had been more than sated. In the same way of the all-too-common roadside burger van, the smell of the field rations stewing in boiling water over their small hexamine field stoves had been about a hundred times more appetising than the actual taste.
In the dark interior of their Land Cruiser, Andy, Mike and the French engineer, Erich, ate in silence; the only noise the rustling of their foil food pouches. Outside, the full moon cast a worryingly bright light down on the quiet road and the surrounding flat terrain. In the last three hours they had seen no more than a dozen vehicles pass by. Each one had been stopped by the hastily established vehicle control point, and then waved on after a cursory inspection by flashlight. All of the vehicles passing were heavily laden with possessions and people on the move, presumably away from the growing unrest in the larger towns. Out here, with only the moon and the stars and the gentle hiss of a light breeze for company, Andy conceded you could be excused for thinking it was a quiet and uneventful night for all of the country. Except for the distant and disturbing orange glow of Al-Bayji on the horizon, you could think that.
From the snippets they were picking up from the BBC World Service and the more detailed reports coming from local stations, and translated for them by Farid, it seemed as if the unrest that had started first thing this morning in Riyadh had spread right across the Arabian peninsula like a tidal wave.
‘They’ve gone insane,’ said Mike, breaking the silence.
In the darkness Andy nodded in agreement, although the American wouldn’t have been able to see the gesture. ‘I just can’t believe how quickly this seems to be spreading,’ he replied after a moment.
‘There’s no working these crazy assholes out. First 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