THE GALES OF ALEXANDRIA

Elgammal’s novel explores a young Egyptian man’s competing loyalties to country, faith, and family.

As the story begins, the protagonist’s father Omar takes on the unenviable task of combing through his recently deceased son Nasser’s journal searching for confirmation of his alleged ties to terrorism. The narrative then moves to the past: Growing up in Alexandria, Egypt, in the 1980s and ’90s, Nasser El-Mohammedi is raised by Omar in an uncommonly secular fashion. An esteemed professor, Omar schools his son using his extensive personal library, and when Nasser comes of age, he falls in with a small group of brilliant friends who go on to study engineering. Their sisters and girlfriends become part of the group, too, and when two members of the cohort leave for America to pursue graduate studies, it is with heavy hearts for those they leave behind. Nasser, on the other hand, is confronted at his graduation by a long-lost uncle, who tells him he needs to come South because it is finally time to visit his mother’s real grave. Once there, Nasser discovers that his mother (who died when Nasser was a child) lived a life of immense secrecy and estrangement from her family due to her insistence upon pursuing a secondary education. When Nasser learns that Omar has lied about Nasser’s mother’s radical past for years, Nasser’s own latent radicalism is inflamed. America is rocked by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, setting the table for a new era of danger, radicalization, and division among Nasser’s once-bulletproof friend group. Elgammal’s novel is deeply felt and richly detailed, vividly capturing the gravity of the circumstances in which his characters find themselves: “Still, he hated the horrible helpless feeling that had seized him—history was happening, people were suffering and dying two miles from where they were sitting, and they couldn’t think of a single useful thing to do.” Some readers may wish to spend longer periods with a single character—Elgammal jumps perspectives regularly—but the shifting POV effect creates a rich texture that helps to separate the novel from its peers.

A sobering tale of complex politics and histories.