“Nothing will be left to chance, sir.” Sherif waved back down at him.

  I waited until Sherif was distracted by other workers climbing up onto the platform with him before I turned back to the director.

  “Mr. DeMille, sir, I need to tell you something.”

  I knew that he would think I was insane if I told him he needed to shut down his set immediately. He looked at his watch as Henry Wilcoxon, who was dressed in a breastplate and kilt like one of the pharaoh’s soldiers, approached with Chico Day, who was armed with a clipboard.

  “Make it fast,” Mr. DeMille said. “We’re falling behind already.”

  My tongue lay flat. If I warned him, I would be sentencing my father and myself to certain death. If I failed to speak up, many more would die.

  “I think you should reconsider your schedule for today,” I said. “Something could go wrong.”

  “‘Something could go wrong’? Mr. Hassan, we have gathered ten thousand extras and fifteen thousand animals for today’s shooting. We can’t afford to have anything go wrong.”

  “I know that, sir. But you need to be careful. You heard what happened to Prime Minister Nasser in Alexandria the other night—”

  “Yes, yes.” He was already losing patience and turning away to consult with his aides. “I sent him a cable to congratulate him on surviving. Now I must look after our setups—”

  “Sir, there are rumors of sabotage,” I said more strenuously.

  “What is your source of information?” asked Henry, smoothing his skirt down over his bony English legs.

  I hesitated, seeing my cousin was no longer on the platform. “There’s been talk among the workmen,” I said.

  “Why on earth would anyone want to spoil our production?” Mr. DeMille demanded. “We’re not involved in politics. All we’re doing is making a movie.”

  It was far too much to explain in too little time. The imam, my cousin, the Ikhwan, Nasser and Naguib; once I started, I’d have to go through the whole history of Egypt to make him understand.

  “Mr. DeMille, we gotta go.” Chico waved his clipboard. “We’ve got less than ten hours to get this scene before it gets too hot to have all these extras out in the sun.”

  I started to say more, but a hand clamped on my shoulder. Sherif had come down off the platform to see what was going on.

  “Mr. DeMille,” he said, like they were old, dear friends. “I just wanted to wish you luck today. What do they say in English? ‘Break a leg,’ sir.”

  “That’s exactly what you’re not supposed to say.” Henry sniffed as a wardrobe assistant handed him a shiny headdress to put on.

  “It’s the thought that counts. Good luck yourself, fella.” Mr. DeMille headed toward his tent, then looked back at Sherif and me. “Hey, Chico,” he called out. “Try to get these two characters into proper costumes and makeup before we roll. They’ve got a good look for the scene.”

  19

  “What did you say to him?”

  Sherif waited until he had me back up on the platform, in our wardrobe costumes and sandals.

  “Nothing.” I went about collecting tools and tarps. “He just wanted to know what I thought of the film so far.”

  “All this time it took to give him your opinion?” He kept staring at me. “Did you give the plan away?”

  “No, of course not.”

  He followed me around as I grabbed a broom to sweep away the candy wrappers and cigarette butts as part of the final preparations.

  “I swear, Ali.” He seized the broom to stop me. “I’ll have you tied between two horses and torn in half if I find out you’re lying.”

  “I haven’t said anything. If I had, wouldn’t we both be under arrest by now?”

  He ignored me and looked at his pocket watch. In the last ten minutes, the military presence on the set had tripled. From our vertigo-inducing perch, we could see beyond the Avenue of Sphinxes to the berm where twenty or thirty air force officers were servicing and guarding the silver Spitfires that had been set up as wind machines for the Exodus. Several dozen more army officers and military policemen were roaming the areas just outside the fences on either side of the sphinx gauntlet, keeping a careful eye on the animals and villagers penned in within the frame lines.

  When I turned toward the rear of the set, I saw no fewer than forty extra cavalry officers arriving on horseback to talk to their colleagues wearing the costumes of the pharaoh’s army back by the corrals.

  “Sherif,” I said, “we’re surrounded by soldiers. Even if these explosions go off as you say they will, don’t you think we’ll be caught and arrested right away?”

  “Not a chance.” He picked up a stray screwdriver. “There are thousands waiting for our signal to attack general headquarters and take Nasser into custody.”

  “Yes, but if someone from the Brotherhood is talking already, they’ll name you and me. We’ll both go to prison forever.”

  “Insha’Allah, it won’t come to pass that way,” he said, turning his attention to the swarm below. “Many of these soldiers here today belong to the secret apparatus.”

  “I still don’t believe that.”

  “You’ll see. Once the explosions start to go off, they’ll use their rifles to shoot the legs out from under people trying to run away. One shot to the legs and then one shot to the head to finish them off. Like pigs in a pen.”

  “Oh my God.” I laced my hands on top of my head. “How can you even talk this way?”

  I was beginning to realize that terrorists, dictators, and Hollywood filmmakers were alike in not accepting the world as it really existed, but insisting that the terms be changed for them, that logic be bent to their purposes, and that life as everyone else knew it be broken down and remade according to their expectations.

  “You have to imagine it before it happens.” Sherif used the screwdriver to draw a picture in the air. “Allah gave the Messenger the idea to fight against all odds in the Battle of Badr. And then he gave him an impossible victory. Surely he can give us another against Nasser and Hollywood. If it wasn’t permissible, he would have found a way to stop us by now.”

  Down below, I heard voices getting louder. A group of American set dressers were on their way up the ladder to do “last looks” and make sure everything was as it should be before the outer scaffolding was rolled back.

  “I can’t be part of this.” I moved toward the ladder, wanting to find my way down. “I won’t go to Judgment Day with all this weighing on my heart.”

  “Ali, look down there.” Sherif pointed with the gleaming end of his screwdriver. “The third sphinx on the left. What do you see?”

  In the middle distance and the blowing sand, I could just barely discern a woman dressed like a Hebrew slave in a burlap sack dress and a headscarf. I was too far away to see her features or the tendrils of yellow hair that were probably poking out from beneath the scarf, but there was no mistaking the self-mocking way she posed for the photographers who were crowding around the crouching man-beasts, with a hand on her hip and head thrown back in a pantomime of sun-dazed rapture.

  “You know what I always thought?” Sherif smirked. “She could have never been an actress, even in Egyptian films. Her face is too broad and her ass is too fat.”

  “Shut up.”

  “I never could understand what you saw in her.” He flicked the screwdriver playfully past the end of my nose. “Dumb faithless cow. Look. They’ve already lost interest in her.…”

  One or two of the photographers had peeled away and begun moving toward another woman, who was walking down the Avenue of Sphinxes with Mr. DeMille. This one wore an eye-catching broad-brimmed floppy white hat; big sunglasses; a white blouse; a black skirt; and, judging from the marks in the sand, two-inch stiletto heels. Yet somehow she moved as if she were on a fashion runway. When she took off her hat and sunglasses, I could see it was the American actress Yvonne De Carlo, who was scheduled to appear as one of Moses’s wives in the film. Immediately, all the other photographers left Mona and ran over to her. She threw back her ebony hair and posed effortlessly, with cheekbones I could see from on high catching the sun perfectly.

  My eyes swung back and caught Mona crossing her arms awkwardly and looking around, trying to be gracious about another woman’s having taken the spotlight from her. A woman who was thinner, paler, more American, and, perhaps to Western eyes, more attractive.

  I think many of us have a moment in our lives when we realize that we will not ever be who we hoped to be. I think this was hers. She would never be a star, or even a minor actress like her mother. Her dream was fading, just as mine had faded a few weeks before. But she tried to smile bravely, as if it didn’t matter. Which caused me to realize that I was still very much in love with her.

  “She’s a whore and an infidel.” Sherif aimed the screwdriver between my eyes. “But nothing will happen to her if you do what you should.”

  “How can I believe that?” I pushed the tool from my face. “You’ve been lying to me all along. Haven’t you?”

  The mask had dropped. I realized that a part of him had always held me in contempt. I had failed to see it because I assumed he loved me as a cousin.

  He tucked the screwdriver into his pocket and handed me three of the time pencils I’d acquired from the Englishman.

  “Connect the rest of these,” he said. “Then you won’t have to worry about anyone coming up and slitting her throat.”

  He patted me on the back to send me on my way. As I descended the ladder, I passed the set dressers assigned by Mr. DeMille to double-check our work. By the time I reached the ground, I was having what people now call a panic attack. Reality whirled around me, like horses on a merry-go-round.

  I looked for Mona, but she’d already disappeared through the pack of photographers swarming Yvonne De Carlo.

  Instead I saw Mr. DeMille headed toward the director’s tent with Henry striding after him in his costume and headdress, so he could both act in the scene and position the extras as needed. I ran after him, thinking if I could show him the primers in my hand he would understand the danger. But a young baby-faced military police officer moved into my path, his substantial frame more than compensating for the lack of experience in his face.

  “It’s forbidden,” he said. “No one else is allowed in.”

  “Please, sir. It’s urgent.”

  I could only just see what was inside the tent. It was like the lodge of a Hollywood emperor transplanted to North Africa. An Ottoman carpet was laid over boards on the sand, Oriental tapestries hung from four sides, and a half-dozen deck chairs surrounded a linen-covered table, where an intricately detailed model of the entire set lay, complete with miniature versions of the sphinxes and hundreds of figurines enacting the scenario about to be staged. Mr. DeMille was smoking a pipe and moving a group of little chariots into place while assistants made notes in their well-thumbed copies of the shooting script.

  “I promise it will only take a few seconds,” I said.

  I was going to hand the director the primers and leave the rest up to God, but then I turned and saw two other policemen go by in a jeep and realized that one of them was my cousin’s friend Osman. Somehow I had assumed he’d been arrested in the crackdown.

  “It’s an emergency,” I pleaded, as a Sudanese waiter in a white jacket stepped past me and disappeared inside the tent with breakfast and tea service on a tray.

  “I warned you nicely.” The officer guarding the tent raised his rifle. “Go away before I smash your teeth in and arrest you.”

  I scuttled off, already tasting blood in my mouth. I pictured thousands of people fleeing the explosions, then getting shot in the legs and heads by Osman and the others. I ran toward the commissary tent, asking Allah to help me prevent this catastrophe. I would accept any sign what to do, any help from any source, without hesitation or question.

  The answer to my prayers came in the slouching form of Raymond Garfield as he came ambling out of the commissary in his fedora and sunglasses. He paused to try to light a French cigarette in the blazing sun. His match hand was so unsteady that he must have been hungover. How he could have hoped to handle a camera later, I don’t know.

  “I have to speak to you.” I ran up. “A terrible thing is happening.”

  He lowered his sunglasses and aimed his bloodshot eyes down his nose. “I know you fancy yourself a critic, Ali, but don’t you think you should keep your opinion of Mr. DeMille’s directing to yourself?”

  “I’m not joking, Raymond. There’s going to be another attack today. A lot of people could get hurt.”

  He dropped his cigarette and sighed. “Could you be more specific?”

  “There are explosives inside the scenery. You need to tell Mr. DeMille.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake…” He took off his sunglasses and tucked them in his breast pocket. “Do you have any proof?”

  I showed him one of the time pencils. “Do you know what this is?”

  He took it gingerly between his thumb and forefinger. “Where did you get this?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  As he studied it, he looked very different from the man he had been just moments before. “This is a number ten delay switch, made by the British.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “It’s not from the prop department, is it?” He inspected me as closely as he’d inspected the fuse.

  “So you do recognize it?” For some reason, it struck me as odd that he knew the exact name.

  “Yes, from the Army Signal Corps.”

  “But I thought you were in the United States Army—”

  “Oh for God’s sakes, Ali,” he cut me off irritably. “This is serious business.” His eyes were no longer sleepy. “Whoever you got this from isn’t kidding around.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.” I threw my hands up. “Now will you tell Mr. DeMille he needs to shut the set down?”

  He groaned and put his sunglasses back on.

  “Raymond, we need to hurry.…”

  Without another word, he began to walk briskly toward the director’s tent. I exhaled in relief. But then two military police officers came up alongside him and each took him by an arm. I realized they must have been watching us since I’d left Mr. DeMille’s tent. As they started to lead Raymond away, he let the time pencil slip from his fingers. But one of the officers stopped and plucked it from the sand.

  “La-a-a…” He wagged it in Raymond’s face and grinned. “No, no,” he said in English. “Naughty, naughty.”

  I watched in astonishment as they dragged him toward the back of the set, past the horses at their troughs and the costumers on their hands and knees before the pharaoh’s soldiers, fixing hemlines and tying sandal straps. How could Allah have permitted this? At the very moment that I’d been forced to put my trust in this outsider, he was getting taken into custody.

  I looked inside the commissary tent to see if there was anyone else I could ask for help. It was filled with extras whom I didn’t know. Real-life soldiers from the modern Egyptian cavalry were dressed like Henry, in the finery of ancient charioteers, while having scrambled eggs and ful mademas alongside several distinguished Egyptian theater actors I recognized who were dressed as Hebrew slaves.

  But then I saw a familiar face behind the smoke rising from the grill.

  Professor Farid was wearing the white cap and jacket of a line cook. He looked down when he saw me staring. I first tried to tell myself it was the pride of a learned man reduced to menial circumstances. But then through the smoke, I saw him take off his glasses and wipe his eyes as if signaling we should acknowledge each other.

  Someone came up behind me and put a hand on my shoulder. I spun around with a raised fist as Mona stepped back.

  “Easy, Ali,” she said. “I was just going to tell you that Mr. DeMille is about to call ‘Action.’ If we want to be in the scene, we have to go.”

  May 5, 2015

  To: GrandpaAli71@aol.com

  From: CecilBAbdul@protonmail.com

  Grandpa,

  Just a quick note to say that if it turns out that you’re telling me this whole story and the point is to run down Ibrahim Farid, I’m throwing the rest of this book away.

  We’ve been studying his work and that dude was a real deal visionary who laid the groundwork for a lot of what we believe in now. If you’re trying to discredit him to turn me around, I’m not buying in. And neither are my commanders.

  Just saying …

  By the way, I told the others that I didn’t want Shayma as a wife because I don’t like her looks. She’s been assigned instead to be a laundress for the fighters. Now every time I pass her, she keeps looking at me like she wants me to do something for her. But even though she’s learned a few words of English lately, I can’t understand her.

  Anyway, I’m more concerned to hear about those chest pains you mentioned a few weeks ago. Did Mom take you to see the doctor?

  Yours,

  Abu Suror

  20

  As we walked away from the tent, Mona casually looped her arm through mine, which she had never done before.

  “We have to get away from here.” I was in such a state that I hardly registered the fresh intimacy of the gesture. “Right now.”

  “What are you talking about?” She started to take my hand and then stopped. “They’re about to roll.”

  “It’s all going to blow up.” I sneaked a glance back at the gates.

  “What is?”

  Sherif was looking down on us from on high, a hand to his side where I knew he was still carrying the gun under his galabiya. He waved and pointed at Mona like he was going to make her a star.

  “Oh, so now he thinks he’s the great director?” she said.

  “Please listen to me.” I put my hands up close to her face. “Sherif is going to try to do something terrible—”

  “Miss Mona, can I get your help for a second?” Mr. Condon, the main unit publicist, was calling out to her. “Some of the press photographers need to be shown to their area so they don’t get in Mr. DeMille’s shot.”