by James Frey
Instead he pulls a slim blade from his pack, sharp enough to cut glass, and slices a square in the case just big enough for the manuscript to fit through. He reaches in and takes hold of the book of his people.
He imagines it warming in his grip, as if it knows him, knows he will be its vehicle, the one to carry it home.
Very carefully, Hilal wraps the book in a soft, holy cloth he’s brought with him, then tucks the sacred package into his bag. He slings the pack over his shoulder and makes his way toward the front door. One pair of wire clippers, one swift snip of the trip wire is all it takes to disable the alarm on the entrance and push the door open—it’s not even locked from the inside.
Hilal knows it’s a little foolish, almost arrogant, perhaps, leaving like this, in full view of anyone who might be watching. But he’s laid claim to what rightfully belongs to his people; he doesn’t want to slither away like a snake. He is arrogant, or at least proud, and he chooses to stride through the front entrance, leaving as he came in, without fear or shame.
As he is pushing through the door, a guard catches sight of him, shouts for him to halt. Hilal could slip away—no doubt he is faster than this burly man armed only with an ancient walkie-talkie. Instead he does as he is told, and stops in place.
“What are you doing here?” the man barks angrily. “The museum is closed.”
Hilal offers the guard a peaceable smile, his grip on his backpack tightening imperceptibly. “Boring class field trip, you know?” he says in flawless Arabic. “I decided to take a nap on one of those fancy pharaoh beds you’ve got here, and when I woke up, the place was all dark. Spooky, right?”
The security guard peers suspiciously at him, but Hilal only blinks sleepily, affecting the apathy and ignorance of a schoolboy. The guard sees only what Hilal wants him to see: a bored teenager, delinquent in his studies, uninterested in anything but his music and his T-shirt collection.
The guard laughs. “Can’t say I blame you, kid. Done it myself, on occasion. But don’t let it happen again, you hear?”
“I have no plans of ever coming back,” Hilal says honestly.
“Can’t say I blame you for that either,” the guard says again, and shakes Hilal’s hand before sending him on his way.
That easily, the mission is accomplished: Hilal carries the priceless manuscript down the stairs, off the museum grounds, and into the Cairo night.
He’s in the mood to walk, and he gives in to temptation, strolling down the palm-lined street, inhaling the smells and sounds of city life, even at this hour, a teeming chaos he so rarely has a chance to experience. He walks down Meret Basha, thinking he will pick up some falafel for himself in Tahrir Square and then get a taxi to the airport.
This is his first mistake.
Hilal has spent his life in cloistered study. He knows innumerable languages of man and machine; he has memorized his own Bible and several others; with the machetes he carries in his pack, he could slice up a battalion of men without breaking a sweat. In so many ways, he is wise beyond his years. But when it comes to the rhythm of city life, he is a child, innocent and easily distracted, led astray by bright colors and the wild music of humanity en masse, a stranger in a very strange land.
He assumes the noise and vibrancy he sees around him are normal; he assumes the shouts and cheers he hears in the distance are simply the heartbeat of Cairo, the everyday thunder and lightning of urban life.
It’s only when he approaches the square, discovers the pulsing horde of protesters, waving flags, thrusting handmade posters in the air, chanting slogans, that he realizes what he’s stumbled into—and by the time he does, the amoeba-like crowd has absorbed him.
The poster-board signs allege government offenses, call for resignations; fists punch at the sky, voices call out for justice, for power, for freedom. The protesters are young and old, men and women, some in full hijab, some in modern gear, all of them vibrating with ecstatic rage. The square is lit with army spotlights, and men in uniform push through the mass of bodies, trying to restrain and subdue the protesters. Clouds of tear gas bloom over the crowd.
Hilal has to get out of here.
He can’t afford to tangle with the authorities, not with the precious, illicit cargo he carries. He threads through the crowd, aiming for the eastern edge of the square, trying to avoid contact or notice, and is almost through, when he sees her.
A girl about his age, in nearly identical uniform, except that her black T-shirt reads, in English, Live free or die. She is smiling radiantly—even as the soldier looms over her and slams his elbow into her face. Even as she staggers backward, blood spattering from her nose.
“Stop that!” Hilal shouts, before he thinks better of it.
The soldier is raising a nightstick overhead, is slamming it down toward the girl, but before he can hit her again, Hilal has plucked the weapon from the man’s hand, has wrapped it around his neck, squeezing just tight enough to cut off his airflow.
The soldier drops to the ground beside the girl, and a ripple runs through the crowd. Beneath the noise of protest, Hilal hears the drumbeat of boot steps making its way toward him. More soldiers, more trouble.
Exactly what he can’t afford.
He scoops up the girl, who weighs almost nothing in his strong arms.
There’s a whisper at his ear. “Bring her this way. Hurry!”
He turns, and two slim figures, one in a hoodie, the other in full veil, beckon. The boy in the hoodie rushes to the girl’s side, staunches her bloody nose. The veiled protester starts clearing a pathway through the crowd. Hilal is no fool, and knows better than to trust a stranger’s urgent entreaty. But as a clear corridor melts open before them, he decides his best course of action is to carry the girl’s limp body through. He’s more than capable of handling whatever lies in store for him on the other side, and he’s not about to leave the girl behind, easy prey for the soldiers or the angry crowd.
“Hurry,” the boy urges again, and Hilal follows them through the protest, cradling the girl in his arms like a small child.
“I’ll take her now,” the boy says, as the protest fades away behind them and they emerge onto a quiet street. He holds out his arms, but Hilal shakes his head. He’s taken responsibility for this girl; he will let her go only when he’s certain she’s safe.
“I will see her safely home,” he tells the two strangers.
“Safe?” the girl snorts behind her veil. “What country are you living in? And you really think we’re going to tell you where we live?”
“Be nice, Dalila,” the boy says. “He helped us out back there. We can trust him.”
“He helped himself out with that soldier, then helped himself to Rabiah. Use your head, Akil. You want to trust him just because he’s pretty?”
“You seem to be assuming I want your trust,” Hilal says. “Or that I would be so foolish as to trust you. I simply want to see the girl to safety and be on my way.”
“What do you care about her?” Dalila asks gruffly.
“I care about the safety of all people,” Hilal says. “Hers happens to be the one I can most immediately safeguard.”
“Forget what country are you from; what planet are you from?” Dalila says, and Hilal doesn’t need to see her face to know her eyes are rolling.
“I don’t care if he’s from Jupiter,” Akil snaps. “I care about getting us off the streets and making sure Rabiah’s okay. You want to keep her safe?” he asks Hilal. “Then you follow us. Now.”
Hilal tells himself that a momentary delay is actually a good thing—it will be better to stay off the streets tonight, find his way across the border come morning, once the protests have died down and he can carefully navigate their aftermath. Tonight there will be soldiers patrolling the streets and the borders; the nation will be on high alert, and Hilal can’t afford to be noticed.
Better, for the mission, to wait.
He’s not about to let himself be distracted, or allow these strangers or their caus
e to interfere with his own.
The girl, warm and stirring in his arms, is no one special; he will simply help her as he would help any living creature in pain or need, and then he will go home.
The strangers turn down one dark alley after another, carving an impossibly labyrinthine path through the Cairo night.
Hilal follows.
There are seven of them, all students at the university, all members of a liberal political group recently outlawed by the government. They use this place, a filthy apartment in a building on the edge of the slums, a building that looks abandoned and condemned, as their planning headquarters and safe house. It stinks of coriander and sweat.
Rabiah is their leader—and a prime instigator of the night’s protest. She lies now on a threadbare couch, a hot towel on her forehead, barking orders at the others; the night’s protest hasn’t yet ended, and already they’re making plans for another.
They’ve offered Hilal a bed—really, a spot on the floor and a thin blanket—for the night. In gratitude, Rabiah says, for helping the cause.
That’s how she phrases it. Not “helping me,” but “helping the cause.” As if they are the same.
“And what is your cause?” Hilal asks. He lets just enough of an accent slip into his voice to let them assume he is from elsewhere.
Conversation ceases, and they look at him like he’s a fool.
“Don’t you read the newspaper?” Akil asks. He doesn’t stray far from Rabiah’s side, and from the way he looks at her, brushes against her every chance he gets, Hilal can tell the boy is in love. From the way Rabiah looks at him—or, rather, looks through him—Hilal can tell she has no idea. And perhaps wouldn’t care if she did.
“Don’t you live?” Rabiah asks. “Don’t you breathe?”
Hilal lives and breathes in cloistered isolation: even his missionary time has been intensely focused on the local, not the global. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of the ancient world, the strengths and frailties of the human body, the detailed myths and traditions of divinity across the globe, and those international events that might signify Endgame-related action: conflict between the bloodlines or a message from the stars. His knowledge of petty national politics is somewhat . . . lacking.
“Today is the anniversary of the revolution,” Dalila explains. She has removed her veil, revealing a soft, rounded face and large, friendly brown eyes that belie the edge in her voice. “One year passes, and another, and nothing changes.”
“Nothing will ever change, unless enough of us raise our voices to insist on it,” Rabiah says. She’s lying down, an ugly purple bruise blooming across her face, yet somehow she still radiates strength.
The others join in, spilling out their grudges against the government, their dreams of a new Egypt, a true democracy governed by rule of law. An end to oppression, an end to corruption, Rabiah tells him, eyes blazing. Freedom of speech. Fair wages. Antidiscrimination laws.
“Equality for women,” Dalila says.
“Equality for everyone,” adds Farid, a boy with a sharp gaze and a neatly trimmed beard. He slips an arm around the waist of the young man next to him, and they smile at each other.
“And you believe you can accomplish all these things with a night of protests?” Hilal asks. He realizes he has little grasp of politics, but this seems far-fetched.
“One night?” Rabiah laughs. “This is only the beginning, my naïve friend. This isn’t a night; this is a movement. And we will move mountains.”
“It sounds like a noble effort,” Hilal says. “I wish you good fortune.”
“It’s not about luck,” Rabiah says. “It’s about hard work. So how about it?”
“Excuse me?”
“How about joining us?” she says. “You know how to fight, that’s obvious, and you’re no coward. You’re well-spoken, you’re attractive—”
Dalila coughs. “Understatement of the year.”
The others laugh, but not Rabiah. “Exactly. You’re ridiculously handsome, Hilal, and people are shallow. They respond to that. We could use you. We’re having a rally tomorrow afternoon outside the university; you could—”
“No, thank you.” Hilal tucks his bag into his chest, reassuring himself that the manuscript is still safe inside. He has to get the book back to Ethiopia, back to Eben. Right now, that can be his only priority. “I wish you luck with your fight, but I must return home to mine.”
“You have something more important to do than change the world?”
“I prefer to effect change without fighting,” Hilal says.
“No such thing.”
“I disagree.” Hilal is polite but firm. There is obfuscation here, because of course he is a fighter; he trains and prepares for the ultimate fight. But that is a higher battle, a battle for humanity rather than amongst it. He believes in the spirit of what he’s saying—it is the spirit that has animated his life of service. “Choosing sides, waging a battle, these can be distractions. Who is helped, today, by your shaking fists and shouted slogans? While you demand justice for the poor, who will feed and clothe them?”
Rabiah snorts. “Ah . . . you’re one of those.”
“Give him a break,” Akil urges her.
“No, I won’t give him a break. He’s everything that’s wrong with this world.” Rabiah looks Hilal up and down. “Let me guess, you’re some kind of religious do-gooder.”
“I do attempt to do good,” Hilal allows.
“Missionary?” she guesses. “Think you can bring the Lord to a bunch of heathens?”
“I don’t think in categories like that,” Hilal protests. “I share the ancient truth, as I see it, yes. And I also share food and clothing and medicine. I help people.”
“You help yourself feel better,” Rabiah says. “That’s it. If you really wanted to help people, you’d change the system that deprives them of food and clothing and medicine. You’d take a stand, fight for something. Instead of feeding the poor, you’d work to end hunger.”
“You make complicated things sound simple,” Hilal says, “but that doesn’t make them so.”
“Okay, then you tell me,” Rabiah challenges him. “All those people you’ve supposedly helped, are they any better off now than they were before? You gave them a few meals, some medicine, but structurally? Politically? Is anything different? Did you change anything, or just say a few prayers and go on your way?”
Hilal doesn’t want to argue with her anymore.
Hilal can’t argue with her.
This girl is infuriating, but he respects her passion and admires her certainty. He feels a kinship with her, senses that, beneath the surface, they are more similar than she knows, both committed to saving their people, to creating a new world. He almost envies her, despite the apparent futility of her fight, because her battle is now. We must spend each day saving the world, Eben always says, but he also says, You must save yourself for the final battle, and these two directives are, for Hilal, increasingly difficult to reconcile.
Sometimes he tires of waiting.
“You’re hearing me, aren’t you?” Rabiah says, with the smile of someone who knows exactly how good she is at making people listen. “I’m getting through.”
“Thank you for your hospitality,” he tells her. She will think he’s afraid to listen to any more of her talk, that he doubts his commitment to his own argument. Perhaps she will be right. “I must sleep now, in preparation for my journey. As I say, I wish you good fortune in your endeavors.”
Despite her goading, he will say no more, and finally Rabiah gives up. Akil shows him a back room where he can stretch out and get some sleep. He uses his bag as a pillow.
“Don’t mind her,” Akil says. “She’s on fire with this stuff. She can’t see anything but the cause. She can’t see that other people might . . . care about more than just one thing. That sometimes people are as important as systems.” He frowns, casting his gaze into the distance, as if watching something approach that gives him great sorrow. “Some
times I don’t think she understands people at all.”
“She sees the bigger picture,” Hilal says. “Sometimes that’s necessary.”
Akil leaves him to sleep, but when Hilal closes his eyes, sleep won’t come. He thinks about his own bigger picture, about Endgame and the Makers and the oath sworn by generations of Aksumites before him, that they will defend the ancient truth and protect their line at all costs.
He thinks about the village he’s left behind, and the people there he was unable to help. How, even had he offered them a cure for their plague, it would not have rescued them from poverty; it would not have changed their system, or their futures. He thinks about how he has recused himself from intervening in the petty human squabbles of politics and governance, and that perhaps Rabiah is right, that this is naïve.
That this is wrong.
He listens to the soft murmur of voices from just beyond the door, these powerless students plotting to take on a nation—not sitting around, waiting for the war to come to them, waiting for their destiny to arrive at their doorstep, but making their own moment in history. Choosing now.
Hilal serves a higher cause, he reminds himself, and should be grateful for that.
But this night, in this restless darkness, he envies Rabiah and her friends and their hopeless fight.
He’s almost sorry that, come the dawn, he will have to leave.
When the screaming begins, Hilal thinks he’s dreaming it.
His dreams these days are full of horrors, screaming and gunfire and flames.
But this is no dream. This is the safe house filled with danger, soldiers knocking down doorways and guns drawn and these fierce protesters cowering in closets and beneath furniture. These are fighters with no idea how to fight.