“Yes, I hope to be part of the crew at the Stock Exchange,” I said. “Though we haven’t really discussed the schedule yet.”

  “Of course you’ll be there,” Raymond said brusquely. “We’ll need to take extra hands for an event of this scale. We just didn’t need you tonight, because it was such a simple setup.”

  “Of course.” Though for some reason, his words rang false in my ears.

  I assisted them in putting the rest of the gear away and helped Mona step off the boat. But the professor held on to my arm as I started to get off after her.

  “Stay,” he said. “There’s something we need to discuss.”

  He guided me back into the cabin, where Mustafa was once again taking the gun from his waistband and holding it out by the barrel.

  “You need to bring this with you when you drive to Alexandria tomorrow,” the professor said.

  “No. I cannot.” I crossed my arms to tuck my hands under my armpits. “What if I’m searched?”

  “They won’t search you if you’re part of the film crew,” Mustafa said, as he kept thrusting the weapon at me. “And they’ll let you get close to the stage.”

  I turned away, sickened all over again. “It’s impossible. I was barely able to shoot that animal from three feet away.”

  “Don’t be an idiot.” Osman gave a spiteful little laugh. “We wouldn’t trust you to pull the trigger. I’ll find you once we’re allowed near the VIP area, and you just slip it to me. I’ll take care of the rest.”

  “It won’t work,” I said. “Nasser and Amer are already on high alert. And what happened to the plan to blow up the set?”

  “We decided to put it on hold while we have this opportunity,” the professor explained. “How many times will we have a chance where the pharaoh is appearing before a quarter of a million people in Mansheya Square?”

  “And what if I say no?”

  They all stared. I heard a sloshing sound and smelled noxious odor. For a moment, I thought both were coming from inside me. Then I realized it was bilge water that had collected in the houseboat’s side boards.

  “Ali, effendi.” The professor came over and laid a hand on my chest. “You have a father who is still alive, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  He smiled up at me with his snaggled teeth. “Your cousin tells me that he’s been involved in some sordid business with women. Is that true?”

  I stiffened. “He works at the hotel golf course. That’s all I know.”

  Mustafa and Osman knocked into each other and smiled as the boat rocked. No doubt they had known sordid business with women themselves.

  “You need to open your eyes,” the professor said. “One way or the other, Nasser will be deposed and Naguib will be put back in charge. And when that happens, we will rule with shariah, our laws will come from the Koran and the hadiths and there will be severe penalties for anyone found to be involved in the exploitation of women and their bodies. Do you understand this?”

  “You’re not seriously threatening a member of my family, ostazi, are you?” I was nearly pleading with him to tell me that I’d misunderstood.

  “I’m just telling you what’s likely to happen.” He tapped the center of my chest. “Unless there were mitigating circumstances to earn your father special dispensation.”

  I held his wrist to make him stop. “But how can you justify this?”

  “Easily.” He pulled away. “You can find justification on every page of religious text ever written, if you twist the words enough. But this is different. We’re fighting against the dominion of man over man, when it should be only God over man.”

  “I still think this is a terrible mistake,” I said, though I knew it was useless.

  One thing I have learned from living in both America and the Middle East: You can never change anyone’s heart or mind when they are confident that they have bullets in their gun and God on their side.

  Mustafa stuck the Enfield in my waistband. “Don’t break any traffic laws this time. Insha’Allah, all will go as it’s supposed to, and tomorrow the pharaoh will die.”

  April 3, 2015

  To: GrandpaAli71@aol.com

  From: SeekerAL@protonmail.com

  Grandpa,

  I’ll have to make this short because I don’t have much time. I’m using a different encrypted address because I need to ask your advice about something.

  Things are not working out with me and my wife. Shayma is only, like, fourteen. She’s Yazidi. She and her younger sister got picked up by one of our rival groups near a place called Mount Sinjar near the Syrian border and then sold to us. I guess in the States they’d call this kidnapping. Now she’s supposed to be, like, my sex slave. My commanders cite all kinds of verses from the Koran and hadiths to justify it, but I don’t know if that’s what the Messenger really meant.

  Long story short, Shayma just sits on the mattress, crying all day. She doesn’t speak any English, but I think she really misses her family. When I go near to try to comfort her, she shrinks away like I’m some kind of monster. So now I feel bad for her. In fact, I don’t even want to touch her. But I don’t want to reject her as a bride, because I’m afraid of what the others will do to her instead.

  What do you think I should do?

  Yours in haste,

  Alex

  16

  “What’s wrong?” Mona asked me from the back seat.

  It was the next day, midafternoon, and we were on the long desert road to Alexandria with our camera gear, and the green fields and water-lifting seesaw shadoofs of the Nile Delta were no longer in sight.

  “Why do you ask?” I adjusted the rearview.

  “You keep looking back.” She turned around, her knees on the seat. “Is something bothering you?”

  There had been a red car behind us for the last hour at least. It never appeared to speed up or slow down. It just maintained the exact same quarter-mile distance from us, whether my foot was on or off the gas.

  “We seem to have an escort.” Raymond barely glanced up from making his shot list. “They’ve been on our tail ever since we left Cairo.”

  “Who are they?” Mona asked.

  “Probably studio accountants, minding the expenses,” Raymond answered, drawing a swift line across a page.

  “Or someone else coming to see Nasser’s speech.” I tried to sound unbothered even as I pressed on the accelerator and went up to sixty-five miles an hour.

  The red car matched my speed exactly, staying just far enough away that I couldn’t see what the model was or how many people were inside but close enough that it could catch us within seconds.

  The color said that it could be one of the king’s old cars, which were under the control of Nasser’s government. After our conversation at headquarters, I was sure that Amer would have someone tailing us. But then it occurred to me that there were enough other red cars available these days that it could also have been a backup team from the Ikhwan making sure I was still heading in the right direction.

  The Enfield was tucked into my waistband, its trigger guard digging into my side. No matter how I shifted position, I could not get used to it.

  A motorcycle came out of nowhere, ripping the air with ferocious velocity and nearly taking off my side mirror. A family of four was on board: a skinny father with a wife in a headscarf and two wide-eyed children, as well as a few sacks of belongings and a freshly slaughtered goat strapped to the back, spattering blood on the dusty road ahead of us.

  “How much do I love this country?” Raymond asked, leaning half his wiry body out the window to film them.

  “I don’t know, Raymond,” I shouted above the wind. “How much?”

  “Enough to break your neck, filming it.” Mona pulled at the back of his jacket, trying to get him to come back inside. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “You’re a lucky man, Ali.” Raymond settled back into his seat with a strangely sated expression.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “To be from here must be a gift. Everywhere you look, there’s a picture worth savoring. The past and the present are happening at the same time.”

  “It’s a blessing and a curse,” I murmured.

  “Doesn’t everyone feel that way about their country?” Mona asked.

  “What?” I glanced back over my shoulder at her.

  “That where they’re from is a blessing and a curse.”

  There was a sound of regret in her voice that made me look back again. But she had turned to look out her open window, her tied-back hair resisting the wind’s incitement to riot.

  I kept my hands on the wheel, fighting its tiny shifts and the buffeting of the wind as the blood trail dribbled out and the pressure of the revolver gave me the urge to urinate. I started thinking about where I might find a bathroom and almost missed the turnoff for Alexandria a half hour later, then proceeded to get us lost in the back streets of that old coastal city that you were named after, my grandson, the red car maintaining its distance behind us.

  I had been to the city countless times before, and had admired its feeling of nostalgic melancholy. Even as a Cairene, I had affection for its bone-white villas, its dusky Mediterranean beaches, its old world cafés where Cavafy wrote his odes to lost Greek glory. But it was different tonight. I could feel the excitement in the air before we even reached the city center, where the streets were jammed with mobs heading toward the Stock Exchange in Mansheya Square.

  It was like a scene from one of Mr. DeMille’s epics, set in modern times. There were not just thousands of people but literally tens of thousands. As we passed them, they were smiling and waving jubilantly, the exact opposite of what we’d encountered that terrible day the imam died in Cairo.

  There were beggars and bank clerks, seamstresses and secretaries, waiters and maids, the petite bourgeoisie and the fellaheen, women with babies and men on bicycles, frail elderly couples who’d been waiting for this night since they were teenagers, bureaucrats in their work suits loosening their ties and hollering like madmen, fishermen in turbans and greasy smocks holding bamboo poles aloft, middle-aged women with harvest moon faces swathed in hijabs trilling the zaghareet, girls in tulip-pink scarves giggling while thick-lipped boys in colonial school blazers chased after them, vendors giving away macadamia nuts and corncobs they’d been roasting on sidewalk grills, and hawkers handing out tiny golden flags on sticks instead of selling them.

  They were in such a joyful state of anticipation about Nasser’s speech declaring our independence that I almost didn’t notice the red car was no longer behind me. But I could not escape the feeling that hostile eyes were still on us. Even more worryingly, I couldn’t think of a way to get rid of the gun I was carrying without endangering myself or my father.

  As we crawled toward Mansheya Square, the crowds grew even thicker and more enthusiastic. Speaker cones hung from acacia and banyan trees along the malls, so people far away could hear as well. This was not just going to be an announcement of an evacuation agreement but a coronation, a public acknowledgment that Nasser had not only forced the last of our occupiers to leave, he had also vanquished his old ally Naguib. He was now officially El Rayyis, the Boss.

  I realized what the Ikhwan was attempting to accomplish here was like trying to swim against the tide in the Red Sea. The odds against success were overwhelming; anyone who raised a hand against Nasser, let alone a pistol, would be surrounded and torn to pieces.

  When we parked the car, I bent over to tie my shoe. Then I slipped the Enfield under the driver’s seat and got out to help the others with the gear.

  A stage had been set up on the roof of the Alexandria Stock Exchange, which stood on the border of the square. There was a giant golden eagle flag draped banner-style over the taller building directly behind it. Folding metal chairs for visiting dignitaries had been set up toward the back of the stage, and microphones for the state broadcasting system were arranged toward the front, so that people all around the country could hear the speech live on their radios.

  There was so much celebration around us that, for a few seconds, I managed to forget my creeping apprehension and need for a bathroom. The air smelled like sea breezes and cordite from actual fireworks being shot off. This was a night for the Egyptians, and no one else. People were shouting out expressions of thanks and joy, “Mutshakreen!” and “Ana mabsoot,” provoking laughter, nods of grudging acknowledgment, marveling headshakes, and sincere touches of hands to hearts. I wanted to join in, to be part of this feeling, but then I remembered that Osman would be coming up to me shortly and looking for the gun. A quake of fear went through me, as I thought about what would happen when he discovered it was not in my possession.

  Mona showed our letter from the Ministry of National Guidance to the guard at the main entrance, and General Amer was summoned on the radio to escort us to our camera position. With an out-of-body sensation, like I was watching myself in a film, I put the tripod over my shoulder and followed Raymond with the camera and Mona with the boom microphone. Three soldiers accompanied us to a roped-off area some twenty-five rows back from the stage, where four members of a local film crew were waiting to assist us with the setup.

  I spotted Osman, a dozen rows ahead of us, pacing back and forth restlessly while preliminary speeches were made on the stage just above him. Already, a half-dozen military police officers were around him in red berets. He was drawing too much attention to himself with his nervous energy. It did not help that he kept making his fussy, bad smell face and squinting over at me like I was a waiter who had forgotten his champagne order.

  I turned away and found Raymond having an argument with Amer.

  “But this is absurd, General.” Raymond pointed at the rope and the guards surrounding us. “You have us miles from the stage. There’s no room for us to lay track or dolly in for close-ups.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but for safety and purposes of national security you will not be having any close-ups,” Amer replied blandly. “And I’m not sure what ‘dolly in’ is, but you won’t be doing that either.”

  It dawned on me why the professor had wanted to make sure I was coming in with the camera crew. Like my cousin with his plan to blow up the set, he was thinking of the camera as a weapon in the modern arsenal and wanting his spectacle to be captured on film.

  “Mr. DeMille is not going to be happy about this,” Raymond warned.

  “Sir, you keep forgetting that Mr. DeMille is just a guest in our country.” Amer pointed a finger. “As are you.”

  “Honored guests.” Mona fluttered between them, a dove trying to make peace.

  “Yes.” Amer raised his chin. “And we treat our honored guests with courtesy and respect, but they do not make the rules.”

  I’d lost sight of Osman in the meantime, but his restlessness haunted me as much as the red car that had been following us. Soon the opening speeches wound up and Nasser joined several other officials taking seats in folding chairs on the stage.

  The crowd started to murmur and point while I tried to stay busy, helping the technicians unspool their cables and change the camera batteries. We were surrounded by miles of human acreage, ready to close in on us like the waters of the parted sea.

  One of the government ministers got up to make the introduction. It was drowned out as Nasser rose and threw his arms wide open as if to embrace everyone and everything. The crowd roared in one voice with a quarter of a million microtones. I watched Raymond pivot the Mitchell camera that I’d helped set up on its tripod, trying to take it all in. Now would have been the perfect time to have a crane shot rising above the crowds or, better yet, be in a helicopter looking down like Allah on the full epic of the gathered humanity. I was just an ant among ants. But Nasser was incandescent, posing under a globe light on a wire above his head, a true star, a hundred times more handsome and charismatic than he’d been in his office.

  It was more than a mirage. In his proud but humble bearing, he was unmistakably one of us. Not a scion from a royal family, or a French or an English politician, not even a pasha from a wealthy dynasty. He looked like what he was—the son of a postman, a child from a village like myself. But somehow he had transcended. He had risen above his station, on his own magic carpet. He had fought his way into military school; climbed up through the army ranks; done battle in the trenches like my cousin; and, most improbable of all, had led the coup that rid us of the monarchy once and for all. If he could accomplish all this before the age of forty, anything was possible.

  The crowd began to chant “Ya’ish Gamal, ya’ish Gamal!” Long live Gamal, long live Gamal.

  Nasser clenched his fists and held them aloft before the golden eagle. This was his picture-perfect moment, the freeze-frame before the credit roll, the instant just before the promise of freedom gives way to the sordid compromises and betrayals of governing. He became an even bigger man right before my eyes, his chest pumping up from all the hope and adulation he was receiving.

  But at the same time, I could hear the pockets of silence. I could see stray dissatisfied men standing here and there with their arms folded. Not necessarily members of our conspiracy—though there were certainly more of those in the crowd than I knew—but unbelievers who could not or would not be persuaded and won over so easily. I saw Raymond pan over briefly, filming them as well.

  “My countrymen, welcome,” Nasser began in his common man’s Arabic as the crowd settled down. “It is good to be here in Alexandria—”

  A new cheer went up with the mention of the city’s name. Why do people cheer for a place where they already are, Alex? To this day, I still don’t know.

  “It was in this same square, when I was a small boy, that I participated in my first demonstration—”