The Golden Scales

by Parker Bilal

  Ahead of him the pyramids emerged from the thick polluted air. Their perfect geometrical symmetry struck a note of clarity that had echoed across the centuries, to collide ultimately with the cacophony of chaos that was the present day. By contrast, the buildings lining the road seemed to have been tossed up as an afterthought, assembled like the doodlings of a distracted mind unable to concentrate long enough to draw a straight line. The drooping cables, the lopsided, crushed vehicles limping along amid the whine of sirens and brakes, the gasps of exhaust choking the light out of the air. Against all that madness the pyramids seemed as perfectly suited to this world as spacecraft that had arrived from another galaxy and set themselves down on this scrap of benighted desert. According to the papers, however, even their grasp on eternity was gradually being eroded by the vibrations created by the steady rumble of the nearby road. Little by little they were being shaken to the ground, to join the rising mounds of rubble to which this city was ultimately, inevitably, destined to return.

  Makana turned west and the road became crowded with heavy articulated lorries laden with stone or shuddering iron rods. He fell in behind a truck filled with camels. They gazed out at their surroundings serenely, seemingly detached from the insanity through which they were passing. To the left was a canal, choked with bullrushes and reeds and discarded junk. Rubbish was heaped up in piles, interspersed with smoking fires and scavenging crows. On the right were intermittent rows of buildings, small, half-finished structures that looked as if they would fall down as easily as they had been thrown up. Here and there was the odd house, set back from the road. Once upon a time this was all open farmland dotted with the villas of prosperous landowners. But that age was long gone now and the old estates had been whittled down to pocket-sized plots, hemmed in by the proliferation of grey breeze-block walls that charted their insistent, meandering course along the side of the road – rising and falling, slumping here and there into heaps of rubble, only to totter inexorably onward again.

  The village itself had been incorporated into this urban sprawl and now was barely distinguishable from the roadside strip. There were stalls dishing out plates of koshari and kebab, heaps of fruit and vegetables, aubergines the size of a child’s head, pomegranates like cannonballs. Makana parked the Mercedes by a white wall scrawled with charcoal graffiti and for the next hour or so wandered the winding, untidy streets, looking for some trace of Adil Romario’s past. The market was crowded with vendors selling everything from loofahs to bright orange acrylic blankets stamped with tigerskin patterns. Everyone seemed to have something to sell. The main street was crowded, the uneven ground littered with melon rinds and corn husks, nylon string, metal bindings, straw and sheep droppings.

  When he reached the far end of the village the ramshackle houses surprisingly gave way to green fields that extended into the distance. Herons drifted overhead like scraps of stray paper caught in the breeze. Ibis stepped on dainty reed-like legs through the golden shield of flooded fields. All of this was presumably where Hanafi’s beans and bamiya came from. Makana turned and kicked his way back through, his eye distracted by the omnipresence of his quarry: peeling and faded images of Adil Romario in his prime appeared everywhere, in windows and doorways, anywhere there was a scrap of glass free or an empty wall. Grubby and in many cases torn, the stickers testified to this claim to fame. The local boy who had done well. As he moved away from the noise and bustle of the market and into the quieter streets, Makana noted that the player’s name had been scratched on the walls at regular intervals. A voice called out from nearby: ‘Adil! Adil!’

  Startled, Makana turned and began retracing his steps. The street was deserted. He rounded a corner and then another; here the houses were built so close together you could reach over in places from one balcony to shake hands with your neighbour across the street. An elderly woman, her skin yellowed by age and framed in a black shawl that had seen better days, leaned out of a window, yelling at no one in particular.

  ‘I’m calling my grandson,’ she explained. ‘He must be around here somewhere.’

  ‘Maybe you can help me? I am looking for the house where Adil Romario was born.’

  ‘Ah,’ she nodded knowingly. ‘You must be one of those journalists. We get them all the time.’ She leaned out of the window and pointed. ‘You can’t miss it. Of course the family doesn’t live there any more, but everyone knows it.’

  Makana imagined that there were a good number of boys around here who had been named after the footballer. The house was indeed impossible to miss. The whitewashed walls were covered with charcoal scratches and more elaborate painted caricatures depicting Adil Romario’s career. There was an image of him as a little boy, bouncing a ball, then the figure seemed to be sucked into a vortex of goalposts and flying players. There were crowns and jet planes, even doves with olive branches, along with tournament cups flying one way or another. There were scores from memorable matches and the name Adil and the DreemTeem logo appeared in numerous forms. The quality of the wall art varied. Some of it was not bad, though many of the aspiring artists were blessed with more enthusiasm than talent.

  Makana turned a corner and circled the block, coming up a narrow street across which two men were shouting at one another. It was impossible to make sense of their discussion which appeared to involve a number of in-laws, a defective car, the failure to fulfil one’s promises, and so on and so forth. It was one of those public displays which had more to do with demonstrating one’s presence than resolving any particular problem. They had succeeded in acquiring an audience, largely because they happened to be standing outside the entrance to a café. A simple hole in the wall. The unsurfaced street outside the entrance was sodden with damp layers of tea dregs and black coffee grounds like arcs of stubble which spread across the ground and even up the wall opposite. As he stepped inside, the customers’ attention turned to Makana only briefly before moving on. When he mentioned the name Adil Romario, however, he was immediately surrounded. The two young men outside stopped trading insults and took up position to either side of him.

  ‘You’re a journalist? Or just a tourist?’

  Makana examined them carefully; they were all eagerness and smiles.

  ‘Would you like to visit the house? It’s just around the corner. You can even see the room where he first saw the light of day.’

  ‘And how much is this going to cost me?’

  ‘Oh, well, of course the family are poor and would expect some compensation.’

  ‘Naturally.’

  Whatever animosity existed between the two men had been set aside in the common cause.

  ‘I take it you knew him personally?’

  ‘When he was a kid? Everyone knew him. Always kicking a ball, he was.’

  ‘He used to sleep clutching a ball.’

  ‘We used to play together all the time.’

  Neither man looked the slightest bit athletic. Overweight and clearly out of shape, they looked incapable of jogging the width of the narrow street without running short of breath.

  ‘What about his parents? Does he still have family here?’

  ‘You see everyone in this place? We are his family. In this neighbourhood, we are all simple people. We care about each other. This village is like one big happy family. What paper do you work for?’

  ‘Who said it was a paper? Maybe he’s from the television, or the radio?’

  ‘So his parents are not around?’ Makana ignored their speculations.

  ‘They were old. They died years ago, may Allah show them compassion.’

  They leaned closer, trying to outdo one another now.

  ‘Ask us anything about him, anything at all.’

  ‘Yes, ask, please. Adil is one of us.’

  ‘One of us, exactly. May Allah preserve him.’

  ‘Why don’t you cut out that lying nonsense?’

  All heads turned towards a man in the corner. He was about fifty, and so immobile Makana hadn’t even noticed him. Thin and
dark as an axe, he wore baggy pants and a threadbare shirt that hung loosely over his bony frame. On his feet were plastic sandals as thin as sheets of newspaper.

  ‘You’re all in such a hurry to tell your lies because you can smell money. Or maybe it’s because you’ve been lying for so long you don’t know what is true and what’s not.’

  ‘Don’t pay him any attention,’ murmured the first of the two young men, making a gesture with his plump fingers. ‘He’s not right in the head.’

  One scrawny elbow was propped on the beaten metal top of the counter as the man stared morosely at the three of them. His face displayed the drawn features of a long-term substance abuser; hashish, alcohol, whatever. If that elbow slipped he would probably fall flat on his face.

  ‘You come here asking questions, and you’re not the first one. And like those who came before, you will not tell this story to the world. You know why? Because no one wants to hear the truth.’ He pointed at the battered little portable television that stood on a shelf in the corner. ‘We don’t expect the truth to come out of that lying thing. They tell us who the President is and we smile and clap our hands. They tell us the people of Egypt are rich and we cry tears of joy. They tell us Adil Romario was born in this village and that his mother and father were a good couple who worked in the fields, and we feel our hearts soar.’

  A rumble of discontent stirred in the little café, but no one made any serious move to dispute his claim. An uneasy silence settled and the two young men stepped back. Makana moved closer to the newcomer, reaching out to offer him a cigarette which he took without a word.

  ‘Nobody wants to talk about what really happened because they don’t want to annoy his lordship, the Great Pasha.’

  ‘You’re crazy!’ muttered the first young man.

  ‘He’s insane,’ concurred the second, who had already taken up position by the door, the game over, looking down the street in search of other distractions.

  ‘I’m crazy enough to tell the truth, that’s what you can’t stand. You call yourself men? Look at you! Scared to say anything that might upset him. The fact is that the rich can have what they want and you all bend over to give it to them, whatever takes their fancy, even your own mothers.’

  This insult duly provoked some shouting and shoving and for a moment the café descended into pandemonium. Then the young men decided it wasn’t worth their time to protest and moved off with a few choice insults thrown over their shoulders. The skinny man didn’t move a muscle throughout all of this. He remained where he was, elbow on the counter, smoking steadily. Finally, he turned his gaze on Makana.

  ‘You’re worse than they are. You come sniffing round here to find a story you can sell.’

  ‘This pasha you’re talking about is Saad Hanafi, right?’

  ‘Were you born a donkey or did you go to school to get that way?’

  Howls of laughter rang out from the gang of children crowding round the café’s entrance.

  ‘Hanafi owns all of this and more.’ The thin man jabbed Makana in the chest. ‘He owns our souls. That’s right. We sold them to him years ago.’

  ‘What has this got to do with Adil Romario?’

  ‘It’s all part of the legend. They want us to believe in him, like an idol, a god.’ He picked up a scrap of coloured paper from the counter, an advertising flyer for Coca-Cola or bubble gum, featuring the inevitable image of the football player. Screwing it into a ball, he tossed it at the television screen.

  ‘Hey, cut that out,’ yawned the proprietor with a tut of annoyance.

  ‘What for? You can’t see anything on that thing anyway.’

  The screen displayed little more than a howling sandstorm of grey particles. From somewhere inside it came faint rumours of a man and woman talking. Shadows shifted vertically at irregular intervals, like agitated clouds.

  ‘Lies, all of it. Stories to cheer us up while we rot down here like rats. Everyone round here hates him. They watch him up there on the screen, thinking that it should be them up there. What a great dream . . . but that’s all it is, a dream. And they,’ he wagged his finger again, ‘they own all the dreams.’

  ‘Adil was born here, though.’

  ‘Sure, he was born here, just like we were. He kicked a ball around these streets. But he isn’t like us. He never was. How could he be?’

  ‘You knew him?’

  ‘Look, I’ll tell you a story and you can go away and do what you want with it.’ He paused to drop his cigarette butt on the floor. Makana held out his packet and offered him a fresh one. The man was overtaken for a time by a fit of coughing. He went to the door and ejected a long brown stream of phlegm before returning to his place at the counter.

  ‘There was this young man, and like most young men he was itching to make it big. So he went to Cairo to seek his fortune. He didn’t have much luck at first. He fell in with the wrong crowd, let’s say. But then he came to the attention of a powerful man who helped him, gave him a chance. And the young man was grateful and became his loyal servant. One day he turned up here, driving a big car, wearing fancy clothes, handing out gifts to everyone. He brought with him his benefactor, a big, fat man, and they strolled around the village like King Farouk and his dog.’

  ‘The big man was Hanafi?’

  ‘I knew you were smarter than you made out.’ The bony finger wagged in Makana’s face again.

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘The same old story they’ve been writing since Sayidna Musa first heard the Word of God. Hanafi’s eyes fell on the picture of innocence that was the boy’s young sister and he lost his head. Pretty soon that fancy car was coming round here on a regular basis.’

  ‘What did the brother do?’

  ‘Well, of course, he didn’t find out until it got too obvious to hide any more.’ The man curved a hand over his belly. ‘We all know who Adil’s father really is, but we don’t talk about it.’

  ‘You’re sure about all this?’

  ‘Why would a man like me make up a story like that?’

  ‘People make up stories for lots of reasons.’

  ‘The girl was fourteen. That’s how those dogs are.’ There was a pause, as if his own words had dredged up something he thought long since extinguished.

  ‘You didn’t say anything either, did you?’

  The bloodshot eyes avoided Makana’s. The voice dropped to a hoarse whisper.

  ‘I was one of the lucky ones – Hanafi bought up land here. He put local people to work on it. Many families depend on him. We can’t turn against him.’

  ‘And the brother, what did he do when he found out?’

  ‘He went mad. He swore vengeance.’

  ‘He killed Hanafi’s wife and child?’

  The bony finger again jabbed the air in front of Makana’s face. ‘He would have killed more but they caught him and threw him in Tora, and that was the end of that. We never saw him again. Nobody wanted to talk about it after that. Now Hanafi owns all this land and we all love him. The thing about a lie is that if you repeat it often enough, people mistake it for the truth.’

  With that he pushed Makana aside and staggered towards the exit.

  ‘One last thing,’ Makana called after him, ‘Adil’s family name is Mohammed Adly. Is that the name of the brother?’

  ‘No.’ The man turned back to answer him. ‘That was on the mother’s side. Adil took his mother’s name, since officially there was no father. The brother used the family name: Bulatt. Daud Bulatt.’ Then the gaunt shadow shifted and the doorway cleared.

  Makana heaved a deep breath and turned to find himself facing the proprietor, who stared up at him from where he sat behind the counter.

  ‘You don’t want to pay too much attention to what that one says. He’s as mad as they come.’

  Chapter Thirty

  Aswani’s was crowded by the time Makana got there. He decided he couldn’t be bothered to wait for a table and eased himself into a free space at the counter. He wasn’t really
even hungry, he decided, examining the trays of raw meat in the cold cabinet.

  ‘Just bring me some salad and things. Pickles. Maybe some taamiya.’

  Aswani wagged his head disapprovingly. ‘You’ve lost your appetite? What’s the matter? Are you in love? Who’s the lucky girl?’

  ‘You tell me when you find out.’

  ‘It’s a bad sign when a man goes off his food. When a man loses his appetite, he is opening the door to invite death in,’ said the cook, stroking his moustache pensively before waddling away to deal with his other customers.

  Sami Barakat appeared just as Makana had started to eat.

  ‘The Hanafi DreemTeem is falling down the league tables like a rat down a sewer,’ he declared, tossing a newspaper on to the counter. Makana glanced at the headlines. Without their leading star it seemed like the team was in serious trouble. The article speculated about what might happen if Adil Romario’s disappearance was in fact linked to his transfer to another club. There was a quote from a new ‘star reporter’ about the continued rumours of Clemenza’s involvement. ‘Is someone trying to bring the DreemTeem down?’ ran the headline.

  ‘Star reporter? They managed to replace you pretty fast.’

  ‘Don’t rub salt in the wound.’ Sami dropped his satchel down on the counter as Aswani came up. ‘No, it’s all right. I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Another one?’ The cook raised his eyes to the heavens. ‘They’re trying to ruin me.’

  ‘I can’t afford to eat,’ Sami said, lighting a cigarette.

  ‘So what’s your theory?’ Makana asked, tapping the newspaper.

  ‘What, you don’t have time to read?’ With his foot Sami hooked himself one of the high stools nearby to perch on. He looked more unruly and unkempt every time Makana set eyes on him. ‘The rot was already visible, even when Adil was still playing. Now their rivals are closing in for the kill. The legend is cracking under the strain.’