Free Our Man in Iraq by Robert Perisic Page A

have to get ready. The dress rehearsal’s at eleven,” she said.
    The phone rang, the landline this time.
    Sanja answered, then held out the phone. “It’s some woman.”
    I took the receiver. “Hello.”
    “H’llo, guess who this is?”
    I shat myself. “Milka?”
    I could see that strong, stocky woman, vintage hairstyle from the age of the first moonwalk.
    “Thought you’d recognize me!”
    “H-how could I not?”
    Milka was my mother’s eldest sister, but I hadn’t seen her since she fell out with my ma in a dispute over an extended-family inheritance; neither of them stood to inherit anything, they just sided with different camps, which ultimately led to them testifying against each other in court.
    Milka was also Boris’s mother.
    “So how are you?” I thought it better to use the formal “you” to help maintain distance.
    “Alive and kicking. And you?”
    “Good.”
    “Do you know why I’m calling?”
    “To do with Boris I suppose?”
    “Where is ’e? What’s goin’ on?”
    “He’s in Iraq.”
    “I know that much. But he don’t call me, like. What a shameful boy. I dunno what to do with ’im. Does he call you?”
    “He was in touch just a few days ago.”
    “And where is ’e now?”
    “In Baghdad.”
    “I shouldna let ’im go there,” she whimpered and started sobbing.
    “Listen . . .”
    “Poor wee lad. You shouldna sent ’im there.”
    “No, Aunt Milka, listen! He asked me. I didn’t ask him to go, let alone tell him to go.”
    “E’s mad!” Milka exclaimed. “Believe me, the lad ain’t in ’is right mind.”
    Then she fell silent. I very much wanted to console her, so I started defending that black sheep.
    “Maybe he simply can’t call you. Do you have email?”
    “What?”
    “Email.”
    “No, where would I get that from? But, ’e could’ve phoned me. Ain’t ’e got a mobile?”
    “It doesn’t work there,” my voice trembled as I lied. “It’s pretty chaotic.”
    “So you think everythin’s OK?”
    “Everything’s under control.”
    She sighed again. “All right then. Sorry to trouble you. Muvvers will be muvvers—we worry.”
    “I know, Aunt Milka, it can’t be helped. Talk to you soon.”
    Talk to you soon? Why the hell did I say that?
    “There are cool people and hot people,” I said to Sanja.” Cool people let you live your own life, but hot people don’t. With them, everything always turns out communal. Open a little door for them and they’ll burst through by the million.”
    “Don’t think about that now,” Sanja said as she got ready to go out. “He might get in touch tomorrow.”
    “There are more of them for sure. We’re cool people who live in a hot country, that’s our problem.”
    “That’s so true,” she said, looking at herself in the mirror.
    “The idiot hasn’t called her even once—their relationship must be a bit of a dog’s breakfast. She acts as if I had personally mobilized him. Fucking hell, as if I’m George bloody Bush.”
    “Hey, don’t get so upset. Nothing’s happened yet, has it?”
    “No, it hasn’t. Unless they drag me into their shit. Now I have to become part of their madness.”
    “You don’t have to.”
    “Like hell I don’t. You don’t know Milka.”
    “Calm down.”
    “Everyone can just go and stick it. Is this what they call life? This is shit!”
    “No, that’s not true.”
    “Oh really?” I sneered. “Why don’t we go and see that flat? Can you explain that to me?”
    “What’s that got to do with it?”
    “Everything. It’s got everything to do with it.”
    “What do you think, that I’m avoiding—”
    “I don’t think anything!’ I thundered.
    She looked away.
    “Sorry,” I said.
    “All this drives me round the bend, sorry.”
    “Don’t take out your anger on me anymore.”
    “I won’t. It was out of line.”
    I went to her, kissed her on the shoulder.
    “It’s OK,” she said. “I have to get going.”
    “Good luck tonight.” I held her arm.