Scott Andrews - Operation Motherland

"So Brett's a Yank," I said, "but you and your friends are fighting the Yanks?"

He nodded.

"And even though the Yanks and the Brits were allies, my dad has been fighting with you?"

Tariq nodded again.

"And you're not Islamic fundamentalists?"

Tariq shook his head, grinning.

"What are you then?"

Tariq thought about this for a moment then he shrugged and said: "Brett is a hockey fan from Iowa, Toseef has a thing for thrash metal, and I'm a celebrity blogger." My confusion must have been obvious. Tariq laughed. "We're a family," he said simply.

I thought of Norton and Rowles, the dinner lady and Matron, and all my friends back at the school. I nodded. I understood that. "And the guy who attacked me? The one who died?"

He shook his head sadly. "Jamail. Good kid but hotheaded. A shoot first, ask questions later kind of boy. He was hard to control, and he made me crazy. But he would have grown into a fine man. He was the one who shot you down, even though I ordered him not to."

"I didn't kill him, you know. The plane exploded, there was shrapnel." It suddenly occurred to me that word was way too obscure, so I added: "that's metal that goes flying around after a big bang."

He looked at me like I was an idiot. "I know what shrapnel is."

"Sorry. Of course you do."

"I've lived in a fucking war zone the last eight years."

"Of course, I'm sorry. It's just that it's not a word we use every day in England." I suddenly felt very embarrassed. "Your English is really good," I added, lamely.

He beamed, his face transformed into a mask of boyish glee. "I know. I studied very hard. I wanted to go to university in England. Your father was going to help me with my applications."

"You knew him before The Cull, then?"

"Everyone knew your dad. Most people kept their distance. It was not wise to be too friendly with the occupying forces. But it was his job to make friends with local people, and I decided to become his friend. I was a liaison. I got good books and DVDs that way. And these sneakers which you fucking well threw up on."

"Sorry. But you did tie me to a chair and threaten to decapitate me."

"It's a traditional Iraqi greeting." He was so stony faced as he said this that, for a moment, I didn't realise he was joking.

"Very funny," I said. Only the tiniest twinkle in his eye betrayed his amusement. A big, gun-carrying geek with a desert-dry sense of humour.

"My name's Lee," I said, holding out my hand. "I think we're going to be friends."

"I would like that," he replied, taking my hand.

"I don't have any DVDs though."

"Oh. Sod off then."

In the fetid darkness of the cell, I looked at him. And he looked at me. And neither of us knew who we were looking at.

"But…" Dad shook his head and blinked his eyes as if he couldn't believe what was happening.

"Your time was up," I said. "I told you I'd come and get you if you didn't come home within a year. So here I am." I laughed and gestured at the dry concrete walls. "I've come to rescue you."

His shoulders hunched and he gritted his teeth.

"You think this is funny?"

"No, I…"

"You think this is a fucking joke?"

"Dad, listen…"

"You were safe! I told you to go to school and stay there. You were safe! Christ. Everything I've been through, everything I've done here, the one thing, the one thing I held on to as my friends were dying, was that at least you were out of it, at least you were safe. What the hell are you doing here, Lee? Why couldn't you just do as you were told, eh? Just this fucking once, why couldn't you do what I told you?"

My stomach tied itself in knots as he shouted at me, just as it always had. When you hero worship your dad, the last thing you want to do is let him down, make him angry, give him a reason to shout at you.

It had been a long time since I'd felt the shame of a child who's let down a parent, and it took me by surprise.

"Safe? Jesus, Dad, I'm safer here!" I protested.

"Do you have any idea what's going on here?" He shouted. "What you've come running in to the middle of?" Then suddenly the anger just drained out of him. His shoulders slumped as he closed his eyes and bowed his head. "Oh God, Lee," he whispered. "What have you done? What have you done?"

I felt the shame slowly change and build into the kind of self-righteous anger unique to teenage boys having a fight with their dads.

"What have I done?" I hissed. "I'll tell you what I've done. I've shot and killed my history teacher, shoved a knife into the heart of a prefect, shot three others, slit the throat of one of my friends, watched my best friend murdered right in front of me. I've been complicit in torture, executions and gang rape. I've been shot, stabbed, strangled, blown up and hanged. I've seen battles and massacres and all of it's on me. My fault, my doing. All the bloodshed, all the death, all of it on me. And through all of it, all the shit, all the killing, all I kept telling myself, over and over again, was 'Dad'll be here soon, he'll sort this out'. But you never came. You left me on my own in a fucking nightmare and you promised, you swore you'd come and find me. Where were you, Dad? Where the fuck were you?"

Hot, furious tears were streaming down my cheeks as I shouted terrible things at the person I loved most in the world.

"You left me, you bastard" I shouted. "You fucking left me!"

My anger gave way to impotent sobbing. And then he was holding me, like I'd held him on the bed all those years before, and he was saying softly: "It's okay, I'm here, everything's okay now."

And despite everything, it was. It really was.

"Your dad was on the last plane out," Tariq explained. "Part of his job was to liaise with local people, and he stayed as long as he could, trying to see that everyone he knew was taken care of. I lost count of how many people he helped when things got bad; bringing food and medicine, persuading the army doctors to visit the sick, even looking after some people himself when the withdrawal began.

"That's why he was on the last plane out, because he stayed to help. But someone shot the plane down. We don't know who or why. Cowardly thing to do, shooting down the last retreating plane. It was a Hercules, full of troops. It crashed over by the river and only your father and two other men survived. He is very lucky to be alive. Assuming he is still alive."

"He's alive," I said, trying to persuade myself.

Tariq looked at me curiously. "What was it like in England?"

I sighed. "I heard it was chaos in the cities. Fires and mobs and mass graves. But where I was, in the countryside, it was kind of civilised. Lots of old ladies locking themselves away, desperate not to be a bother to anybody. The odd farmer started shooting anyone they saw on their land, but that was about as bad as it got. The trouble only really started after the plague burnt itself out."

"It was not like that here," said Tariq, shaking his head wearily. "Exactly the opposite. The British got orders to pull out and leave us to die. There was talk of a big operation back home."

That triggered a memory: a dead man, tied to a chair screaming.

"Operation Motherland?"

"Yes, that was it. Your father never told me what it was, but the army just packed up and left. The Medhi army tried to take control for a while. There were some massacres, lots of fighting. It was horrible. But then Sadr died of the plague and eventually there weren't enough of them left and it just sort of dribbled away.

"For us, the plague ended the fighting. The big armies were gone and there was more than enough room for all the religious and racial groups to stay out of each other's way. The Kurds have their own homeland now, in the north. The Shi'ites and the Sunnis have their own towns and holy places and they leave each other alone. And although there are only a few hundred of them left, it's the first time in living memory that no-one's been trying to wipe out the marsh Arabs up in Maysan.