She tore her gaze away from the eerie light show and joined Finch and Dalton, who were huddled around the open laptop, watching the Al Jazeera reporter’s live broadcast from outside the gates.
“Weird, isn’t it?” she observed, overcome by a sudden tiredness and setting herself down cross-legged beside them. “Sitting here, inside the gates, watching ourselves from the outside in.”
“It’s like a bizarro-world version of a hostage situation,” Dalton intoned.
Gracie noticed a shift in the shadows coming out of the roof hatch to her left, and saw Brother Ameen’s head pop out. He gave them a subdued nod and climbed up the rickety ladder to join them.
“How’s Father Jerome?” Gracie asked.
He shrugged wearily. “Confused. Scared. Praying for guidance.”
Gracie nodded in empathy, frustrated that she couldn’t give him any answers herself. She knew that the pressure he was under was only starting. Watching the streaming news reports on the laptop only confirmed it. The reports coming in from Cairo and Alexandria were troubling. The revelation that Father Jerome had effectively foreseen what was still unexplained was causing a huge stir across the country. The polarization of opinions was already clear, even though the story had barely broken. The clips chosen for broadcast showed the local Christians to be confused, but generally excited, by the news. For them, Father Jerome had long been a beacon of positive transformation, and on the whole, they seemed to be embracing his involvement as something inspirational and wanted to know more. The Muslims who were interviewed, on the other hand, were either dismissive or angry. And, Gracie thought cynically, probably chosen for how inflammatory—hence attention-grabbing—their reactions were. Clerics were denouncing Father Jerome and calling on their followers not to be swayed by what they were already describing as trickery.
She glanced over at the young monk. His face was tight with tension.
“What is it?” she asked him.
He kept his eyes on the screen for a moment, then turned to her.
“I don’t understand what this thing is that you all saw. I don’t understand Father Jerome’s visions either, or how they’re both related. But there are some things I do know. Egypt’s not a rich country. Half the people around here have little or no education and live on less than two dollars a day. Even doctors in public hospitals don’t get paid more than that. But we’re also a very religious country,” he continued, his eyes drifting off to the chaotic light show below. “People take comfort in their religion because they don’t see hope in anything else around them. They don’t have faith in their politicians. They’re tired of traffic and pollution and rising prices and falling wages and corruption. They have no one else to trust but God. It’s the same everywhere else in this part of the world. Religious identity matters more to people out here than their common citizenship. And here, in this country—we’re on a knife edge as far as sectarian differences are concerned. It’s taboo to talk about it, but it’s a real problem. There have been a lot of incidents. Our brothers at the Abu Fana Monastery were attacked twice in the last year. The second time, they were beaten and whipped and made to spit on the cross.” He paused then turned, his eyes bouncing between the three of them before settling on Gracie. “There’s a lot of tension and a lot of misunderstanding between the people of this country. And there are millions of them within an hour’s drive of here.”
Gracie understood. It wasn’t a good mix.
“Bringing Father Jerome down from the cave was a good move,” he added. “But it might not be enough.”
She’d been thinking the same thing. An alarming vision coalesced inside her: that of two seriously antagonistic groups outside the gates, Coptic Christians on a pilgrimage of sorts to hear what Father Jerome had to say, and Muslims out to repel whatever outrage the kuffar—the blasphemers—were perpetrating.
Again, not a good mix. Unless you were cooking up some nitro.
“Where’s the army?” she asked. “Don’t they know what’s going on here? Shouldn’t they be sending people here to protect the monastery? And the cave—it’s gonna get trashed if things get out of control.”
“Not the army,” the monk said somberly, “the internal security forces. They’re twice as big as the army, which tells you where the government perceives the real threat. But they don’t usually send them out until after a problem catches fire. And when they do show up, things generally get worse. They don’t have