talking about war as though it was inevitable?’ Makana asked.
‘What would you know about it?’
‘Watch your mouth, boy!’ interjected Sindbad.
‘It’s all right, Sindbad.’
‘Hadir, ya effendi.’
‘Sindbad,’ Ishaq leaned over from the back seat. ‘I knew I’d seen your face before. You used to box, didn’t you? Heavyweight, right?’
Sindbad mumbled something under his breath.
‘Maybe you have all the protection you need, after all,’ Ishaq said, sitting back.
‘Let’s hope so,’ said Makana.
They drove back towards the riverside and sank into a mass of dense traffic, as if the wheels were churning through thick mud. At the Kit Kat roundabout they turned in again and the streets grew narrow and more crowded as the number of pedestrians swelled. They flooded across the road, reducing the car’s progress to a snail’s pace. A camel being led by the nose overtook them. Loping gracefully along, oblivious to the absurdity of its surroundings. Horns beeped in harmonious disarray while figures wandered back and forth through the headlight beams like a herd of sleepwalkers. Ishaq leaned over the front seat and pointed.
‘Take the next left. It’s on the next corner. You can see it.’
‘Take him back to the gym,’ Makana said to Sindbad as he got out of the car. ‘I’ll walk from here, then come back and wait here for me.’ To Ishaq he said, ‘Try and find Antun. If you do, take him to Father Macarius.’
As the Datsun screeched away, Makana stumbled off over the usual debris of shattered bricks and shredded nylon bags. The street was dark and uneven. A discarded watermelon rind smiled up at him from the dirt. The asphalt, if there ever had been any, had long since been buried beneath layers of mud and rubbish. It had been broken up and ground down by lorries and horse carts and every manner of human transport and footwear, and never replaced. No one really paid much care to an area like this. The politicians and their loved ones didn’t live nearby and few tourists ever ventured here. The houses were unadorned. Ragged scraps of light appeared here and there announcing an opening in a wall was a shop of some kind. Children scampered by. A group of boys were kicking an old football about under a solitary lamppost. Spurts of dust flew up around them. An uneven goal had been drawn on the wall with a stick of charcoal. You could barely see the wall, let alone the goal. Training for a generation of blind footballers.
The café was closed. The name was painted in letters so feint you had to look twice to see them. The metal doors were shuttered and bolted, sealed with a heavy padlock. It was the same hole-in-the-wall café where he had left a ten-pound note for the boy. The same torn note that had been nailed to Sami’s hand. There was no sign of the Omda with the handlebar moustache.
The building where Rocky lived was right across the street. Could Rania be here? Makana had a sense that he was being watched as he crossed and ducked quickly through the open doorway. The threshold was like a heavy curtain, on the other side of which was pitch blackness. The glow from the street behind him revealed only the foot of the narrow stairwell. Up above him faint threads of light filtered under doorways. It was hot and airless in there. Landlords regularly overstepped the building regulations, discarding common sense as they did so. Thus a four-storey building would be pushed up to seven, nine or eleven floors even, as if trying to push the limits of human stupidity, or break the world record for precarious living. Every now and then the earth would give a slight tremor to remind people of their humble place in the scheme of things. Whole buildings came down, walls crumbling as if they were made of brittle clay. Men, women and children crushed in their beds. There would be the usual cries for justice and the blame would be passed, and gradually things would return to normal and people would sleep peacefully again, until the next tremor. At a small window on the second floor he paused and put his head to the opening and breathed deeply. Outside, an eerie combination of shadows and streetlights painted the street in squares of light and dark. Turning back, Makana flicked the wheel of his disposable lighter to reveal graffiti left by tomb raiders: apartment numbers and the names of occupants scratched on the wall with