Friendly Fire

from the time just before dawn when a white thread can be distinguished from a black thread. The words reference the Qur’an 2:187.

* Bein el-Sarayat is the name of a street and district in Giza, near Cairo University.


* Sika is a mode in Arabic music beginning on E half flat and having B half flat.


* Tirsana is a soccer club in the lower echelons of the Egyptian soccer league; Abdel Latif el-Tilbany was a singer with a small following.


* Al-Ahram is Egypt’s leading daily newspaper.


* Ahli is Egypt’s leading soccer club, with a massive popular following.


* Muslims are excused from the fast in Ramadan in cases of travel or illness; in addition, Muslim women are excused while pregnant, nursing, or menstruating. As an off-color joke, the employee is insinuating that Isam is experiencing the last.


* Ali ibn Abi Talib was the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad; Aisha bint Abi Bakr was the second wife of the Prophet, after the death of his first wife Khadija.


* Muhammad Kurayim was governor of Alexandria at the time of the French invasion of Egypt in 1798. In resisting the French occupation, he was sentenced to death.


* Abu al-Tayyib Ahmad ibn Husayn al-Mutanabbi (915–965) is regarded as one of the greatest poets in the Arabic language.


* As-salamu alaykum (‘Peace be upon you’) is the approved Islamic greeting, to which any Muslim is expected to respond Wa-alaykum as-salam wa-rahmat Allahi wa-barakatuh (‘And upon you peace and the mercy of God and His blessings’).


* Port Said is located in the Suez Canal duty-free zone.


* This scripture is from the Qur’an 36:9.


* From 1948 to 1967, the Palestinian territories east of the armistice line with Israel and west of the River Jordan (the ‘West Bank’) were under Jordanian rule.


* Hattin was the site of Saladin’s victory over the Crusaders in 1187 that restored Jerusalem to Muslim rule. Khalid ibn al-Walid (592–642), also known as ‘the Sword of God,’ commander of the Muslim forces during their early conquests, remained undefeated in over a hundred battles.


* The riyal is the unit of currency in Saudi Arabia. Foreigners can only work in Saudi Arabia at the recognizance of a Saudi citizen, who retains their passport and controls their movements in and out of the country. Sponsors typically also take a percentage of the worker’s earnings.


* The Wafd was Egypt’s leading political party in the first half of the twentieth century. The party and its leader, Mustafa el-Nahhas (1879–1965), were banned from political activity following the 1952 Revolution, but the party was allowed to resume its activities in 1983.


* On February 4, 1942, British troops surrounded the royal palace in Cairo and forced King Farouk to accept a Wafd Party government led by Mustafa el-Nahhas.


* The House of the Nation, the symbolic home of the Wafd Party, was the house of the nationalist leader and founder of the party, Saad Zaghloul (1859–1927). It is now a museum.