“You did?” I walked to a chair and sat down stiffly.

  I hoped she wouldn’t see how much I was limping. Or notice my broken sandals and the dirt on my feet. Or smell how infrequently I was allowed to wash.

  “Raymond doesn’t need my help.” She looked down at her watch, the Cartier piece incongruous with the rest of what she was wearing. “The American embassy is already starting to make some inquiries on his behalf, and…”

  I saw dampness in the corners of her eyes and dared to have hope. Where there is water, there can be life. Or maybe the stench of my body odor was getting to her. She took out a tissue.

  “What is it?” I asked. “You know you can always speak plainly to me.”

  “He’s not as likely to be put to death as you.” She blew her nose daintily.

  “Oh.” I scratched a flea bite on the back of my neck. “I see.”

  She looked down as if the business of folding and refolding her tissue into smaller and smaller squares was an all-consuming task, and more important than what she’d just said.

  My brave face began to fall. It was not, strictly speaking, new information. I had overheard other prisoners in the yard talk about the possibility of death sentences. But these were abstractions, shadows on the wall. Hearing the words from Mona’s lips made them as real as the hemp oval of a noose dangling just above my head.

  “You already knew that,” she said. “Didn’t you?”

  “Well…” My mouth was full of tar. “I had hoped there would be some consideration for the warnings I tried to give.…”

  “I hoped that too. I tried to tell them this is all a misunderstanding. You don’t hate the Americans. You love them—”

  “I admired some of them,” I said, embarrassed by my past sycophancy.

  “Oh, please. You mooned over Mr. DeMille like a schoolboy when he first got here.”

  “I wasn’t that obvious.” I held my head up. “Was I?”

  “Wouldn’t it be better to say that you were?” Her voice softened. “I tried to speak to him or Henry before they left Egypt, but you know, they were in such a rush.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  She cast a frightened glance at the door. “You know, there’s a rumor he was poisoned.”

  “Is there?”

  “The military police want to hush up the whole incident, so foreign investors don’t get unnerved. But I’ve heard that they found ground-up cherry pits in his teacup.” She leaned close, so I could feel her exhale onto my face. “They say each one has only a little bit of cyanide. But if you put a bunch in at once, it can cause someone to have a heart attack.”

  “Allah…”

  It was starting to make sense now. The fruit that came in the envelope when we were in hiding, my cousin spitting the pit into his palm, the professor working in the commissary tent. For all the clandestine coordination and feverish plotting with explosives, it all came down to dropping a handful of crushed pits into a teacup at just the right moment. And all I’d done with my running around and yelling was to create a useful diversion.

  “I am a fool,” I said flatly.

  “No, you’re not. It’s not your fault at all.”

  “Then whose fault is it?” I put my face in my hands. “Oh my God. Why didn’t I see what was really going on around me? I thought I was being so careful and smart—”

  “It’s not your fault.” She raised her voice. “Because it’s my fault.”

  Her gentle brown eyes alighted on my face and then, after a moment or two, turned away.

  “Mona, how could any of this be your fault?”

  “Because I was the one talking to them.”

  I turned my ear toward her, sure I could not have heard her correctly.

  “Talking to whom?”

  “You know.…”

  She stared down at her feet, which were shod in small red velvet slippers with a faded gold geometric pattern.

  “Mona, you’re not making any sense.”

  “Listen to what I’m telling you.” She put her head down and spoke in a rapid murmur as if she were praying in solitude. “I’ve been telling the government people what I thought you and the others were up to.”

  “That can’t be true.” I wagged my chin, refusing to accept the testimony my ears were providing. “Can it?”

  Her head stayed covered and bent, but she gave the tiniest of nods.

  My mind stopped functioning in a logical way. Instead, it went to the strangest place.

  I pictured myself walking along the banks of the Nile the day after my mother died. I was holding my father’s hand when we came upon a banyan tree full of birds. Only I couldn’t see the birds, because the branches and leaves were in the way; I could only hear them screaming. I remember looking up and thinking it was the tree itself crying out, as if nature had gone wild with grief.

  What Mona was telling me at that moment made no more sense than that shrieking tree.

  “They’ve been using me the whole time to spy on everyone,” she continued in a low and fervent voice. “I should have told you much sooner.”

  “Why?” I struggled to recover the wind that had been knocked out of me. “Why would you even agree to do such a thing?”

  “To keep my father out of prison.” Her thumb rubbed absently over the dial of the watch he had supposedly given her. “They’ve been holding that over me, ever since Naguib was in charge. I’ve been going to parties and public events for almost two years and reporting everything I see—”

  She kept talking for a while, but I could not follow what she was saying. Everything was muffled and blurred, like I was drowning in the Red Sea again.

  Her voice gradually faded back in. “Now that I’ve stopped cooperating, they’ve arrested my father to try to force me to keep spying for them. But I’m done with all that. I decided I had to stop talking after they arrested you.”

  “But this can’t be true.” I found myself getting very cold and still. “It doesn’t add up. Someone else must be the informant. You’re not even related to anyone in the Ikhwan.”

  “They may have had others. But I won’t use that as an excuse. I’m the one who’s responsible.”

  As I started to rewind the movie in my head, it all began to make a kind of terrible, inevitable sense. She was familiar with Sherif and the professor from our days at the university. She was aware that each of us were involved with the Brothers to some degree. She’d had ample opportunity to observe what we were doing in the operation. She’d been the one pointing Raymond’s camera when I was up on the platform with Sherif. She had seen me at the table buying the time pencils from the Englishman right before he was arrested. She had even been in attendance on the professor’s houseboat to see me with Osman and Mustafa before the alleged assassination attempt in Alexandria.

  “But why?” I asked, astonished. “Why would you do this to me?”

  “It wasn’t to hurt you. I was just trying to help my father. You can understand that, can’t you?”

  I pictured Nabil drunkenly warbling “Mona Lisa” in front of the rooftop orchestra. Then I remembered him whispering in my ear that she was a little bit out of my “league.” I had thought it was an insult. Now I realized it was a warning.

  “You would have done the same for your father,” she said. “Wouldn’t you?”

  A hot, prickling anger came over me. “So you were just using me as well? For the whole time I’ve known you?”

  “It wasn’t like that,” she started to say.

  “And why should I believe you?” I raised my voice. “Because now you’re not acting?”

  Sherif had been right about her. I didn’t know whether to be more disgusted with her or with myself for not seeing through the ruse.

  “It’s a shame that Cecil B. DeMille didn’t give you more time in front of the camera,” I said through front teeth that were chipped from the beatings I had taken. “Because you’re a better actress than I gave you credit for.”

  “That’s unworthy of you, Ali,” she replied in a small wounded voice.

  “You’re in no position to tell me what’s worthy and what isn’t,” I shouted. “I’m the one who’s bound for the gallows. Or did you conveniently forget that?”

  “No. I didn’t forget.”

  A cough outside the door reminded me the guards were still out there and ready to come in. I took a breath, trying to collect myself. She was right about one thing, of course. I would have done the same thing if it had meant keeping my own father out of prison.

  “Please, I need to try to make this right.” She reached for my hand.

  “How?” I drew it away. “Are you going to try to climb into Nasser’s bed?”

  “That’s not very nice.”

  “Neither is being an informant,” I said.

  She began fussing with the scarf’s knot under her chin. “I’m going to try to raise money to get a lawyer for you.”

  “Don’t bother.” I sniffed. “My father is trying to do that. But most of the attorneys are afraid to get on Nasser’s bad side.”

  “Then I’ll go to America and try to speak to Cecil B. DeMille.”

  “That’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve said yet.”

  “Why?”

  I gestured haplessly at the locked door, the bars on the windows, and the warden’s stolen citations on the wall, trying to convey how futile the situation was.

  “Mr. DeMille has been deathly ill,” I reminded her. “Even if he recovers, I very much doubt that he would agree to see you. Especially not on my behalf.”

  “Néanmoins, I’ll make him see me,” she said with a touch of Gallic arrogance. “I’ll sit outside his office until he comes out. I’ll make him understand.”

  “I’m sure he has a long line of other failed actresses waiting.”

  “I know I deserve that.” She nodded with a heavy sigh. “But I’m not giving up. This is my cause now.”

  “Oh, that’s what I am to you? ‘A cause’?” I shoved back from her, my chair legs making a grunting sound. “No thank you, Mona. I don’t need anyone feeling sorry for me.”

  “I’m not doing it because I feel sorry for you.” Her jaw became firm. “I’m doing it because I want to.”

  “Why? I’ve already served my purpose. Haven’t I?”

  “That’s not how it was. I didn’t mean for you to get hurt.”

  “That sounds like a line from a movie I took you to. Was it Laila Mourad or Bette Davis who said it originally?”

  I was still trying to wound her, because that’s all I could do. If I was going to die soon with no other way to leave my mark on the world, I might as well be someone’s bad memory.

  “I’m going to make it up to you,” she insisted.

  “Oh please.” I sneered. “You want to light your candles and get your absolution, like you’re still the good-hearted girl in your Christian school. Leave me alone, Mona. I’m not the one to give you absolution.”

  “That’s not what I came for.”

  “Then why did you come?”

  My sneer hurt me. My top lip was so dry and cracked from dehydration that it began to bleed a little.

  “I told you. I came because I wanted to see you.”

  She reached out and wiped tenderly at the trickle.

  “I don’t believe you.” I shook my head. “I’m a dead man and we both know it.”

  “Don’t say that. They can’t hang everyone. I’m going to fight for your life.”

  “Good luck—Even if they spare me, I’ll be in prison for most of it.”

  “Then I’ll wait for you.”

  “Please, Mona.” I sucked my cut lip. “That’s just your guilt talking. It won’t last.”

  “No.” She put a soft hand over my mouth. “I’ve felt this way all along. Ever since you showed me Children of Paradise and it ended up just the two of us alone in the dark.”

  This time I did not pull away. The comfort of her touch, the perfumed smell of her skin, the faint pulse under her palm. My body shuddered with the promise of joy, even as my mind told me this was all just another illusion.

  “Come on.” I tilted my head back. “I never had enough money for you, and we both know it.”

  The Cartier watch was still on her wrist, inches from my eyes.

  “That’s what I thought as well.” She touched the clasp self-consciously. “But now I know better.”

  “Wouldn’t you rather wait for Raymond?” I asked.

  “You’re not serious, are you?” She looked at me sideways. “That was just a passing fancy.”

  I squinted. “You’re actually saying you would wait for me to get out of prison?”

  “Yes.”

  I ached inside, wanting to believe her.

  “It could be years before I get out,” I said, testing her. “Many years.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “How could it not matter? You’re a young woman.”

  “I’ve told you, I always wanted to devote myself to something. With all my heart. I used to think I could be a nun. Then that I could be an actress. Now I know I want to devote myself to you.”

  I tried to remember that I’d believed in mirages and performances before and had wound up in chains.

  “It’s not rational, what you’re saying.” My tongue touched the spot of drying blood on my lip. “Your entire life is ahead of you.”

  She might not have been Yvonne De Carlo, but there were still many in Cairo who would have gladly married her. Army officers, businessmen, even foreign diplomats who could have taken her far away from Egypt on their next assignment and given her a life of leisure in another land.

  I asked, “What about money? What about your social standing?”

  “I used to think I cared about those things.” She undid the unclasp of her timepiece. “I don’t anymore.” She held the watch out to me. “Here. Take this. Maybe you can use it to gain favor with the warden and the guards.”

  “No, it’ll just get taken from me.” I shook my head. “Is this what you really want?”

  “More than I’ve ever wanted anything,” she said.

  I closed one eye, like I was about to look through a microscope. “But is it what I really want?”

  “It’s up to you, Ali. I’m here only for you.”

  She spoke so quietly and so modestly that I thought I might have misheard her. I hunched forward in my chair and opened both eyes, trying to make sure that she was speaking in earnest and no longer acting. The better part of my life passed in the two seconds before her eyes stared straight back into mine.

  I remembered something else about that day I’d walked along the Nile with my father. There had been a great fluttering among the branches of the banyan, and then the birds all flew out at once. I think they might have been swallows, which in the olden times were supposed to represent the souls of the dead. They had massed over the river at sunset and then slowly spread out like an unwinding thread against the darkening sky.

  And as they did, I remembered my mother and my sisters, and my spirit lifted just a little. I recalled wanting to ask my father how life could be so beautiful and cruel at the same time, but I did not have the words.

  Finally I did have the words, but what good could they do? The woman I loved was saying she longed for me. Yet I was in a cage and she was one of those who’d helped put me there.

  The door opened and the warden appeared in the doorway, apparently having heard more than enough.

  “Your time is done,” he said. “Stand up and put your hands behind your back. You have to be handcuffed again.”

  I did as he asked while Mona looked up at me.

  “I’d like to come see you again before I go to California.” She held up the watch on her wrist. “I’m going to sell this piece to get some of the money for the ticket. I told my mother she has to give me the rest or I’ll never speak to her again. Is that all right?”

  “I’m your captive.” I managed to smile as the warden put the manacles on my wrists again.

  She kissed me right on the mouth. It was not a movie kiss, meant to be seen, not felt. It was the kind of kiss you never recover from. My legs started to go out from under me. I put my hand on her shoulder to steady myself and the warden cleared his throat.

  “Now I’m your captive,” Mona said.

  Then she walked out without giving him so much as a nod.

  25

  For days after that, I dared to have hope. There was a new lightness in my step. Whenever I saw the sergeant with that tattoo by his eye, I would whistle “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” and sing the words “Mr. Bluebird on my shoulder” to myself. The beatings ceased and my body began to heal. Along with some of the others who’d been arrested with me, I was designated a “political prisoner” and allowed to wear my own clothes again. Then I was given extra hours in the exercise yard, where I was permitted to see the sun and join the circle of my fellow inmates humming to themselves while walking counterclockwise around an empty chair.

  It was there that Professor Farid finally approached me, after weeks of ignoring me since our arrival at the Siggn.

  “You see that?” He thrust his fragile-looking chin at the vacant seat.

  “See what?”

  “It’s where Mahmoud Abdul Latif used to sit,” he said in a fierce whisper.

  “The one who shot at Nasser?” I raised an eyebrow.

  “Pretended to shoot at him. We know this was a hoax now. They gave him special favors by letting him sit in that chair, smoking cigarettes and reading newspapers, while the rest of us were walking in mindless circles around him. And now he’s gone. They came to his cell and took him away in the middle of the night. It’s all part of their plan.”

  The guards had taken the professor’s pince-nez, and without them he somehow looked both wizened and naïve, like an awkward teenager who’d found himself in the stiff-limbed body of an old man. He clung to a well-thumbed copy of George Eliot’s Mill on the Floss that had its cover falling off and pages tumbling out.

  “Which plan is this?” I asked.

  “It’s circles within circles,” the professor replied, barely moving his lips in the morning chill. “The actor has been moved to another stage.”