetl. The hangover wasn’t going away. I got up, walked past the lifts and ordered a Red Bull at the little café—a tiny booth squeezed in beside the staircase. A corpulent woman sat in the foyer, wearing the introspective expression that you see in doctors’ waiting rooms. She reminded me of Milka, so I got out of there quickly.

Back in my office, I checked email again but still nothing from my cousin. Perhaps I wasn't patient enough. I thought about that woman waiting doggedly and realized that those are exactly the kind of people who were able to put up with socialism. They were a generation that stuck it out on waiting lists for housing and were then rewarded when the government gave them a flat. Waiting was a worthwhile business. It had become second nature to them. But today there's no more waiting for one's rights, there’s a different sense of time. We’re nervous. Speedy. We drink Red Bull so it will give us “wiiings.” That’s our generation.

I dialed Boris’s Thuraya number. They connected me via London. A recorded voice in Arabic came on before it rang. Nothing.

I sent him another email: “Please get back to me. I know I offended you. Get back to me immediately, please, or I’ll have to start a search for you. Stop horsing around now, things are getting serious. Please!”

Page 10 of GEP’s newspaper:
HERO OF THE PEACE
. A young Iraqi in a denim jacket with a white polo shirt and gel in his hair, kissing Dubya’s photo. On the same page,
JOURNALISTS LEAVE IRAQ
, reported by our former colleague Rabar, who wrote with irony, but finely honed, unlike my fool of a cousin: “The war in Iraq, day 28.” That’s how it began, all nice and clear. “The hotels are rapidly being vacated. Colleagues can smell the next war coming and surmise ‘What do you think, are the Americans going to attack Syria or Iran? Or North Korea?’” Rabar announced his moves, albeit imperceptibly for the ordinary reader, but the insider could see the skill involved:
JOURNALISTS LEAVE IRAQ
meant above all that he, Rabar, was leaving Iraq. But our reporter was still there.

I phoned Sanja.

“He still hasn’t rung,” I said.

“Maybe you should talk about it with someone at the office.”

“I guess. I’ll see.”

“OK then, bye, I have to go.” She paused.

Oh Jesus, her play. “Bye, good luck!”

But she’d already hung up.

She was right. I had to talk about it with someone here. But where should I begin? By saying that he’s my cousin? Or that I’d falsified reports that ran in the paper?

With the inklings of a plan I headed to Secretary’s office. He was waiting for me.

“I was just about to call you. We’re off to see the Chief.”

“I need to talk to you about something.”

“It would’ve been great to find out about the Rijeka thing earlier. Not exactly up to date, are we?”

I didn’t have an explanation other than I’d forgotten about my actual job.

“It just caught everyone on the wrong foot,” I said.

We stood there in the frame of his door. Or rather, I’d dug in there, and Secretary tried to get around me.

“We’re off to see the Chief,” he repeated.

“Listen, I have a few problems with the fellow in Iraq.”

“Who?”

“You know who.”

“Just forget about that now.”

I had no choice; I set off after him.

He knocked on the Chief’s door, poked his head in, and then entered.

We discussed Rijeka Bank. The Chief wanted a thriller about a bank robbery and Secretary was after a lively story with flesh-and-blood characters. I explained to them that their character had simply invested unwisely. He then tried to back out by taking a risk. He didn’t report the disaster to anyone until the mess was perfect.

“The losses were then kept under wraps for a time, probably until the management sold its shares. That’s their weak point now because it was fraud.”

The Chief nodded.

“They had insider information and used it on the stock market. In America you go to jail for scamming like that, but here there’s no law against it.”

“What do you mean there isn’t?” the Chief butted in.

“There’s no law; parliament didn’t pass it,” I said.

“What? How’s that possible?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “They went on and on about national pride—I can’t remember.”

“That’s enough philosophizing,” the Chief grumbled. “What’s important is: Who stole the money?”

“The twit misinvested it. Scams are hard to prove.”

“No no, it’s not a scam,” Secretary said.

Perhaps it wasn’t the right time, but, thinking of Markatović, I started to talk about the responsibility of the media. Sensationalism in the economy was dangerous. We had to think about the ordinary shareholders, people who pray to God that everything ends well. This wasn’t show business. If capital flees, if savers storm the banks, it’s over. Our banks had collapsed that way before, I reminded them, and sometimes they’d even been destroyed intentionally.

Secretary rolled his eyes.

The Chief was in a no-nonsense mood. “First do this, then you can go into who destroyed the banks. And don’t go on about responsibility, just be quicker in the future.”

I tried objecting.

“It’s agreed then,” the Chief bulldozed. “All we need is a photo of the guy.”

He cast a glance out the window.

“The sky’s gone all dark,” Secretary noted.

Pero nodded. “As if the shit will start to fall, as that famous Serb would have said.”

They laughed.

“Kovačević,” I said.

“What?” the Chief looked at me.

“The Serb. It was Kovačević, the playwright.”

“Cut the crap, playwright! Where’s the dough? Who’s connected with the guy? Gimme that.” He grabbed his coat and put it on.

“I’ve got another topic,” I said, finally seizing the moment.

“What?”

“The Red Bull Generation. It’s a phenomenological story about our—”

“Not now,” he said.

“That’s for a column. We have columnists for that,” Secretary added.

“Yesterday the word was about creation,” I said, stopping the Chief at the door. “We have to invent things. Politics is no longer in politics—where’d the hysteria go?”

He stopped.

“That’s Red Bull: hype, fervor. We're anxious, like bulls being taunted by the red cape of the bullfighter. We run for nothing and it causes panic on the market, and all that—Red Bull covers that. Symbolically, I mean.”

I’d never been pushy like that before. I’d always thought you’re not allowed to be too pushy or you’ll look like a real prole. You had to look relatively disinterested. Back in school we despised the overeager nerds and that attitude had stuck to me like a sidecar all through life. But I’d looked so disinterested for so long they weren’t relying on me at all.

“Yeah, give it a try,” the Chief said. “If you think you can do it. But not until next week. Now get on with the bank.”

That woman was still waiting at the little café.

Curiosity got the best of me. “Are you waiting for someone?”

“’E was s’posed to play in Nantes but ’e didn’ get to play.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I’m Anka Brkić, muvver of the football star Niko Brkić,” she let loose. “He was s’posed to play in Nantes.”

“Isn’t that mostly the case?”

“No no, ’e was s’posed to play,” she caught her breath. “They invited him. But this manager, Marko Čatko, sold ’im to the Emirates, to Arabia. There was more money there. But ’e took all the money for ’imself—allegedly it’s in the contract—and ’e also said Niko was ’is. My son was ’is!”

“Sounds nasty but if that’s what the contract says.”

I took a Vodka Red Bull and was about to go. But the woman had the kind of look—you just couldn’t tear yourself away without feeling rude.

“Then my Niko, out of spite, din’ wanna go to the Emirates: ‘I’d rather stay ’ome and plough’ ’e said. And now Marko Čatko and his people say they’re gonna break his legs, so I’ve come to report it.”

“Have you been to the police?”

“The police? Nah, Marko Čatko’s brother, Ikan Čatko, is ’igh up in the police. I canna’ do nothin’—I ’ave to go to the press.”

I told her that she had to wait for Vladić, the guy who wrote about sports.

“Yes, they told me. I’ve been ’ere since this mornin’. There’s not even nowhere to relieve myself.”

“Vladić is sure to come by for a drink.”

So I showed the muvver of the football star Niko Brkić to the office bathroom and stood watch for her because I saw she was afraid. She thanked me profusely and went back to continue her wait.

I went back to my desk, the internet, and Popocatépetl. Out of the volcano’s crater a wisp of smoke trailed up into the clear Mexican morning. The Centro Nacional de Prevención de Desastres constantly monitored seismic activity and the possibility of an eruption. The people around me phoned, wrote texts, rummaged through the rubbish, constructed reality, searched for events.

In that state of existential meditation I remembered the golden pipes from Saddam’s house in Tikrit. Markatović said they’d been smuggled out by a cameraman working for foreigners. Perhaps Boris had got mixed up in business like that. Maybe he’d got hold of a Mesopotamian sculpture
thousands of years old and was now hauling it through the desert. Locals are bound to try and flog all sorts of merchandise to foreigners. If a cameraman there is capable of smuggling Saddam’s pipes, God only knows what Boris is going to bring back. Probably something worthless but big.

Then it hit me. Rabar would know about any Croatians still there. He wrote “Journalists leave Iraq” so he’s bound to be on his way back or to have already arrived. He and I hadn’t had a falling-out, so what did I care if he’d gone over to GEP?

I’d already pressed his number in my mobile’s address list and got a connection before I realized the number was the one here in the office. The first digits were the same.

I hung up.

I needed his new number, the GEP mobile. I’d have to ring his wife and ask. But I didn’t have his home number or his address. I didn’t have anyone’s address anymore. No one did.

I went to see the office secretary.

“Could I ask a you personal favor?” I said in a soft voice.

“Why are you sneaking up on me like this?” Jumpy woman.

“I need Rabar’s number, or at least his address,” I said.

“Rabar’s?”

“Yes, it’s something private. I loaned him a few things. Do you have his home number in the files?”

She gave me a conspiratorial look and then jotted down his number in silence, as if she were recommending me a dealer.

I winked and said, “Iraky peepl.”

She didn’t understand.

“That’s, like, a password.”

“And what do I have to say back?” she asked.

I caught Rabar at the airport in Frankfurt between two flights.

“Talk about out of the blue,” he exclaimed. “How are things at home? Any rain?”

“Yes, I think there could be.”

“I’d like that,” Rabar declared. “Drizzle—or a downpour, a drencher, a deluge. Just give it to me. I want to feel the rain on my face, man. But here in Frankfurt there’s nothing.”

I told him we were working on a stupid piece, counting all the Croatians in Iraq so as to show that Croatia was playing an active role in world events. A long way of asking who of our people were still in Iraq.

After giving me some names, he said, “Listen, let me ask you. Have GEP and PEG reconciled since I’ve been gone?”

“No chance.”

“A truce, even?”

“Nope. It’s all still the same.”

“Fucking hell. Well, bye.” Rabar cut off, seemingly having remembered what the nature of our official relationship was. That’s how it was during the war: while away you forget the local conflicts, but as soon as you’re home the fights begin again.

I emailed the guys Rabar had mentioned, attaching a photo of Boris and asking them if they saw him to have him contact me immediately.

My mobile rang. The display said: RABAR.

“Hey, Rabar.”

“Did you call earlier?”

Shit! It was Dario, apparently the novice had inherited Rabar’s office number—the one I’d rung first.

“No. I must have pressed the wrong key.”

“If you’re after Rabar, he’s gone over to GEP.”