Our Man in Iraq. Robert Perisic

know that it’s not you, that you’re not the one who enjoys it, but, in real terms, you will be the one, and you’ll be a no-one when it starts to be fun, and then ask me: where were you and what did you do?

      Jason Maple is happy, he says, cos it’s started, and that happiness is an incredible thing: you’re dirty, exposed to diseases, the air is full of hot lead, you have to salute idiots, a whole pyramid of idiots sitting on your shoulders, but you’re happy. OK, you’re not happy all the time, you’re temporarily happy, but that too is incredible. I was so happy when we were cleansing villages there, it doesn’t matter where. And now I’m unhappy when I leave the flat, and I go back to check I haven’t left anything switched on, so nothing catches fire, cos I don’t trust myself and I know what it’s like when there’s a fire.

      I was happy when we were cleansing those villages, and that’s why I don’t trust myself, cos today, when someone talks about it, you wouldn’t believe what stories there are, today when they just tell me how it was – they just need to mention it – I get unhappy, madly unhappy, aggressively unhappy. It’s enough for me just to remember why I was happy back then, and I’m unhappy now, and that’s why I don’t trust myself and why I’m happy, cos I don’t trust myself, and being like that I’ve come to see you guys, to see your happiness, I told Jason.

      He didn’t understand me at all, of course, imbued, as he was, with meaning.

       Worker and individualist

      I read those pieces again, they got under my skin and made me feel strangely uncomfortable; I tried to relax my shoulders and kept stretching my arms. I heard my joints crack.

      Fortunately I was interrupted by a call: ‘Excuse me, did you put in the advert: Former rebel, tall and swarthy, needs a guarantor for a loan?’

      It was Markatović, the joker. He was highly amused that even I now had dealings with a bank.

      ‘OK, former goth,’ I replied, ‘I’ll remember you’re interested.’

      ‘Listen, have you got time for coffee?’ he asked.

      ‘You drink too much of the stuff,’ I said.

      Markatović was always asking me to ‘go for coffee’, and always with a business motive. He wasn’t one of those guys who you never see around any more when they have kids. With him it was the opposite. He had a registered firm for marketing, publishing and all sorts of things, and he drank too much coffee all over town; he handled a million pieces of information from all sorts of different spheres. He liked to say he knew half the country, and he presented himself as a link for everyone and everything.

      ‘Come on please, I need your help – it’s important,’ he said.

      I had to go to the Churchill Bar; I hadn’t been there before. When I arrived I saw it was a posh place by any standards: full of fancy little glass cases full of fat cigars, with leather armchairs and pungent smells. Markatović greeted me with outstretched arms as if I was just the man they had been waiting for. He wasn’t alone...

      Here, unhoped-for, I saw the notorious sheriff of a small town in a valley, surrounded by several bodyguards; I’d never seen the fellows before but I could tell straight away that they were bodyguards because of the way they glanced around like children looking out of a car. They were redundant, of course, because this tycoon, who went by the nickname ‘Dolina’, was himself an intimidating hulk; clearly he only kept bodyguards so as to make an even worse impression.

      I had no idea what they were talking about, but Markatović said straight away that I was a genius at ‘those sorts of things’; he introduced me as an editor of the weekly Objective and an ‘image specialist’, and languid Dolina sized me up suspiciously like a sumo wrestler before a fight.

      ‘What’s this all about?’ I asked.

      Markatović told me straight out that this Cyclops needed ‘a new image’.

      ‘A new image,’ Markatović repeated with an air of importance and nodded to me, which made the bodyguards twitch; now they kept a cautious eye on me as if looking to see if I’d brought the ‘new image’ along.

      After a dramatic pause, Markatović explained to me what I already knew: this ‘gentleman’ with millions of euros to his name, had recently left his party, which was generally inclined towards the filthy rich and had allowed him to amass wealth and take over his valley during the war – thereby gaining himself the nickname ‘Dolina’, meaning valley. Markatović was therefore trying to persuade him that, without the backing of the party, he could no longer keep the same old image... ‘He’s in new circumstances now, politically speaking, and can’t use the old image any more,’ Markatović told me, although his words were intended primarily for Dolina, who probably still needed persuasion because, I’m afraid to say, he didn’t know until now that he possessed any image at all.

      ‘Yes, yes, he needs a new image,’ I said gruffly.

      I helped Markatović out now and then, out of habit. War and capitalism in the nineties had been a nasty shock to my system, and penury made me develop the habit of taking on any work, even if that meant doing three or four jobs at the same time. I actually wanted to slow down a bit now. I tried to explain to Markatović that panic was on the decline these days, but he claimed the situation now was even worse. Besides, business meant growth: you had to pay off old loans with new ones – if you didn’t rush forwards, the masses would catch up with you from behind. As soon as you stood still you were done for, Markatović told me.

      ‘That means the new image needs to be tailored to suit the new situation,’ Markatović said to me, actually speaking to Dolina.

      I saw that I’d have to say a few words too.

      ‘That’s right, the new situation... Redesign is fundamental.’

      ‘Ugh, yes,’ Dolina nodded after some difficult thinking. ‘Y’mean you can take care of that?’

      He said that to Markatović, and Markatović glanced at me.

      But Dolina was still looking at Markatović.

      I suppose I wasn’t making much of an impression.

      Unlike Markatović.

      I watched him. I envied old goths like him a bit. It was easy for them to switch into career mode: black polo-neck, black suit, black coat, shiny black shoes. For me, an ordinary old rebel, there was no painless transition. I tried the bright, bold and stylish. I even bought woollen jumpers, only to take off all that stuff again a minute before leaving and put on my standard gear: T-shirt, leather jacket, sneakers or boots, and jeans in the middle. I just couldn’t make an impression.

      That was a bit depressing. Whereas the allegedly depressive goths became all the more energetic as years went by.

      Markatović now explained to me that, with my help, he was planning to profile Dolina as a dissident who’d clashed with the powers-that-be in the capital; now he was a regionalist.

      Good, but seeing that Dolina’s valley wasn’t the size of a region, ‘Let him be a microregionalist. Hah, how does that sound?’ he asked. Hmm, I looked at him, then at Dolina, the microregionalist. ‘No, no, microregionalist isn’t quite right.’ Regionalist still sounded better.

      Markatović continued: the task was to make him a dissident, a regionalist and... an individualist. That was the logical conclusion since he’d left the party. And a liberal. It all added up: dissident, regionalist, individualist – he was bound to be a liberal too.

      Dolina’s comment? He had to go to the toilet, so off he went, accompanied by a bodyguard.

      If there were no real liberals in those backwoods we had to invent them, Markatović told me. This meant we were onto something BIG... Because if we presented him as a liberal maybe someone sensible would join him. There were sure to be people in those parts. And if they took heart... Markatović couldn’t stop. His ideas came thick and fast.

      ‘I