The Bone Clocks

Suddenly we heard the rumble of army vehicles, and the crowd scattered, or tried to; we clustered into a group again as we realized both exits from the field were blocked by two convoys of four Humvees. Marines emerged from the vehicles in full body armor, pointing their M16s at us. A disembodied roar filled the field: “Hands above your heads! Hands where I can see them! Allof you on the fucking ground now or I swear, you gloating fucking Ali Baba pig-fuckers, I’ll put you inthe ground!” No translation was provided, but we all got the idea.

“HANDS HIGHER!” another marine yelled at a man in a mechanic’s oil-stained overalls, who said, “Mafee mushkila, mafee mushkila,” No problem, no problem, but the marine shouted, “Don’t contradict me! Don’t contradict me!” and booted the man in the stomach—all our guts jerked tight in sympathy—and he folded over, gasping and coughing. “Find out who owns this farm,” the marine ordered an interpreter, whose face was hidden in a sort of head-wrapping, like a ninja. The marine spoke into his headset, saying the area was secured while the interpreter asked the old man in the red kaffiyeh who owned the farm.

I didn’t hear the answer because a black marine was standing over Aziz, saying, “Souvenirs, huh? This your handiwork, huh?” Fate sent a Chinook thundering out of the sun; it drowned my voice as the marine yanked Aziz’s camera off his neck with such force that the strap broke, and Aziz fell forward headfirst. Next thing I knew the marine was kneeling by Aziz with his handgun pressed against my photographer’s head.

I shouted, “No—stop! He’s working for me,” but the din of the Chinook drowned me out, and suddenly I was flipped to the ground and an armored kneecap was pressing my windpipe into the dirt, too, and I thought, They won’t discover their mistake till I’m dead. Then, No, they won’t discover their mistake at all; I’ll be deposited in a shallow pit on the edge of Baghdad.

“WHY AREN’ TTHEY grateful, Ed?”

A cube of wedding cake is halfway to my mouth, but Pauline Webber has a penetrating voice, and now I’m being watched by four Webbers, six Sykeses, Aoife, and a vase of orange lilies. My problem is, I have no idea who or what she’s talking about, as I’ve spent the last few minutes mentally composing an email to the accounts department at the corporation that owns Spyglass. I look at Holly for a hint, but she blanks me from behind her wronged-woman mask. Though I wouldn’t be too sure it is a mask.

Luckily, Peter’s younger brother and best man, Lee, comes to my aid; his “core competence” may be “tax evoision” but that doesn’t stop him being an authority on international affairs too. “Iraq under Saddam used to be a concentration camp aboveground and a mass grave below. So us and the Yanks, we come along and take their dictator down for them, gratis and for free—and how do they pay us back? By turning on their liberators. Ingratitude is deeply, deeply, ingrained into the Arab races. And it’s not just our lads in uniform they hate; it’s anyWesterner, right, Ed? Like that poor reporter who got offed last year, just for being American? Gro tesque.”

“You’ve got spinach stuck in your teeth, Lee,” says Peter.

Of course Aoife asks, “What does ‘offed’ mean, Daddy?”

“Why don’t you and I,” Holly says to Aoife, “go and see Lola and Amanda at the big kids’ table? I think they’ve got Coca-Cola.”

“You always say Coca-Cola stops you sleeping, Mummy.”

“Yes, but you worked so hard being Aunty Sharon’s bridesmaid, we can make an exception this once.” Holly and Aoife slip away.

Lee still hasn’t caught on. “Has the spinach gone?”

“It has,” says Peter, “but the tactlessness is still there.”

“Huh? Oh.” Lee does a contrite smirk. “Oops. No offense, Ed. Imbibed too freely of the old vino, methinks.”

I should say, “No offense taken,” but I just shrug.

“Thing is,” says Lee in a let’s-face-it tone, “the invasion of Iraq was about one thing and one thing only: oil.”

If I had a tenner for every time I heard that I could buy the Outer Hebrides. I put down my fork. “If you want a country’s oil, you just buy it. Like we did from Iraq up until Gulf One.”

“Cheaper just to install a puppet government, surely.” Lee pokes out the very tip of his tongue to show how provocative he is. “Think of all those lucrative oil contracts. Favorable terms. Yum-yum.”

“Maybe that’s what the Iraqis object to,” says Austin Webber, father of Peter and Lee, a retired bank manager with drooping eyes and a fascinating forehead like a Klingon’s. “Being governed by puppets. Can’t say I’d relish the prospect much, either.”

“Could we pleaselet Ed answer my questions?” Pauline says. “Why has the Iraqi intervention gone so horribly off script?”