“Did you see any movies?” asked Ari.
“Nope,” admitted Omar, “but I did catch a few great parties.”
“That so?” Ari spotted the Cairo Times English Edition in a pocket behind the front seat. He pulled it out and began to read the lead story.
After a minute, Beth asked, “What’s your take on Jordan, Ari?”
Ari didn’t answer. He was lost in the newspaper.
“Ari?”
“What?”
“You seem so … distracted. I just asked you a question.”
Ari pointed at the newpaper. “This story I’m reading. It’s so … I can’t believe it.”
“Oh yes, very sad,” agreed Omar. “An old story. It’s been all over the news.”
“What happened?” asked Beth.
Ari described the article. “Says here that this guy was driving in downtown Cairo. He gets stopped by a couple of cops. They take his cell phone and 163 Egyptian pounds.”
“How much is that?” she asked.
“Thirty-five dollars,” said Omar, “a little less.”
Ari continued. “So the next day the guy goes to the police station, fills out a complaint. The day after that the two cops come over to his apartment…” Ari stopped scanning the page. “… and throw him out the window.”
“What?” Beth was aghast. “How horrible.”
“For thirty-five dollars and a cell phone. The cops just got sentenced to two years in jail.”
“Two years? That’s it?” Beth looked at the newspaper.
“That’s the headline.” Ari pointed at it. “ONLY TWO YEARS.”
“Very sad, very sad,” said Omar, “but I wouldn’t take it at face value.”
“What? They didn’t kill him?” asked Ari.
“No, no, I’m not saying that he jumped out the window from depression. It’s just that in Egypt you get an ear for when the news is too simple and everything’s tied up in a nice little bow.” Omar made a dainty little knot in the air. “He might have been Muslim Brotherhood, he might have been involved in something shady, the cops could have been paid to kill him—”
“Paid?” asked Beth.
“Or someone who did kill him could be paying the cops to go to jail instead.”
“What?” That made no sense to Ari. “Cops volunteering to go to jail?”
“If someone confesses to a murder,” explained Omar, “there’s no trial, no investigation. If someone’s poor enough, you could pay them to confess in place of you.”
Beth was curious. “How much?”
“I’ve never done it, but…” Omar looked out the car window at some poor kids playing football barefoot in the street. “Maybe … ten thousand dollars for each year in prison, I’d imagine.”
Ari folded the paper back up gingerly as if it were unclean and slipped it back into the pouch behind the driver’s seat.
Chapter 42
“I was allowed to purchase Studio Giza from the government a few years ago,” Omar told Beth and Ari as they drove through the front gate of Omar’s facility. “The studio was built in the 1930s along the Hollywood model.”
Now comes the seduction process, thought Ari. It was all very familiar. Just like in LA, there was a front gate in the tall white walls and a guard who checked them in. They pulled up in Omar’s personalized studio chief parking space closest to the head office bungalow.
“Hundreds of movies have been made here,” continued Omar as they got out of his car. “We might not be on the same scale as a Paramount or a Universal, but we’re still very Hollywood. I ask you, what’s the difference between the Spanish Moorish LA style of architecture and the Arabic Egyptian style?”
“This place is cute,” said Beth.
She’s drinking the Kool-Aid, thought Ari as Omar led them through his campus of art deco buildings.
“We have about a dozen soundstages, a scene shop, lights, equipment, cameras, a mixing stage, everything you need to make a movie. The government has always understood that Egypt’s image was crucial to its economic development—see, we have a movie and three TV shows shooting right now.”
Omar laid it on thick. How the studio had been built by the government in the 1930s and the Egyptian film industry was created. He elaborated on the history of the studio, showing them through a dark soundstage where a film crew was shooting on a set. He took them outside onto the studio street lined with building façades of every style from Venetian to Wild West. Two more film crews were working at either end of the street.
“And you?” asked Ari. “What’s your interest in all this?”
“Me?” Omar stopped and put his hand on his heart. “I’m on a one-man crusade to modernize Egypt’s film industry.”
“Tell Ari how you want American productions…?” Beth prompted him.
“When American studios come to Egypt, they have a bad experience with inefficiency, corruption, delays, you name it, and they never come back.”
“I will,” said Ari.
“You are almost an Egyptian.” Omar patted him on the back. “You are the talk of the town. In fact, because of you the Supreme Military Council has forbidden the photography of the Sphinx from a helicopter.”
Beth’s face sharpened up. “What happened?”
Ari shrugged sheepishly. “We sandblasted a few tourists.”
She seemed to suffer a momentary migraine at the thought, but let the matter drop. “Omar, Ari thinks we should move half the shoot to Jordan.”
“Why? Because of these demonstrations?” Omar brushed aside the air with his hand. “Listen, there is a line the Army won’t let them cross, then … wham.” He clapped his hand with his fist. “This is all just a bunch of kids on the Internet who never felt an Army boot on their asses yet. It happens to every generation. It happened to mine. See this?” Omar stopped and lifted his hair. Behind his ear, he had an old scar. “Nineteen stitches from a police baton in the side of my head.”
Ari shivered, remembering how that fist hit him in the temple. Farah’s face spinning away from his own as he almost blacked out, almost lost his vision. He stepped away from Omar and Beth absentmindedly.
“Ari!” Beth called to him.
He turned around. “What?”
“You’re in the shot.” She pointed at a movie camera aimed back down the studio street at them.
Ari froze, embarrassed, mortified. He’d broken a take for the first time in his professional life. The movie’s director laughed and walked over to them.
“Take five!” the director said to the film crew. “Omar my brother.” He and Omar kissed.
Omar clowned around, making a big show for the crew. “Don’t stop the camera! Keep rolling! Do you know who this is?” Omar pointed at Ari. “The man who shot the Sphinx!”
The actors and everyone on the crew applauded Ari.
“Take a bow!” demanded Omar.
Ari winced and shook his head as he walked away.
“What’s wrong?” asked Beth as she followed him.
“He did that on purpose,” said Ari tersely. “Samir’s going to hit the roof when he finds out we’ve been here.”
“We have every right to get a tour of this facility,” she shot back. “And how’s he going to know?”
Ari stopped, turned to her, and said, “There are no secrets in Cairo.”
Chapter 43
Beth picked up the framed photograph of Samir’s wife, Leela, and his daughter, Yasmine, from the glass top of his desk. Samir was nervously fondling a cigarette as he watched his computer, waiting for it to ring.
“Your daughter?” asked Beth. “She’s beautiful. Oh, I miss my kids.” She sighed wistfully. Ari shifted in his seat. She had never mentioned them before, not to him.
“One thing quickly,” said Samir. “I did not get the latest wire transfer.”
“Oh?” said Beth a little too innocently.
Ari looked at her, trying to figure out if this was an accident on her part or some sort of deliberate maneuver. �
�The money didn’t hit the account, again,” he said.
“I’ll look into it,” she told Ari, then turned to Samir. “How are we doing on the budget?”
“I will have it finished by dawn at the latest.”
“I don’t need it that fast,” Beth told him. “You can do it tomorrow.”
“No, I need to think. There are too many people around when the sun is up,” said Samir. “Too much distraction.”
“Great,” said Beth, and then a tense silence settled into the room for a few moments. Each waited for the other to say something.
Finally Ari spoke. “We need eighty-five thousand dollars to start paying the crew or nothing is going to happen.”
Beth locked eyes with Ari and pointed at the computer screen. Just then the computer rang and Samir answered it. The group of producers popped up on the screen on set in New York.
“Hey, Ari,” said one of the producers. “What’s this I hear about the King of Jordan in tennis shoes?”
“King Abdullah?” Surprised, Samir turned to Ari.
“Prince, Prince Amir.” Ari corrected him. “I flew in for the day to scout, so I just had the clothes on my back, tennis shoes and a polo shirt.” Ari pointed at his own clothes. “When I got to his house I was embarrassed, so he changed into exactly the same thing I was wearing.”
“Why?” asked another producer.
“To make me feel welcome,” said Ari. “They had told him I was nervous about my clothes.”
The producers each marveled. “Wow … That’s manners … Considerate … Do you think he would buy Paramount?”
“While we’re waiting for Frank…” Ari got down to business. “The Jordanian military has a uniform price list for equipment. It’s very cheap. Humvees are three hundred dollars a day. Tanks are a thousand. Tanks come with a crew and a truck that drops it off and picks it up.”
“What kind of tank?” someone asked.
“An M1,” said Ari. “It’s all American. Everything’s American. The same stuff used in Iraq.”
“And the paint? Do we have to paint them to look American?” asked another producer.
“No, they do that. There’s a military paint shop. They paint everything except for aircraft. There’s a Black Hawk that—”
Frank walked over from a distant movie camera behind them.
“Hi, Frank!” said Beth with forced cheerfulness.
“Hi, buddy.” Frank spoke only to Ari. “What did I miss?”
“Hey, Frank, I was just talking about equipment in Jordan,” said Ari.
“Did you say Black Hawk?” asked Frank.
“Yes, there’s a Black Hawk that doesn’t have any markings on it. It belongs to an elite commando unit, so we don’t have to paint it.”
“How low can we fly?”
“No limit. We can fly it right down the main street in Amman, between the buildings.”
“I want that shot,” said Frank.
“You got it boss.”
“I saw the Sphinx shot.”
“And?”
“Good.” Frank nodded slightly. “Very.”
Frank and Ari smiled at each other, a tight, contained, knowing smile. There must have been a lot of talk about the cost among the producers, thought Ari.
Then they all chimed in. “It was amazing!… Great work!… Fantastic!… The studio wants to make it the poster!”
“Okay, okay.” Frank hated any unbridled compliments thatflew around a set and always quashed them. “I’m trying to finish up our last day here, so let’s get to it. Are we going to have a problem with these demonstrations? Ari?”
“Well, I haven’t seen anything that would stop us from shooting yet. The university seems to empty out whenever there’s a rally.”
Everyone laughed.
“And the airport, Samir?” Ari turned to him.
“It will never be affected,” said Samir. “It is well guarded and attached to the Air Force base where we flew to the Sphinx.”
“The museum?” asked Frank.
“There was a rally that completely surrounded it,” said Ari, “but that was announced well in advance.”
“Beth, should we be thinking about moving more of the shoot to Jordan?” asked Frank. “What’s your opinion?”
Everyone waited for her answer as she shifted the webcam to focus on her.
“Well, the insurance won’t cover an act of war,” said Beth. “Civil unrest, maybe. Samir, do you think the protests will get bigger?”
“The government will crush … I mean stop them,” said Samir.
“What does the other guy think?” asked Frank.
“Omar?” asked Beth. “He says the same as Samir. Plus we’ve already started spending money to prep Cairo. We shouldn’t throw that away.”
“Omar?” asked Samir.
“So we stick with Egypt?” asked Frank. There was a moment of silence for anyone to make an objection. “What do you guys think?” Frank prompted the producers.
“Yes … Yeah … It’s the right choice,” they all agreed.
“I do like the airport in Cairo,” Frank mused. “It’s scary. It’s also from the same period as Saddam International.”
“So we would have to bring the actress…?” asked Ari.
“What’s her name?” Frank turned to the producers.
“Afareen?” Samir dropped his cigarette. It rolled off the desk onto the floor. His hands patted his shirt pocket for another. He could find none.
“We’ll have to bring her from Israel,” said Ari.
Samir erupted. “No!”
Beth and Ari look at each other, and Ari said, “Samir, whoa…”
“An Israeli actress cannot work in Egypt!” Samir insisted, glaring at Frank on the computer screen.
“Why not?” Frank asked Samir simply, without emotion. “Is there a law against it?”
“It is not done. I’m telling you. It will not be allowed! Permissions will be taken away!” Samir’s rage flared up. He tried to control himself with great difficulty. “No actor will act opposite her. If they do, they will be thrown out of the Actors Guild.”
“Why? Because she’s Jewish?” probed Frank.
“No, because she’s Israeli,” insisted Samir.
“Ari, what do you think?”
“It’s probably true,” said Ari. “There’s some cultural thing that we don’t understand. They really fetishize the wars against Israel here.”
“You will lose Khaled Nahkti,” insisted Samir. “He will refuse to be in your movie.”
Frank became very calm. “Ari, go ask Khaled.”
“I will call his agent right now,” offered Samir.
“No,” said Frank. “I want you to go see him, Ari, look him in the eye and ask him. Got me?”
“Actually, I had dinner with Nahkti.” Ari turned to Samir. “He said he would do it.”
Samir stiffened, blushing a little, humiliated.
“When?”
“Who’s Khaled Nahkti?” asked one of the producers.
“He’s the Brad Pitt of Egypt,” said Ari.
Another producer spoke. “Omar said—”
Samir cut him off. “Who is Omar…? Who is Omar?”
No one answered the question. It was as if Samir no longer existed.
“Frank, the Jordanians will work with an Israeli,” said Ari. “We can just use the airport in Jordan—”
“I don’t like it.” Frank silenced Ari. “It’s wrong. It’s too small and new. I like Cairo International. And I’m not going to blacklist somebody because they’re Jewish or anything else.”
“I will call the Actors Guild right now to ask permission, and you will see the answer,” said Samir almost as a threat.
“No,” said Beth. “Don’t call anyone.”
The producers seemed to close ranks and cluster around Frank.
“Hey, Frank, they need you on set,” called out an assistant director in the distance.
“I’ve got to go back to camera,” said Fr
ank. “So we’re done?”
“Yes,” said Beth.
“Bye, buddy.” Frank waved to Ari. “Take care of yourself.”
Ari pushed a button and hung up the computer closing the screen for good measure.
“Samir, Samir, Samir…” Ari shook his head. “You can’t yell at the director.”
“He is wrong,” insisted Samir, reaching for the cigarette on the floor.
Ari wanted to say, the director is never wrong. My job is to make him feel like Superman. If he thinks the sky is pink or two plus two equals five, we have to figure out how to make it that way. Every time he talks to us he has to feel empowered, not distracted, not diminished. Ari didn’t say a thing.
Beth spoke before he could. “It doesn’t matter if he’s wrong. There are ways of telling him no. You just don’t do it to his face.”
“You ease him into it,” agreed Ari. “You should know that, Samir the Hammer.”
Samir lit the cigarette he had been toying with and took a long calming drag. “So you dined with the prince? You did not mention it.”
“I didn’t want to rub it in,“said Ari.
“Rub it in?”
“I thought I might make you feel…” Ari didn’t want to say the word inadequate. “I just thought it was bad manners to talk about.”
“No,” Samir took another drag and let the smoke drift out of his mouth. “In manners it was quite the opposite.”
Chapter 44
Ari took Beth to the café around the corner from Samir’s office where he had dined on his first night in Egypt. They both wanted to get the bad taste of the meeting out their mouths, and Ari thought he’d show off his local knowledge of Cairo cafés.
The waiter set down a small plate of hummus. Beth tore off a piece of bread, scooped some of the creamy paste, and wolfed it down. Suddenly her chewing slowed and she started to savor what was in her mouth.
Beth swallowed. “This is…”
“Yes?” said Ari, proud of his little magic trick.
“The garlic was just—”
“Crushed, exactly.” He picked up a piece of bread for himself.
“Crushed just now?” She pointed back toward the kitchen.
“The minute you ordered it.”
“Wow, it’s powerful.”
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