Boris Johnson - Seventy-Two Virgins

‘Why don’t you listen to what he has to say?’ There was a strained, almost giggling note to her voice.

The Ambassador continued. He had been trained at the Ecole Nationale d’Administration in the ancient art of the suasoria, of arguing for whatever side of the case he happened to be on. Should Hannibal have crossed the Alps by the Iser Valley? Or should he have stuck to the Riviera? There was a time when Yves Charpentier would have been equally learned and fluent in support of either case. Today, as happens with all of us from time to time, he found his voice taking on the choky timbre of absolute sincerity.

‘Our friend the cook has told us that America would dominate the world with her nasty fast food. He deplores the hamburger, and so do I. And yet I must ask you all: Are you forced to eat this thing? Are you obliged to buy the dreaded Newman’s Own Balsamic Vinegar, instead of making your own vinaigrette? Are you obliged to support the ruthless profiteering of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream? But no!

‘Yes, the men from McDonald’s have built their triumphant yellow arches across Europe, and it may interest you to know that in our country, people of France, the hamburger chain is growing faster than anywhere else on earth. But do they compel us to erect these monstrosities, as the victorious Roman generals erected their triumphal arches over the defeated Gauls? Non, mes amis. We build the arches ourselves, to gratify our own appetites.

‘Our friend the cook — whose recipes for dock leaf soup and placenta pie I have not yet had the good fortune to sample — told us of the many American soldiers who are deployed overseas. Well, I should not have to remind you, but there are many thousands of American soldiers still in France . .

‘Say what?’ said the President, scandalized for a second that his extensive briefing on Yurp did not contain this fact.

‘Chap doesn’t know what he’s on about,’ said Silver Stick, who had once been something in NATO.

‘Yes of course,’ said the Frenchman to those around him. ‘Do not look so surprised. Go to Normandy; go to Omaha, and Gold and Juno and Sword; and then go to see the receding vistas of white crosses on the huge green lawns which contain the remains of thousands upon thousands of the Americans who gave their lives for the freedom of my country, of our country, who sacrificed themselves for the freedom of Europe. Go to Flanders, and the Ardennes; go there, you fools who despise and deprecate America, go there and tell me that we the people of France do not owe the Americans an eternal debt, a debt which it is our privilege, in some small way, to pay back today.’

‘Well I’ll be danged,’ said the President, breathing out. He snapped a salute. ‘Allons, enfants de la patrie, le jour de gloire est arrivé.’

The Frenchman was about to make some other points; for instance that the ideological links between the American and French republics were in some ways stronger than the link between the United Kingdom and her former colony. He was going to point out that the Statue of Liberty had been presented to the people of America by the people of France, in 1885, in recognition of the centenary of America’s war of liberation from government by the very place in which they stood.

But by now his job was done. It is a feature of human nature to believe in that which is evidently strongly believed in; and there were millions in France who were deeply impressed by the passion of their distinguished representative. Many had picked up their mobiles to express one point of view, and were suddenly overcome with a sense of the frivolity of anti-Americanism, and voted the other way.

In the diners and lounges of America there was shock at this sign of gratitude from an unexpected quarter. There was amazement. There were fits of piteous blubbing.

‘Yay!’ whooped Cameron. She was blushing, and there were tears in her eyes of innocent joy. ‘See,’ she said, turning to Adam, ‘see what Yves really thinks.’

‘Of course he thinks that, and that’s exactly what I think, too.’

Jones stared at the Frenchman on the screen. His nostrils were as white and rigid as porcelain.

‘Shut up the pair of you,’ he said out of the corner of his mouth. ‘We will see what happens when the votes come in.’

The BBC announced that there had been some very heavy polling in India, where intercommunal riots had broken out in Mumbai and Delhi, so ferocious was the disagreement between Muslims and Hindus. The percentage in favour of release of the Guantanamo prisoners was back up to 55.

Jones’s eyes went to the door, whence he could hear Dean’s retreating footsteps.

Oh sweet Prophet, praise and honour to your name and may a thousand blessings be upon you, thought Haroun as he struggled with his fly. As he did so he noticed the horrible graffiti: ‘Vote Labour!’ ‘Death to the middle class.’ ‘Applications to be next Tory leader,’ someone had written on the bog roll dispenser. ‘Please take one.’ Was there no end to the degeneracy of these people and their politics?

His gun had been left in the sink, and the door, marked Gentlemen Members Only, was unlocked. But what did he care? In an instant he would attain relief.

Now the fly was open, and — what in the name of Allah? He had forgotten about the prophylactic towel. He swore, and with a lung-bursting, drowning desperation he tore at his trousers and sought out the safety pin he had used to fasten the towel to his loins.

His imam had given him a tip, you see: that he would need his genitals intact, in order to enjoy the seventy-two heavenly benefits of martyrdom. Now he couldn’t undo the beastly towel. He jabbed his finger on the pin. He bled on the sacred nappy.

He yanked and pulled on the towel, formerly the property — for some reason — of the Creech Castle Hotel, Taunton, and now the O-ring seal of his urethra began to expand. He couldn’t stop it. Shame was coming down the tracks like a derailed Cannonball Express.

America has an astonishing 99.3 televisions per 100 households, a density exceeded only by Taiwan. Almost the entire population of the East Coast was now watching the debate in Westminster Hall, and they were voting with a patriotism that stunned the data collators of the BBC.

‘It can’t be true,’ said one polo neck to the Director of Political Editorial. ‘There’s something on the wires saying that 127 million Americans have voted to keep the prisoners in Cuba. How many people live in America anyway?’

‘Sounds dead dodgy to me,’ said the BBC hierarch.

‘We can’t suppress it, can we?’

‘Nah, put it out,’ said the executive with a vanishingly tiny smile. ‘But if you can think of a health warning, so much the better.’

‘It is lies, all lies!’ railed Jones. ‘It is the Fox TV. It is propaganda and bullshit.’ But Jones could not stop the earth turning, and as dawn continued to break over America, and as the alarm clocks went off and the TVs went on, Americans voted in huge numbers to vindicate their right to bang up the towelhead nutters. In Iowa, Wanda Pickel and Jason Jr voted solidly for the President, and so did Mom’s new friend Howie, a realtor whom she had met on the set of a daytime TV show.

Now Jones could feel his majority slipping away; he was like one of those candidates who thinks he has won, on the night of the election, because they count the votes from the liberal urban areas first. Only as the votes start to come in from the shires, from the boneheaded conservative villages where they know right from wrong, does it dawn on the candidate that the race may be closer than he thought.

Dean, he noted, was now out of the door; and Jones began to count his protégé’s footfalls down the corridor. Another couple of seconds, he thought, and stroked the Nokia.