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number of their stars but their Mercedes, those generals who fought against Islamic terrorism by conscientiously rubbing their foreheads with sandpaper every night to imitate the abrasion of skin against the prayer rug until they got a callus from it and seemed more pious than their enemies, in Egypt everything is always excessive, I took down names addresses networks the traces of activists from Afghanistan or the Sudan, and the military men, each one fatter than the next, peppered their talk with in sha’ allah, allahu a’lam, la hawla , they who, with the same devotion, vigorously tortured and shot bearded men in the rear courtyards of overcrowded prisons along the Nile valley, I was indeed in Alexandria, twice I managed to go there by sea, in the summer, a ferry made the crossing from Cyprus, you could go from Beirut to Alexandria by changing boats in Larnaka which is not the most unpleasant of stopovers and, for someone carrying sensitive material as I was, was more practical than the Beirut airport swarming with Syrians, of course Marianne had stopped being there a long time before that the instant Ras et-Tin emerged from the morning fog, you felt as if you were seeing the city from behind, secretly, without any affectation, the way you surprise a naked woman at dawn in her bathroom, and the sea was so clear that, from the rail, you could count the jellyfish in the warm water: on every trip I pictured Marianne, the flash of her underwear in the freezing bedroom, the two seconds of silence facing her bare legs on the edge of the bed, which she had too quickly hidden under the sheets, outside the storm was raging, wind blew against the shutterless bay window, what were we doing in the same bed, she was probably complying with modernity, she saw in this sharing a pallet an innocence laced with danger whereas I, steeped in desire, saw only a magnificent opportunity, the rosé wine called Ruby of Egypt I had filled her with was still, along with the Ricardo, my Alexandrian madeleine: at a table with the soldiers or police officers who sipped Johnny Walker at lunch without removing their sunglasses I downed Ruby of Egypt and Omar Khayyam in big swigs happy at the memory of Marianne in front of their horrified gazes, as if the Prophet had authorized only British whisky, and I even knew someone close to the president of the Republic who stuffed himself with fried red mullet and washed it down with single malt, a symbol of status, of power, all the while telling me in detail the fate of such-and-such a person, dead under torture or in who knows what torments—why did I so rarely go to Cairo I don’t remember anymore, we were given assignments to meet in Alexandria or in Agami at the entry to the Libyan Desert, maybe because it was summer, in winter everything was different, the winter of 1998 something important was being negotiated in the capital, right against the Nile at the edge of Garden City with businessmen who looked like the Communist activists in novels by Tsirkas, boastful talkative men the kind who can put you to sleep as surely as this train at night, cautious but also pleasant, Salomé made into a snake, far from the seedy simplicity of the soldiers and cops, people who took off their tinted pince-nez so as the better to look you in the eyes, assess you, sound you out as the train rocks me, puts me to sleep as in Alexandria where I fell asleep shivering and counting Marianne’s unattainable breaths, now despite myself I count the vibrations of the train as it goes over the crossties, one by one, I become aware of my body on the seat, Egyptian, Lebanese, and Saudi businessmen all educated in the best British and American prep schools, discreetly elegant, far from the clichés of colorful, rowdy Levantines, they were neither fat nor dressed up as Bedouins, they spoke calmly of the security of their future investments, as they said, they spoke of our dealings, of the region they called “the area,” the Zone,