The Golden Scales Read Online Free Page A

up on to the road there was a queue of battered vehicles stacking up, trying to get a good look at it. A steady stream of earthy comments was being flung at it. The big man in the cheap suit climbed impassively behind the wheel. Makana thought it was one of those Mercedes they used to call a ‘ghost’ because they are so silent and had no number to identify the model, but his knowledge of cars was probably as outdated as the pyramids. When they got inside the big white car the locks on the doors clicked shut and Makana discovered another possible reason for the nickname. Once inside the dark interior, the air conditioning and the tinted windows cut off the outside world. It was like entering another dimension – a spirit world where nothing could touch you, physically or otherwise. This is how the rich live, he thought as he settled himself into the plush seat. Out of sight of the rest of us.

Chapter Two
    As they drove, Makana tried to recall what he knew about the man he was being summoned to meet. The name Saad Hanafi was not unfamiliar to him, just as it was not unfamiliar to anyone in the country who had eyes and ears. Umm Ali would have passed out in a dead faint if she had heard that name uttered on her awama . Saad Hanafi was one of the richest men in Egypt. He was also one of the most influential. His interests ranged from substantial stakes in a handful of foreign automobile franchises, to include frozen-food lines, insurance companies, a good deal of real estate . . . and, most important of all, a football team.
    In this world, it seemed, if you wanted to assure yourself of a seat in the temple among the great and godly, owning your own football team greatly improved your chances. And whereas most teams were associated with one particular part of the city or another, the Hanafi DreemTeem represented the aspirations of millions. This was what he really offered: a dream that everyone could share. In a draw held once a month, he gave away an apartment to some fortunate person. On television you could watch them screaming and fainting as they were given the news. They wailed and howled and fell to the ground. They tore at their hair and jumped up and down. People supported Hanafi’s team because they wanted something to believe in.
    From what they printed in the papers, his own life story was itself something of a fairy tale. It was referred to over and over again, despite the detractors who claimed that, like so many tales swirling through the air like the dust in this country, it was more myth than fact. The papers printed the story because it was a fable people wanted to believe in – needed to even, in these hard times.
    According to legend, the man who now dined with kings and presidents, who ate off silver platters, whose water flowed out of gold taps, had started out in life plucking bricks from a hot oven in a small muddy village in the Delta. Children are used for this task because they have small hands and because they are nimble and quick. An older person would get burned. By the age of thirteen he was trawling the streets of Cairo collecting scrap metal. Eventually, through hard work and good fortune, so the story went, he began acquiring apartments, running his own construction company.
    There was a darker version of this fairy tale, in which Hanafi figured as a common bultagi , a thug, but even this legend had been bent out of shape, smoothed over by countless reiterations. He stole from the rich and gave to the poor, they said. As a teenager he ran a small gang of hoodlums. They robbed merchants and broke into warehouses. If you wanted someone roughed up, or even killed, they would take care of it for a price. Hanafi, they said, was never caught because he kept people loyal to him. He redistributed his ill-gotten wealth among the less well off, and in return the inhabitants of those neighbourhoods saw him as a hero, defending him to the death. Families who could not afford to pay the rent were