Free The Ghost Runner by Parker Bilal Page B

apologise.’
    ‘I wouldn’t if I didn’t feel I wanted to.’
    With that she walked away without another word. As he watched her go, Makana realised that she had somehow raised more questions than she had answered.

Chapter Seven
    Musab Khayr was the missing piece in the puzzle. According to Magdy Ragab, he was still in Denmark, the country which had granted him political asylum. Ragab claimed to have lost contact with him over the years and indeed had no way to inform him that his daughter had died, assuming he even cared about a child he had made no effort to see for so many years. Then again, Makana thought to himself, perhaps there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for that. Did he ever stop caring about his own daughter? Wasn’t that what she would have concluded after all these years? Why hasn’t my father tried to find me? It was an uncomfortable thought and one which dislodged Makana’s mind from the track it had been on.
    As he crossed the square in front of the Husseini mosque the following morning, Makana wondered if Musab could be as hard hearted as Ragab made out? Had something turned him against his wife and child? Perhaps he had changed. Who doesn’t? Could he really claim he was the same person he had been when he first arrived in this city, lost and bewildered, trying to find a foothold to restart his life when the last thing he felt he deserved was to go on living? Musab had been in prison, and a lot of things could happen to a man in prison. The brief time Makana had been incarcerated all those years ago remained with him as a vivid memory. It crept up on him in unsuspecting moments. Enclosed spaces. The sound of a door closing. He avoided using lifts whenever possible. It woke him in the middle of the night leaving him drenched in sweat and kicking out, convinced that darkness was closing over him like a grave.
    Aswani’s was almost deserted save for the flies that buzzed furiously inside the glass-fronted cabinets, dizzy over the feast of raw meat on display. Aswani’s face was the usual rumpled map, puffed up and sprinkled with a generous handful of grey bristles.
    ‘Are you paying for him?’
    ‘Where is he?’
    Aswani nodded across the room. ‘He’s already eaten two bowls of humous.’
    Sami was seated half concealed behind one of the ugly red pillars that jutted out like unwanted furniture at various points around the room.
    ‘Ah, there you are.’ Sami licked his fingers before extending a hand which Makana managed to avoid taking as he pulled out a chair and sat down. Unperturbed, Sami made some pretence of tidying up the debris strewn across the table: napkins, empty plates, scraps of bread. ‘I ordered lamb. He has some chops which look excellent, worth waiting for.’
    ‘Are you sure you’ll have any appetite left?’
    ‘I’m sorry, I missed breakfast this morning.’ Sami grinned, restoring a certain boyishness to his face. ‘You know how married life can be.’
    Sami Barakat was the source of most of Makana’s information when he needed research doing. As a journalist, he had access to more archives and resources than Makana could ever reach. In addition, he had the private numbers of high-ranking army officials, ministerial assistants, press officers at a dozen embassies, as well as a field of colleagues who had their own networks. Sami’s help had often proved invaluable.
    ‘How is Rania?’
    ‘She’s fine, spends all her time on the internet. I tease her that she has more friends in New York and LA these days than in Cairo.’
    Makana leaned back against the wall and lit a cigarette. The smoke wafted upwards to be gently swept in circles by the overhead fan. A gnarled old man, all bones and missing teeth, paused in the doorway and clicked a set of castanets together, improvised from a couple of shoe-polish tins. It was a half-hearted effort. He looked like he had barely the strength to stand, let alone get on his knees and shine a pair of shoes. He stared at