Our Man in Iraq (21 page)

How on earth did al-Qaeda get into this?

Standing at the kiosk, I opened page two of
The Daily News
. Down in the corner next to the main article there was a box with the heading
NEPOTISM
. It reported that Boris had been sent to Iraq by PEG’s editor, who was also his cousin, “which speaks volumes about the way that news corporation functions.” They didn’t mention me by name, but more as a metaphor for perversion. I’d obviously had my five minutes of fame. Milka received better treatment: a photo and a little tribute to her grit.

I took a seat at a café on the main square where old ladies with showy coiffures pretended to be remnants of the Hapsburg Empire. I didn’t want to go into a bar or café where I might meet someone I knew. I put on my shades. From now on I’d
camouflage myself between the old ladies and the relics of former regimes.

I read the paper to find out why al-Qaeda was silent about the fate of the Croatian reporter. Obviously they’d come up with the title first, so they sent inquiries about Boris to certain websites allegedly linked to al-Qaeda. No reply came, and if you looked at it that way al-Qaeda was indeed silent.

And what of Boris? What if cuz latched onto the heroin produced by the Afghan Taliban? What if he were ultimately found having overdosed in a Baghdad bathroom?

I tried not to think about that. It was best to be silent for the time being, like al-Qaeda, and read the paper and sip my coffee inconspicuously in the street café, dissolving into the masses. But copies of the paper were on every table.
AL
-
QAEDA SILENT ABOUT THE FATE OF CROATIAN REPORTER
, they screamed. As if we were so important for al Qaeda to target! Yes, we wanted to be a part of the global spectacle!

Hard to believe I’d created this whole ruckus. It was as clear as daylight to me that my story was impossible to understand. It’d been full of idiocy and madness from the beginning—or even before that. But I went along with the game. For years, day in day out, that balderdash had been building up in the language I used to form my thoughts and opinions. I had my role. It bothered me when I spoke, it bothered me when I thought, it bothered me that I existed.

An old lady from the next table watched me attentively and blinked like a lizard about to lash out with its tongue. She’s sure to have watched TV last night and now she thinks she’s seen me somewhere. You could tell she was racking her memory, which, fortunately, was overloaded. All the same, I was terrified for a moment that she might recognize me. But who was I? My image had collapsed in one single day. I was surprised I could represent myself at all.

I called Sanja. I wanted her to reassure me that I was still me and to keep me in one piece.

“We could go and see the flat!” she said with enthusiasm.

“I really don’t know if it’s the right moment now.” I felt it was too early to mention that I’d sunk all my money into shares.

“We can talk about it at home. Come home, will you?”

“I can’t get a loan now.”

“Come on,” she said in a trusting tone of voice, “maybe I could get one. They might be giving me a permanent contract. Possibly starting as early as next month.”

“Yeah, great.”

“Aren’t you happy?”

“Sure, I’m happy,” I said. “There’s just so much going on. I can’t keep my mind on everything.”

“Yes,” she agreed, pensively. “Haven’t you seen the review in today’s
Daily News
?”

“Was there something?”

“They really heaped praise on me.”

“I’ll have a look.”

“There’s something about Boris too,” she added.

“I’ve just bought a
Daily News
now but haven’t got round to reading it yet.”

“Maybe don’t read it. Better take the classifieds and think about positive things.”

She was trying hard to cheer me up. I felt guilty. She should have said: Why did I have to meet you? And: People are disgusted by you and laugh with derision. And: You’re not even a villain, but a media caricature. I imagined people at coffee tables making jokes at my expense. Those voices were bound to reach her too. She hadn’t shown any signs of being influenced, but the more considerate she was, the greater my guilt became.

I browsed through
The Daily News
again and found the culture section. There was a lengthy article about
Daughter Courage and Her Children
under the title
STRIPTEASE PUNK
. The critic speculated on the meaning of the play and went on at length about the role of rock music in the East and West. Ingo had set the plot with the rock group on a “Western front,” so this theme kept coming up. Rock assumed a paradoxical position from the very beginning in the conflicts of East and West, the critic wrote. Although it burst onto the scene in the West in the ’60s as a rebellion against the system—often with an openly leftist bent—it was to become a weapon of the West against the Communist East. Rock embodied the culture of freedom and represented the essence of the West—at least that’s how it was always perceived by young generations in the East. So rock definitely played a role in the collapse of Communism. It may seem strange to someone in America, for example, that Frank Zappa fans in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius had erected a 4.2-meter monument to their idol in 1995; it was made by the sculptor Konstantinas Bogdanas, who’d produced a serious sculpture of Lenin for the 400th anniversary of the University of Vilnius in 1979.

The critic, however, was not sure whether Ingo’s play referred to the role of rock in the Cold War or in today’s East-West conflicts. So was Ingo perhaps caricaturing Huntington’s thesis on the “clash of civilizations”? Or perhaps both conflicts at the same time? The critic praised the play for its complexity and multiple layers of meaning, citing that Ingo—because he “didn’t seem particularly well-informed”—probably didn’t have our ex-Yugoslav East-West conflicts in mind, where cultural opposites such as rock vs folk, urban vs rural, Western vs Balkan, and Croatian vs Serbian belonged to the politico-cultural arsenal to be used whenever needed, in war or peace.

I skipped part of the piece, down to where I saw Sanja’s name: “This former member of the group Zero performed with great instinct, creating a powerfully feminine figure with fascinating charisma.”

My mobile rang. Silva.

“I heard you got the sack,” she said. “Sorry to hear that.”

“Not the first and not the last. Globalization goes hand in hand with particular processes. Everything is interconnected these days. Someone makes a mess in Iraq, and I have to carry the can here.”

“Good you can joke about it.”

“What else can I do?”

I surprised myself by the way I was talking to Silva. It was if all my despondency had disappeared. It occurred to me that with Sanja I couldn’t any more act the cool freak; it was like I was obliged to be depressed because I’d disappointed her, while I owed Silva nothing.

“Did you know that Pero got the sack too?”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. This morning. The boss blew his top. You did both look pretty dumb last night.”

I laughed.

“Don’t laugh. That’s tragic, not funny,” Silva continued. “Now your cousin on the other hand—that’s funny.”

“It is tragic—not funny.”

“Sorry, but I died laughing when he turned out to be your cousin. What do you think’s up with him?”

“How should I know? I just hope people will stop asking me about him one day.”

“I get you.”

“Now the whole country is worried about him. The guy is sooo significant that he needed me to find him a job.”

“But he has disappeared.”

“If he’d disappeared in Solin or some other dump here he could rot there and no one would bat an eyelid.”

“No one knows what’s up with the guy.”

“The concern for him is one hundred percent to do with where he disappeared—Iraq. The center of the universe right now. It’s got fuck all to do with real concern for him as an individual.”

“No need to get angry. We’ll see what happens.” She hung up.

I continued the conversation in my head: it’s a lie when you say you care. It’s just what’s on TV today: a film about a Croatian reporter who disappears in Iraq. You feel part of it and identify with the hero. Not with the anti-hero.

The old lady who’d been watching me got up, came over, and stood right in front of me. Some old ladies are most impertinent, if you consider that their death is just around the corner.

“Yes?”

“Are you the young ’un who disappeared in Iraq?”

“No, and I’m not the other guy either.”

“Oh dear,” she shook her head. “We were so excited. We thought we’d found you.”

I entered the flat with the newspaper under my arm. Everything was just as before, yet it seemed I was coming back from a long time away. On the coffee table, the classifieds were still there with flats circled. Two glasses, the ashtray, an empty pizza box. I got myself a glass of water and sat on the armchair in front of the TV. The silent screen stared at me dully as if waiting for me to do something.

Noises came from outside and filled the room’s heavy, motionless air. The lighter clicked; flame appeared. I inhaled.
I looked at all our things. Everything seemed too full; there was no more space. Out in the street the sounds of traffic rose in volume. Cranes filled the view out the window. Congestion there too.

Sanja and I had once been free here, outside of everything, with our kisses and long dreamy gazes into each others’ eyes, envisioning future days. But now the walls had been breached and run-of-the-millism flowed in from everywhere and nowhere: the stench of society.

For the first time since dropping out of Drama I felt I had to write. I had to commit all this to writing. Perhaps it’d help me to step back from things. I’d be able to stay sane and see everything in perspective; I’d arrange everything in an order that made sense.

I had a flashback to me and Markatović drinking beer in the canteen, back when it seemed all paths were blocked and the gloom was oppressive and suffocating. Back then we already knew about all the horrors that people have just started writing about today. Evil had touched and tainted us. That torments us even today, I thought: we have no trust and no faith in this reality, this peace, these people, or ourselves.

It was already dusk; I didn’t turn on the light.

Later the phone rang, the landline. “Guess who this is?”

“No idea,” I said and hung up.

Much later I heard the lock turn. Sanja opened the door and turned on the light.

“I’m here,” I said.

A whole roll of newspapers was jutting out of her bag.

“Hey,” she looked at me rather frightened, “why are you sitting in the dark?”

“I had a headache, so I turned off the light.”

“Is it better now?”

“No.”

“Want me to turn it off again?”

“It’s up to you.”

She turned on the reading lamp and switched off the ceiling light.

“You shouldn’t smoke if you’ve got a headache,” she said. “What are you drinking? Is that rakija?”

“Water.”

She crouched beside me and stroked my face. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“I’m not well.”

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“My head hurts.”

“What happened?”

I thought deeply about that. All sorts of things had happened, and nothing was left. I wanted to talk like that, without endless, futile explaining. That standard language wearied me with its questions and answers.

“You can’t just sit there in silence—say something!” She started to sob like a smacked child.

I shut my eyes. “Don’t cry, please. It’s just that my head hurts.”

She calmed down and searched for tablets in the drawers. She handed me one. “Here, take this.”

I swallowed it.

“Today I bought shares in Rijeka Bank. I placed the order last night over the internet, I don’t think I knew what I was doing. When I woke up it was all over.”

“You bought what? Say that again slowly.”

“The dough I had—it’s all in the shares now.”

“In what shares?”

“Rijeka Bank,” I repeated.

“But that’s crazy. That bank has collapsed.”

“That’s just speculation.”

“Jesus, Toni, what’s going to happen to you?”

“I wanted to see how far I could stretch my luck,” I told her almost enthusiastically. “Free myself of everything in one fell swoop. There was no plan, it just happened, like a natural disaster.”

We were silent for a few moments, and then she said, “You know, maybe you should talk to someone.”

“We are talking.”

“I’m not a psychologist.”

“Do you mean a psychiatrist?”

“I can’t tell how all this has affected you. I don’t understand.”

“Good. OK. Point taken. Can you chill out a bit now? You don’t need to ask me anything.”

“Why not?”

“Because there are some things you just don’t get.”

“Why are you saying this?”

“Look, you're not the right person for me to talk to about some things.”

“Why are you being so nasty? What are you doing to us?”

Sanja was lying on the bed in the room, facing the wall.

“I'll come for the rest in a few days,” I said from the door. And then I started sobbing.

“Where are you going to go?”

“I’ve found something temporary.”

“You can’t go now, like this,” she sobbed.

“So you mean I shouldn’t go?”

Three days earlier she'd told me that we couldn't go on like this. And burst into tears.

“It’s so horrible, it’s all so horrible.”

I went up to her, sat on the edge of the bed, and stroked her hair.

“My love,” I said as quietly as I could, “my great love.”

Regret burned me from the future, from the time we wouldn’t be together: that future nostalgia, an awareness of the oblivion that would blanket everything.

“Don’t forget me.” I kissed her hair and whispered, “I’m going now.”

She didn’t turn around.

I got up and took my old rucksack and suitcase. I looked at her from the door, her shoulders were shaking. My gaze roamed the flat one more time, I nodded goodbye to everything and left.