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punching and scratching at him. In that split second I wanted to kill him. I wanted to tear his tongue out for telling me, tear his eyes out for watching Papa die, for not helping him, tear him apart for just being there. My anger, my blame focused on the soldier, not the person, in front of me.
    But he gently, carefully, held me at arm’s length while my tirade battered him. He lifted his eyes to mine muttering apology after apology as Aziz tried to pull me away. I felt his hands shaking and I thought I saw tears on his face.
    I stopped and hung my head in shame.
    “I’m sorry,” he whispered again.
    I wanted to say I was, but couldn’t speak, whatever emotion, whether grief, confusion, hatred, fear or sorrow, held back the words.
    I couldn’t think, didn’t know what to think.
    Papa, my papa, was dead?
    “I…” began the American soldier. “I… ah… I wanted to tell you about it myself. So you’d know. I wanted you to know… how it happened.”
    I stared at him.
    “Would you like to know?”
    I took a deep breath. “Yes.”
    The soldier looked down at his hands. He didn’t look up again, as the words came tumbling out of him, like if he looked at me, he would not be able to continue.
    “When Joe arrived this morning, the place was a little different, everyone was busy… some of the soldiers were agitated and nervous, a couple excited. There was like an edge about the place, adrenalin pumping round, y’know? We were being sent to check out the house of some suspected weapons dealer, Joe was to come with us, to interpret, and talk to the guys, keep them calm and stuff. It wasn’t a good district we were heading to, and y’know, I’d worked with Joe for a good while, and I knew when he looked nervous. Hell, I was nervous. We gave him a bulletproof vest. It had an American flag on it, on his chest.”
    He paused, tapping his chest to show where it was. He ran his over-sized fingers through his hair, and scratched the back of his neck.
    “He didn’t like it. He’d said it before and on the way, in the back of the truck he moaned about it some more. ‘I’m not an American,’ he said. ‘What’ll my people think? It’s like an advertisement on my chest.’
    “I told him to pick it off and one of the other soldiers gave him a pin they had stuck in their uniform. Anyhow, they got chatting. Joe was interested in people, y’know? He liked to hear their stories, where they were from, and that. So he sat chatting with Eric. He was from Texas and spoke with such a drawl, you wanted to put a cowboy hat on his head and ask him where his horse was tethered.
    “Eric was in a better mood than anyone else, he was heading home in the morning, told Joe he was hanging near the back, taking it easy and looking after him. I listened to them chat like old buddies, about family back home, Eric’s mom and dad, his sister and his little brother, about Joe’s wife, your mom, about you. Eric showed him a photo of his little brother playing in the Texan desert with a toy rifle. Wanted to be a soldier just like Eric.
    “Anyhow, when we got there, some of them went inside, I stayed out, marking the doorway, Eric went further back with Joe waiting ’til someone was brought out to be questioned. We didn’t want to take him in, it was too dangerous.
    “There was a load of shouting and banging from inside. I looked back to Eric. He looked worried, he lifted his gun to his shoulder, stopped chewing his gum.
    “Soldiers came out dragging a couple of men, their hands behind their heads.”
    He paused to shake his head and I watched his fingers going round and round the rim of the cup, trembling.
    “Two women came chasing out after them, and their voices were, like, so high and shrill. Their arms were flapping around all over the place. Then their neighbours started joining in the noise. You could hear them shouting stuff, but we hadn’t a clue what they were saying, and Joe was picking out some of it, telling us they were