Diarra served canapés and suffered to see the demon rise. Although he was surrounded by beef samosas, chicken skewers and domino-sized slices of chocolate cake, he couldn’t resist on Wednesday and made the mistake of almost all anti-Madrid fans. When he found out that Bayern had scored 13 minutes from time, he turned on his cell phone and started watching the Strangis game. And if…?
Since there were no screens nearby other than Diarra’s cell phone, I hung on his shoulder like a parrot and also started watching the semifinal, even though I had sworn not to. And if…?
Diarra, originally from Mali, served canapés smiling at the opening of a photo exhibition in Nouakchott, capital of Mauritania, but inside he wanted to die when he saw out of the corner of his eye how Madrid once again made a pact with the devil and scored two goals with the match dying
Diarra had already forgotten how to serve, whether anyone wanted more ginger lemonade or what his parents’ names were when the referee hurriedly whistled for offside which ended in the goal being disallowed for the Germans. “They always help them. They would have to put the referee in jail! “He said full of rage and it seemed to me that he had fallen short by not also asking for the demolition of the new Bernabéu.
Although we had just met, the roar of Merengue hatred made us twins and we swore a blood oath. As we both thought that Dortmund had no chance in the final, we promised ourselves not to watch the game even if in the 85th minute the score was 273 to 0 in favor of the Germans; The whites were not going to come back in the injury time.
For Diarra, there was something strange in that merengue happiness but it was not the referee favors. They were another type of trap: he believed that Madrid used the power of a marabou, an African sorcerer.
“Think about the mistakes of the rival goalkeepers, the fear of the referees, the missed goals… that’s magic.”
I was thinking about whether to coin the neologism “hechicerato” or whether “maraburato” sounded better to challenge Madrid’s two hundred champions, their anthem and the squid sandwiches with mayonnaise, when I found myself ridiculous baptizing my rage after a kind of dinosaur in Jurassic Park .
“The referees, okay, but I don’t think an African sorcerer, eh?” I told him very dignified.
When everyone attending the inauguration had left, I was left collecting small plates with leftover curry and chocolate and sharing desolation with Diarra. Trying to encourage it to see if something would stick to me, but there was no way.
Devastated, before saying goodbye and when no one was looking, I approached his ear and whispered a totally serious request.
“Hey, for the final against Dortmund, you won’t have the phone number of some powerful marabou on hand, right?”