Cover design by Robin Bilardello
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Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
FRIENDLY FIRE. Copyright © 2004, 2008, 2009 by Alaa Al Aswany. English translation copyright © 2009 by Humphrey Davies. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Digital Edition August 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-195945-5
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* Mustafa Kamil (1874–1908) was an Egyptian nationalist leader.
* Zaqaziq is a city in the Nile Delta, the capital of Sharqiya Governorate.
* Sabri Ragheb (1920–2000) and Hussein Bikar (1912–2002) were both well-known Egyptian painters.
* In Ramadan, Muslims are required to start fasting from the time just before dawn when a white thread can be distinguished from a black thread. The words reference the Qur’an 2:187.
* Bein el-Sarayat is the name of a street and district in Giza, near Cairo University.
* Sika is a mode in Arabic music beginning on E half flat and having B half flat.
* Tirsana is a soccer club in the lower echelons of the Egyptian soccer league; Abdel Latif el-Tilbany was a singer with a small following.
* Al-Ahram is Egypt’s leading daily newspaper.
* Ahli is Egypt’s leading soccer club, with a massive popular following.
* Muslims are excused from the fast in Ramadan in cases of travel or illness; in addition, Muslim women are excused while pregnant, nursing, or menstruating. As an off-color joke, the employee is insinuating that Isam is experiencing the last.
* Ali ibn Abi Talib was the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad; Aisha bint Abi Bakr was the second wife of the Prophet, after the death of his first wife Khadija.
* Muhammad Kurayim was governor of Alexandria at the time of the French invasion of Egypt in 1798. In resisting the French occupation, he was sentenced to death.
* Abu al-Tayyib Ahmad ibn Husayn al-Mutanabbi (915–965) is regarded as one of the greatest poets in the Arabic language.
* As-salamu alaykum (‘Peace be upon you’) is the approved Islamic greeting, to which any Muslim is expected to respond Wa-alaykum as-salam wa-rahmat Allahi wa-barakatuh (‘And upon you peace and the mercy of God and His blessings’).
* Port Said is located in the Suez Canal duty-free zone.
* This scripture is from the Qur’an 36:9.
* From 1948 to 1967, the Palestinian territories east of the armistice line with Israel and west of the River Jordan (the ‘West Bank’) were under Jordanian rule.
* Hattin was the site of Saladin’s victory over the Crusaders in 1187 that restored Jerusalem to Muslim rule. Khalid ibn al-Walid (592–642), also known as ‘the Sword of God,’ commander of the Muslim forces during their early conquests, remained undefeated in over a hundred battles.
* The riyal is the unit of currency in Saudi Arabia. Foreigners can only work in Saudi Arabia at the recognizance of a Saudi citizen, who retains their passport and controls their movements in and out of the country. Sponsors typically also take a percentage of the worker’s earnings.
* The Wafd was Egypt’s leading political party in the first half of the twentieth century. The party and its leader, Mustafa el-Nahhas (1879–1965), were banned from political activity following the 1952 Revolution, but the party was allowed to resume its activities in 1983.
* On February 4, 1942, British troops surrounded the royal palace in Cairo and forced King Farouk to accept a Wafd Party government led by Mustafa el-Nahhas.
* The House of the Nation, the symbolic home of the Wafd Party, was the house of the nationalist leader and founder of the party, Saad Zaghloul (1859–1927). It is now a museum.
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