Modem Times 2.0 - Michael Moorcock [9]
“Was it my fault?” he asked her.
She sat up, smiling. “Look at the time!”
12. HOME ALONE FIVE
I learned from Taguba that the first wave of materials included descriptions of the sexual humiliation of a father with his son, who were both detainees. Several of these images, including one of an Iraqi woman detainee baring her breasts, have since surfaced; others have not. (Taguba’s report noted that photographs and videos were being held by the C.I.D. because of ongoing criminal investigations and their “extremely sensitive nature.”) Taguba said that he saw “a videoof a male American soldier in uniform sodomizing a female detainee.” The video was not made public in any of the subsequent court proceedings, nor has there been any public government mention of it. Such images would have added an even more inflammatory element to the outcry over Abu Ghraib. “It’s bad enough that there were photographs of Arab men wearing women’s panties,” Taguba said.
—Seymour M. Hersh, “The General’s Report,” New Yorker, June 25, 2007.
PORTOBELLO ROAD, DESERTED except for a few stall-holders setting up before dawn, had kept its familiar Friday morning atmosphere. As Jerry approached the Westway, one hand deep in the pocket of his black car coat, the other still in its black glove resting on the handlebars of his Gent’s Royal Albert bicycle, he glanced at the big neon NEW WORLDS Millennium clock, in vivid red and blue, erected to celebrate the magazine’s fifty-fifth birthday. Two doors closer to the bridge, and not yet open, were the FRENDZ offices, and nearby were Time Out, Rough Trade, Stiff Records International, Riviera Management, Mac’s Music, Trux Transportation, Stone’s Antiquarian Books, Pash’s Instruments, The Mountain Grill, Brock and Turner, The Mandrake, Smilin’ Mike’s Club; all the great names which had made the Grove famous and given the area its enduring character.
“I remember when I used to be a denizen round here. Glad to see the old neighbourhood has kept going.” Jerry spoke to his friend, Professor Hira, who had remained behind when the others had gone away.
“Only by a whisker,” said the plump Brahmin, shaking his head. “By a lot of hard work and visionary thinking on the part of those of us who didn’t leave.”
Jerry began to smile; clearly Hira was overpraising himself and being slightly judgmental at the same time. But Hira was serious: “Believe me, old boy, I’m not blaming you for going. You had a different destiny. But you don’t know what it’s like out there any more. North Kensington is all that remains of thefree world. Roughly east of Queensway, north of Harrow Road, south of Holland Park Avenue, west of Wood Lane, a new kind of tyranny triumphs.”
“It can’t be much worse than it was!”
“Oh, that’s what we all thought in 1975 or so. We hadn’t, even then, begun to realize what Fate—or anyway The City— had in store for us. Ladbroke Grove is the only part of Britain which managed to resist the march of the Whiteshirts from out of the suburbs. We keep the night alive with our signs. That’s a battle we’re constantly fighting. Thank god we still have a few people with money and conscience. All the work we did in the ‘60s and ‘70s, to maintain the freeholds and rents successfully kept the Grove in the hands of the original inhabitants, so that, at worst, we are a living museum of the Golden Age. At our best, we have slowed time long enough for people to take stock, not to be panicked or threatened by the Whiteshirts. Here, the wealth is still evenly