Last Light by Alex Scarrow Read Free Book Online

they’re turning on us because we kicked out their tinpot dictator, now all of a sudden they’re turning on each other. Do you think they just got bored with blowing up foreigners?’
    Andy sucked in a breath and let it go. He had sat through so many conversations that started like this back in London, around the dinner table in the company of Jenny’s friends and their husbands. Invariably the hubbies rarely strayed beyond talking about Top Gear , football, property prices and very occasionally, politics, and even then only in a superficial ‘that’s how I’d sort things’ kind of way.
    Erich sat in silence for a moment before murmuring something in French that suggested he agreed with the Texan. He ended his sentence with a solitary English word, ‘savages’.
    The driver-side door opened and a cool flurry of wind blew in a cloud of grit and dust. Farid climbed in, his shemagh fluttering around his face. He quickly pulled the door closed.
    ‘The others okay?’ asked Andy.
    Farid nodded. ‘Amal and Salim sleeping. The other engineer, U-u . . .’
    ‘Ustov,’ said Erich.
    Farid nodded politely, ‘Ustov sleeping too.’
    The silence was uncomfortable until Mike decided to break it in his own blundering way.
    ‘So why are all you people fucking well ripping the crap out of each other?’
    The old Iraqi man turned to Mike, ‘Is not all of us. Many, like me, we want just peace.’
    ‘Yeah? Well every time another roadside mine blows a hole in one of our convoys, there’s one hell of a lot of you out there celebrating on the streets jumping up and down and firing your guns in the air.’
    ‘That is not everyone .’
    ‘And now you’re doing it to each other,’ Mike said, almost laughing with exasperation, ‘I mean . . . I don’t get it . . . why?’
    ‘I do not expect you to understand.’
    ‘But you’re all brothers aren’t you? . . . All Muslims? We’re supposed to be the big bad guys aren’t we?’
    ‘Would you ask me to try understand why so many Christian brothers died in your American Civil War?’
    There was a lull in the car that Andy suspected might precede an enraged outburst from Mike. But to his credit he replied in a measured manner. ‘No, I suppose you wouldn’t understand if you’re not from a southern state. Shit, of course you wouldn’t.’
    Andy turned in his seat to face both Mike and Farid. ‘Why don’t we leave off politics for now, huh?’
    ‘I just want to understand what makes these people tick,’ said Mike. ‘We came in and kicked out Saddam, we’ve tried rebuilding this country, fixing the power stations, the sewage systems, the water supplies, the hospitals. Rebuilding the schools so all the little boys and girls—’
    ‘You rebuild our country, yes . . . but in your image!’ Farid replied, his soft voice raised ever so slightly in pitch. It was the first time Andy had seen the normally placid old man raise his voice in anger. Under the stress, his very good English began to fracture a little.
    ‘We not wanting our girls go to school, to learn how to become business lady, to dance around undressed in exercise gym before other men, to do power lunch, make big business deals. We do not want to buy McDonald burgers, or Coke, or Pepsi, or cowboy boots.’
    Farid came to an abrupt halt, ground his teeth in silence and stared out of the window at the moonlit desert. ‘It still our country. Only Iraqi people can know how to make fixed again, like a puzzle. We know what all the pieces is . . . are, and how they going together. You Americans don’t even know what picture is on the jigsaw!’
    Mike laughed. ‘Oh Jesus, what a load of crap. I tell you this - I know you ain’t got your goddamned pieces right when you have women and children blown to bloody shreds in the marketplaces every day. The best chance you had of rebuilding this shit-pit piece of desert you call a country, was when we rolled in and knocked over Saddam’s statue. And you threw that chance right