Part 12 (2/2)

If only Secretary General knew.

”I was his only son.”

As I walked from the parade square towards my dorm I could feel the asphalt surface of the road melting under my boots. In the distance the road evaporated into mirage after vaporous mirage, each of them disappearing as I came closer. Bannon and Obaid were still on the parade square, doing yet another session of extra drill. There was no point going to my dorm. I headed straight for the comfort of Bannon's bunker. The air conditioner was on and my sweat-soaked s.h.i.+rt turned stiff within minutes. I took it off and sat there in my white vest looking around for something to take my mind off the drill commands still reverberating in my head. I lay down on the floor with my head on the mattress and put my boots next to the air-conditioner vent. I rummaged under the mattress and as expected found a brown envelope with the July issue in it. Thai beauty Diana Lang and Ya.s.ser Arafat shared the cover: Lang Shots Lang Shots and and Arafat's Guns and Poses Arafat's Guns and Poses, said the cover of Playboy Playboy's World Special issue.

I decided to save Ya.s.ser Arafat's interview for later and opened the centrefold. The door opened and Bannon walked in, fanning himself with his peaked cap. ”I give up. Your friend isn't going to make it.”

He ignored my hand which was struggling simultaneously to stuff the magazine into the envelope and push the envelope under the mattress. Little streams of sweat were running down Bannon's white crocodile face, his hair stuck to his scalp and he was whispering to himself, ”Two weeks before the President's inspection and I got people who can't even lockstep.”

I brought my feet down from the air-conditioning vents and asked Bannon what he was talking about.

”Baby O ain't going to stay in the Drill Squad. As soon as the parade begins, he starts to sweat like a wh.o.r.e in church. He just hasn't got the apt.i.tude.”

”Obaid may not be a natural on the square but he is very keen,” I said. ”I have never seen anybody as motivated as he is. He stands there in our dorm at night simulating his moves.”

”He might have made a good kamikaze but he is just not cut out for going through the whole d.a.m.n drill.”

”He is very emotional about it. Surely you can...”

I let the sentence hang in the chilled air. Surely he would know what I meant. We just couldn't let Obaid down.

”It's for his own good,” he muttered. ”You tell him to turn right and he goes left. You ask him to throw the rifle and he just stands there. And this is with my verbal commands. Imagine the mayhem when we are in the silent zone. We were doing our rifle spirals today and his every throw came at my head. He'll kill someone or get killed. You try and put some sense into his head. He'll make a fine officer but no way is he rehearsing with us. I have to go and fill out my final report.”

Bannon left the room without looking back, without promising anything.

I was still contemplating whether I should find out what Ya.s.ser Arafat was doing in a magazine full of oriental girls with heart-shaped pubic hair when the door opened and Obaid walked in, kicked the door shut behind him, leaned against the Bruce Lee poster and stared at me as if I was the sole reason for his lack of hand-eye coordination.

His khaki uniform was marked with patches of sweat, his blue scarf tightly wrapped around his right hand and there was a bruise on his right cheek. His normally serene eyes were swirling pools of anger.

The reasons for his regular thras.h.i.+ng on the square were obvious to me. You could score top marks in war history, you could simulate your drill movements all night long, but when the silent zone kicked in, you couldn't look in your manuals to find out what to do and how to do it. Obaid did all my studying for me. He drew my navigation maps, he took care of my inability to concentrate on any textbook for more than two paragraphs and he prepared notes for me. Despite the lack of an academic bone in my body, or maybe because of it, I was soaring ahead in the drill department, already commanding the squad, whereas he still loitered in the reserve pool. Anyone who could sit down and read a book outside the cla.s.sroom for ten minutes straight would never make a good officer let alone a coherent pair of military boots on the parade square. And Bannon did have a point: one wrong step, a single wrong note from silent cadence, could wreck the elegant routine we had devised for the President's inspection. It could also destroy the sword manoeuvre that I had prepared for the President.

I thought of distracting Obaid with Ya.s.ser Arafat's pictures, but I looked at his contorted face and gave up on the idea. He opened and closed his fists. There was a fury in his eyes that I had never seen before. I moved towards him to put my hand on his shoulder. He recoiled and turned round, put his hands on his face and started to bang his head against the wall.

”It will be all right,” I said and felt like one of those doctors who tell you to live life to its fullest after informing you that you have only six weeks to live. He was still for a moment, then he sprang from his position and hurled himself towards Bannon's bed, bringing down the bamboos hoisting the camouflaged canopy over the mattress. All the books he read hadn't taught him the basic military rule: you manage your anger by kicking a.s.s, not by rearranging the furniture in your room. He picked up the pillow and threw it at the wall. Disappointed by the lack of impact, he picked up the ceramic Buddha. I lunged forward and stopped him. ”Not the Buddha,” I said, taking it from his hands. His fingers were warm on Buddha's air-conditioned ceramic face. He looked around for something else to throw. The air conditioner's cold air had dried up some of the sweat patches on his s.h.i.+rt. As I moved closer to calm him down, I picked up the cardamom on his breath and the musky smell of his drying sweat.

”Let's talk it through,” I said. That's what he normally said in such situations.

”You are trying to keep me out.”

”Look, Baby O...” I fumbled for words and tried to fill the silence by moving my hand from his shoulder to the back of his neck. His hair bristled under my palm, his neck was still warm despite the chill in the room. I felt angry at my own lack of empathy and it came out.

”Look, it's not a picnic that I am not taking you on. It's for your own good, Baby O.”

He ignored my patronising tone. ”There is a much simpler way,” he said. ”What is this place full of? Aeroplanes? What do we need to do? Take a plane and go for the-”

”We are not having that discussion again,” I cut him off. For a man in uniform his ideas about soldiering were naive. He considered himself some kind of character from Jonathan Livingstone Seagull Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, the latest addition to the pile of books on his bedside table, and talked about aeroplanes as if they were not million-dollar fighting machines but some kind of vehicle for his spiritual quest.

”The wind was a whisper in his face and the ocean stood still beneath him...” he said with his eyes closed. ”I could do it all by myself.” He patted my cheek.

”You can hardly land that b.l.o.o.d.y thing. Forget it.”

”Who needs to land?” He produced a navigation map with coordinates drawn and a red circle around the Army House. ”Twenty-three minutes, if there is no head- or tailwind.”

I s.n.a.t.c.hed the map from him, flung it over my shoulder and stared into his eyes. He stared back unblinking. I thought of telling him about Uncle Starchy's nectar but immediately decided against it.

”Colonel s.h.i.+gri didn't kill himself and I am not about to,” I said. Then put my mouth to his ear and shouted at strength 5: ”Is that clear?”

Screw my inner cadence, I thought.

”Is that clear?” I shouted again.

He pressed his ear over my mouth, leaned into me, and put his hand on my waist.

”If you want to do it here, you've got to have me in the squad. You need a back-up.”

I removed his hand, took a step back. ”Listen, stick to your Rilke or whatever you're reading these days. What are you going to do? Hey, look, this is my sword, here comes the General, look, I am taking a swipe.” I did a limp-wristed mime with an imaginary sword. ”Oops, sorry, I missed. Can I have another go?”

I think I killed him with those words.

I didn't see his fist coming at my guts, and as I doubled over, his knee hit my ribs and sent me reeling onto Bannon's bed, face down. I found myself sprawled on the heap of bamboos and the camouflaged canopy. The surprise of being hit by Baby O was so overwhelming that I didn't feel any pain. The Bruce Lee poster blurred for a moment. Obaid came and stood over me and looked down as if he had never seen me before. My boot caught him between his s.h.i.+ns and he fell beside me.

I rubbed my lower ribcage and sighed. Obaid propped himself up on one elbow and watched me closely. He sat up suddenly as if he had made up his mind about something. Planting both his knees around my hips, he started to pull my vest out of my trousers. He gently rubbed my lower ribcage with both his hands, all the time looking into my eyes. I didn't like him watching my reactions so I closed my eyes, my hips raised themselves involuntarily and my starched khaki trousers suddenly felt very tight. I hoped Bannon would take his time filling out that report.

He moved my vest upwards, the chilled air sent s.h.i.+vers through my chest and my nipples turned shamelessly erect and purple; my belt was unhooked. I sucked my stomach in and held my breath as his hand wandered into my pants. He didn't hold me, just let the back of his hand rest against my c.o.c.k as if it was a chance encounter. I was scared of the lips that were gently brus.h.i.+ng their way towards my chest. I was scared of being kissed.

I breathed in the smell of jasmine oil from his hair and sank back into the mattress; a bamboo crunched under me and I tried to get up in a fit of panic. His hand in my pants pinned me down. His lips travelled along the outline of my jaw, his fingertips made tiny, airy circles on the tip of my c.o.c.k. I groaned and my hips began to move but he pressed me down with his knee. His lips traced my ribcage and kept travelling downward. I did some hard thinking with my eyes shut. There is a stream near my house on s.h.i.+gri Hill; I found myself standing in it during the winter, testing my first erection against the ice-cold water. My body leapt up and my c.o.c.k touched the tip of his nose and he laughed.

There was more surprise for me as he wriggled out of his pants and took my hand to his c.o.c.k. I found myself tracing a curve, not just a slight curve, but the semicircle of a new moon. His c.o.c.k was bent like a bow and his erection arched towards his navel. He sighed and lay down beside me. His eyes were shut and a gentle smile was spreading around his lips, a smile so serene, so full yet gentle, that he seemed to have retreated into his world where the wind whispered in his face and the ocean beneath him was still.

I didn't dare speak for a long time. The air conditioner turned off at some point and the only sound in the room was that of two scared boys breathing.

”No. No,” he whispered in the end, cupping me in his hands in a futile attempt at not leaving any traces on the bed. ”Not on the sheets.”

He spoke with his face staring up at the ceiling. ”You wouldn't do anything stupid.”

”And you will not do anything f.u.c.ked up,” I said.

”I wouldn't,” he said.

In the morning he was gone.

EIGHTEEN.

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