Those stone triangles are more immense than you can imagine up close. Each step is a challenge to the thigh muscles. We started at a light trot on the dirt road leading out of the village and past the hotel. The sun wasn’t even up, but I was already sweating in my undershirt and the one pair of shorts that I owned. By the time my foot was on the first step of Khufu’s pyramid, my lungs were tight and wheezing like an accordion with a bullet hole. My cousin bounded on ahead of me, using his one good leg to vault upward and hoist the one wounded in the war onto the next step. I gritted my teeth and put my head down, trying to forget the fear of heights I’d suddenly developed looking over Raymond’s shoulder on Mount Sinai. My knees pumped harder, ignoring the cramping of my leg muscles and my gut. I grew dizzy as my heart pounded. I was afraid I might fall, but I was more afraid of my cousin beating me to the top of the pyramid.

  I pulled into my core and raised my feet higher as the steps turned steeper and rougher. Sherif grunted and slipped. He fell on his face ahead of me. I reached down and tried to pull him up as I started to pass, but he cursed under his breath and turned his head in bitter refusal of any aid.

  The capstone was high above us, half hiding the sun. Elbows tucked in at my sides, I lifted my knees and asked Allah to give me strength to reach the summit. My thighs were rubbing together and my calf muscles were shredding. But God straightened my back and allowed me to maintain the integrity of my gut. As I neared the top I heard Sherif give a high-pitched yelp behind me, and I knew I had him. I stepped onto the capstone and raised my arms, as the white eye of the sun offered me the forgiveness of its widening aperture.

  Sherif limped up the rest of the way, his beard not quite concealing the same look of disgruntlement he’d worn when I beat him as a boy. Things were different now, of course. He’d been wounded fighting in the Negev while I was in my soft velvet seat watching John Wayne movies. But he threw his arms around me and embraced me with all his might.

  “You did it, my cousin,” he said. “I knew you still had it in you.”

  On the fourth day, he brought me to an old gymnasium in Dokki after his work on the set was done. There were several Brothers I vaguely recognized waiting there, as well as his friend, Mustafa, who wore a blue wrestler’s singlet that plunged and gripped him in ways that I found very uncomfortable to behold.

  “What are we doing here?” I asked Sherif. “I’m not a fighter.”

  “But now you have to be.” He pinched my cheek and gave it a playful slap. “Or else you’re a khaser.”

  The equivalent English word would be “loser,” Alex. But that doesn’t convey the full disgust and abasement of how my cousin said it in Arabic, or the way the old mats at that gym reeked from the sweaty, frustrated helplessness of the men who’d been pinned on them over the years.

  Mustafa shook out his heavy arms and grinned as he beckoned for me to engage with him in the faded white circles at the center of a canvas. He was a large man with a short neck and a massive, proud-looking chest. He had a pale complexion and a reddish tinge to his hair and beard which he attributed to one of his ancestors being a member of a legion of lost Crusaders who had converted to Islam. The more likely story, shared among Brothers, was that his mother had an assignation with a Scotsman, which explained his father’s absence and his defensive temperament. More dauntingly, Mustafa—the Americans on the crew called him “Big Mo”—had been a runner-up to be Egypt’s entry in the Mr. Universe bodybuilding contest several years before, while my own experience of physical competition was limited to grappling with Sherif when we were schoolboys.

  “Go on,” my cousin said. “We have to build you up again.”

  “I promise I’ll go easy.” Mustafa rolled his head around on his broad shoulders until there was a crack. “But not too easy.”

  The others laughed as I held my arms out stiffly, not even sure how I should try to grab him. Mustafa seized me and put me in a headlock. Then he started to walk me around the room with my chin clamped onto his hip, proudly displaying me like a pet goat to the others as they doubled over with laughter. But, as I said, I was still wearing a good deal of pomade in my hair. It allowed me to slip out of the half nelson and dance away to show he hadn’t hurt me.

  As he came at me again, I noticed the awkward way he crossed his feet. Not like an experienced wrestler. It occurred to me that his impressive physique might not actually be that strong. When he grabbed me again and threw me down to the mat, I decided to resist. I stayed on my stomach, refusing to let him roll me over and pin me.

  “Submit,” he said under his breath, as he tried to bulldoze me onto my back. “Come on. Get it over with.”

  At first his strength was so overwhelming that I might as well have been grappling with a jeep or a three-hundred-pound tiger. But the longer I made him struggle, the heavier his breaths became. I kept my knees and elbows locked and my center of gravity low. When he tried to grab me by the hair, I suddenly jerked my head back and smashed it into his jaw. I heard his teeth come together like castanets. He slapped me and let out a childish yelp as if he’d bitten his tongue. I jumped up and pulled free of him just as I heard my cousin blow a whistle.

  “Okay.” Sherif clapped his hands. “That’s enough for now.”

  Mustafa looked at me, grunting and panting, his face even redder than his beard. To this day, I don’t know if he’d held back to help me build my confidence, or if he was simply not as good as he claimed to be.

  After I toweled off and showered, we went to Professor Farid’s houseboat, docked near University Bridge, for evening prayers and the intellectual salon. It was really not much more than a floating living room with thatched rugs, rickety furniture, and a tiny galley. I had spent many happy evenings there, expanding my mind before we had our break. As I stepped aboard for the first time in months, the deck beneath me and the smell of bilge water filled my nostrils. I almost hit my head while entering the low-ceilinged cabin and I felt a little seasick.

  I suppose I was scared that I had been lured onto the boat to be attacked as an apostate. But Brothers whom I had never met before stood up to shake my hand, and the professor himself, who was not given to physical displays of warmth, put his arms around me and embraced me in a way that he never had before. Instead of talking about Western literature and film as we had in the old days, we talked about suras and respect for the laws of our religion. I do not remember all that was said, but I realized what I had been missing for so long when I was chasing my movie mirages. Here was a sense of belonging, of being at home in the family of my Brothers, of what Mona had called a purpose.

  “I don’t like very much about the Christian Bible anymore,” the professor said, taking a moment to embrace both Sherif and me after the meeting. “But I have always loved that story of the prodigal son. What was lost is now found.”

  So I was more than a little surprised when my cousin came up to me on the pier afterward and told me that the next day we would be driving out to the set in Beni Youseff and I would be working on The Ten Commandments again.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. “What you’re suggesting isn’t even remotely possible. Mr. DeMille fired me personally.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” My cousin shrugged. “He’s fired and rehired at least three people since I’ve been on the set. That seems to be how it is with these movie people.”

  I nodded, having seen the same volatility on Egyptian productions as well. We even had an expression for it: “Gone with the wind, back with a belch.”

  “Anyway, they’ve agreed to give you another chance,” Sherif explained. “Just not at the same level. You’ll have to work your way back up.”

  “‘Not at the same level’?” My voice cracked. “How much lower can you get than carrying a man’s chair around for him?”

  “You’re going to need to work two jobs for less money, to get back into”—he stopped to search for the right English—”‘the good graces of Cecil B.’”

  “You’re not joking?”

  “Your father’s the one who tells jokes.” He shook his head in disapproval. “But listen. I’ve arranged for you to be in a crew with me two days a week, helping with the rigging and painting. The other three days you’ll be with Miss Mona and this Jew she’s working with, carrying gear for their documentary.”

  I could scarcely tell the seething in my head from the lapping of the river against the dock.

  “Who even suggested this?” I asked. “I’d sooner have Mustafa’s sweaty stomach in my face.”

  “It was my idea,” Sherif said. “And Miss Mona was all for it when I spoke to her.”

  “You spoke to Mona?”

  “Yes.” He started pulling on his beard. “For you, I can try to get along with her. I always said I was a better actor than you gave me credit for.”

  “And what did she say?” I asked.

  “I was able to take advantage of her guilt.” He gave a little laugh behind his hand. “She feels bad because you got her hired for this film and now you don’t have a job on it. She said she’d speak to this Jew Mr. Raymond and convince him to go along with it as well. Even though he’s a little reluctant.”

  “I’m sure he is!”

  Yes, I had ostensibly saved him from falling off a cliff, but he had more than enough cause to be uneasy around me.

  “I don’t know, Sherif,” I said. “But why would I even want this again? You told me yourself I was wasting my life and hurting our cause just by associating with these infidels.”

  “Are you joking?” He smirked. “You’ll be given unprecedented access as part of the documentary unit. You’ll be filming air force bases, army installations, the Egyptian mint, and Nasser’s personal office. You’ll be able to report back to us when they’re planning to make their move against the Ikhwan. Which our sources say they are.”

  “Why would Nasser let me see any of that?” I asked.

  “Don’t underestimate yourself, Ali. You can be very persuasive when you want. I saw how you lied to get the assistant’s job in the first place.”

  “That was different.” I blushed, embarrassed. “That was convincing a bunch of American movie people I was qualified. Nasser is in charge of the whole military and intelligence operations.”

  My cousin grabbed my ears again and mashed his prayer-callused forehead against my still-unblemished one. “Have faith in God and trust in your Brothers. You won’t be alone.”

  As he said this, other Brothers were stepping off the houseboat and coming up to shake my hand. I liked the way they slapped my back and shoulders, welcoming me into the fold and letting me know in gesture as well as word that I was now one of them.

  “I still don’t understand how I could have gotten rehired after Mr. DeMille himself fired me. Mona asking Raymond couldn’t have been enough.”

  “It wasn’t,” Sherif admitted. “I had to get involved in convincing some people as well.”

  “You? How?”

  “I talked to this Mr. Chuck, who’s playing Moussa the prophet. He said he didn’t like you at first either, but then he felt bad about how you’d been let go.”

  “Wait—You’ve gotten to be friends with Charlton Heston?”

  “In a way.” Instead of pulling on his beard, Sherif smoothed it with a touch of pride. I told him I’d been a soldier and we started talking about guns. He’s very knowledgeable, you know.”

  “Yes, be careful. He said he’s a hunter.”

  “We talked about that as well.” My cousin grinned. “To be honest, he’s not such a bad fellow when you get to know him.”

  January 13, 2015

  To: GrandpaAli71@aol.com

  From: landocal@protonmail.com

  Grandpa,

  I told you that you wouldn’t be hearing from me for a while, didn’t I? But I suppose it’s natural for you to worry. So I wanted to use this new email address to let you know that I’m all right for now.

  I can’t write for very long, or tell you anything about where I am and what I’m doing. But trust in Allah that I am with my brothers and happy in my sense of purpose. I’m glad your book has taken a turn. I was beginning to question why I still was reading it. But now I’m starting to see why you say you were on the same path before me.

  I was specially interested to read about you trying to get into better shape, because I’ve been doing the same thing. You would scarcely recognize me now! I’ve lost, like, twenty pounds in fat and regained it in muscle, because I’ve stopped eating crappy American junk food and started exercising. Every day since we’ve arrived, I’ve been running five miles a day with the others. I can do nearly fifty push-ups without running out of breath or stopping because my muscles are exhausted, the way they did when I flunked phys ed and had to make up the credits to graduate. We’ve been climbing ropes and lifting weights, and next week we continue our intensive weapons training. Soon they tell me I will be introduced to my bride.

  Anyway, I guess you can tell Mom and Dad I’m fine. But please remind them that I’m never coming back and they need to accept that.

  Yours, with respect,

  Abu Suror

  12

  Sherif picked me up early the next day, but instead of going to prayers we drove out past the golf course and the pyramids until sand stretched out into infinity on both sides of the road, striated lightly with the distant memory of having been underwater many millennia ago. In my obsessive sorrow and yearning for Mona, I began to see womanly curves in the berms and dunes, as if God practiced the notion of the feminine on this landscape before putting it into human form.

  I was about to ask Sherif if we were going the wrong way to The Ten Commandments set when, fifteen miles outside Cairo, a giant pharaonic city loomed up from the sand, like a battleship suddenly appearing in the middle of the desert.

  An avenue lined by sixteen ivory-white sphinxes led to a pair of gates that were at least eleven stories high and a quarter-mile wide. I looked up at them as if King Kong’s foot were about to come down and crush me. Flat-roofed pylons pushed back a nearly purple sky, their façades painted in brilliant hues of yellow and blue, depicting scenes of royal hunts and kings in chariots firing arrows at the sun. There were identical black marble pharaohs on either side of the entrance, thirty-five feet tall, seated and staring out placidly as if they could see clear to the end of time.

  The gates opened and a line of horse-drawn chariots burst forth as if from the pages of a children’s storybook. White and brown chargers hauled golden-wheeled baskets, with the whips of men in brass helmets and breastplates flashing in the dust. They came right at us, links in an endless chain, then abruptly veered away. A white Ford pickup truck was in hot pursuit, with Cecil B. DeMille hanging out a side window and hectically shouting directions through a megaphone while my Egyptian replacement translated.

  “Go get them! Ride, goddamn it, ride. Ride like your job depends on it!”

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “It’s just another rehearsal.” My cousin hit the brake to avoid getting us caught in the middle of it. “For this big Exodus chase scene with all the people they’re filming next week.”

  One of the soldiers fell off the back of a chariot and went rolling off the track, his helmet rolling off in the opposite direction. He wound up facedown and motionless in the sand. The chase went on without him and no one appeared to look back.

  “Allah!” I turned to Sherif. “Why doesn’t anyone go to help him? He looks like he could be seriously hurt.”

  “This is how it goes. He’s not the first. They’ll take him to the hospital, but not before the rehearsal is over.”

  I recognized the actor Yul Brynner bringing up the rear of the chase, in a chariot that was much bigger and more ornate than the others. He was wearing a white T-shirt, and his completely hairless head was gleaming in the sun. He was smoking a cigarette and holding on to the side of his wagon like it was a cruising yacht while an Egyptian in a modern cavalry officer’s uniform whipped the horses for him.

  “This shaven-headed one is playing the pharaoh Rameses the Second,” Sherif said. “If you end up working with him, make sure you always have a pack of cigarettes ready.”

  I was still a little shaken as we parked behind the façade, among the trailers, trucks, and regular cars. Henry, the assistant director Chico Day, and some of the others whom I’d worked with before my firing nodded and smiled, cautiously welcoming me back as we made our way through a small industrial city that had been set up near the ancient quarries.

  We passed a huge commissary tent with outdoor grills and dozens of picnic tables, a makeup tent where extras were getting their bodies bronzed with makeup, and yet another tent where scenic artists were painting pieces of kelp that would appear on the dry bed that was supposed to be the parted Red Sea at yet another location. I smelled fire from the forges of a blacksmith’s hut where artisans were busy soldering and hammering shields and helmets. Just behind a half-dozen wardrobe trailers were two massive derricks digging wells to provide water for the thousands of extras and animals who were already starting to show up. Not to mention the full-sized corral for the horses and a legion of gasoline-powered generators with step-down transformers on poles hidden just behind the façade of the pharaoh’s city.

  Less than a week before, I would have been enchanted and enraptured by all that had been wrought in Cecil B. DeMille’s mighty name. But now I was enraged. How dare they? I finally understood why the professor and the others had turned against these outsiders. The Americans had spent millions of dollars to create this extravagant mirage, when villagers nearby were starving. They stood to reap millions from their illusion while paying a pittance to the sweating, straining, hardworking Egyptian bodies that risked permanent injury and disfigurement, if not actual death, to help them do it. My salary had been reduced from twenty dollars a day to five dollars a day, for doing twice as much work. Others were getting even less and getting thrown from moving chariots.

  All at once, I detested everything about these kufar from the smell of their hamburgers grilling in the commissary tent to the way they gave everyone nicknames (“What’s the scoop, Ali Oop?”). I told myself that I would have eventually turned against them anyway, even without the harsh lessons of Sinai. But as I followed Sherif up a series of ladders behind the façade, I became sick to my stomach. And not just because of the fear of heights I’d discovered in Sinai. I was disgusted with myself for having shamelessly aped these outsiders for so long, without noticing they were blatantly laughing behind my back.