Free The Ghost Runner by Parker Bilal

we have available, which isn’t much.’
    ‘So did either Karima or her mother ask for your help?’
    ‘I spoke to Nagat a couple of times. She had joined a support group for women whose husbands were in prison.’
    ‘She had decided she wanted nothing more to do with him.’
    ‘I got the impression he had done something very bad, a long time ago. She was very young when they married. They ran away together but over the years she realised she had made a mistake. It often happens. She wanted a divorce, but he wouldn’t agree. Then he went abroad.’
    The passing light swept over her face, so that he caught brief flashes of her features, like fragments of a puzzle that refused to come together to form a whole.
    ‘How did you know where to find Karima?’ Makana asked.
    ‘I have my sources. People call me when there is something they think could be of interest.’
    ‘Women suicides, you mean?’
    ‘It’s not always what it appears.’
    Makana noticed the driver giving her odd looks in the mirror. Zahra had also noticed.
    ‘What’s that smell?’ she asked suddenly.
    ‘What smell?’ sniffed the driver.
    ‘It smells like burnt plastic.’
    ‘La, ya sitti , this is an air freshener.’ He pointed at a plastic pine tree bobbing from the rear-view mirror. ‘It makes the air better.’
    ‘It’s making me ill.’
    Makana managed to wind down the window a couple of centimetres before it jammed. The driver fiddled with the air freshener, still watching Zahra and narrowly avoiding several collisions.
    ‘Ask him to pull over please,’ said Zahra.
    When they came to a halt, Zahra got out without a word. The driver began apologising again. ‘It’s just a piece of plastic that smells. I swear. I can throw it out. Wallahi .’ He reached for the offending object and was holding it out of the window when Makana stuffed some notes into his hand. They were alongside the river now on the eastern side of Zamalek. A nursery under a bridge. Plants were laid out in buckets and old gallon tins that had once held olive oil. A man in wellington boots and ragged clothes wandered up and down with a watering can.
    When he reached her she was standing by the metal railings. Her body was shaking and he waited at a distance as she sobbed quietly to herself. Lighting a cigarette, Makana exhaled and watched the slow-motion fireworks exploding across the river. Lights of every colour and shape, arching out of the ground on roads and flyovers, outlining the towers of the hotels and the squat insurmountable wall of the National Democratic Party. Alongside it the glow coming from the National Museum. The whole city seemed alive with ghosts that floated on electric currents. The air off the water cleared the warm petrol fug of the traffic.
    ‘Thank you. I really think I might have fainted or something in that car.’ When Makana shrugged, she gave a little laugh. ‘I’m sorry, I must seem a little unbalanced to you.’ A few strands of dark hair had escaped from the headscarf. Tucking them out of sight she smiled wistfully. ‘It must seem very unprofessional of me to react like this.’
    ‘You became friends with Karima.’
    ‘It’s not so strange. Some women seek legal advice, others are looking for a place to hide, but most of them just want someone who will listen, someone who cares about their problems.’
    They had reached a bench that was more or less intact. It resembled a museum piece, weary from all the memories it had to bear. A long procession of lovers’ names. Where were all these people now, Makana wondered? Overweight and middle-aged? Married to other people and not knowing why? With children of their own who had no idea that here lay the evidence of the passion their parents might have once felt for a stranger?
    ‘When I first met Karima her mother was ill. She was dying, in fact. I felt sorry for her at first and later I felt admiration. She was very brave.’
    ‘You must feel strongly about women to get involved in