The Casanova of Cairo

@copyright 2020/Mike Consol 

There was a national mania for spirituality at the time Lolita Firestone founded the Center for Cosmic Consciousness in Sedona, Arizona. Not all that much happened during the organization’s first year, but Lolita’s reach started growing decisively when she began recording videos and podcasts and using social media platforms to distribute her messages. 

She aspired to a global audience and influence. Although many did not believe in Lolita Firestone’s cosmology, they found her dangerously charming. They might not have believed or even liked what she was saying, but they were mesmerized by watching her say it. 

The Center for Cosmic Consciousness membership rose to more than 30,000 by the end of year two and started growing exponentially after that, as an international audience began following this pied-piper of spiritual thinking. Some Africans, men and women from Somalia, came to Sedona to attend the Cosmic Center’s astral projection workshop. Their arrival set off alarm bells at the U.S. State Department and Central Intelligence Agency because Somalia was on the terrorism watchlist at both agencies due to its notoriety as home to sea pirates and religious extremists. The city’s police department and Chamber of Commerce also went on red alert. 

The CIA dispatched one of its youngest professionals, a 24-year-old agent named Jim Gamble. He was a product of the agency’s unofficial legacy program, the son of a veteran CIA man who had cleared the way for his son’s immediate hiring and maiden assignment in Sedona. This was not exactly a plum assignment; Gamble was hoping for something with more danger and intrigue. He was modeling himself after a toned-down version of cinematic British agent James Bond — unflappable, well-spoken and nattily dressed, always wearing a collared dress shirt and blazer. 

His assignment was straightforward: embed himself in the community, join the Cosmic Center, work his way into their trust, penetrate the inner circle, hack into the organization’s computer system, plant some secret listening devices in the most sensitive locations, find out if anything seditious was taking place within the organization and make sure, god forbid, the organization was not unwittingly playing the role of a useful idiot in Boko Haram’s plans to start exporting its terrorist ideology and activities to U.S. shores. 

Given his youth, a pair of agency veterans named John Boozer and Vince Lilifeld, were assigned oversight responsibilities for the Gamble. Boozer and Lilifeld would be on the phone a couple of times a week, monitoring progress and making sure the inexperienced new agent was not falling prey to common rookie mistakes. 

When freshly licensed CIA man Jim Gable arrived in the Sedona red rocks he told local residents and members of the Center for Cosmic Consciousness that he had just moved to Sedona (which was true) because he had learned about its reputation as a spiritual power center (which was a half-truth) and he wanted to learn more about metaphysics and all things New Age (which was an outright lie). 

Yet another group of African men had arrived in Sedona to attend a Cosmic Center workshop, this time from the north African country of Egypt, more commonly associated with the Middle East than Africa. The workshop they were attending was titled Climbing the Chakras. 

CIA agents John Boozer and Vince Lilifeld were flashing red to Jim Gamble about this visit, as the plot thickened around The Center for Cosmic Consciousness. It turned out that, for all intents and purposes, it was a man named Omar Moustafa who was attending the workshop, and the clutch of men around him were his advisers and members of his security detail. The CIA had been tracking Omar Moustafa for years because he was son to Egyptian president Gamal Moustafa. CIA analysts found great promise in the fact that Omar Moustafa was western educated with a bachelor’s degree from Cornell and advanced degrees from Cambridge and the London School of Economics. Better yet, Omar Moustafa had an appetite for the good things in life, including sensual pleasures. He was known as the Casanova of Cairo and women threw themselves at him. He used them for his physical gratification and then handed them back to their old lives without incident. By time he was 15 he was a teenage pin-up among Egyptian girls, during his twenties he became a sex symbol and was voted the Sexiest Man Alive by the Egyptian equivalent of People magazine. Now age 31, Omar Moustafa’s handsome visage and rock-star image was also accompanied by a powerful intellect that had leaders around the globe taking him seriously as an international dignitary who spoke on behalf of Arab and Islamic people throughout the region. 

The CIA and State Department were hopeful that Omar Moustafa would have a liberalizing effect on his authoritarian father, who had been grinding the Egyptian populace for decades. Gamal Moustafa had been too hungry for power, too paranoid about losing it, and too fearful of his own population to relax his martial oppression. He made sure that his security services and national police force had their heels pressed firmly on the windpipe of the population, and the Egyptian citizenry detested him for that, even while loving his son.  

Any such moderating influence Omar Moustafa might be having on his father was yet to manifest. 

 

 

 

 

When the police chief and five of his officers from the Sedona Police Department went to pay the Egyptians a visit at Poco Diablo Resort, they were surprised by the size and intimidation factor of five men in blue suits who greeted them in the corridor. They had wires sticking out of their ears, proving they were an organized force, and that they were communicating with other Egyptians at a different property location, perhaps in a SWAT or surveillance van sitting in the parking lot. 

“You don’t look Egyptian,” the police chief told the men. 

“We are Moroccan,” one said. “Have you ever seen the movie Casablanca?” 

The chief’s face remained impassive. 

“Do you know who Humphrey Bogart is?” 

“The chief and his officers looked at one another, as thought it was a trick question.” 

“Never mind,” the chief said, and backed away. The police chief then pinched the bill of his hat, as if to signal to the fearsome Egyptians secret service men, Glad to see all is well here, and please carry on. 

He and his officers left the vicinity with their manhood only partially intact. 

 

 

 

 

Gamal Moustafa sat in the presidential palace and contemplated his implacable destiny — death. As president of Egypt, North Africa’s greatest country and the cultural center of the Arab and Islamic cultures of the Middle East, he had one of the very best situations imaginable. He lived in a palace. He had the full strength and confidence of the Egyptian military at his disposal. He had the admiration of Egypt’s foreign, domestic and military ministers surrounding him. He held sway over the Egyptian Parliament, and every need at his beck and call. So what’s not to like? 

The former military general turned dictator had recently celebrated his 83rd birthday and took account of his frailties, which were multiplying at a disconcerting pace. His body was feeble, and how long would it be before his mind followed? Sure, when he died there would be a full week of mourning, pomp and pageantry celebrating his years of leadership, but then he would fade from memory, and Gamal Moustafa was a man who had his sights set on achieving some form of earthly immortality from the time he was a teenager reading about the great pharaohs of Egyptian history, now entombed in the Pyramids of Giza near Cairo. 

Among the obstacles faced by Gamal Moustafa was his dreadful unpopularity among the Egyptian citizenry, which he ruthlessly oppressed. There was just one thing the average Egyptian gave him credit for, and that was having sired his youngest son, Omar Moustafa, who was the most popular person in all of Egypt and most of the Middle East. Omar Moustafa was a dashing, young international playboy who, despite his Dionysian lifestyle, was considered a man of the people, even among the devoutly religious. Millions were already calling for son to replace father as president. It would never happen, Gamal Moustafa decided, because it was impossible to sell the idea internally with a bunch of other generals and senior government officials jockeying to become the next palace occupant upon Gamal Moustafa’s death. 

 

 

 

 

Lolita Firestone showed up for just a one-hour session during the three-day Climbing the Chakras workshop. The energy exchange between she and Omar was obvious to everyone in attendance. Omar directed his chief of staff to request a private audience with Lolita before leaving town. She invited him to her modest two-bedroom home, the security detail standing outside. 

When Omar and Lolita sat in the cabin, the atmosphere was a power plant, glowing with physiological energy. She was the most naturally regal woman Omar Moustafa has ever laid eyes on. 

They discussed the famous Sedona vortexes (otherwise defined as spiritual power centers) and Omar reminded Lolita that the world’s preeminent power center was the Pyramids of Giza, which he speculated might even be a portal to spiritual dimensions. 

“I would like you to be my honored guest,” he said. “I think you will find it to be another of those rare places on earth that empower you. I’ll have my people get in touch with your people and see if we can’t make it happen.” 

Lolita smiled without commitment. They sat in silence and gazed at one another for a very long time. 

Omar had never met anyone like her. Where had this person of such verve and determination come from? What were all these numinous words and phrases being inspired by? How was she able to profoundly express spiritual matters without over-intellectualizing? She expressed herself poetically, simply and understandably. There was no denying she was a fresh voice and vibratory presence, a one-woman impact site. 

Her voice was full and husky for such a petite woman. Every phrase rounded, harmonious and hypnotic. Most powerful of all was the use of eye contact to bath people in her liquid gaze. It left recipients with no choice but to drown. 

Omar Moustafa knew he was already under her spell. 

 

 

 

 

Gamal Moustafa had a dream one night that he had restored the Pharaoh system of government in Egypt by pulling a political powerplay. An entire plan was laid out in detail during the dream, which he considered a message from Allah. If his fellow government officials and military generals would never go for an idea that would diminish their stature, he would take the issue straight to the entire Arab world and use his son’s enormous 93 percent popularity rating as leverage. Women loved Omar Moustafa because he was handsome, dashing, gallant and charming. Men loved him because he was masculine, athletic and conducted himself with great intelligence and poise on the world stage. Besides, both genders concluded, when was the last time the Arab world had produced an international sex symbol? Omar was not just popular in the Middle East, he was a media sensation in Africa, Asia and Europe too. Sadly, he was not as popular in the United States, a country that obsessed itself with its own citizenry (never foreigners, unless they were British, of course). 

The occasion when Gamal Moustafa would activate his God-given plan was Egypt’s equivalent of the U.S. President’s State of the Union Address, and he convinced the Middle East news agency Al Jazeera to broadcast his speech across the region, on Al Jazeera’s condition that he truly had something monumental to announce, and on Gamal’s condition that Kuwait-based media company keep the importance of forthcoming speech under wraps. Gamal Moustafa wrote two speeches, one that he handed off to his fellow government and military leaders for their review and comment, the other was the speech his was actually going to deliver to his fellow Arabs. 

Gamal Moustafa shocked his fellow countrymen and the region (and put his political future at massive risk) when he called for the restoration of the Egyptian Pharaohship, and the naming of the first Pharaoh in 2,000 years. That person, he maintained, should his son, Omar Moustafa. 

It turned out to be the speech of his Gamal Moustafa’s life. Yes, his government colleagues were apoplectic with betrayal and grief — as were the leaders of other Arab dictatorships — but the vast majority of Egyptians and Arabs were set ablaze with excitement at the prospect of young Omar Moustafa becoming Egypt’s maximum leader and the start of a modern-day Pharaohship. 

Gamal Moustafa sensed that he was on the cusp of achieving the earthly immortality he so desired. If Gamal could see his gambit through to fruition, Omar Moustafa would be the founding Pharaoh of Egypt’s 32nd dynasty, and his rule would be long, and Gamal Moustafa’s place in history huge and everlasting. 

 

 

 

 

An emergency session of the Arab League was convened. Several wobbly governments were disturbed by Gamal Moustafa’s earth-shaking proposition. Already, the Arab people were united in their support and had taken to the streets in greater numbers with each passing hour. Arab leaders were not so hot on the idea. They feared overthrow. 

The public displays of disobedience were countered in the time-honored way, with threats, floodlights, tear gas, cudgels and tanks. 

  Arab dictatorships felt they had no choice. What if all the people in all the nations of the Middle East wanted to follow the Pharaoh? 

 

 

 

 

Twelve days after the initial announcement of her pregnancy, Lolita Firestone, with great fanfare, made a grand announcement regarding the source and authenticity of her pregnancy to the Cosmic Center faithful, as well as loyal followers worldwide, via satellite webcast. The pronouncement was a revelation. Gestating inside her was the offspring of international Egyptian playboy Omar Moustafa. 

The crowd’s excitement never been more feverish. Never mind that most of the Cosmic Center membership knew nothing of this man, had never even heard his name before. They turned to one another for answers. 

One of the viewers to this announcement at Omar Moustafa’s insistence, sitting half a world away, was Gamal Moustafa, who, upon hearing the news, looked as though he had just sat on a soft-boiled egg. He had told his son only the day before that his ascension to Pharaoh would require his taking a wife, someone to play the role Queen of Egypt. “No one will accept a Casanova as Pharaoh,” Gamal said. “It is unacceptable.” Now he was fearful the entire plan would collapse under the groaning weight of son’s indiscretion. 

Omar was still wearing his Cuban shades, though the desert sun had already set. 

“Take those godawful things off your face,” Gamal commanded. “I told you a wife.” 

“I have found one, father,” Omar said, pointing at the screen. “It is Lolita Firestone.” 

“You fool. She will never be accepted. Who is this woman? Why is she the one? Is she even Muslim?” 

“She’s beyond Muslim,” Omar said, “she’s spiritual.” 

The president’s expression turned grave. “Do not ever let anyone hear you say that.” 

News of Omar Moustafa’s fornication spread like a tidal wave across the Middle East, setting off wailing in the streets. The devout beat themselves on the head in the mourning. It wasn’t as though everyone didn’t already know Omar had fornicated, he was too handsome, too virile and surrounded by too many attractive women to not fornicate. It would have taken an act of God to keep him from fornicating. Still, the pregnancy was incontrovertible proof he had bumped uglies with the opposite sex out of wedlock and with a heathen. Worse, it was an American from Hollywood, a failed actress, a commoner whose bloodline lead to nowhere. 

The Casanova of Cairo had gone rogue. It was a colossal indiscretion and heresy of his faith. It was assumed a man would marry the one he impregnated, but this situation was too unorthodox, too massive a departure from his culture to be carried through. The situation had become septic. 

Omar Moustafa’s popularity rating plummeted. The suffering in the streets was panoramic. While the unrest mounted, Omar was on a secure satellite phone talking to Lolita Firestone. 

“I have a question for you,” he said, “a question I don’t want you to answer to — not yet. Will you marry me? Please stay silent and let me have my say. I know we haven’t even discussed marriage, and I know you are convinced you cannot leave Sedona, your spiritual power center. I don’t believe that’s true. Come to Cairo and the power center known as Giza and tour our legendary pyramids with me. I understand your situation, the geography of it, the latitude and longitude, the vortexes. We will live in Giza by the pyramids. Just like Sedona, it is a spiritual power center, many say the most powerful on the entire planet. Why do you think this is the cradle of civilization? Why do you think this, of all places, is where the grandest pyramids were built? God on earth.” 

He listened carefully to Lolita’s perfectly balanced inhalations and exhalations. 

“Your work as a spiritualist can be carried out here. I will see to it that you are provided all the necessary resources. But first the nuptials. Our wedding will be the biggest matrimonial event since Charles and Diana. Your reputation will multiply overnight. Every person on the planet will know Lolita Firestone and what she stands for. You could bring peace to the Middle East.” Omar paused. “Right after the social unrest we are currently experiencing is quelled. They don’t know you, not yet. They will come to love you. All I ask is you give this a chance by making a visit, right here to Cairo, under the heaviest security imaginable, and test the situation. Feel the primordial vibe. You and your entourage. I will come get you. I will fly all of you out here on a government jet with a fighter jet escort.” 

Lolita Firestone felt that Omar Moustafa’s arrival had been foretold in many little ways. It was fate. Why would the swarthy, handsome, regal Casanova of Cairo ever arrived in Sedona to attend the Climbing the Chakras weekend workshop it their pairing wasn’t meant to be? Why had he requested a personal meeting with her, and why was she compelled to welcome him, to receive him at her home and make time for him, listen carefully to his words, appease him, play his game, let flames crackle in the fireplace? It had been ordained. He was mythic. 

After all, Lolita Firestone had no plans or desires of her own, except to do the will of God. 

 

 

 

 

Gamal Moustafa’s approval rating, which spiked in the aftermath of his wildly popular bring-back-the-Pharaohship speech, had gone into retrograde under the groaning weight of his son’s transgression, impregnating an American non-Muslim woman. Gamal’s detractors saw the time was opportune and struck quickly, taking to the Al Jazeera airwaves to blast the president of Egypt, accusing him of duplicity, nepotism, mentally instability and inflaming the entire region by dangling the outdated Pharaohnic system of governance. 

Al Jazeera was glad to host the Moustafas opposition leaders in the interest of presenting a balanced portrayal of the issue. 

“Why,” one of the detractors rhetorically asked, “do you think the pharaohs were laid to rest two millennia ago.” 

The diatribe didn’t stop with the Egyptian president, the hellfire was turned on Lolita Firestone, the American carrying Omar Moustafa’s unborn child, who they dubbed an impure woman, emblematic of all that was wrong with the Middle East — the corruption of Western influence. She was an interloper, a carpetbagger, a pagan, a Tokyo Rose, and Omar Moustafa’s Yoko Ono. 

Gamal Moustafa has been tuned to Al Jazeera all day, and upon hearing the coordinated verbal attacks against him, the turtle-eyed dictator stiffened in his chair at the Yoko Ono reference. 

 

 

 

 

When the Airbus A320 touched down in Cairo, there was a welcoming committee waiting for Lolita Firestone and Omar Moustafa. She exited the plane gingerly, Omar and his adjutants at her side. Gamal Moustafa was not part of the receiving line. He refused to meet with Lolita, despite Omar’s urging, because he considered her a passing phantasm of his son’s overactive sex life. He calculated that it would be over soon because of differences were too numerous to be surmountable. 

Lolita’s arrival in Cairo placed her just 20 minutes northeast of the Pyramids of Giza, and she almost instantly felt the vortex-like power expanding and re-energizing her nervous system. 

“You can feel it,” said Omar. “I can see it. Your beauty. Your radiance. Now you know why this was the matrix of civilization.” 

Omar said, “Let this be your new home.” 

Lolita smiled, looked up and saw a red-tailed hawk circling high above. It cawed three times. 

“We will do God’s will,” she said. 

Omar Moustafa had made plans for Lolita Firestone, mother of the future Pharaoh of Egypt, to address the Cairo citizenry from the balcony of the presidential palace. That would not be possible without his father’s consent, at a minimum, and at this point President Gamal Moustafa was strenuously objecting to the idea of this Westernized woman would be given a stage of such stature and speak directly to his people. Upon further argument and reflection, however, the Egyptian leader realized he had no choice because the current situation was unsustainable. His presidency was being imperiled by plunging approval ratings and the impeachment proceedings against him. If the situation persisted he would certainly be removed from office, and perhaps even charged and convicted of apostasy and jailed for what remained of his life. Perhaps the only thing that could save him now was if the persona of the so-called Lolita Firestone was truly as powerful and influential as his son was assuring. 

Gamal Moustafa acceded to his son’s wishes for the public presentation, on one condition: If Lolita Firestone could not improve the situation through her own ministrations, she would be sent back to America, without the protestations of his son. After niggling over what constituted “improvement” of the situation, the two men agreed to the terms. 

Already, the sound and fury of the Arab street would have been even more toxic if not for many Arabs listening to and watching Lolita Firestone’s podcasts and videos on the Center for Cosmic Consciousness website during the past few days. Her words, images and hypnotic rhythms softened their animus and resistance, until government censors shut off access to the site. 

Still, security would be as high as humanly possible to protect the visiting dignitary, as death threats by the thousands had already been leveled against Lolita, and more than one million people were expected to surround the president palace to see and hear Lolita Firestone live. 

The fury of the crowd was deafening as Omar Moustafa stood on the fourth-story balcony of the presidential palace before a million of his countrymen and women. He was attempting to introduce the woman he wanted to assist him in leading Egypt and the Arab world into a new era of greatness, but his voice was mostly drowned by the roaring masses. 

Arabs were willing to overlook Omar Moustafa’s peccadilloes, but this is far beyond that, this is what the Catholics called a mortal sin. Omar had partaken in American sex, and everyone knew what that meant but could not quite put its significance into words. A pair of helicopters were idling on the roof of the palace, ready to make a vertical extraction if there was a loss of crowd control and they surged and breached the palace. 

For his safety, Gamal Moustafa had been quarantined at a secret offsite location by his staff members. 

CIA computer surveillance operatives back in the United States were monitoring the situation in real time, having hacked into Cairo’s extensive network of security cameras, giving them lines of sight from dozens of angles. 

When Omar Moustafa yielded the microphone, Lolita Firestone stepped forward, materializing out of the thin desert air, and now she was being magnified in high-definition living color by several jumbotron display screens temporarily installed to give the presenter a larger-than-life presence. The curiosity and fascination surrounding this woman was unequalled, and that reduced the volume of the crowd’s fury by many decibels. There she was in full electric intensity, a radiant smile on her face and she waved to the Egyptians if they were friends, as though to signal, It’s good to see all of you again. A flush of warmth ensued. That further quelled all but the most bellicose elements in the crowd. 

An expert interpreter poised at a nearby microphone was prepared to translate Lolita’s native language into Arabic. He would not be required. Omar and the masses — both live and those listening on radios and televisions and smartphones — were stunned into silence when the first words crossed Lolita Firestone’s lips. 

“A miracle has been performed by God,” she articulated in perfect Arabic. A murmur rolled softly to the crowd. Omar, standing behind her left shoulder, visibly wobbled as most of the blood drained from his face. Unbeknownst to all, even Omar, Lolita had absorbed the Arabic language in what seemed an almost instant transference of knowledge. Command of Arabic was the tool she needed and, along with her Cleopatra lips and voice, it made her communication almost extrasensory. 

“This child is boy and he will be named Ramesses Moustafa, after Ramesses the Great, one of Egypt’s most eminent Pharaohs,” she said. The crowd, soaring on the charisma of the moment, exploded into delirious cheering. “He will succeed his father, Omar Moustafa, as the second modern Pharaoh of the new Egypt, an Egypt that, under the Pharaoh’s leadership and divine inspiration, will restore its status as the matrix of civilization. The Egyptian people will again lead the world.” 

Complete pandemonium. The dispirited Gamal Moustafa sat forward in his chair, sensing a rebirth. 

Lolita didn’t blink, not once, and the air was perfumed for hundreds of yards around with the ambrosial scent that had become one of her signature. The long, proud neck had never looking more imperial, as she went on to speak about Allah, Islamic grandeur, Arab pride, human rights and economic justice. She ended by coming full circle, back to the child gestating within her, the future Ramesses the Second. Her luminous Arab-speaking voice turning the tide. The outrage over this woman and her unholy pregnancy had been sufficiently glossed over. Notions of Cleopatra, perhaps the most well-known of all Egyptians, was on everyone’s mind, perhaps telepathically implanted there by this outrageously magical American woman. 

Omar Moustafa, soon to be Pharaoh, was no longer the protagonist of his own story. Now there was Lolita Firestone, the personification of royalty, one who could join Queen Noor of Jordan as another American woman whose grace, poise and influence won over the hearts and minds the Middle Eastern people. Lolita was a person beyond ethnicity and was speaking to the masses in the most important language, the poetics of spirituality, right from the presidential balcony, fusing church and state, mosque and nation, the secular and ecclesiastical, God and man. Just as she had done in the United States, she instilled in all around her an ardor for God the Supreme. 

When she finished and turned to Omar, he fell to his knees, his heart was about to burst. “How?” he asked. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Then he lowered his face, as if in prayer, and began to sob. Now even Omar was caught in Lolita’s web, a willing prisoner. He choked out the words, “The spirit is made physical.” 

Muslims were certain that Allah had placed Omar Moustafa in righteous hands. 

When the sunlight started blazing, Omar and Lolita were quickly whisked away, and she was carefully showered by her assigned female assistants and wrapped in a fresh hijab for her meeting with President Gamal Moustafa. 

Servants were everywhere, and the table was illuminated by the glow of burning candles. The baby, Ramesses Moustafa, the future Pharaoh of Egypt, continued gestating within Lolita’s womb. Her baby-bump swelled. 

For the first time, Lolita Firestone was completely naked before Omar Moustafa, walking toward him, her bare feet lightly slapping against the priceless marble floor, sun-drenched, radiant, cat-like. The contours of breasts, hips and buttocks were peerless. 

For the first time in his young life, Omar was stunned by love. 

The servants had exited. Omar approached and placed firm hands on her delicate shoulders. Omar Moustafa, the professional cocksman, had discovered eternal monogamy. He knew this evening was going to be highlighted by mad spasms of delirium, followed by brief intervals of paralysis. Their open mouths came together and the swashing sounds began. Omar would again find Lolita’s lovemaking to be energetic and fearless. 

 

 

 

 

The Arab World’s population had been repressed for so long it was spring-loaded for violent rebellion. Attempts to remove President Gamal Moustafa from office and upend the movement were going nowhere because they had run into impossibly stubborn resistance, and it was coming from all age groups, not just the young and berserk. Once plans for construction of a new pyramid began there would be no stopping it, the reincarnation of the Pharaohship would be fait accompli. 

Omar and Lolita were in the streets with the people, Lolita speaking perfect and inspired Arabic. The optics were as good as they get with the ruggedly handsome Omar and the arrestingly beautiful Lolita, and the adoring crowds all around them. Then there was the romance of it all. The couple was creating a new Camelot, one not seen since John and Jackie Kennedy. 

“When does a cult become a religion?” the head of the Iraqi delegation lugubriously observed. 

Some of the region’s dictators were already smelling embalming fluids. 

 

 

 

 

After seven blazing days and halcyon nights in Cairo, Omar Moustafa and Lolita Firestone and their entourage re-boarded the Airbus A320 and headed back to Sedona USA. As the jetliner gained altitude, the lights of the Mirage jetfighter escort could be seen flashing starboard, even in the broadness of daylight. They would be refueled in midair by an airborne tanker provided by a European ally, and the jetfighters would peel away before entering the U.S. airspace, where a pair U.S. Air Force F-16s would take over the watch until the Airbus safely landed at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix. 

A light chop rippled the ocean surface below. 

Everyone on the aircraft sat motionless, except for Omar Moustafa’s charmless and twitchy security detail. Omar and Lolita were in the private cabin adjoining the cockpit. The entourage imagined they were having mile-high sex in there. Any telltale sounds were drowned by the hum of the aircraft’s wing-mounted General Electric turbofan engines. 

In reality, Lolita’s bare feet were propped on Omar’s lap, all the better for the Egyptian leader to fiddle mischievously with her toes. 

“What are you doing the rest of your life?” Omar asked Lolita. 

She smiled. Moments later she fell asleep to a splurge of radiant white light. 

Omar’s time in the United States would be brief, just one night at Lolita’s townhome surrounded by armed men and armored SUVs, then off to Washington, D.C., the next day for a meeting with the President of the United States and the Secretary of State. Omar Moustafa’s skyrocketing influence in the hottest of political hot zones made it was essential the U.S. government establish a friendly and mutually beneficial relationship with the new leader. This would be a White House tête-à-tête with the promise of an official State Dinner after Omar Moustafa was installed as Pharaoh. 

 

 

 

 

The second Pharaoh of the 21st century was not going to be born out of wedlock, so President Gamal Moustafa put his entire staff to work on planning and executing, in a matter of weeks, the largest, most opulent wedding in the country’s history, a ceremony attended by presidents, philanthropists, celebrities and holy men. 

It wasn’t an easy declaration for President Moustafa, who still had his misgivings about Lolita Firestone. He still wondered where she had come from, it was as though she stepped into their world from another dimension, like a walk-in. He liked and admired Lolita and the things that she was accomplishing on behalf of his son, but he also sensed her tremendous power and feared it. She might come to overshadow Omar, become more famous, admired and influential. What if she took over the Pharaohship? There had been seven female pharaohs, including Nefertiti and the great Cleopatra. It could happen again. 

Already, like Cleopatra, Lolita was being called Queen of the Nile by Egyptians and, like Cleopatra, she had exotic beauty and powers of seduction. She had seduced the country, the entire region and an entire people. How is it possible that one woman could seduce an entire region of people with cultural and religious divisions that had always been considered insurmountable? 

He would tell Omar not to be passive, to assert himself and make sure his wife played the appropriate role of a woman, a secondary role in support of her husband and his leadership. 

 

 

 

 

Omar Moustafa and Lolita Firestone were married in Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo, built in 972, and considered the most resplendent of the city’s many mosques. It served as the gathering place for hundreds of invited guests for the start of the traditional three-day Egyptian wedding. Clergymen from several different faiths offered benedictions, but the marriage vows were Islamic and carried out by an officiating Islamic cleric, the Imam of the mosque. 

The British Royal Family had nothing on this soirée, which was meticulously planned and executed and broadcast globally because of its political import and celebrity value. Just a week before the wedding, People magazine featured Omar Moustafa on his cover and declared him the Sexiest Man Alive. 

President Moustafa walked Lolita Firestone down the aisle. Lolita arrived at the altar and so did the fragrance. She had foregone the bridal veil for a traditional Islamic headdress called a dupatta. Omar’s lips could be read to say, “You are an angel.” Lolita gave her groom a serpentine smile. Her white wedding gown was lacy, high-collared, and streamlined on the sides and back but with the good taste to have enough drapery in the front to conceal evidence of the child flowering a few layers deep — as it was one thing for all the world to know the bride was pregnant, quite another to make a tawdry show of it. Nobody would fault the bride for her modesty, and yet the gown looked tantalizingly close to falling from her body in a single glorious cascade of silk. 

A trio of red-tailed hawks circled at high altitude above the mosque.  

They repeated their sacred vows, the promise of a lifetime. Each phrase was spoken in Arabic, then repeated in English. Everyday Egyptians swarmed Tahrir Square to listen to the broadcast nuptials and offer their own prayers and respects. As night fell, a government-approved and supervised bonfire roared. 

During the vows, President Moustafa leaned over to one of the most powerful members of Parliament to say, “You must admit, our country has not been on a world stage like this in hundreds of years.” A prideful smile added an exclamation point to the statement. 

The member of Parliament gave the president an uncomprehending look. “Am I supposed to find solace in that?” he hissed. “You have stabbed all of us in the back. We are effectively out of power and now at the mercy of your son, the Pharaoh, who I trust will have a better and kinder disposition then you.” 

“I doubt that will matter because, fortunately, you’ve always been quite practiced at sucking up to power,” the president snarled. 

Newspaper articles published the day before reported a short honeymoon was scheduled at a remote, unnamed tropical island that Omar’s press secretary said didn’t even exist yet on navigation maps. 

 

 

 

 

The moon was full the night Ramesses Moustafa was born. Lolita’s strong, supple body was in labor just two hours before her long-awaited son traversed the birth canal and began his new incarnation of mortal life. Omar Moustafa marveled at how his wife’s body had opened itself inside out and disgorged this new life form, soft and gooey and clueless and agitated by the disruption, crying out in a voice several times the size of his body. 

It was a perfect birth, all fingers and toes accounted for, a precocious face and intoxicated eyes, unsure where to look next. The face was a hybrid of the visages belonging to Omar and Lolita, who splashy American and British press outlets had taken to referring to as LoMar. The entire population of Egypt celebrated. Food was eaten, music was played, tears shed. It was a day of splendor. The greatness of this iconic nation would be restored, people were confident. 

The languid body of Ramesses Moustafa was spread across his mother’s chest, Lolita’s drowsy body sinking into the bed, a rich supply of mother’s milk already seeping from her engorged breasts. She gave Ramesses baby talk in Arabic, then English, and then back to Arabic. 

Omar’s face became strained by the gravity of the event, the arrival of the second Pharaoh of the 21st century. The responsibility of raising him, teaching him gallantry, making him regal was pressing upon him. He nudged himself into the bed next to Lolita and kissed her face. “With the birth of this beautiful baby boy, we have multiplied,” he said. 

 

 

 

 

President Gamal Moustafa summoned Omar and Lolita to his chambers. The president rolled from bed that morning an hour before sunrise and read from the Quran. 

Omar and Lolita arrived at 9 a.m. sharp, Ramesses cradled softly in her arms. The president rose on a pair of dead legs to greet his son and bride and grandchild. It was one of a couple dozen frailties he would experience that day, reminding him that his time was short. He had prayed that Allah would keep him alive long enough to see Omar become Pharaoh and the modern-day Grand Pyramid completed, but not long enough to descend into complete decrepitude. He would sooner drink the hemlock than have handmaids bathing him and attending to his biological functions. 

He explained that, with the birth of Ramesses Moustafa and construction of the Grand Pyramid well underway, he was prepared to announce that he would relinquish his office in 45 days and yield the nation’s power to his son, the new Pharaoh of Egypt. There would be no more presidents, the country would be ruled by the Pharaoh, Omar Moustafa, who would live in the former Presidential Palace, which would be renamed the House of Omar, and eventually the House of Ramesses. Gamal Moustafa would dissolve his own presidency and activate, forthwith, the legislation Parliament had already enacted to make the transition to the Pharaohship. It was important that these moves be made in his lifetime to ensure there were no attempts by members of Parliament, after his death, to make political maneuvers to undo the legislation establishing the Pharaohship. 

The president further announced his determination to see one other thing happen in the time he had left — to see the other nations of the Middle East and Northern Africa come under the influence of the Pharaoh, much as devout Christians in nations all over the world follow and observe the utterances of the Pope. At least they used to. Christians had mostly become renegades, in Gamal Moustafa’s estimation, making Christianity a runaway faith. No such insubordination was found in Islam, marking it as the world’s true faith. 

“People in this country are so ready for change,” he told his son and bride. “I wish I had thought about this 25 years ago.” 

Of course, that long ago, Gamal Moustafa would have had to self-anoint and declare himself the new Pharaoh, an act of such colossal self-aggrandizement it would not have gone over badly with his political enemies, and supporters. This move was audacious and supercilious enough. 

His blood pressure had risen in dramatic fashion ever since he cooked up and started pursuing the campaign to restore the Pharaohship, and the blood pressure remained disconcertingly high ever since. He refused to take the medications the doctors offered, in part for fear of being poisoned by his detractors. Instead, he treated the medical condition with extra prayers and daily walks. 

Gamal placed his hands on the sides of Omar’s shoulders. “Don’t allow self-doubt to creep in. You will grow into this role.” 

Lolita kept a respectful distance and silence, her long, stately neck holding her head aloft. 

“I am ready, father.” 

As if he understood the moment, baby Ramesses made a soft mewling sound. 

President Moustafa gave his son a light chuck under the chin. “I know you are.” 

The president went back to his chair his remove the load off his aching legs and said: “All the people who were my friends and allies now hate me. I know they are hissing and would have assassinated me by now, or at least faked my death by natural causes, if not for the ninety percent support the populace has given you. I guess if you’re going to alienate everybody in your life, it is best to do it at the end, when the consequences will be short-lived.” 

Omar put a hand on his father’s shoulder. Lolita, hugging Ramesses to her chest with both arms, turned and exited the room, giving the men some private moments. 

“At first this is an act of vanity. I wanted to be remembered forever,” the president admitted. “Now it has become obvious that this is a good thing for all. You’re the right man for this sacred job, an extraordinary man, which is why the entire region is so exhilarated and supportive. The people are blazing.” 

Omar despaired for his father, looking so dark and lonesome, even on the cusp of the historic realization of his dream. 

When Lolita returned to the chamber to bid a goodbye she said: “The genetic code belonging to the Egyptian people have their genes sending messages again, Mr. President. Messages that had been latent for countless generations, messages that are saying, You are a glorious people to whom every other civilization on the planet owes a debt of gratitude.” 

Gamal Moustafa stared at her for several moments before turning to tell his assistant, “Write that down.” 

 

 

 

 

With tremendous pomp and pageantry, the day had come for the official coronation of the new Pharaoh of Egypt, the redoubtable Omar Moustafa. It all took place within a grouping of massive air-conditioned tents erected on the Giza Plateau, set between the Great Pyramid and new Grand Pyramid, still under construction. It was a desert oasis, a giant white chrysalis containing more than 2,000 people. The ceremony began at 11 a.m. with the actual installation of the new King and Pharaoh at high noon, when the air in Cairo had caught its daily a fever, thermometers registering 111 degrees Fahrenheit. 

The man about to relinquish his leadership of Egypt, President Gamal Moustafa, sat in a in a high-backed chair looking haggard, the weight of the controversial issues and ages pressing down on him. The eyes of several members of Parliament strafed him. The malice disfigured some of the parliamentarians faces. The president wouldn’t allow his dark own eyes to give anything away. 

An ancient dirge began to play to add to the solemnity of the proceedings. It was a national salute of the highest order. The whole world was tuned to the coronation. Omar Moustafa was feeling the weight of incalculable expectations, and they would have been crushing if not for his partnership with the indomitable Lolita Firestone, the irresistible force and immovable object all in one. She looked like the queen that she was, her body clad in gold cuffs, bangles, chokers and other majestic jewelry and accessories. For the first time, the tops of Lolita’s small-to-medium-sized breasts (small to breast men, medium to those who favored perkiness and proportionality) were visible, swelling up from the neckline of her garment. It was yet another aspect of her power that she kept out of sight until today, presenting them only tastefully so. Lolita’s face was full of adoration as she gazed at Omar, only breaking that line-of-sight to occasionally look down at Ramesses, comfortably ensconced in an elevated crib. 

Weeks earlier Omar Moustafa has already outlined an ambitious agenda for his administration that included establishing an academy of sciences, a world-class university system, a powerful technology industry, a space exploration program that would send probes to Mars, Jupiter and other distant planets and solar systems, a ministry of arts and culture that would establish museums rivaling those found in France, Italy and the United States, aspiring to equal the Louvre, the Vatican and Getty museums. 

The slipstream of change was running at full velocity. 

The officiating cleric proclaimed, “Out of little more than sand, desert and wind rose the cradle of civilization and some rare people appointed as Pharaohs who were worshiped as gods on earth and led their people through an era that brought human creativity, intellect and mysticism together to form one of the greatest countries the world had ever seen. For 3,000 years they led ancient Egypt and built great monuments to themselves and their gods — the Pyramids of Giza, the great Sphinx, the most elaborate temples the world never seen.” 

Omar stood in the tinted, filtered light, looking almost spectral. It was the desired effect, to make him appear as something beyond human. After he finished repeating his vows to the Egyptian people and gods and was declared Pharaoh, King and Maximum Leader of the Egyptian people, the crowd came to its feet for a sustained roar of cheering and applause. Instruments played, voices rose, hundreds of white doves where released into the burning Cairo skies and flew crazily and in all directions. 

Those attending the ceremony would feast on camel that evening, a meat considered a delicacy in that part of the world. 

When all ceremonies of the day had been exhausted, Pharaoh Omar and Queen Lolita recessed to the president palace, their new home, which had been renamed the House of Pharaoh Omar by legislative decree, and would one day become the House of Pharaoh Ramesses. 

“This will be your Camelot,” Omar told the new queen. “I will play Mark Antony to your Cleopatra — not to confuse history, of course.” 

They touched one another and spoke of the implementation of their respective agendas. It was the remaking of a nation for Omar. It was the creation of a widespread spiritual commonwealth for Lolita. It was now official — they were the power couple beyond all our power couples, with gravitas and glamor beyond compare. 

 

 

 

 

Former President Gamal Moustafa was taking his daily walk through the sprawling palace grounds when a jolt ran diagonally through his chest, then the tachycardia started and his heart was off to the races, beating faster than a racehorse in the home stretch at Churchill Downs. He had been turning aggressively more yellow in recent weeks from the toxicity building in his system, something he mistook as a suntan from spending more outdoor time. His kidneys and liver just weren’t doing the work anymore. 

Gamal Moustafa went down, ricocheting off an olive tree and collapsing into a rosebush bristling with thorns. He didn’t feel a thing because he was dead before his skin suffered the indignity of more than 100 pricks, lacerations and abrasions. Death by heart attack was a primitive and time-honored way to die. He was 89 years old. 

When they found the president’s, his body was tangled and suspended in the rose bushes, his legs and varicose veins pointed at the sky. 

The funeral and burial were muted affairs, as his country, even during his short timeframe out of office, had passed him by and cleared Gamal Moustafa from their minds for two reasons and two reasons only — he was being thoroughly outshined by his son the Pharaoh, and by Lolita Firestone the Queen of Egypt. Then, of course, there were his many years of brutal dictatorship and repression of his own people. 

It was exactly this kind of amnesia and ignominy the ex-president had worked so hard to avoid. 

As Omar Moustafa was engineering job creation and economic expansion in his country, he dispatched Lolita on diplomatic missions across the Middle East to broker a peace settlement here and an armistice there to bring to an end to the skirmishes that had bedeviled the region for centuries. The Persians of Iran and the Arabs of the rest of Middle East exchanged olive branches. The two major branches of Islam, the Sunnis and Shias, were convinced to focus on Allah and the prophet Mohammed rather than warring and quibbling about their methods of worship. Although there was still a powerful streak of animus between Israelis and Palestinians, the latter withdrew their declaration that the former had no right to exist and must be driven into the Mediterranean. Talk of a separate Palestinian state was renewed in earnest. 

  With peace and stability among Middle Eastern nations achieved for the first time in the post-World War II era, the prosperity already being realized in Egypt started spilling over and other parts of the region. What was not to like? 

The Pharaoh showed up for the handshakes and signing ceremonies, making him the undisputed heavyweight champion of the region. A Nobel Peace Prize quickly followed. What choice did other leaders have? Their own people were following the Pharaoh and expressing more allegiance to him than their own country’s president. The people had spoken: tribalism and warfare were no longer a part of their program. 

Pharaoh Omar Moustafa and Queen Lolita Firestone-Moustafa, against colossal odds, did indeed lead Egypt to reestablish itself as the center of human civilization. It wasn’t just the economics, the arts, the cuisine, the history, the temples, the artifacts, the diplomacy, the charisma of its leadership, the civility of its people, its spirituality and newfound religious diversity, or even its egalitarianism and the way it treated its poor and its animals — it was its ability to make monumental change during an era when all other nations were frozen in the status quo. 

Egyptians had not known such plenitude in several millennia. The world’s leading economists had taken to calling the amazing economic transformation Desert Storm. 

While the Pharaoh reaped the credit, he knew that Lolita Firestone had been the flashpoint. If not for the serendipitously of coming across her spellbinding video on the Internet, if not for his trip to Sedona to attend the Climbing the Chakras workshop, if not for his personal meeting with this extraordinary Spirit Woman, and if not for their ensuing love affair and her willingness to become his lifelong partner, this could not possibly come to pass, not this radiantly and transformatively. 

Omar became the most famous man in the world since Muhammad Ali was heavyweight boxing champion of the world, and Lolita the world’s most famous woman since Jackie Kennedy was the First Lady of the United States. As a couple their power, reach, influence and celebrity were unequaled. He was a leading man, she was a leading woman, everyone craved their invitation, no one turned it down. 

It seemed ready to go on forever, but it did not. It came to an end one day on a space flight, a shuttle mission that was supposed to be simple and foolproof. Egypt’s space exploration program was tried-and-true, having sent probes to distant planets and solar systems, and launched new satellites and assembled space stations. This was nothing more than two revolutions around the moon and a return to earth. The mission was an act of confidence, a symbolic achievement for a program whose technical ecstasy exceeded all expectations in the endless frontier of space. 

It was on reentry that something went terribly wrong, a catastrophic failure of the shuttle’s command capsule. A seal had broken and allowed the oxygen to escape. Just the slightest crack in that cosmic egg and their mortal tenure was over. They had died adventurously and triumphantly as the entire human race observed. 

Three days before their deaths, Lolita had dreamed of their deaths foretold. When death arrived it landed like a feather. Omar and Lolita, just moments before the capsule was contaminated, had left their bodies and were floating. They were in their etheric bodies now, and when they looked at one another Omar knew exactly what was happening, and yet he was experiencing a peace and calm that he had never known in life, and he also knew Lolita was utterly familiar with the dimension they had entered. She would be his guide as they crossed into Eternity. 

Trumpets and violins were playing in the distance, coming in plush, sonic waves. It didn’t take long for Omar to realize they were not listening to the music, they were the music. 

When the shuttle’s autonomous guidance system landed the spacecraft, Egyptian space agency people found their bodies perfectly intact, though lifeless. 

Many people theorized that it was conspiracy and sabotage, though there was no evidence to support the allegations. Still, everybody involved in the mission was held and questioned for a minimum of 48 hours. Next came eternal preservation and their bodies. They were wrapped in the finest linens and mummified, placed in their sarcophaguses, sealed in their sublime tomb within the Grand Pyramid, where the tireless couple was given eternal rest.

@copyright 2020/Mike Consol