Sergeant Achmed Eleish of the Cairo Police sat in a housecoat on his living-room sofa reading the Sunday paper. His wife Samira and he had just returned from Fajr, the morning prayers, at the mosque. Their two adult daughters, both teachers, had gone "for a quick shop," which meant Eleish would not see them again before the evening. Sunny but not too hot outside, Eleish decided it was shaping up to be a perfect lazy Sunday.
Aside from the homeless and the ultrarich, the rest of Cairo's eighteen million residents lived in apartments. The Eleishes were no exception. Leaving a smaller one-bedroom apartment, they had moved into their modem nineteenth-floor, two-bedroom apartment in the heart of Cairo two years earlier when, with the help of his daughters' savings, Eleish scraped together a down payment. Their home was Achmed Eleish's pride and joy. His castle. He often told his wife and daughters that if Allah smiled upon him, He would let Eleish live in the apartment until the day he died.
Still dressed in her black dress from the prayer service, Samira Eleish stood across from her husband, ironing his shirts for the week ahead. "What's new in Cairo, Achmed?" she asked.
The detective looked up from the newspaper. Again, he was struck by her warm large eyes and aristocratic face, which had aged so well in the thirty-two years since they wed. Even her gray hair seemed to complement her mature beauty. And unlike her husband, Samira had maintained the same slim figure her entire adult life.
Eleish shrugged and flapped the paper in his hands. "Corruption. Cost overruns. Minor scandal. In short, absolutely nothing is new in Cairo,"
"No news is the best news of all," Samira said as she hung a shirt and then reached for the next one in the pile.
"Hmmm." Eleish mumbled his agreement as he turned the page. The headline caught his eye immediately—"Publishing Mogul Re-defines Arab Newspapers." Below it, a picture of Hazzir Kabaal occupied a third of the page. Staring at Kabaal's smug smile and expensive Italian suit, Eleish felt his stomach knot. He wanted to flip the page and forget about Kabaal on his day off, but he couldn't peel his eyes from the article. It described how with his latest newspaper acquisition Kabaal had claimed a monopoly over the conservative print media in much of the Arab world. Suddenly Eleish's perfect day clouded over.
"Achmed?" Samira asked, recognizing the frown on her husband's face.
"Hazzir Kabaal" he said softly.
Samira shook her head slowly and sighed. "Let's not talk about him today."
Eleish held up the paper for his wife. "He's right here on page two," he said.
"What is he up to?" Samira asked calmly without taking her eyes off her ironing.
"He bought another newspaper." He flapped the paper in his hand. "Can you imagine, Miri? Soon, his will be the only opinion the man on the street reads. Then what?"
"People are not fools, Achmed." Samira stopped ironing. She fingered the pendant hanging from her necklace. "His kind may make the loudest noise, but he doesn't speak for the people."
"He will soon enough," Eleish grumbled.
Ever since he had been shot, Eleish harbored an interest in Kabaal that bordered on obsession. Eight years earlier, Eleish and other police officers had raided the home of a fundamentalist who was part of a plot to assassinate members of a visiting European Union delegation. Bursting through the apartment door, Eleish was blown back against the wall by a shotgun blast discharged from five feet in front of him. Only the Kevlar vest and his proximity to his would-be-killer — which prevented shrapnel from spraying into his head — saved his life. Two of his colleagues and all four of the terrorists were killed in the gunfight.
Several weeks later, when he could finally take a breath or a step without feeling like a chainsaw slashed at his chest, Eleish investigated. He discovered three of the four terrorists worked for newspapers owned by Kabaal. Eleish refused to accept it as coincidence. While he never connected Kabaal directly to the assassination plot, he discovered that Kabaal and his papers had links to several extreme Islamist elements, including Sheikh Hassan's Al-Futuh Mosque.
"Miri, he won't stop until he has shamed our religion in front of the whole world," Eleish sighed. "Or worse."
"I know, Achmed," Samira said patiently.
"There I go again, right?" Eleish chuckled with a flash of self-insight, but he couldn't help himself when it came to Kabaal. "He embodies the worst of these extremists and their so-called Muslim Brotherhood," he said.
Samira closed her eyes and nodded. Eleish knew she had heard the speech a hundred times before, but he had to get it off his chest.
