Page 2

This is always the point I find myself, after climbing the stairs, a climb I never remember: standing at the windows looking out over the desert, out over my burned out shell of a car, and over the road to nowhere.

But now the road is no longer empty, no; the road is crammed, jammed fender to fender with vehicles of all kinds, cars and buses and lorries, tanks and troop transports and vans, vehicles in such numbers that movement is all but impossible. And as I stand there looking at them, the music rises, slowly, louder and louder, and then the music fills the world, and the years roll away. I’m back in February 1991, flying over Kuwait. The years fall away, and then is now.

Again, I’m looking down at the road to nowhere, but this time from the cockpit of an A-10 Warthog, the heavy plane moving at the merest touch of my fingertips, and below me, the trapped line of the Enemy, helpless in their column of vehicles, trapped in their withdrawal. Far ahead comes the pall of smoke where other planes have already bombed, and now it’s my turn.

Here I come, flying at just above stall speed, because the Enemy are not shooting back, just staring helplessly up at the winged doom coming down on them, and I fire, the huge GAU-8 Avenger Gatling cannon blasting death down onto the Enemy, tossing entire vehicles up into the air like matchbox toys. Here I come, laughing excitedly into my mask because the Enemy is trapped and it’s fun to kill him, and it’s safe too, because the Enemy is withdrawing, not fighting, and is utterly incapable of defending himself.

Here I come, and the cluster bombs drop free from my underwing racks, exploding like blossoming flowers, and the Enemy is obliterated in smoke and flame as I pull smoothly into a climb, banking to come round again, listening to the air controller’s instructions in my earphones, because there are so many of us over the target that there’s a virtual traffic jam. And I look down at the road, and the Enemy burning to cinders, and I’m laughing, laughing.

Abruptly, I’m back, back to the present. Somehow, at this point, I’m always out of the building and back behind the wheel of my car, pulling away from the bone white house with the Christmas-tree scorch on the wall. And now as the music fades, as I know it will, the undertone takes over, whispering, and it’s the song of the desert, and try as I might to shut my ears, I am compelled to listen.

Up ahead, the road to nowhere is jammed, as I know it will be. Now I’m part of the jam, too, vehicles to left and right, cars so close their bodywork almost kiss mine. Figures sit inside these vehicles, just too dim to see clearly, silhouettes which nod and move their hands on their wheels and look at me with faces that stay in the shadow.

It’s always at this point that I feel compelled to look to my right, towards the burned frame of the passenger seat. Always, always, I try to look away, but my head turns despite every bit of willpower I can muster, and I see him.

He sits in the passenger seat, lolling against the far door, what is left of his face turned towards me. He’s no longer human, not in any real sense of the word, unless a charred corpse counts as human, but he sees me, and is aware of me, the burned eyeballs in his skull regarding me calmly. He raises one hand and caresses the edge of the dashboard, and his fingers leave tracks on the metal, as though it’s as soft as putty. And, each time, I am terrified that he will reach out and touch me, but he doesn’t. Instead, he leans towards me, the remnants of his lips moving, and the scene dissolves...

...and I am in a small house, the whitewashed walls bare of decorations. Outside the window, I can see a palm tree, nodding, and if I get up from the bed and walk over to the window, I shall see the Euphrates, a strip of vivid blue running through the land. But I have no desire to get up and go to the window, because I’m lying back in the soft afterglow of love, with my beloved lying in the crook of my arm. Tomorrow is another day, and who can know what the future can bring? But now I have my beloved, and in the aftermath of our lovemaking, life is sweet indeed.

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