2

Benton drank from a bottle of water as he walked toward Samawah under the blue dome of heaven. His feet were hot. He wore cheap socks that were woven with nylon and polyester. He knew better, but had still done nothing about it when it came time to pack. They couldn’t breathe as he stepped from rock to rock across the broken earth toward the squat city and its muted people. This always put him in a mood.

Closer, he found the small city unremarkable. He might have been in Jordan, or the West Bank, or Bahrain as he looked at the flat roofs and the canopy of satellite dishes made dirty from the sand and the winds and the absence of rain or the social pressure to clean them. Around the city was its litter — the discarded refrigerators and tyres, the bed frames and canvas bags. There was no topsoil. There was surely a proper reason for this, but Benton imagined that too many feet had walked here for too long in search of too much.

He approached a derelict oil truck in a wide and unused parking zone. Someone had painted, in giant white letters, ‘We want Fredum. Bleads help Iraq peple.’

Benton put the empty bottle of water back into his satchel, intending to throw it in a bin later.

He checked his watch. Dhuhr prayer was around 11.30 a.m., and Asr prayer shouldn’t be until around three-ish. He figured he had a workable window to get oriented and at least conduct a few discussions.

Towns have eyes in the Middle East. This one, however, felt blind — as though it were resting in the midday sun in preparation for a long stretch of work in the cooling night yet to come.

A boy appeared. He was thin, about twelve years old, and carrying a platter of glasses of tea over his shoulder like a French waiter. The boy wore sandals and had thick black hair. He was unhurried, and focussed on his task of delivering tea and lunch to the shopkeepers.

When the boy saw Benton, he stopped and fixed himself to the earth, paralysed. Eyes wide, he was motionless until an inner force shot into his limbs, making him jerk erratically. He twitched his head right and left and back to Benton, as though Benton might issue instructions that would end his indecision. Benton could hear the glasses rattle on the thin, silver platter as they amplified the boy’s vibrations and started dancing to the arrhythmia of his heart. Soon enough, the cups could not keep up. One by one, the cups fell, smashing themselves on the hard earth, and the sweet water poured from the platter onto the boy’s feet, scalding his exposed toes and forcing the boy to join in the dance he had inadvertently started.

Hopping in pain, the boy dropped the platter, and he turned and ran as fast as he could, back the way he had come.

Not loudly enough, not by a long shot, Benton called out, ‘I’m not going to hurt you. I promise.’

But the promise never reached the boy’s ears, and in a moment he was gone.

Alone again, Benton trudged toward the first buildings and into a narrow alley between them. It was shadier between the buildings, and cooler. He paused to scratch one foot with the other through his leather boots. It was unsatisfying. He’d have to take the boot off, and perhaps the sock as well.

Kneeling with his shoe untied, Benton heard a rumbling ahead of him, through the mouth of the light and narrow alley. It sounded like water. It was an impossible notion, but he half expected a tidal wave to come bursting into the passageway, a crest of salty white foam gushing around him to his waist, to flood his boots and cool his feet.

It was only when they were almost upon him that he understood the sound as a wave of human voices, foreign and excited.

His shoe tied, he stood and looked back, unconvinced by either choice of staying or going. The choice was made for him as he deliberated. They poured in as a flood to a wadi. They were silhouetted by the bright light of the Iraqi sun, and in that moment they overtook him and drowned him. Hands gripped him, and he shielded his face as people started pulling him, surrounding him, and pushing him out into the city. They called and yelled in Arabic. His bag was pulled from his shoulder, and he was no longer sure of anything at all.

He shouted for them to wait, but his voice failed him for the second time in Samawah. There were too many people, and too much emotion. When his head struck something hard, he fell to the ground.

Benton did not pass out. He was, however, bloodied and incapacitated. Two men were holding him up. They smelled bad. Their shirts were made of cotton and were sweaty. He couldn’t see their faces. There was blood in his eyes. It came from his head. He raised a hand to find the source. He was pulled into a building and then pushed into a chair. There was a voice.

‘American?’

Benton couldn’t see who’d asked the question. The man was standing too close. The smell of all the people was overpowering. The sunlight was poking through the spaces around the man’s face and through the shoulders of those around him.

‘American?’ the man said.

‘I’m British,’ Benton said.

‘American?’

‘British, for Christ’s sake.’

‘English?’

‘Yes, yes. I can’t breathe.’

The dark face in front of him yelled something in Arabic and then stood up, pushing the other people back. He shushed the people around him, bringing silence, order, and calm.

He handed Benton a cloth and a bottle of water.

‘Thank you,’ Benton said.

‘Who are you?’

‘I’m Thomas Benton. I’m a journalist with the Times. I’m here to understand what’s happened and to learn what you’re all going to do next. I’m … I’m hurt. I don’t want to upset anyone or get anyone else hurt. Can we talk?’

There was mumbling and then Benton said, ‘Do you speak English?’

‘Yes, yes. Everyone speaks English. Everyone-everyone. You are not American? You are not here to help us?’

‘No. I’m a journalist.’

In the quiet and uninterrupted moment that followed, Benton was able to look around and see where he was.

He wasn’t in a cave dwelling or an Iraqi torture chamber. He wasn’t even in a boxy apartment with barred windows and a dubbed Western television set playing in the background. He was in a pharmacy — a pharmacy that stocked L’Oréal hair products and Halls lozenges, and was having a twenty per cent–off sale on reading glasses if you used 1.50 magnification and didn’t mind wearing orange.

The man who had been too close stood back and pulled a white plastic chair across the concrete floor. Sitting, he rubbed his face with a tissue and placed it in his jacket pocket.

‘What is going to happen to Saddam?’ the man said.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Benton said, wiping his own face with his red bandana.

‘Saddam. We need to know what you are going to do with Saddam. What is our future?’

‘I came here to ask you the same question.’

The man shook his head. No. This made no sense to him.

‘You have an army. Big army. You drive Saddam out of Kuwait. OK. Now what? You take Saddam away?’

‘Well … no.’

‘Why not?’

‘The international coalition was formed to restore Kuwait and secure the borders.’

‘OK, OK, but the problem is Saddam. We fought a war with Iran, then Kuwait, then America. Always war because of Saddam. So … now it’s time to get rid of Saddam, yes?’

‘Isn’t that what you’re doing?’ Benton asked. He felt a cut on his head. ‘Why did someone hit me?’

‘No, no. Sorry, your head hit the wall. People were very excited to get news. You are a journalist. So … you have news.’

‘No. I’m here to get the news from you, and report it in Britain.’

‘They don’t need the news. We need the news. Are you going to get rid of Saddam?’

‘It’s our understanding,’ Benton tried to explain, ‘that you’re having a revolution. That you’re getting rid of Saddam. I’m here to understand your plans. You’ve already taken the city. There’s a Shiite flag on the water tank. Are you being supported by Iran? Are you hoping—’

Another man, wearing the white coat of a pharmacist, interjected. Benton didn’t understand what he said, but the crowd started to disperse, and the man he’d been speaking with nodded, stood up from his chair, tapped the arms of a few people, and then walked out.

The pharmacist looked at Benton’s wound. ‘I told them we were not being good hosts, that you need some help first, and that we can discuss this all over some food and tea. Clearly, you want to talk to us, and we want to talk to you. We should do it properly. Times are very delicate. Very delicate. I can tell you this, though: the answers to the questions you are asking don’t exist yet. I was educated as a chemist. In chemistry, the answers are out there, waiting to be found. But in life, in politics, in war, the answers aren’t there yet. Your whole profession has a very strange theory in the middle.’

‘My head hurts,’ said Benton, not only feeling a throbbing in his head but starting to hear it, too.

‘I’ll get you some aspirin, unless you’re allergic. The Republican Guard took most of it. We have a few left. I’d like to put a bandage on you, too.’

‘Yes. Fine. Thank you.’

The pharmacist shooed people out of the shop on his way to a small cabinet. He used a tiny key to unlock it, and removed a white plastic bottle.

‘How are you?’ Benton asked.

‘How am I?’ he said.

‘Yes. How are you?’

‘Worried. Very, very worried. But thank you for asking.’

The pharmacist was pressing down on the childproof cap when he stopped and looked at Benton. They could both hear it. It was as if the air were being sucked from the room and pushed back in, quickly and repeatedly.

‘What is that?’ Benton asked.