offence punishable by death. Behind comes a banner proclaiming the Swaffham Women's Choir, and then, Jews Against the War.
On Warren Street he turns right. Now his view is east, towards the Tottenham Court Road. Here's an even bigger crowd, swelled by hundreds disgorging from the tube station. Backlit by the low sun, silhouetted figures break away and merge into a darker mass, but it's still possible to see a makeshift bookstall and a hot-dog stand, cheekily set up right outside McDonald's on the corner. It's a surprise, the number of children there are, and babies in pushchairs. Despite his scepticism, Perowne in white-soled trainers, gripping his racket tighter, feels the seduction and excitement peculiar to such events; a crowd possessing the streets, tens of thousands of strangers converging with a single purpose conveying an intimation of revolutionary joy.
He might have been with them, in spirit at least, for nothing now will keep him from his game, if Professor Taleb hadn't needed an aneurysm clipped on his middle cerebral artery. In the months after those conversations, Perowne drifted into some compulsive reading up on the regime. He read about the inspirational example of Stalin, and the network of family and tribal loyalties that sustained Saddam, and the palaces handed out as rewards. Henry became acquainted with the sickly details of genocides in the north and south of the country, the ethnic cleansing, the vast system of informers, the bizarre tortures, and Saddam's taste for getting person72 Saturday
ally involved, and the strange punishments passed into law - the brandings and amputations. Naturally, Henry followed closely the accounts of measures taken against surgeons who refused to carry out these mutilations. He concluded that viciousness had rarely been more inventive or systematic or widespread. Miri was right, it really was a republic of fear. Henry read Makiya's famous book too. It seemed clear, Saddam's organising principle was terror.
Perowne knows that when a powerful imperium - Assyrian, Roman, American - makes war and claims just cause, history will not be impressed. He also worries that the invasion or the occupation will be a mess. The marchers could be right. And he acknowledges the accidental nature of opinions; if he hadn't met and admired the professor, he might have thought differently, less ambivalently, about the coming war. Opinions are a roll of the dice; by definition, none of the people now milling around Warren Street tube station happens to have been tortured by the regime, or knows and loves people who have, or even knows much about the place at all. It's likely most of them barely registered the massacres in Kurdish Iraq, or in the Shi'ite south, and now they find they care with a passion for Iraqi lives. They have good reasons for their views, among which are concerns for their own safety. Al-Qaeda, it's said, which loathes both godless Saddam and the Shi'ite opposition, will be provoked by an attack on Iraq into revenge on the soft cities of the West. Self interest is a decent enough cause, but Perowne can't feel, as the marchers themselves probably can, that they have an exclusive hold on moral discernment.
The sandwich bars along the street are closed up for the weekend. Only the flute shop and newsagent are open. Outside the Rive Gauche trniteur, the owner is using a zinc bucket to sluice down the pavement, Parisian-style. Coming towards Perowne, his back to the crowds, is a pink-faced man of about his own age, in a baseball cap and yellow Day-Glo jacket, with a handcart, sweeping the gutter for
73 Ian McEwan
the council. He seems oddly intent on making a good job, jabbing the corner of his broom hard into the angles of the kerb, chasing out the scraps. His vigour and thoroughness are uncomfortable to watch, a quiet indictment on a Saturday morning. What could be more futile than this underpaid urban scale housework when behind him, at the far end of the street, cartons
On Warren Street he turns right. Now his view is east, towards the Tottenham Court Road. Here's an even bigger crowd, swelled by hundreds disgorging from the tube station. Backlit by the low sun, silhouetted figures break away and merge into a darker mass, but it's still possible to see a makeshift bookstall and a hot-dog stand, cheekily set up right outside McDonald's on the corner. It's a surprise, the number of children there are, and babies in pushchairs. Despite his scepticism, Perowne in white-soled trainers, gripping his racket tighter, feels the seduction and excitement peculiar to such events; a crowd possessing the streets, tens of thousands of strangers converging with a single purpose conveying an intimation of revolutionary joy.
He might have been with them, in spirit at least, for nothing now will keep him from his game, if Professor Taleb hadn't needed an aneurysm clipped on his middle cerebral artery. In the months after those conversations, Perowne drifted into some compulsive reading up on the regime. He read about the inspirational example of Stalin, and the network of family and tribal loyalties that sustained Saddam, and the palaces handed out as rewards. Henry became acquainted with the sickly details of genocides in the north and south of the country, the ethnic cleansing, the vast system of informers, the bizarre tortures, and Saddam's taste for getting person72 Saturday
ally involved, and the strange punishments passed into law - the brandings and amputations. Naturally, Henry followed closely the accounts of measures taken against surgeons who refused to carry out these mutilations. He concluded that viciousness had rarely been more inventive or systematic or widespread. Miri was right, it really was a republic of fear. Henry read Makiya's famous book too. It seemed clear, Saddam's organising principle was terror.
Perowne knows that when a powerful imperium - Assyrian, Roman, American - makes war and claims just cause, history will not be impressed. He also worries that the invasion or the occupation will be a mess. The marchers could be right. And he acknowledges the accidental nature of opinions; if he hadn't met and admired the professor, he might have thought differently, less ambivalently, about the coming war. Opinions are a roll of the dice; by definition, none of the people now milling around Warren Street tube station happens to have been tortured by the regime, or knows and loves people who have, or even knows much about the place at all. It's likely most of them barely registered the massacres in Kurdish Iraq, or in the Shi'ite south, and now they find they care with a passion for Iraqi lives. They have good reasons for their views, among which are concerns for their own safety. Al-Qaeda, it's said, which loathes both godless Saddam and the Shi'ite opposition, will be provoked by an attack on Iraq into revenge on the soft cities of the West. Self interest is a decent enough cause, but Perowne can't feel, as the marchers themselves probably can, that they have an exclusive hold on moral discernment.
The sandwich bars along the street are closed up for the weekend. Only the flute shop and newsagent are open. Outside the Rive Gauche trniteur, the owner is using a zinc bucket to sluice down the pavement, Parisian-style. Coming towards Perowne, his back to the crowds, is a pink-faced man of about his own age, in a baseball cap and yellow Day-Glo jacket, with a handcart, sweeping the gutter for
73 Ian McEwan
the council. He seems oddly intent on making a good job, jabbing the corner of his broom hard into the angles of the kerb, chasing out the scraps. His vigour and thoroughness are uncomfortable to watch, a quiet indictment on a Saturday morning. What could be more futile than this underpaid urban scale housework when behind him, at the far end of the street, cartons
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