Chapter 798: The Ocean
[Somewhere over Spain. Tuesday 17 July 2018. 12:10.]
"Coach. Wake up. You have to put the suit on."
"The what?"
"The suit." Nadia had a garment bag over her arm and 3 more hooked on 2 fingers. "All of you. Now. Before we start the descent."
I sat up. "Nadia, it is a bus."
"It is not a bus."
Zzzzip.
Charcoal. White shirt. Federation tie with the star on it. There were 23 of them coming down that aisle and Mustapha was handing them out by squad number without looking at the labels, because he has done every kit bag on this trip by memory since Voronezh.
"Boss." Harit, in the aisle, holding his up. "Boss, this is a wedding suit."
"Put it on, Amine."
"I am 21. I look like a lawyer."
"You look like a man who got to a World Cup final. Put it on."
Hahahaha.
That was the first laugh out of that squad in 2 days and it went right down the cabin, and Bray heard it from 4 rows back and did a thing with his eyebrows at me that meant there we go.
Sofyan came out of the toilet with the jacket on and the tie hanging round his neck like a scarf.
"Karim. Karim. Do the thing."
"Do it yourself."
"I cannot do it. I have never done it."
El Ahmadi got up, 33 years old, and stood in the aisle of an aircraft at 30,000 feet doing a 21-year-old’s tie for him, and Elena Vasquez was down that aisle with Tomás and the camera before either of them noticed.
"Coach."
"Yes, Elena."
"That is the opening shot of the episode."
"Course it is."
About 40 minutes out, El Ahmadi came down the aisle and crouched by my seat.
He has done that perhaps 3 times in 6 weeks. He is 33 and he does not waste words on anybody.
"You have not been," he said.
"To Morocco. No."
"To Africa."
"Never."
He looked at me the way you look at a man who has told you he cannot swim.
"Then I say one thing and you will not understand it until later." He put his hand flat on the arm of my seat. "Do not look for the football today.
"You will look for it. It will not be there."
He went back to his seat and put his headphones in.
I sat there and thought, yes, all right, Karim. The football. Obviously.
Ding.
"Cabin crew, seats for landing."
Nobody sat down.
I had a window on the right and the first thing I ever saw of Africa was the Atlantic, and then a long white city stood along it in the sun with the light coming off every roof at once.
We came round onto the approach for the airport, and that is when I saw the road.
There is a main road running from Rabat-Salé into the city and I looked down at it from about 3,000 feet, and I could not work out what was wrong with it.
It was the wrong colour. That was all I had. A road is grey, and that road was not grey. It was red and it was green and it was moving.
I sat and looked at it for about 8 seconds before my head would give it to me.
People. That is people. All of that is people.
"COACH." Nadia was out of her seat and leaning over me. "Look at the next one."
There was another one. And past that, another.
"Nadia, what is that."
"That is the road in from the airport."
"That is a dual carriageway."
"Yes," she said. "It has been shut since 6 o’clock this morning."
Ding. Ding.
23 men came out of their seats at once and went to the windows on one side and the crew gave up.
"Wa Allah."
"Chouf! Chouf!"
"Sofyan. SOFYAN. Come here."
Hakimi had his phone flat against the glass and was already talking into it.
"You are seeing this. You are seeing this live. Look. LOOK." He was narrating an aeroplane window to whoever was on the other end of it. "That is my country. That is my country doing that."
Ziyech, who has not shown me one thing in 6 weeks, had both hands on the seat back in front of him and his mouth open.
"Boss." Harit was pulling at my shoulder like a kid. "Boss, look, look, look."
"I am looking."
"No, there. There. The roof."
And Badr Banoun stood in the aisle with one hand on the overhead locker and his eyes shut and did not look out of the window at all.
The door came open and the heat walked into that aircraft before any of us walked out of it.
Harit said something in Arabic and put his forearm over his eyes.
I got 3 steps down and the shirt was already stuck to my back. It came up off white concrete into my face and it came off that ocean wet enough to sit on my chest, and there is no shade anywhere on an apron.
Somebody behind me said 29 degrees. I have been hotter in Spain in March and I have never once felt anything like it, and I was wet through in charcoal wool before I reached the bottom of the steps.
And at the bottom of them I put my foot on the ground, and that was Africa. 27 minutes past 1 on a Tuesday afternoon in July, 29 years old, on concrete hot enough through my shoes to make me think about it.
RRRAAAAAAAAAAA.
Through the noise of the aircraft we had just got off.
There were people on the roof of the terminal. Not officials. People, up on the roof of an international airport with flags over the parapet, and along the perimeter fence in a line that went off both ways past where I could see.
Out on the apron itself there were about 200 airport staff who had no business being on an active apron at all.
Baggage handlers in hi-vis. Cleaners with the trolleys still in their hands. 2 women in the uniform of the airline we had just flown on.
A lad in a high-vis vest was crying and waving in an aircraft at the same time, walking backwards, doing his job.
Nadia stopped at the bottom of the steps and put her palm flat on the concrete for a second, and did not explain it, and nobody asked her to.
A man in a federation blazer came across that apron at me and got hold of my hand with both of his.
"Coach Walsh. Coach Walsh." He would not let go. "You are welcome. You are welcome. Ah, you are welcome."
"Thank you."
"No, no, no." He was still shaking it. "Thank you. Thank you, thank you."
"Coach." Nadia had my elbow. "The bus."
"He has still got my hand."
"I know. Come on."
The bus was stood on the apron with the engine running.
A double-decker with the roof cut off and a rail round the top deck, and 23 players and 9 staff going up a set of steps into it in charcoal wool at 2 in the afternoon with no shade on it anywhere.
"Right." Marcus was already up the front with the phone out. "Airport to the palace. 11 kilometres, and they have given it 40 minutes."
Bray looked at him. "40 minutes."
"That is what it says on the sheet."
"Marcus."
"What?"
"Look over the side."
We were rolling by a quarter past 2, and it was only then that I saw what they had put round us.
Nee-naw. Nee-naw. Nee-naw.
2 marked cars at the front and 2 at the back. And between them, down both flanks of that bus, a column of motorcycle outriders in white helmets riding in formation, 4 abreast, close enough that I could have leaned over the rail and put a hand on the nearest man’s shoulder.
I counted 30 bikes before I lost the number.
They rode the whole 11 kilometres like that. 5 hours at walking pace on hot machines in full uniform, and not one of them broke formation, and not one of them looked up at us once.
A helicopter somewhere up and to the right that we heard all afternoon and never saw.
"Have you counted the bikes?" I said.
"I stopped." Marcus had put the phone away. "Danny, that is the escort you give a head of state."
We got 200 metres.
RAAAAAAAAA.
They were not lining that road. They were on it.
Stood on the central reservation and up on the crash barriers and on the roofs of parked cars with their arms out, and the bus went from 40 miles an hour to walking pace and never got above it again.
"BONO! BONO! BONO!"
"HAKIMI!"
"Dima Maghrib! Dima Maghrib!"
Bang. Bang-bang. Drums, hundreds of them, going in and out of time with each other down the length of a dual carriageway.
Prrrrrrrp. Horns.
And over the top of all of it, off the balconies, that noise the women make. High and rolling and going on longer than a human being should be able to hold it.
Lilililililiiiii.
It came down on us from 4 floors up in every street we went down, and it is the sound I hear when anybody says the word Morocco to me now.
Fsssshhh.
The flares went up out of the crowd in red and green, hundreds of them at once, and the smoke sat over that road at head height and we went through it like a boat going through fog.
"BOSS." Harit had both hands on my arm. "Boss, they slept here."
"What?"
"On the floor. Look. Look down."
Blankets. Cool boxes. A folding chair strapped to a barrier with a bungee. A sunshade rigged out of 2 broom handles and a bedsheet, and a bloke under it with 2 small girls on the barrier in front of him.
"They have been here since last night," Nadia shouted at me. "The barriers went up Monday. They shut the airport road at 6 this morning and the ring road at 9."
"The whole city?"
"The whole city, coach. Everything. Schools are out. The ministries sent people home at 11."
I looked at her.
"They have closed the capital," she said. "For you."
"Nadia, they cannot shut a capital city for a football team."
"They have shut it for the football team." She had the folder up against the sun. "Tramway suspended at midday. Every school in Rabat and Salé finished at 11. The ministries let their staff go at 11 as well and half of them are stood out there in the clothes they went to work in.
"Ambulances are on a diversion plan. The airport road has been one-way since 8 o’clock this morning."
"That is a country stopping."
"Yes," she said. "That is what I have been trying to tell you since Moscow."
Bray leaned in from my other side.
"Danny. There is a bloke down there in a shirt and tie with a lanyard on eating a sandwich on a crash barrier."
"He is on his lunch."
"He has been on his lunch since 11 in the morning."