Gerald Seymour - Holding the Zero

There was a doorman at the entrance to the last block of apartments on Martyr Avenue.

He walked past the man, who bowed his head, the dirt from his boots flaking on the lobby carpet, and climbed the stairs. He emerged onto the roof and stood in the shadow of the water tank.

Aziz looked out over the vista beneath him. Behind him, on the far side of the city, was the glow of the lights of the airfield from which the helicopters would fly. To the side, set in a shambles and without pattern, were the pinpricks of the Old Quarter. In front of him was Martyr Avenue, the barricade and two tanks with personnel carriers behind them.

Beyond Martyr Avenue were two neat lines of apartment blocks, then the sharply illuminated length of 16th July Avenue. When he swivelled further he could see the plaza outside the governor’s house, and at the end of it was the floodlit gate to Fifth Army headquarters. His search for a vantage-point was completed… But he was too high, the elevation was too great. For a moment longer, as if he had earned a little of its luxury, he let the night air play, cool and cleansing, on the stubble of his face and the dirt. Then he whistled for the dog and went back to the staircase, down three flights of steps.

The door on the second floor had no nameplate. He rang the bell, kept his finger on the button.

A bolt was drawn back, a key was turned. He saw a momentary joy on her face, then the shock. Without explanation, Aziz pushed her aside, kicking the door shut behind him with his heel.

She wore a loose housecoat and fluffy slippers. There was make-up on her face but insufficient to hide the crow’s feet lines at her eyes and mouth – his wife, in his home, did not use cosmetics because they could not be paid for. She had blond, short-cut hair, but the stems were grey-black below the platinum. He went through the living room, past the chairs and tables and lamps – more expensive than they could have afforded to buy -and into the soft-lit bedroom. There was a big bed, with pink sheets and blankets, and a padded headboard, such as he and his wife had never slept in. He pulled aside the drawn curtains and stepped through the French windows onto the balcony. He could see the edge of the airfield perimeter, the Old Quarter and the barricade at the end of Martyr Avenue. Through the apartment blocks was a clear view of long sectors of 16th July Avenue. It was a corner apartment and there was an additional balcony off the living room from which he would be able to look over the square outside the governor’s house and the gates to Fifth Army. He went back into the bedroom, and gazed at the photograph in the frame on the dressing table.

The face smiled above the uniformed shoulders.

It was the face he had seen, cold and evaluating, when he had fired on the range and in the mountains too. He picked up the photograph of the brigadier. The face, bloodied and scarred, was now in the cell block. His hand shook as he laid the photograph face down on the dressing table.

‘You know him? He is very kind to me. To me, he is a gentle man…’

He told her to close the bedroom door and switch off the light.

‘He did not come last night. I thought, just now, that you were him…’

When the room was darkened, Aziz dragged back the curtains and fastened them at the sides of the window. He went to the bed, ripped off the pink coverlet and threw it onto the balcony.

‘I am from Malmo in Sweden. I have been in London, Paris, Nicosia, Bucharest, Beirut, Cairo and Baghdad, and now I am in Kirkuk. I am very lucky to have found such a kind and gentle man at the end of my road. I suppose that he is busy with the situation -but you know better than me that he is important.’

He settled himself down on the coverlet, used it as padding so that the hard tiles of the balcony would not stiffen his legs, reduce the circulation and harm the accuracy of his shooting.

‘And he has told me that soon he will be more important…’

He told her to leave him and to take her photograph with her. The peace of his mind was fracturing. He watched for the woman and the sniper. Because he had put vanity above duty to his family, his life depended on the man in the cell block.

‘We should go in one group.’

‘No, we must be in small groups,’ Meda said.

Haquim smacked his knuckle into the palm of his hand. ‘We need to be a fist and punch with firepower.’

‘We should be water running through fingers, in groups of twenty, no more.’

‘Strength in numbers is our only option,’ Haquim persisted.

‘We should attack from all angles so they do not know where to find the heart of us.’

The men, 280 of them – fewer than the number needed to take the Victory City, far fewer than the number who had charged the defences at Tarjil – stood in a tight, mesmerized circle around her and Haquim. It was as if she held them in a noose. In the moonlight, he saw the adoration in their eyes. He knew some of them as thieves, and some of them as beggars. Some were so old they could barely run and others were so young they could not have done a day of man’s work in the fields. The best men, the men on whom the mustashar would have depended, had gone back with agha Ibrahim and agha Bekir, as he had… but, unlike him, none of the best men had returned. They would be slaughtered, all of them – her and him – when the helicopters flew. He thought she had sacrificed the life of the Englishman, used an old loyalty, sent him on the long march against the helicopters and killed him.

‘You’re wrong.’

She laughed in his face. ‘I am right, always right. You are wrong, always wrong.’

‘It is madness.’

Haquim heard the hostile rumble in the throats of the men around her. He fought for their lives and they did not recognize it. She danced on him. Everything he had achieved in a lifetime of soldiering she danced on, as if it were worthless. He had told the Englishman of his long march across the country when he had brought the peasant boys back to their homes, and at least the Englishman had listened with respect. He had held the pass with the rearguard so that the refugees could reach the safety of the frontier; without value. He did not dare to look into her eyes for fear that she would entrap him, too… but he would lay down his life to protect her.

‘You should not be frightened, old man. We are not frightened, nor Mr Peake. Trust me. We are two hundred and eighty. We are in groups of twenty men. We are in houses, gardens, alleyways, yards, not in the roads where they have barricades and tanks. They will not have the helicopters to search for us because Mr Peake will not be frightened.

We are going forward. You will sleep, tonight, in the governor’s bed, while I direct Kirkuk’s defence from the governor’s office.’

‘If you get to the governor’s house, how long do you think you can hold it?’

‘Until they come, a few hours, it’s all we need.’

Still, Haquim did not dare to look into the light of her eyes. He rasped, ‘Who comes?’

‘It is because you are frightened, old man, that you are stupid… The pigs will come, of course. Bekir and Ibrahim will come – all of the peshmerga will come. They wait a little way off. They need me to give them courage. When I am in the governor’s house they will have the courage and come. It will happen.’

At last, reluctantly, Haquim looked into her face. The sneers and taunts had gone. He was responsible. He had heard talk of her, gone to her village, listened to her, believed in her, promised her grandfather that he would watch over her, had taken her to meet agha Bekir and agha Ibrahim, and he had watched the little army swell. The smile caught him as surely as the barbed hooks the children used when they caught fish off the dam of the great Dukan reservoir. He took her hand. There were grenades on straps against her chest.