Now, in our time, the only illusionist that remains is Allah. Even as children we are taught the simple secrets of the physical world, but Allah remains our Lord, unidentifiable and unseen.
As though I have been unconscious for these last few minutes, the traffic seems to have suddenly built up. A string of vehicles wait at a traffic signal where a broken arch signifies a gate to a once medieval castle. A child waves from the side window of a car. I smile and return the gesture. She reveals a plastic poppy and shakes it at me. The girl presses her nose against the glass. The car moves away.
Towards the crest of the hill the white coach has stopped at a car park and its occupants are climbing out. Men and women in military dress uniform. On the concrete, some are putting the finishing touches to their attire: doing up brass buttons, squeezing peaked caps onto their heads and patting down berets. A man with a large belly — a band sergeant major, I judge from the stripes and crown emblem on his arm — is going from person to person, dusting down their shoulders with a clothes brush. Instruments are unpacked from their cases and tuned, a noise that slowly builds into a cacophony of broken squeals. The car park’s rough concrete and dilapidated signage appear as an inappropriate, ugly backdrop to the splendour of the military scene. The military would, with their bellies and their instruments, their gleaming brass buttons and sashes of red against black and green, defend every inch of England, for ever England — once, I too would have defended every inch of its green pastures, but not the car parks or the dreary urban uniformity under a grey sky. Out there that’s not how any of us remembered it.
The body of the long coach bisects the scene. On one side are the memorial and the assembling band, and on the other is a volunteer tea stand. Folding tables and chairs are set out, and after ordering a tea, I take a seat shielded by the cover of the bus and place the daysack beneath the table, hoping no one will notice it. The daysack is a field patrol item, not something a soldier would carry while in ceremonial dress.
I rest my head in my hands and picture the most beautiful scene I ever saw. It was in Afghanistan. We were finishing up a night patrol and dawn had just broken. The sky was streaked with reds and pinks, and the pink was so thin where it met the snow-capped peaks of the Hindu Kush that it seemed to melt into the white snow. It was impossible to determine where the earth ended and the heavens began, and at the sight of its magnificence my eyes watered. Then from a distant loudspeaker I heard the call to prayer, the still cold air carrying it to my ears as though it was sung right beside me. I stood on a plain between mountains on each side, and the plain was still dark, still to be illumined by the sun. I shivered and looked around as though for the first time in my life I was properly seeing. The scene had no borders, no left or right; on each side it melted into the dewy air. Everything I needed — rations, a stove to boil water, ammunition — I carried in a daysack, and in that moment I felt like picking up my pack and just walking straight ahead to get as high as I could, to lose myself in the Hindu Kush.
I remember thinking that there would be only one thing better than the view from down on the plain. If I were up on that peak where the air was so thin and the wind chill so cold that I could endure it for only minutes, there I would be closer to Allah. Imagine the light-headedness, the exhilaration, the peril. I could almost touch it. For those freezing minutes I would be truly free and experience something beyond beauty. I would be in some vital place man does not inhabit, more alone than can be imagined. My appreciation of Allah would be equal to my fear of death, but despite that fear I would feel no pain. At any moment the winds would sweep me off and my sublimation would be complete. That would hit it. That’s what I want. That is Allah.
A volunteer replenishes my tea, now gone cold. From the other side of the coach I can hear the drum sergeant bellowing instructions as he orders his band into place. I hear the scraping of chairs and the noise of civilians taking their places mixed with the excited shrieks of children. The brass band plays a few notes of a military marching song, a final practice, and as it falls silent I can picture the audience on the other side of the coach as they cheer and clap.
I stand up, pull my daysack out from underneath the table and swing it casually onto my back. My watch reads five minutes to eleven. I march slowly but earnestly, my limbs straight, thumbs perpendicular to my body, my chin tilted up, my stick leading me on.
Up top it flattens out into a square of tarmac, and in the centre is the war memorial, a simple stone cross about ten feet high with steps at the base. The cross is engraved with the names of men, and the steps below it are covered with a wreath and a blanket of poppies. Around it on all sides stand men and women, civilians and military — army, navy and air force in their best dress uniform. I note the band, about twenty members, and pick out the clack of the sergeant’s boots as he walks down the line and makes his final inspection. Beyond the band are the ruins of the castle, thick crumbling stone walls rising like spurs of ice. The wind has got up again and I steady my cap, feeling a warm trickle of sweat pass obliquely across my forehead. My heart speeds up but not excessively, a faint repeating thud in my chest.
Unchallenged, I move among servicemen and women. I wear a fixed smile and an air of thoughtful detachment.
Allah. Allah. It is time to think of Allah. Now is the time for exhilaration. I am on a steep cliff surrounded on all sides by the heavens and I feel light-headed. I sense the excruciating pain of wind chill like needles on the skin of my face. I unbutton the breast pocket of my tunic and pull out a mobile phone. An old Nokia. I smile at the familiar keys, my eyes moving to the number seven, then eight and finally six.
I pass through the crowd. They face towards the memorial and no one turns to look at me. Here there are children, here old boys in resplendent uniforms and twinkling medals. Here are civilians, men and women. I make for where the military uniforms are most dense. I hold the Nokia in my right hand and lean on my stick with my left.
A solitary bugle sounds the ‘Last Post’. Everyone removes their hats.
I move again, fast. My distance to the memoriaclass="underline" twelve feet. Ten feet. Six. I flit deeper into the crowd. I whisper verse, any verse; the first thing that comes into my head.
The bugle’s last note echoes as a two-minute silence commences. I wait. Let them have their silence.
Finally, a padre begins to read a prayer. Ever-living God, we remember.
The face of the phone reads three minutes past eleven. I should have keyed in the detonation code by now. My instructions. The text message.
. gathered from the storm of war into the peace of your presence..
I take a deep breath.
May that same peace calm our fears.
I have the power to end their prayer.