All my life, I had wanted to be on the set of a Cecil B. DeMille picture. But now that it was finally happening, it was hard for me to enjoy it. For one thing, the director would yell in increasingly bad temper whenever he saw me talking to the cinematographer and the cameramen, trying to understand how they were shaping the light and why they were framing the shots in a certain way, instead of bringing him a bottle of water or an umbrella to block the sun.

  For another, Sherif kept drifting into view, carrying pieces of track for the cameras to glide on or special heavy covers to keep sand from getting in the gears of the cameras.

  I was still haunted by what he’d said about me being the driver. How could he have known I was there? Who would have told him? Every time I tried to think through the consequences, my mind went white. I decided there was nothing I could do about it now, so I tried to be like an actor and pretend I had no troubles looming.

  Once the sun dropped into the valley, it started to get very cold. The Americans made campfires amid the tents near the mountaintop. Flames cast flickering shadows on the rocks as they finished eating lamb and goat on skewers, so that each wavering silhouette looked like someone’s true self set free to dance wildly behind them.

  I found myself in a circle of crew members around a campfire, facing Chuck and Mr. DeMille across the flames and contemplating the judgment that might lie ahead.

  “I have a question,” Chuck said. “In the burning bush scene that’s coming up, whose voice will we hear talking to Moses?”

  The director took off his glasses, exposing the fine lines and folds of his age in the firelight. “You mean, which actor should we use in post?”

  “It’s an important decision, don’t you think?” Chuck rested an elbow on his knee, more frontiersman than Moses in this pose.

  “Are you asking me who will play God?” Mr. DeMille said.

  “I had a thought.” Henry interrupted. “What if we had a different actor dub the voice in every country where the film is shown? We’d have God speaking in the native tongue no matter where we are.”

  “And the biggest confusion since the Tower of Babel,” Mr. DeMille replied. “No, Henry, that’s your worst idea yet. Which is really saying something.”

  “I was thinking I should do it,” Chuck broke in.

  “You? You’ve already got a pretty good part,” Mr. DeMille shot back. “You want more dialogue?”

  The fire jumped again, its intensified glow defining silhouettes within the tents that had been set up around the plateau, turning each canvas into something like a small cinema screen.

  “I don’t think I’m just being an egotistical actor,” Chuck said.

  “I’ll be the judge of that.” Mr. DeMille angled his glasses.

  I looked around for Mona, realizing it had been hours since I’d seen her.

  “I’ve thought about this seriously,” Chuck insisted. “Don’t you think God speaks in subtler ways? Isn’t it possible that he talks to us through our own thoughts in our own voices?”

  “I don’t know if that’s right,” I said, wondering how my cousin would react if he was close enough to hear this.

  They all stopped talking.

  “Or rather, I don’t think that’s right,” I tried again. “I think people of faith might be offended if you suggest that God is just a psychological condition. To them, God is not just a state of mind. God is real. He gives consequences to all our actions.”

  A chunk of burnt wood fell and fiery cinders rose into the air.

  “Mr. Hassan, I think you’re taking Chuck a little too literally.” Mr. DeMille squinted. “All he’s saying is that we need to find a way to represent man’s faith. We all agree that we can’t show the face of the Almighty. But should he not be present in our film at all? Should we just have silence when the Lord speaks to Moses?”

  “Why not?” asked Henry.

  “So a prophet of three faiths will be shown talking to himself?” I asked, looking for clarity.

  I noticed the light in one tent about twenty yards away seemed to blaze up with a special brightness, like the screen when a monster finally appears in a horror movie.

  “Mr. Hassan, we’re just trying to come up with a visual solution to a practical problem,” Mr. DeMille said with rising irritation.

  “But you were asking me before how my people might perceive this production more gladly,” I said, swatting a burnt flake from my face. “In Islam, there is a belief that visual representations of God are haram and that some things can only be seen with the spiritual eye—”

  “Well, I’m not making this film through the spiritual eye, I’m making it in VistaVision,” Mr. DeMille cut me off.

  I looked around again, wondering where Mona could have gone. “I understand that, sir, but such things can give offense—intentionally or not.”

  “You know, I’m getting a little sick and tired of having my motives impugned over and over by some freelance movie critic—”

  “I don’t think Mr. Hassan is impugning anything,” Chuck said. “He’s just putting in his two cents.”

  “Then here’s my two cents, in United States currency.” The director got to his feet, legs looking like they were strangulating in their tight puttee wrappings. “If you don’t like it, lump it.”

  “Forgive me, Mr. DeMille.” I jumped up. “I didn’t mean to insult you.”

  But the fire was inside him now. “You know, you’ve been getting on my nerves this whole trip, you and your ilk. Nothing’s ever good enough for you, is it?”

  “With respect, Mr. DeMille.” I put my hands out like he was about to charge at me. “I thought we were just having an idle conversation.”

  “I don’t allow ‘idle conversation’ on my set, mister. And I don’t like this constant carping about how we’re not telling the story the way you want it told or how we’re carrying out a secret mission for the Jews in Israel or whatever other nonsense you’ve been spewing.”

  There was no point in trying to explain to him that it was Professor Farid who had hurled some of those accusations, not me. DeMille was in a blind fury, his temper feeding on itself, and I was the nearest target.

  “Why don’t you go make your own goddamn movie?” he said. “You think you’re some hotshot young filmmaker, don’t you?”

  “Sir, that would hardly be practical.” I tried to smile. “I’m not Cecil B. DeMille.”

  “Oh, so it’s personal? You know, I’ve had it with all this bellyaching and second-guessing. And I’m not going to put up with it. You understand? You can get lost right now.”

  His fists were clenched and his face was so contorted that he was barely recognizable as the solicitous old man floating beside me in the Red Sea. He wanted to punish me, to make an example of me for the others. To strip my skin off in public. I saw Henry and Chuck look away, embarrassed.

  “Henry, I’m going to need another assistant,” the director said. “What’s that other boy’s name? Idris? Eddie?”

  “Yes, Mr. DeMille, we call him ‘Eddie.’” Henry got to his feet. “But do we want to make a hasty decision like this when we’re this tired and tempers are this frayed?”

  “My temper is fine and my judgment is sound,” Mr. DeMille replied. “I want Mr. Hassan off my mountain.”

  “Your mountain, sir?” I stared, not sure he could be serious.

  “How soon can we ship him back to Cairo?” the director said. “I want another driver as well. One who actually knows how to drive.”

  I took his words like a slap to the face. Tears came to my eyes. He was blaming me for the accident. After I had followed his orders to get us out of there and then betrayed my teacher publicly to defend him at the press conference.

  “Come, now, we can’t just throw him off the mountain in the middle of the night,” Henry tried to reason with him. “Especially after what he’s done for us—”

  “I don’t care what he’s done or hasn’t done, or what he’s said or hasn’t said.” Mr. DeMille lashed back at him. “Mr. Hassan, I would like you gone by first light.”

  He stalked off, leaving the rest of us in stunned and awkward silence. No one would meet my eye. And then, one by one, they started mumbling excuses to get away, until it was just Chuck and myself.

  “I’ve got lines to learn and a letter to write to Lydia.” The actor got to his feet and stretched his long legs. “I’m sorry, Mr. Hassan. Obviously, the stress is getting to the old man. Good luck with wherever you end up.”

  I sank down slowly into a squat, asking myself what had just happened. I had believed that we were in this together. That one of us could not go down without taking the other with him. But I’d been half blinded by my idolatry. He had fired me because he could. And I was powerless to stop him. I could not hurt his picture without sticking my own head in a noose. Because what was I to him? Less than a speck of sand in the desert.

  I stared into the flames. A woman was laughing somewhere close by. Mocking me. I looked around and saw silhouettes moving within the canvas tents that had been set up, figures in the shadow play of my imagination. Then I heard the smooth rumble of a man’s voice, trying to talk her into something. But it couldn’t be Chuck. He had stopped to join a group of crew members, watching four shepherds enact the ancient ritual of the wolf stalking the sheep around another fire on the landing.

  “The story never changes.” I heard my cousin’s voice. “The interloper tries to steal in and raid the flock, and has to be chased away.”

  “Oh my God, Sherif.” I turned to face him. “Why do you have to keep tormenting me? Why couldn’t you have just stayed in Cairo?”

  “Oh, I always wanted to come back to Sinai.” He yawned and rubbed the sides of his beard with a look of contentment. “The best times of my life were here.”

  “That sounds like madness,” I said. “This is one of the places where we lost the war with Israel. And where you were wounded.”

  “The hard places make us who we are.” My cousin rested a hand on my shoulder. “Yes, it’s a parched wilderness, where hardly anyone lives and hardly anything grows. But I couldn’t wait to get back here. Married life is nothing compared with the closeness I had with my brothers here and in the Negev, and all the other places we were. How am I supposed to care about whether the baby’s diapers get changed after we survived four months in the pocket of Al-Falujah with our supply lines cut and that incompetent moron Nasser in charge? After I’ve seen the villages raided, the people killed, and the land stolen by these Israeli interlopers—”

  I knew he was telling me something important, but all I could focus on was the sound of the woman’s lightly scandalized laughter. I recognized the suavely insinuating accent of the man in the tent with her.

  “Excuse me, Sherif.” I started to get up. “But I have something I need to do—”

  “Don’t.” He grabbed my arm. “I told you she’s not worth it.”

  “You don’t know where I’m going.” I tried to pull away.

  “Of course I do. You’re going to see what that Coptic whore is doing with that fucking Jew. And I’m telling you not to do it.”

  I barely heard him as I watched the figures behind the screen merge and then come apart. It was like witnessing my own murder.

  “I tried to warn you, didn’t I?” Sherif said in a husky growl. “I could see what she was when we made that idiotic movie together. But you wouldn’t listen. She’s a user.”

  “It’s not true.” I tried to deny the evidence from my own eyes.

  “You let her blind you,” he taunted me. “And she isn’t even that good-looking—”

  “Shut up.” I yanked my arm from him. “Do you have a knife?”

  “Why?” He gave a small laugh. “So you can cut her throat? Or yours?”

  “I don’t know.” I started to sob. “I don’t have anything left to live for anyway—”

  “Stop it.” He suddenly seized me by the ears. “Be a man and get a hold of yourself.”

  “Sherif, you’re hurting me.” The shock of physical pain refocused my attention.

  “You’re a disgrace,” he said. “And you’ve brought it upon yourself.”

  “How can you talk to me that way?” I blinked back my tears in astonishment. “You’re my cousin. Can’t you see I’m in pain?”

  “You should be in worse pain.” He pulled harder on my ears. “In fact, there are people who want to murder you right now.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I told you before. I know you were the driver. You killed Sheikh Sirgani.”

  My knees started to go weak. And then everything inside me collapsed. I could not remember how to breathe or swallow properly. All I could do to defend myself was make a vague croaking sound.

  “Don’t bother to deny it.” Sherif fingered my ears more tenderly. “When the people who’d been in the crowd described the driver of the red car, I knew it was you.”

  “They were trying to kill us, Sherif. You weren’t there. They were starting to turn the car over—”

  “Don’t make excuses.” He twisted my ears so savagely that I thought he would rip them off the sides of my head. “You chose to be there. You chose to work for these kufar. You chose to be behind that wheel. Not someone else. You caused the death of a holy man who was important to our movement. And then you helped these infidels cover it up. A lot of people are saying you should be punished by death. In fact, the real reason I came out here was to protect you. Mustafa and Lofty still want to beat you within an inch of your life and leave you crippled.”

  “Mustafa and Lofty know as well?” I asked, trying to catch the wind that had just been knocked out of me.

  “Of course. Lofty’s cousin was in the crowd that day.”

  “But what can I do to make up for it?” I asked desperately. “You know I meant no harm—”

  He pressed his forehead against mine and began to roll it back and forth, as he spoke to me with a tenderness that I had not heard from him in many years.

  “Apologies are not enough,” he said. “You need to do actions. If you want to make real amends, and not just talk. Don’t you know that you’ve said enough empty words to last a lifetime?”

  I let him continue rolling his brow over mine as I wept for forgiveness. It felt like he was trying to change the shape of my forehead. He was right. I had chosen the wrong dream. Every prayer I had skipped in favor of a matinee, every film magazine I had opened instead of the Koran, every belittlement I had endured from a foreigner had led me to the wrong path. I knew now there would never be a swimming pool and I would never change my name to Al Harrison, and Mona would never ride beside me down the Pacific Coast Highway in a Chevrolet convertible with the top down. Because I would never be a real American. I was just a brown man in a white man’s world.

  “Please, Sherif. Direct me. Tell me what to do.”

  “Don’t worry.” He finally let go of my ears and hugged me. “No harm will come to you as long as you stay on the rightful path. But first, I need to know that you’re willing to commit to your faith and to being a soldier in this war we’re fighting.”

  “Which war?”

  “We’re going to take our country back from Nasser,” he said. “His grip isn’t as strong as he believes. There are members of the Revolutionary Command Council who are still with us. They just need a sign that we’re willing and able to do whatever it takes.”

  It was not as extreme an idea as it may sound now, Alex. After all, Naguib still had the title of president and there were more than a million Muslim Brothers in the country. If they were inspired to rise up in revolt, he might regain power and put Nasser in chains. Even in my hopeless fallen state, I recognized my own self-interest in this. Under a new Ikhwan-backed regime, I might be marked for death as a traitor. Unless I could show some value as an asset.

  “You’ve never had to be really courageous, Ali, but I’ve told the others something in you is worth saving.” Sherif held me close, allowing me to huddle against him for warmth. “I used to see it when you’d beat me to the top in the pyramid races. But your commitment needs to be absolute. Will you swear that you are one of us and Islam is your constitution?”

  It’s true, my grandson, that I could still have found a way down that night. I could have turned myself in; thrown myself on the mercy of Nasser’s associates; informed on my cousin; done my time; and perhaps lived a quieter, more anonymous life after I got out. But it wasn’t just fear or cowardice that stopped me. I wanted a role. I wanted to fight. I wanted to be part of something bigger than the life I was living. And if it wasn’t Hollywood, it would have to be the war my cousin was promising me a role in. Everything I had been before burned up in the fire on the mountain that night.

  “I don’t know what use I can be, Sherif. The only thing I’ve ever really done before is run the student cinema society.”

  “Forget all that.” He kissed me on the forehead and released me. “Your true life starts now.”

  “Okay.” I used my wrist to blot my tears. “But first can you get me a ride back to Cairo?”

  10

  As the sun cast its first rays the next morning and slowly warmed the mountaintop, I was looking at the world through changed eyes. I do not mean to say that I became a jihadi overnight, Alex. But when I took a deep breath and pulled back my shoulders, the ache in my side from sleeping on the ground went away.

  I brushed off my white canvas trousers, dealt with my bodily functions behind some tall boulders, and decided to try to renew my faith with the fajr prayer to greet the day.

  But once I took off my shoes, I discovered a problem. No water. Not a drop to wash my hands, feet, ears, and nose as prescribed. The sun streamed through a gap in the stones, drying up whatever moisture was in the air. I remembered the lessons of the school I used to go to with Sherif. My teacher would say it was twice as blessed to pray in the desert because Allah could hear your voice more clearly in the wilderness. He reminded us that the Prophet Muhammad had no sinks or cisterns. One could perform tayammum, the act of purification, when no water was available. So I got down on my knees and touched the cleanest part of the sand with both hands before I pressed my brow to the ground.