Carney's War Read online

  He had agreed with Jeff that he would go through all the potential press releases and tidy them up, putting them in a format that would be more functional. This included taking out many references to religion and ethnic groups. The impending visit by American politicians didn’t help, as there had been heaps of such documents to wade through and Khalil hadn’t really got the time. He worked most nights on it for short periods, while Saira slept. “Surely they can do this for themselves,” he thought, “instead of pestering me all the time.”

  Khalil reasoned that they probably wanted him to feel part of the “machinery of power” as an old gent had stated at one of the meetings. He remembered what Jeff had said, that “none of them have been anything more than local councillors; the sort of people who hold up planning consent for your loft conversion or conservatory.”

  “I had better not get on the wrong side of them,” Khalil thought. “Me and Saira will probably need to get a planning application past the old boys one day!”

  That afternoon Jeff and Khalil had discussed the best way to approach the visit by the American delegation planned for that weekend. Jeff’s group would only get a brief audience at Congress House in London’s Great Russell St, which had been hired out for the occasion.

  “So let’s get this straight, Jeff, we’re not actually aligned with the Republicans – at least not the ones in the US Congress or whatever?”

  “No, not really,” Jeff replied. “This is more of a… well… a fact-finding mission. All political parties do this sort of thing.”

  “Would that include the Nationalists?”

  “One thing I would ask you not to do, Khalil, is bring them up here; we are very sensitive to being put in the same basket as them, especially by the media, who would love to knock us around as much as possible.”

  “That’s OK; I just need to know where we are.”

  “Of course, and we have no problem with that,” said Jeff.

  “What about Europe, the Middle East, Afghanistan, etc. What’s our line?” asked Khalil.

  “Well that’s easy; we are cool over Europe, but we don’t accept any more loss of sovereignty. We do not back US policy on the Middle East and we did not support the Iraq invasion. In fact we want an International Tribunal for those US and other politicians who gave Saddam Hussein the means to kill so many people back in the eighties; as well as any industrialists who helped him out with chemicals and that sort of thing.”

  “What about Afghanistan?”

  “That’s a policy we’re working on, Khalil. If asked we will just state that we need an “exit strategy” which can mean anything anyway.”

  The following morning the various small local parties descended on Congress House. Jeff and his colleague’s turn to speak to the delegates finally came and Dan, the main American spokesperson, a tall bald academic-looking man in his early sixties, looked directly at them and said: “You know - I have to ask this question, why do so many white American politicians seem to have become one-dimensional over the last ten years from a European viewpoint?”

  Khalil’s first impression was that it was a clever question; designed to throw them all off-balance with an oddball approach. He replied, as it had seemed to be directed at him.

  “Could you elaborate slightly please, Dan?”

  “Yes of course; have you noticed that since 9/11 we have become more and more stereotyped; like we are all dinosaurs?”

  The group around Jeff just looked at each other until Khalil broke the awkward silence: “No Dan, not especially come to mention it. I understand something of what you’re saying where stereotypes are concerned; I mean black American guys are still cool, Asian guys are still seen as hard-working. I suppose we all fall into certain stereotypes.” Jeff and the others were mere spectators in the exchange.

  “Exactly and that is the crux of the problem,” replied Dan. “We’re all just stereotypes, aren’t we? We all have to break moulds every day of every week of every year; black and white, male and female, Christian, Muslim you name it - especially the politicians.”

  “It’s not just politicians,” piped up Jeff, who was worried that he would be ignored. “Here, we tend to find that our own footballers have become parodies of themselves, and other sports people and those in the media spotlight.”

  “Sorry, I don’t follow,” said the American.

  “What I think Jeff means,” interjected Khalil, “and correct me if I am wrong Jeff, is that the general behaviour of a number of high profile white men in this country is not breaking down obvious stereotypes; it is just reinforcing, for example, ‘bling’ culture amongst white men – which is somewhat ironic as it comes from black American men!”

  At this the Americans fell around laughing. Khalil felt like he had scored a goal when he looked at the expressions on the faces of Jeff and the others.

  “But would you say that the ‘Special Relationship’ has been adversely affected in recent years by recent events?” asked one of the delegates.

  “The thing is,” Khalil replied instantly “that all the Americans who disagreed with the Iraq War ended up agreeing with all the Brits who disagreed with the war and all the Americans who wanted the war, ended up concurring with all the Brits who wanted the war; so in the end the Iraq War made no real difference. Don’t you agree?” stated Khalil magnanimously.

  Jeff looked slightly confused, as did some of the Americans.

  “Absolutely,” Dan replied. “I couldn’t have put it better myself.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The following Monday morning Jeff and Khalil were having an early morning coffee at one of Jeff’s favourite haunts.

  “Khalil, you really dealt with those comments by the Americans last Saturday. I think we were all very impressed by the way you handled the situation.” Jeff seemed lavish in his praise.

  “Thanks, Jeff,” replied Khalil. “I just stated what I felt.”

  There was a long pause, which Jeff broke. “My own argument, Khalil, is that political failure is creating fragmented and marginalized communities. Politicians have failed to understand why some young people are turning to gangsterism and extremist politics. The gangs and cells are like small colleges often in areas where governments have not had any impact in the past and failed to deliver the basic essentials for everyday life. This is as true of remote communities in Pakistan as it is of areas of Western Europe where old manufacturing towns have had high unemployment for years along with large immigrant communities.”

  “I agree, but there are wider issues here,” replied Khalil. “It isn’t just young people who feel marginalized; it’s the many normal hard-working people, in other words the voters, Jeff. Ultimately, our political establishments have dug their own graves as no one is about to defend their outmoded structures of power when they show little interest in reforming themselves, especially with all these scandals.

  It’s impossible for our political elites to carry on as they are. They have no interest in change when that will mean an end to privilege. In that sense they are just like the rulers in the Middle East, many of whom are now being challenged by the masses in their own countries. That’s how we can have an impact in marginalized communities. By showing how our rulers are just that; they are rulers. They are not leaders; they are reactionaries, who levy greater taxes for their foreign wars and come up with ever more ridiculous ways of misgoverning and mismanaging us.”

  Jeff smiled and nodded.

  “We’re of a similar mind, Khalil.”

  ***

  Joe was picking the post off his doormat. There was another flyer from the political outfit that had come to his attention before he had gone away to Afghanistan. His natural instinct was to bin it like all the other junk mail but somehow he decided, in the absence of a newspaper, that he would read it and remind himself what they had to say, whilst drinking his tea. He had another week off before he was due back at work and plenty of time to waste.

  He recalled the scenes at the Town Hall months
earlier; scenes which had been comical but embarrassing nevertheless. He sensed that they were looking to build a local powerbase. In some respects he was concerned for his own political identity, as much as anything, and wanted to explore various avenues to see what the different parties stood for. It wasn’t even a question of agreeing with them, as much as striving to convince himself that he had exhausted all the possible alternatives in a greater game of finding some kind of political identity. The result would always be unknown; perhaps the journey was more important.

  He carried on reading and it stated in general terms that the voters of the UK no longer supported expensive and pointless wars. They were bankrupting the UK while Russia and China look on. The fall-out from this failure was that the liberal democratic traditions that had come about after World War Two were now beginning to crumble. This wasn’t just a political or security issue as the “…economic situation was changing as the Euro failed as a currency. The world was being sleepwalked into a new order based on the fear of terrorism and steep social and economic decline.”

  Joe stopped reading. He remembered that he had to meet Alison later that day. He called her to arrange a time.

  “So; what’s it like to be home Joe?”

  “I don’t know – I haven’t quite got used to how it feels to be back,” he replied. “It’s weird really. What are you supposed to feel? I suppose you just get tired and move on.” He paused. “Generally it was a positive experience.”

  When they met they didn’t need to say much. He tried to conceal his emotions at meeting up again and saw something about her he hadn’t seen before. She was like a blueprint, never changing, always sticking to her way of life and view of the world.

  The same old routine returned far too quickly once he went back to work full-time, with shopping, going to the gym, and evenings spent watching TV. Alison had given him a blow-up Bob the Builder balloon as a present before he had gone to Afghanistan and he was saying hello to it whenever he crossed his threshold at night. Sometimes he thought he heard a reply, albeit a very high-pitched one. At least for the moment he wasn’t bored, but he toyed again with the idea of life and career changes.

  ***

  Az had been in England a few weeks. He had become adept at telling lies about what he had been doing whilst away, building a false picture of his activities with various groups, unverifiable as they were. One morning he sat down in an Islington café and mulled over what had happened in his life over the last twenty years since leaving school. Fighting had been a constant theme ever since his early childhood. He wasn’t that big, or hard, but he’d had his share of punch-ups in life, and had stood up to the racists from an early age. He remembered the difficult times in his early twenties when he had got into the worst battles.

  One incident in particular had stood out. Three men had been walking along a street in north London in the 1980s and they had all racially abused him. They came around him shouting “Paki scum”, shoving him around and then carried on past him. He had seen two of them peel off to walk across a high street and the third turned left down a narrow side road. Az followed him to see where he went. After one hundred metres the man had stopped to light a cigarette. That was when he got him. He first checked to see if there was anyone else around and then he took the man’s legs from behind knocking him over. He swung round with his foot kicking him in the side and then twice in the head. The man didn’t see him, not that Az cared. But it meant that when a passer-by found the man lying in the street with a fractured skull there was no possibility for identification. Quite literally the man hadn’t known what hit him. Az had thereafter always reasoned that if you were going to take someone out you should only do it when you could not be identified. That was the hard part; the rest was easy.

  Az had also prided himself on the fact he had been with scores of women as a young man and never had a bad experience. He just didn’t admit it to friends and family. In fact when he had bumped into one or two of his old flames they had got on well. Part of him still counted himself as one of those liberated men who hadn’t bothered with the wife and kids route. He had neatly side-stepped all that to preserve his freedom. While his mother had given up on him giving her grandchildren he reasoned that at least he hadn’t lost his money to some scheming minx.

  However, now he he didn’t seem to have what was required to find a wife. His confidence had been draining from him, mainly because everyone else was moving on while he stayed still. He was in a virtual no man’s land and wasn’t sure where his life was heading. At the same time he’d had enough of his own shallowness and self-interest. He had thrown off his old self but didn’t know what to with the new one.

  He sat in the café and looked around him. It was one of those typical high street joints that would do anything as long as you wanted eggs, chips and beans and variations on that theme. However, Az thought, wasn’t that what modern England was all about: honest, hard-working immigrants most of them from traditional communities that had come to the UK to start a business and get on without complaining? And what reward do they get: accusations of scrounging and every crime under the sun?

  However, he did admit to himself that London was getting a bit crowded and there was now far too much competition for work. Even just trying to get on the train could be an issue. Certainly things had changed for the worse over the years in that respect. He had even started to struggle to regard himself as an immigrant.

  “How can I be?” he thought. “There are so many foreign people here who have nothing like my understanding of this country – but they all arrogantly claim that they are part of the ‘New Europe’ and have more rights than I have. It’s like I am being pushed out somehow.”

  He dragged a piece of toast across the plate. His main personal problem in life was an inability to express his views, to get himself heard. Admittedly, he knew that many other people faced the same problems and had done something about it. They usually worked hard to change their lives. But that involved a degree of confidence in oneself that Az just didn’t possess. He was, he reasoned, far too honest for all that posturing in order to gain influence. And then he thought of Khalil, a man for whom posturing was an art form. “How wretched would that be, to be like him!” Az choked.

  But for Az it was also about the fact that he didn’t really see the point of making your own voice heard above everyone else. It was so un-cool, so ‘why bother?’ He particularly hated the practice of talking over other people; it was yet another American import from the 1980s. But it was now common currency for just about everyone to behave like that. The media had made sure of it. He counted himself as one of those trying to turn society away from that kind of behaviour, to reject the American way of life. He much preferred the values of deference, respect and integrity that his short time at an English grammar school had bestowed upon him. And his religious views could help him teach people the meaning of humility and understanding before God. The two things went together. It occurred to him that becoming an Imam was probably his destiny.

  As he finished his “Full English Halal Breakfast” flashes of his earlier life came back to him. He remembered the well-groomed, chiselled types, who had attended the school all those years ago, and who were now no doubt fully ensconced in their Surrey villas with their equally well-groomed spouses with the kids planted in the local prep school. He thought of his mates who he used to hang around with.

  “Like latter day grammar school grow-bags, the ‘cycle’ continues.” He grinned. However, it also occurred to him that the reality was now quite the reverse for a lot of those men he had known; a litany of failed marriages and houses that could not be financed once the economic downturn had come along. Many from that generation, who would still be under forty years of age, had at one time been the lucky ones; they had been at college at a time when education was cheap even from their over-privileged standpoint. That was no longer the case, especially for those like him seeking to continue their educations. No one was immune from econ
omic reality.

  Az sipped on his tea fondling the copy of the Daily Mirror on the table, and pondered what he was going to say to his cousins.

  “Oh, screw it.” He decided. “If they ask I’ll tell them the truth, what have I got to lose anyway? My brother thinks I’m a crackpot, Khalil hates me and Wazir has been corrupted. That’s fucking typical of this country; people get brainwashed and turn against their own kind.”

  ***

  When he met up with his friends Dex and Baz that weekend Joe had still only been back a few weeks. He had adjusted to the temperature gradient between Afghanistan and London, but wasn’t sure what the next year would bring. The recession seemed to be still in full swing and there was an election due.

  “Good to see you, bud; glad you got back OK!” said Baz. “How was it?”

  “In a word: hot. In two words: hot and dusty.”

  Dex handed him a pint and opened a packet of crisps.

  “Cheers mate. So what do you think is going to happen with the economy and all, Baz?” Joe replied. “Are we going to get financial meltdown in the coming months?”

  “What; are you serious?” said Dex. “I think all we’ll get is a massive cut in the public sector. And it will probably be a good thing.”

  “Thanks for that, mate; that’s me out of a job in six months. Still at least I had one to come back to.”

  “Well, you can always try your hand at something else for a while,” replied Baz.

  “Why do you say that? It’s not as if I have other work if I need it,” said Joe quizzically.

  “That’s odd I thought you did; isn’t that what you have been doing these last few months; other work?” said Dex.

  “Yeah; I see what you mean; I thought you meant a career change altogether. But the way things are going I wouldn’t be surprised if they cut back on that as well,” replied Joe. “I might have to look around if the economy dips even more. Maybe it’s an opportunity as well as a challenge.”