“Yep, yep, I’m all right!” I tried to sound happy and polite.
My muscles had seized up; I was as stiff as a board. I tried my best to stand up. If they saw me just lying there, making no effort, they’d fill me in. But I couldn’t move.
The door opened and I saw daylight. I stretched out my arms, palms upwards, in a gesture of helplessness.
“I can’t move,” I said. “Stiff.”
He called to another guard. I clenched my sore muscles in readiness for the kicking I was about to receive.
They came into the toilet and bent over me.
“Up, up, aaah,” one said, all nice and gentle. They put my arms around their necks and lifted me upright, almost with compassion. They were actually concerned. I couldn’t believe it.
The crash of a door bolt and the friendly shout of “Good morning! Good morning!” echoed around the block as they helped me towards the door to the courtyard.
The light was dazzling, even though the toilet block was in shadow. I squinted at the sun. It was fairly low, and I guessed the time was about eight o’clock. The sky was a beautiful, cloudless blue, and the air was cool and crisp, with just enough nip to make your face tingle and let you see your breath as you exhaled. It could have been an early spring morning in England, and I could have been coming out of my house and setting off for work.
Directly in front of us was a vehicle, and beyond it a single-story building. The noises were subdued-vehicles in the distance, disembodied voices shouting further down the camp, city noises the other side of the walls. I heard a bird singing to my left. I turned my head and looked up; it was in a tree that grew on the other side of the courtyard wall. It sang its heart out and it was lovely to hear.
Below it, in the corner where the toilet block met the wall, there was a pile of large metal segments. When aircraft drop cluster bombs, the ordnance breaks up at altitude and releases the payload of smaller bombs. The large outer casings fall to earth, and these were obviously being collected by somebody. They had English writing on them. It gave me a good feeling to see something from home. Somebody friendly was up there in the sky, not watching over me or even looking for me, but at least they were there, and they were hosing these people down.
The vehicle was facing outwards, ready to go, and as we approached the engine fired up. I got in and was left with a couple of guards. One of them, the first black Iraqi soldier that I’d seen, reminded me of my battalion days. In the early eighties, when the Afro was in, our black dudes used to buy pairs of tights and cut the legs off to use as sort of bank robber masks to squash their hair down at night. The effect of this was to make their Afros really tight in the morning, so that when they put their berets on, their hair didn’t poke out and look ridiculous. As soon as we were off duty, they’d get out the Afro comb and frizz it all out again.
This lad had the mop on top, then the ring where the band of his beret had dug in, but all the rest was sticking out. Obviously he didn’t put his head in a stocking bottom at night, and I wondered if I should pass on the beauty tip. It gave me a little giggle to remember the battalion. It seemed a lifetime ago. Dinger was in a bad way, shuffling like an old man, moving along about a foot every pace, being supported either side by two lads. It was quite funny to watch because Dinger towered a foot or so above them. It looked like a pair of little Boy Scouts helping an old-age pensioner.
The bright light hit him, and he shuddered up like a vampire, putting his head down to protect his eyes. We’d been blindfolded and in darkness for so long, and all of a sudden we were getting full wattage, like bats caught in a searchlight.
I saw that the guards were commando again, in DPM and carrying AK47s. Dinger didn’t have his boots either, and his feet were cut. Much the same as me, there were big red scabs on the outside of his socks where the blood had congealed. His hair wasn’t its usual dirty frizzy blond; it was matted and a dark reddish brown. His face was covered with a week of growth, and that, too, was covered with mud and scabs.
As he was helped into the vehicle, he put his hand out and I grabbed hold of it and pulled him in.
“All right, mate?” I said.
“Yeah, I’m all right.”
I got the grin. The house might be bomb-damaged, but the lights were still on in the attic.
It was another major victory. We’d made physical contact, we’d exchanged words. It was a big boost to my morale, and I hoped I’d had the same effect on him.
The guards put the blindfolds on again, breaking the scab on the bridge of my nose and squashing my eyeballs so hard that I got snowstorms in front of my eyes. One of Houdini’s secrets was to tense all his muscles as tightly as he could when they were tying him up, so that when he relaxed he had some room to play with. As they tied the blindfold, I tensed my cheek muscles to give me some slack later on. It didn’t work.
They put the handcuffs on again, good and tight. My hands were very tender, and the pain was unbearable. Perversely, I took a deep breath and clenched my teeth as the ratchets bit into the flesh because I didn’t want them to see that they were hurting me. I’d been going through the process of playing on my injuries, and now I was being counterproductive again by trying not to show the pain.
We sat and waited. As I listened to the engine ticking over, I wondered where we were going to. Had we convinced them we were inconsequential nuggets, not worth any further waste of manpower? Were we now on our way to a prison where we would just sit out the rest of the war in relative comfort?
My thoughts were broken by what I assumed was one of the guards. Just as the driver put his foot on the clutch and engaged first gear, he poked his head through the open window and said quietly, “Whoever is your God, you will very soon be needing him.” I didn’t know if he was saying it out of compassion, or as a cruel and deliberate ploy to make us flap. But it had the effect of totally saddening me. My whole body dropped, as if I’d been told my dad was dead. It was a massive shock. Things had seemed to be on the up, and now this.
Whoever is your God, you will very soon be needing him.
The sincerity in his voice alarmed me. I thought: That’s it then, it is going to get worse. The mention of God was horrifying because there was so much concern in the guard’s voice when he said it, as if it really was only God who could save us now. Did it mean we were going to be executed? That was fine-I’d just have to hope it was publicized and the people back home got the news. What about torture? We’d heard the horror stories during the Iran-Iraq war, and the thought now crossed my mind that this was it: Here we go, it’s time for the old chop your bollocks off routine, followed by ears, fingers, and toes, all nice and slow. But the optimist in me was fighting hard, saying: No, they wouldn’t do that: they must realize they’re going to lose the war; they don’t want another Nuremberg.
If the desired effect was simply to piss me off, then it succeeded-severely. The same went for Dinger. As the Land Cruiser lurched across the courtyard, he muttered out of the corner of his mouth, “Well, at least they can’t make us pregnant.”
I giggled. “Yeah, fair one.”
The boy in the passenger seat turned round and gob bed off angrily, “No speak! No talk!”
They might not be able to make us pregnant, but they might try and fuck us. It was a crazy assumption, but your mind does that sort of thing under duress. The thought worried me more than getting killed.
Alone with my thoughts, I brooded about the conversation I’d had with Chris back at the FOB.
“That’s all you need on top of getting captured,” Chris had joked. “To have six chutney ferrets roaring up your arse.”
We drove for about fifteen minutes in brilliant sunshine. I could tell we weren’t heading out of town because we were still turning corners at quite frequent intervals and the noise of human activity didn’t drop. People in the streets were shouting at one another; drivers were leaning on their horns.