I met Mounir on a felucca (Nile sail boat) – a traditional setting for small celebrations, in this case the birthday of a common friend. He was tall, unusually poised and self-contained for a man in his early twenties, with the longish hair that in this culture signals rebelliousness. He studies philosophy at Cairo University, which is challenging, he said, since students are not allowed to question the existence of god. He taught himself English reading Plato and Kant and was articulate and ironic to the point of scathing. His eyes were very black and animated with something more righteous than anger. He reminded me of a falcon I once saw that had been trapped in the desert and brought to market in Cairo; the eyes of a caged god.
I learned that Mounir was applying for a scholarship at a Greek university and that he had a Greek girlfriend whom he had met in downtown Cairo while participating in a demonstration that the police dispersed by roughing people up. The girl spoke to him, asked if he was all right. She introduced herself as Athena, and Mounir was struck that the justice embodied in her name should have reached him at a moment when it seemed the most distant of concepts. We talked throughout the felucca trip, as the sun slipped behind the buildings and the sky grew dark. Viewed from the Nile at sunset, Cairo looked almost benign, like a defused bomb. But Mounir carried its explosive tensions within him; he seemed to burn with possibilities that turned to ash before he might even speak their names.
