He had been a professor once and spoke like one now. He started his account not with the story of a man but with the struggle of a generation, a generation that had been raised to believe in secular isms—Nasserism, Baathism, Communism, Pan-Arabism, Arab Socialism—only to learn, in June 1967, that all the isms were merely a mask for Arab weakness and decay.
“You were the ones who unleashed the storm,” he said. “The Palestinians had their Catastrophe in forty-eight. For us, it was sixty-seven—six days in June that shook the Arab world to its core. We had been told by Nasser and the secularists that we were mighty. Then you Jews proved in a matter of hours that we were nothing. We went in search of answers. Our search led us home again. Back to Islam.”
“You were in the army in sixty-seven?”
He shook his head. “I’d done my army service already. I was at Cairo University in sixty-seven. Within weeks of the war ending, we organized an illegal Islamist cell there. I was one of its leaders until 1969, when I completed my doctorate in economics. Upon graduation, I had two choices: go to work as a bureaucrat in Pharaoh’s bureaucracy or take a job teaching in Pharaoh’s schools. I chose the latter and accepted a position at the University of Minya in Middle Egypt. Six months later Nasser was dead.”
“And everything changed,” said Gabriel.
“Almost overnight,” Ibrahim said in agreement. “Sadat encouraged us. He granted us freedom and money to organize. We grew our beards. We established youth organizations and charities to help the poor. We did paramilitary training at desert camps funded by the government and Sadat’s wealthy patrons. We lived our lives according to God’s law and we wanted God’s laws to be the laws of Egypt. Sadat promised us that he would institute sharia. He broke his promise, and then he compounded his sins by signing a peace treaty with the Devil, and for that he paid with his life.”
“You approved of Sadat’s assassination?”
“I fell to my knees and thanked God for striking him down.”
“And then the roundups began.”
“Almost immediately,” Ibrahim said. “The state feared that Sadat’s death was only the opening shot of an Islamic revolution that was about to sweep the country. They were wrong, of course, but that didn’t stop them from using the mailed fist against anyone whom they believed was part of the conspiracy or conspiracies to come.”
“They came for you at the university?”
He shook his head. “I left the university at sundown and went home to my apartment. When I arrived no one was there. I asked the neighbors if they had seen my wife and children. They told me they’d been taken into custody. I went to the police station, but they weren’t there, and the police said there was no record of their arrest. Then I went to the Minya headquarters of the SSI.” His voice trailed off, and he looked down at the file in front of him. “Do you know about the bridge over Jahannam, my friend? It is the bridge all Muslims must cross in order to reach Paradise.”
“Narrower than a spider web and sharper than a sword,” Gabriel said. “The good cross swiftly and are rewarded, but the wicked lose their footing and are plunged into the fires of Hell.”
Ibrahim looked up from the file, clearly impressed by Gabriel’s knowledge of Islam. “I’m one of the unfortunate few who’s actually seen the bridge over Jahannam,” he said. “I was made to walk it that night in October 1981 and I’m afraid I lost my footing.”
Gabriel removed Ibrahim’s handcuffs and told him to keep talking.
He was taken to a cell and beaten mercilessly for twelve hours. When the beatings finally ceased, he was brought to an interrogation room and placed before a senior SSI man, who ordered him to reveal everything he knew about planned Islamist terror operations in the Minya region. He answered the question truthfully—that he knew of no plans for any attacks—and was immediately returned to the cell, where he was beaten on and off for several days. Again he was brought before the senior officer and again he denied knowledge of future attacks. This time the SSI man led him to a different cell, where an adolescent girl, naked and unconscious, hung by her hands from a hook in the ceiling. She had been flogged and slashed to ribbons with a razor and her face was distorted by swelling and bleeding. It took Ibrahim a moment to realize that the young girl was his daughter, Jihan.
“They revived her with several buckets of cold water,” he said. “She looked at me and for a moment didn’t recognize me either. The senior man whipped her savagely for several minutes, then the others took her down from the hook and raped her in front of me. My daughter looked at me while she was being mauled by these animals. She pleaded with me to help her. ‘Please, Papa,’ she said. ‘Tell them what they want to know. Make them stop.’ But I couldn’t make them stop. I didn’t have anything to tell them.”
He began to shiver violently. “May I have my clothing now?”
“Keep talking, Ibrahim.”
He lapsed into a long silence. For a moment Gabriel feared he had lost him, but eventually, after another spasm of trembling, he began to speak again.
“They placed me in the cell next door, so that I was forced to endure the screams of my daughter all through that long night. When I was brought before the senior officer for a third time, I told him anything I could think of to ease her suffering. I gave him crumbs from my table, but then crumbs were all I had to give. I gave him the names of other Sword members. I gave him the addresses of apartments where we had met. I gave him the names of students at the university who I believed might be involved in radical activities. I told him what he wanted to hear, even though I knew I was condemning innocent friends and colleagues to the same suffering I had endured. He seemed satisfied with my confession. Even so, I was given one more beating that night. When it was over, I was tossed into a cell and left for dead. For the first time, I was not alone. There was another prisoner there.”
“You recognized him?” Gabriel asked.
“Eventually.”
“Who was it?”
“It was Sheikh Abdullah. He recited the words of the Prophet to me. ‘Rely on God. Don’t be defeated.’ He soothed my wounds and prayed over me for the next two days. I am alive because of him.”
“And your daughter?”
Ibrahim glanced at Gabriel’s wristwatch. “How much time do I have left before I am handed over to the Americans?”
Gabriel removed the watch and slipped it into his jacket pocket.
“May I have my clothing now?”
Gabriel leaned back in his chair and hammered twice on the double doors.