2

I STILL REMEMBER THE FIRST day. Two-and-a-half years ago it was: 3 March 2023, to be exact.

I was on leave, walking down Sharif Street in Downtown in search of a café to sit at. The street was crowded as usual. It was nearly 2 p.m.—Downtown rush hour.

Without warning, the National Bank collapsed and a huge mass of dust and debris rose up, concealing and choking everything around it. We’d subsequently learn that the bank had come down of its own accord and not from a rocket or artillery round.

Over the course of the next three hours, large numbers of warplanes would pass through the skies overhead, bombing selected targets: the Central Bank, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health, the Doctors’ Syndicate, the telephone exchange in Muqattam, the satellite dishes in Maadi, the Opera House in Zamalek, and army-owned buildings, factories, and warehouses the length and breadth of the republic—all of which we’d find out later. Communications were knocked out, and in the blink of an eye we were back at the beginning of the twentieth century. No internet, no mobiles, no landlines, and no television. Nothing but radio. Voice of the Arabs continued to broadcast its regular programming schedule, with soothing music taking the place of its hourly news bulletins.

After three hours of pinpoint bombardment, we heard the following report from the BBC:

The armed forces of the Republic of the Knights of Malta have inflicted severe defeats on the Egyptian armed forces, and the Arab Republic of Egypt is now under the control of the Fourth and Fifth Armies of the Knights of Malta. The Egyptian constitution is henceforth suspended and the constitution of the Republic of the Knights of Malta is promulgated in its place. Parliament, the Shura Council, the Military Council, the Egyptian Council of Motherhood and Childhood, the Egyptian Council of Civil Rights, the Egyptian Human Rights Council, and the Egyptian Council for Technical Support for Preventative Measures have all been dissolved, the Egyptian Constitutional Court abolished, proceedings at all Egyptian courts suspended, and the Egyptian General Intelligence Directorate absorbed into the Fourth Army of the Knights of Malta. The president of Egypt has stepped down, the current prime minister removed from his post, and the government disbanded. Finally, operations by all branches of the Egyptian armed forces have been halted.

At 9 p.m. that evening, we’d hear the name of Egypt’s new military ruler, Field Marshal Paul-Pierre Genevieve, and learn of his first decree: appointing Dr. Khalifa Sidqi prime minister and directing him to form the new government. The morning of the next day, 4 March 2023, all the papers would run more or less identical headlines, the most significant of which would be al-Ahram’s front-page lead: Dr. Sidqi tasked with forming new government amid reports of the abolition of Information Ministry.

In the week that followed, while the new prime minister set about selecting his ministers (so that the government can confront the dangers and difficulties that lie ahead for Egypt), some four hundred and fifty thousand soldiers and officers from the Knights of Malta’s twin armies entered Egypt, sailing up the two northern branches of the Nile to the towns of Damietta and Rashid, spreading out across the entire Delta region, and moving to occupy Suez and Port Said from the Suez Canal. Armored divisions established themselves in Damietta and Rashid, then in Mansura, Damanhur, Tanta, al-Mahalla al-Kubra, Ismailiya, Zaqaziq, Menuf, and finally Cairo. Just the Delta, though: not a single Maltese trooper moved south of the capital. The south was utterly ignored.

Occupation patrols started up in these cities and towns, their mission to maintain order following the disappearance of the police and the army’s defeat. It was said to be the most successful military operation in history, with the Egyptian army’s equipment and bases completely destroyed within a week of the Maltese forces’ deployment. Most soldiers and officers, without leadership, weapons, or communications equipment, went home, all hope of mounting a resistance gone. At week’s end, with Maltese units deployed throughout the Delta and in Cairo itself, the prime minister announced that:

Egypt abides by all international treaties and shall continue to subsidize comestibles and fuel, pay the salaries of government employees—including employees from the Ministry of Defense—and, in light of recent international developments, looks forward to a successful future with which it shall dazzle the world.

During this time, Egyptians offered their occupier no resistance, and when communications networks were brought back after a week offline, news spread that twenty civilians had been killed during the Maltese deployment—a very small number when weighed against other wars—while there was nothing at all about military losses, nor about the former government or president. Photographs and reports on the subject of the Knights of Malta’s two armies and Field Marshal Paul-Pierre Genevieve were everywhere. Very quickly, life returned to normal.

As proof of the Maltese Knights’ naval power, the swiftness and maneuverability of their boats and launches, and to underline their control of Nile traffic, five light battle cruisers moored in the river between the island of Zamalek and Cairo’s east bank. The boats were dwarfed by the massive buildings looming over the Corniche, but everyone knew what these dwarves were capable of.

I was living in Doqqi back then and working at the Qasr al-Nil police station in Garden City on the other side of the river—the east—and, like all the other policemen in East Cairo, I stopped going to work. West Cairo and its sprawling hinterland didn’t seem to be of the slightest concern to
the Knights.

For all that time, the word ‘occupation’ was never once glimpsed in the papers. It was never heard.

Very strange, that. I mean the journalists’ ready acceptance of the occupier and the fact that they put up no resistance. Everyone acted like the whole affair was forgotten and went on with their daily lives—cooperating with the Knights of Malta’s traffic patrols in the occupied cities and waiting obediently in queues for long minutes while their licenses were checked and ID documents perused—and then, two months in, the military ruler declared the Egyptian courts open for business once more. The news was met with great acclamation and was widely regarded as Maltese recognition of the splendor of the ever-splendid judiciary. The prosecutor’s office treated the Knights as it had once done the Egyptian police, as the authority that maintains order and brings cases to court, and as keepers of the peace, and the judiciary treated them in the same way. The Knights of Malta, it appeared, were considerably more competent than we were and, truth be told, the Interior Ministry’s performance had reached its lowest ebb some time before. People had stopped making complaints and had come to accept the thefts and kidnappings with equanimity—after a while, there was nothing left to steal or anyone worth snatching. Maybe that was why the Knights of Malta’s task proved so very easy.

Nine months of calm, and then Colonel Mohamed Ahmed Abdallah was appointed minister of the interior. Colonel Abdallah had formerly been deputy minister in charge of prisons. In his acceptance speech, having first taken the oath before Field Marshal Paul-Pierre Genevieve, he invited all former employees of the ministry to return to work, asking that they conduct themselves irreproachably and set the interests of the citizens above all others. A most moving speech.

At once, a media campaign got underway, demanding that the men of the Interior Ministry return to their posts in order to serve the homeland and its citizens. The press, yet to use the word ‘occupation,’ came out in support of the minister. Much was penned about the ‘majesty of the state,’ fallen into decline since the police had gone on strike, about our responsibility toward the country in which we lived, about lifting the burden from the shoulders of the Maltese armies, who were sacrificing much to safeguard security within Egypt’s borders when their real job was to secure them against foreign aggressors. There were calls for the next Police Day—25 January 2024—to be the date they went back to work, and the campaign was dubbed ‘The Police Return on Their Feast Day,’ but it never spread beyond the confines of the papers and television. There was no sign of support for their return on the streets—not the slightest interest in what was happening.

Sure enough, on 25 January 2024, Maltese troops handed control of police stations and security directorates, as well as the ministry building itself, back into the hands of the Interior Ministry.

I was at a crossroads, with two clear choices: return to work under the occupier or refuse to countenance the idea, as I had done all along. Up until then I’d been receiving my salary as usual, and of course giving up the job for good would have entailed a major dent in my finances, for in the normal course of events a police officer has no income save his salary and I myself truly had no other.

Things were still pretty much stable. Of course, Cairo was full of the checkpoints set up by the Knights. Their soldiers spoke Arabic like Tunisians, and English in many different dialects, and they and the inhabitants got by one way or another. As I saw it, we had sunk as low as it gets, content with a bunch of mercenaries as our occupiers and with no hope of getting rid of them. Just shy of half a million men from various countries, all of them now citizens of the Republic of the Knights of Malta, and we, all pride set aside, were welcoming them as guests into our country.

This republic had no territory to its name. What history it possessed went back to the remnants of that crusading order which had taken control of Malta and then been expelled, leaving it in limbo until it adopted Rome as its headquarters. A state without citizens, just twenty thousand affiliates and four hundred thousand members. . . . And then, just prior to March 2023, the whole lot, members and affiliates alike, became citizens of the Republic of the Knights of Malta: the bureaucrats, officers, and soldiers of many nations now a mighty and many-branched fighting force.

Their leadership determined that Egypt was a land where they could all settle down, and so they set out, sailing from points all over the globe to battleships and aircraft carriers moored off the Egyptian coast. It could be that the nations of the world had encouraged them to do so, to bring an end to the hollow bluster and stupidity with which Egypt had long conducted its international relations. The republic was a state without a political or administrative system, just two vast, highly trained armies drawn from a range of ethnicities and nationalities. Land pirates, to use a choicer term, and landless, so patriotism never featured in their thoughts: they’d chosen to leave their countries behind them and settle here.

I gave a lot of thought to what had happened and was convinced that they had known we wouldn’t resist. And, of course, that they’d be able to beat the Egyptian army outright. That accomplished, the rest was just a jaunt through a fertile land, green and populous.

I refused to work. Something beyond all understanding was taking place around me. A serene madness afflicted Egyptians, allowing them to accept everything which had happened in recent months, and the same madness claimed the police. I’d do anything, I decided, but I’d never work for the occupier. Even as the majority of my former colleagues were going back to their posts, and stations, and salaries, dissenters such as myself were almost too few to mention. Maybe no more than a thousand officers. I was in about as bad a state as could be when a Maltese armored car was blown up on Ramses Street. An hour after the explosion, the Egyptian resistance announced that this was its first operation and would not be its last. I realized then that I was not alone.

The pace picked up thereafter. The resistance carried out assassinations of occupation soldiers, blew up their armored cars and tanks, mortared their bases, and launched missiles at their jets. In the space of a week, more than one hundred Maltese officers and soldiers lay dead, and at the end of it I received a call from an old colleague asking to meet up. The request was friendly, and down the line his voice seemed devoid of enthusiasm or excitement. Sitting at the café surrounded by people, Major Karim Bahaa al-Din asked me to join the resistance. Just like that, simple as could be, and I wasted no time making my delight clear and accepting his offer. What Bahaa then said was truly gratifying: the resistance was made up of former police officers plus a very small number of former army men, who were not kept fully informed and were regarded as second-class members, entrusted only with suicide missions or high-risk operations. There was, in addition, an even smaller number of civilians, prompted by patriotic fervor to carry out foolish but nonetheless effective acts with the aim of ending the occupation. They spied or passed on information, that was all. They didn’t know the police officers, the names of the leaders, or the meeting places, and they weren’t armed, though any one of them who wanted to volunteer was handed a blade and let loose on the enemy. Set up like this, the Egyptian resistance was our paradise: a perfect instance of the Egyptian police service’s acumen, its members’ devotion to the service of their homeland, and their wary reluctance to bring outsiders into their circle, even if they were true patriots and loathed the occupation, as many regular citizens surely did. We all knew the reasons—the uncountably many reasons—why we alone should occupy the most important positions inside the resistance. For instance, civilians are essentially weak, they prefer their little families and trifling pleasures, and they aren’t trained to use weapons, to work in groups, or to take responsibility. Even when they are—like army officers, for example—they inevitably lack the ability to think clearly in a tight spot. Karim said that the army guys had developed this limitless, suicidal bravery, its source their shameful defeat and a desire to compensate for their grave sin against the nation. They were in a continual and incurable state of torment, he said, and they were prepared to kill themselves in the cause of wounding a single occupation soldier. That seemed right and proper, and I reflected that by the time the occupation was over—and I’d no idea when that would be—we would have got rid of all of them. In the end, who wants the army to run the country again?

The resistance belonged to us, and to us alone: a huge organization run by the cream of the cops, whose first and only purpose was to expel the occupier. The fact is, I couldn’t have cared less about the army officers. They were finished the first day of the occupation, and they’d stay that way unless we said otherwise. What bothered me was the credulousness of the civilians in our ranks. From a colleague of mine, I learned that they were just throwing their lives away, and it was only when I saw that the overwhelming majority of Egyptians were living under occupation in perfect contentment that I felt sympathy for them—there are people who still care about this country, I told myself.

Following this first encounter, another colleague asked to meet me. A brigadier general this time. I didn’t recognize him and I hadn’t ever heard his name, and I even had my doubts about whether he was an officer at all, but my fears vanished when I saw him walking over to where I sat in the restaurant in Heliopolis. He moved very slowly, as befits an officer whose mind is busy with thinking, not with throwing his body around. This was how a brigadier general walked, and this was how he sat, and no sooner was he sitting, in fact, than he told me his name and a little about the work he’d done with the Interior Ministry. Brigadier General Adel al-Shawarebi, a mid-ranking figure in the leadership of the resistance, who despite his poker face and dead eyes warmed up considerably after just five minutes of conversation, as though he’d been waiting to get comfortable with me just as I had been with him. We talked a lot about the state of the country and when I voiced my surprise at how long the occupation had lasted and the resistance’s almost total invisibility, he said that this was infinitely preferable to getting civilians involved: their abstention would only emphasize the role we played in military operations inside the cities. We were currently engaged in a guerrilla war, he said, and no one was better suited to that than us. I interrupted to tell him that my sole condition for signing up was that this structure be preserved unchanged: police officers at the center and army officers and civilians on the periphery and powerless. He laughed and said, “If only the civilians cared!” and that the leadership couldn’t involve them even if it really wanted to. The real problem was the army officers, which was why they were taking care to dispose of them through high-risk operations. This tactic would never change, and it seemed that the army officers themselves were well aware that this policy was being applied to them and to them alone, and that moreover they appeared to be perfectly satisfied with the arrangement. “In the end, we’re at war, and in any war there are casualties. Why shouldn’t those casualties come from the side that lost us the country in the first place?”

His words put me at my ease. Then he told me that they wanted me as a sniper. I mustn’t take too long making my mind up and I would begin work in short order.

I thought back to my time as a sniper with the Airport Police and Public Protection Authority. For ten years, I’d held that rifle, gazing out at the world through scopes for hours on end, and after a brief struggle had surrendered to the temptation to spy on people. And I’d shot four of them.

“We know you never miss,” said Colonel Adel.

And really, I never had. Even after leaving Public Protection and going to work for other branches of the service, such as homicide, I’d never missed. I’d practice out in the desert east of Cairo and from time to time go off to Sinai “to hunt gazelles.” I’d never aimed at the gazelles—I would zero in on the black rocks that covered the open ground. Hunting gazelles I regarded as beneath a man who’d hunted men; stones were more honorable by far. My companions on the first hunting expedition made fun of me, but they quickly realized I couldn’t be screwing up every time and that I must be deliberately leaving the gazelles be. Even in Sinai, I’d never fired wide.

I remembered the long vigils: the stillness that comes while waiting for a viable target to appear, reporting in that a target was available, waiting the few moments for the green light to be given, the stillness of the instant that followed, and the bullet vanishing into the target. I’d always had my breathing under control. Never had to puff and pant to pull in more oxygen. My throat never dried up. Adrenalin never surged through my veins. Aiming and firing as easily as running a hand through my hair. Glorious memories, for sure.

I agreed on the spot, and made it clear I was ready to go to work without any conditions or reservations. The only difficulty was that I didn’t own a weapon at present and the resistance would have to provide me with rifle and scope. He smiled and said that this was not a problem.

In the six months that followed, I killed many people, many more than I’d killed as an officer of the Interior Ministry. Previously, the people I’d shot had been attempting to force their way into the places I protected, or trying to assassinate or assault the people I guarded. Simple, clean operations with no complications. As a key operative in these missions, I had known exactly what was what: waiting for my orders in accordance with standard procedure, firing the bullet that kept the person I was protecting safe. Working for the resistance, everything was different.

The risk was far greater. I was exposed to enemy fire at all times, at risk of arrest and trial for murder, or for resisting the authorities, or for being in possession of an unlicensed firearm. Joining the resistance was patriotic, but it was against the law, and murder was a crime as it had always been. But it was necessary to get rid of the occupier.

I took up positions on rooftops all over the city, until I came to know the features of each roof and flight of stairs by heart. I used many versions of my beloved Dragunovs, from advanced Romanian models to perfect Chinese-made imitations, and for several days I worked with one particularly beautiful Russian variant. In the six months before I climbed the tower, my darling Dragunov was my constant companion.

For those six months, I killed officers and soldiers from the twin armies of occupation, and I killed those who collaborated with them: Egyptian policemen, former Egyptian army officers, government workers, and ministers.

I killed the minister of culture as he left an art exhibition in Garden City. I was set up in the building where the exhibition was being held and I watched him emerge, bid goodbye to the artists, and get into his car. I let the car move off down the street, then fired three shots, the first passing through his head, and the second and third penetrating the back seat and lodging in his body. I hit the minister of the environment with a shot to the head from a standing stance. The rifle was resting on a parked car in the street outside his residence. I fired the bullet, dropped the rifle, and calmly walked out of the street. No one gave me a second glance. The resistance was at its strongest back then, and no one dared look me in the face. I killed civilians, those who had regular dealings with the occupation soldiers: heads of companies and institutions that provided them with food and equipment. They had the wherewithal to provide protection for themselves and their families, and assassinating them had become all but impossible without a sniper’s rifle. I killed lots of them. I killed an officer after he had taken a first and last sip of coffee, and I killed the waiter who set the cup before him. The waiter remained frozen in place for several seconds after the bullet struck the officer; he must have known the next one was for him. I accidentally killed a civilian when I shot an officer and a round passed through his chest and hit the man in the thigh. I saw his thigh bleeding heavily, and I saw him crawling in an effort to escape, and I knew he would die from loss of blood. I killed the Egyptian wife of the commander of the Cairo Military Zone. I killed her as she stood there at a public gathering to receive guests’ good wishes for her honeymoon and a happy marriage. I shot her in the head from a building at a distance of less than twenty meters, and at first no one realized what had happened, so I went on firing and killed five people I didn’t know, then shot at random into the crowd. I killed a total of twenty individuals that day. I killed the former Egyptian chief of staff, the man who’d been responsible for the Egyptian army, the very army that had been wiped from the face of the earth in accordance with a precisely executed plan. Planes, tanks, armored cars, troop carriers, trucks—anything with an engine was destroyed on the first day while this fellow sat at his desk trying to get through to the Americans and failing. Pissing his military pants, no doubt, as reports came through of the army’s rapid collapse, and no one picking up. It had been 1967 all over again. A grim day. I was going to shoot him in the head as he walked his granddaughter to school but I shot out his liver instead, leaving his granddaughter bent over him, trying to stanch the bleeding with her hand. I fired on anyone who approached to try to assist them and I fired on the first ambulance to reach the scene a full hour later. The man was dead by then and his granddaughter had stopped crying and was now staring at his bloody body, the sticky softness of the gore beneath her fingernails lubricating the palm with which she rubbed his dead hand. For the duration of that hour, I was at risk of being discovered, killed even, at the very least of being arrested, but the former chief of staff deserved the torment of blood loss, of the heat leaving his limbs, and the sight of the fear in his granddaughter’s eyes, of the final spasm. I was tormenting the man and I was happy.

These were months of sprinting, climbing stairs, leaping away over rooftops, and of weighing up situations. Should I leave the rifle or carry it with me as I make my escape? Will the pedestrians notice me? Will an occupation soldier shoot at me? Do I really have to kill this one, or is it pointless? Is killing this one a punishment or a message?

In my power to kill people there was a measure of the divine.