Authors: Parker Bilal
She turned and left the room without another word. Adil didn’t trust her and neither did Makana.
He turned his attention to the telephone on the desk. It had a built-in answerphone system which was activated. The counter showed it had registered twenty-one messages. He rewound the tape and went through all of them. Six were from someone at the club, a man Makana guessed was the assistant coach. Five were from Gaber and another four from someone called Soraya, Hanafi’s youngest daughter. She sounded worried. ‘Adil, where are you? Please, it’s never been this long.’ None were from Hanafi himself. Several callers mentioned that they had tried his mobile telephone and got no answer. Three were from a woman who identified herself as Mimi. Her tone was frantic. She wanted to see him. In the final one she didn’t give her name, but Makana recognised her voice. ‘Please, tell me why you are doing this to me?’ she begged. ‘What have I done?’ Then there was a long pause and a sob, before finally the line clicked and went dead with a resigned tone.
The remaining message was not a real one at all. There was no sense of urgency to it. Instead, in response to the beep, there was a long silence. It was so long that Makana thought for a moment there was no one there. Then he heard the breathing, slow and even. Finally, a voice enquired, ‘Adil?’ once and then fell silent. No name, no identification, no message. Still, the caller waited, as if he thought Adil might be avoiding him, refusing to pick up because he knew who was calling.
Makana picked up the address book again and went through it. The name Mimi was circled and underscored. A series of numbers was scribbled alongside it. He tried them one after the other but they were all disconnected. No address was given.
He spent some time going through all the names in the address book, ticking each of them off after he had made the call. Nobody had seen or heard from Adil in weeks; in some cases it was months. Despite his success, it seemed that Adil Romario had few regular or close friends. The ones Makana spoke to tended to be on the frivolous side in general. Happy-go-lucky, playboy types, media darlings, movie celebrities and television journalists with shrill voices, male or female. They told him nothing. With friends like these your absence would be noticed for about as long as it took for someone else to call.
Makana slipped out of the flat without seeing the housekeeper again. In the front lobby he cornered the doorman, a sophisticated version of the usual
bawab,
wearing a uniform the colour of boiled spinach. He was reluctant to talk until Makana produced the envelope of expenses. ‘He keeps himself to himself, always polite, but you know how it is with people like that. They live in another world from the rest of us.’ The delivery boys in a takeaway place next door wore red uniforms with a logo of a monkey on roller skates holding a pizza box. A bland electronic storm of syrupy music gushed from the overhead speakers, loud enough to make conversation all but impossible.
‘We know who he is, sure.’
‘He’s a regular customer.’
‘Is this for a magazine? I have a friend who works in television. Maybe you know him?’
‘It’s fine being a big star and everything but you’d think a guy like that could manage to smile once in a while,’ offered one of them as Makana made to leave.
The DreemTeem Football Club looked like a bomb had hit it. Over the old stadium an enormous new edifice was being constructed. Cranes swung through the air and jackhammers pounded. Scaffolding clattered and heavy lorries rumbled in and out of a deep pit in the ground, churning clouds of grey dust like hot pepper into the air. Alongside this a semi-circular building housed the main offices of Hanafi Enterprises.
Makana was hoping to interview some of Adil’s team mates. Gaber had made an appointment for him with the team’s manager, Guido Clemenza. Makana arrived ten minutes early. Still, Clemenza kept him waiting another forty, and when he did finally appear he seemed reluctant to talk.
‘I should warn you,’ he began, ‘you won’t get much cooperation from the players.’
Clemenza was Italian, a heavily built man with a tanned face and grey spiky hair that stuck up like bristles on a wire brush. He wasn’t exactly an examplar of healthy living, considering he was the manager of a football team. He smoked incessantly while they spoke.
‘Why is that?’
‘Don’t you read the papers? They all think they deserve the same attention as he gets.’
Makana recalled the piece he had read in the newspaper about conflict within the team.
Clemenza sucked his teeth. ‘Gaber said he had hired you to find Romario. Personally, I don’t see the point. If he doesn’t want to play, why not let him go?’
‘I thought you would be keen to get him back.’
‘Think again. He’s overrated. Give me a player with less talent and more motivation any day of the week.’ His flinty gaze was sharp as a hawk’s and gave little away.
‘Hanafi seems to think differently.’
Clemenza smiled conspiratorially. ‘It’s his club, Hanafi can think what he likes.’
‘The team isn’t doing so well without Adil Romario.’
‘It’s motivation we’re lacking, not Romario. You promise people the world and then one man gets all the glory. The players feel that no matter how hard they work, they are never recognised for it. Win or lose, it makes no difference to them.’ Clemenza smoked for a time. He seemed to be trying to decide something. ‘What exactly made Hanafi hire you?’
‘You’d have to ask him that. Why do I get the feeling you don’t much care for Adil?’
‘There’s no love lost between us,’ the Italian grunted. ‘It’s no secret. Everybody knows.’
‘You argued?’
‘Don’t get your hopes up. Players are like racehorses. You have to treat them with care or they break a leg. He’s an arrogant prick who thinks he walks on water.’
‘Because Hanafi looks out for him?’
‘He’s the public image of the DreemTeem. The kid who came from nowhere and reached the stars.’
‘And in terms of the team?’
A brusque shake of the head. ‘Adil’s heart is no longer in it. He’s a hindrance, a prima donna. He can put the ball into the net, sure, but you have to serve it up to him on a platter, and even then, nine times out of ten, he screws up. Raw talent only takes you so far.’
‘His heart isn’t in the game then?’
‘You got that right. And now I am going to have to leave you.’ Clemenza got to his feet. A woman had appeared in the doorway and was signalling to him like an extra in a television melodrama.
‘One last question. Can you think of any reason Adil might want to disappear?’
‘As many reasons as there are days in the month. I tell you, when I walk out on to that training pitch it never fails to surprise me that there are players out there. No one wants to work any more in this country. They want it all for free.’
With that he was gone. Makana stretched and went over to the window. He was in the conference room of a large modern building set right on the river’s edge in Giza. This was the seat of the Hanafi empire and from it Makana had a panoramic view of the pyramids and the Great Sphinx in one direction, and the city skyline in the other. Between where he stood and the river lay the vast construction site of what would one day become Hanafi’s flagship – the new stadium.
The foundations had been laid and a ring of columns was being built circling the inner oval. A number of these appeared to have massive stone figures on top of them. These resembled the statues of ancient kings, Ramses and Thutmose and all the rest of them. There was something about the faces of the statues that struck Makana as being wrong and yet oddly familiar.
Outside, by the lifts, a girl was sitting behind a reception desk.
‘Who would you like me to call next?’ she asked as he approached.
‘Oh, let me think . . .’ He waved one hand vaguely. ‘Is there a bathroom I could use first?’
The girl looked at him as if uncertain if his access qualified him for the privilege before finally consenting. She pointed him down the hall. ‘Go to the end and turn right.’
Makana smiled his thanks and walked in the direction she had indicated. When he reached the bathroom door he went straight by. At the end of the corridor a door led to a staircase. He went down it and emerged into the old training area of the club. A sign pointed down a ramp to the players’ area.
A small fortune had been ploughed into the recruitment of the Hanafi team. With his backing they could afford to purchase established players just as they were falling off the European circuit, which gave them a fairly international line-up. They had Dutch and British players, several Spanish and Italian. Most of them were past their prime, of course. Some were well on their way down, but they were still professional enough to take on most teams in this country and their names were familiar to the fans. There were also a number of African players: from Senegal, Nigeria, Cameroon. The majority of the team was Egyptian, of course. Some of these players were familiar to Makana, men who had played for well-known clubs like Zamalek and Al Ahly. A couple had been on the national team. They helped consolidate the local fan base. It was one of these he spotted coming out of the changing rooms with a sports bag slung over his shoulder, Ahmad Essam, a tall, taciturn man Makana remembered from years back.
‘Essam?’ He held out his hand. ‘I watched you score in the Africa Cup. What a goal!’
‘Thanks.’ The player took Makana’s hand and shook it. They walked out together through the tunnel and into the sunlight. ‘Not many people remember that.’ Essam looked weary, as if the occasional brief moments of glory had gradually been obliterated for him by decades of steady defeat.
‘You scored against Zambia.’
‘Those were the days. People really cared about the game. Now it’s every man for himself.’
‘You haven’t done so badly.’ Makana nodded at the new stadium going up.
‘Sure, it’s all change now.’ Essam’s face remained unsmiling. ‘Are you looking for someone?’
‘I came to talk to you about Adil Romario.’
‘To me?’ Essam hefted the weight of his bag higher on his shoulder and looked Makana over. ‘You’re not even supposed to be in here, are you?’ He started walking again.
‘Look, I wouldn’t be in here if I didn’t have permission, right?’
Essam paused and eyed him again. ‘So what are you doing?’
‘I’m writing a book on the team. Hanafi hired me.’
‘What, the whole team?’
‘The whole team.’
‘Really?’
‘Sure. Actually, the old man thinks the team needs more motivation. You can’t achieve greatness if everything is centred on a couple of big names.’
‘Or one.’
‘Or one.’ Makana nodded, pulling out his notebook and pen. The tall player gestured towards a beaten-up red Mazda parked against the wall. They walked over and leaned against the side.
‘So what do you want to know?’
‘Well, this is all just background material right now. I need to get a feel for the dynamics between the players. What it’s like to be part of such a high-profile team.’
‘The dynamics?’
‘Take yourself, for example. You are probably the most experienced player on the team. The others look to you for direction, I imagine.’
‘Sometimes.’
‘I guess it’s not that easy?’
‘It’s not,’ Essam conceded with a shrug. Then went on, ‘My legs are going. I have to work twice as hard these days just to keep up with the younger players.’
‘So, tell me about Adil Romario.’
‘The truth?’
‘The truth.’
‘You know what the problem is? Nobody sees the rest of us. I mean, take me. I worked my way up the hard way, just like him. My father was a
fellah
. I played for the national team. Then this kid comes along from nowhere and suddenly he’s the star of the team.’
‘Who decided that . . . Clemenza?’
‘He changes the line-up for almost every match, and never seems to get it right. The result is, we are losing. Other teams are beating us though we have better players.’
‘So how come Adil gets all the attention?’
‘Because it’s not about the game any more. It’s about all the other stuff. You know, he has to be seen with this actress and that singer, and they want him advertising perfume and potato chips.’
‘I hear he doesn’t even turn up for practice these days.’
A wry smile appeared on the other man’s face. ‘He does that from time to time. Just takes off. No explanations given or asked for. Clemenza doesn’t dare take it out on him.’
‘Where does he go when he disappears?’
‘I don’t know. He takes that big fancy car of his and drives off somewhere.’
‘The silver Cherokee?’
‘That’s it.’ Essam gave his own Mazda a dirty look. Makana recalled the shells he had found in the desk at Adil’s apartment.
‘Does he have a place somewhere by the sea that he likes to go?’
‘Not that I’ve ever heard of.’ Essam looked off into the distance. ‘Between you and me, he enjoys himself too much. The parties, the girls . . . He’s not serious about the game, not any more.’