“Narrower than a spider web and sharper than a sword,” Gabriel said. “The good cross swiftly and are rewarded, but the wicked lose their footing and are plunged into the fires of Hell.”

Ibrahim looked up from the file, clearly impressed by Gabriel’s knowledge of Islam. “I’m one of the unfortunate few who’s actually seen the bridge over Jahannam,” he said. “I was made to walk it that night in October 1981 and I’m afraid I lost my footing.”

Gabriel removed Ibrahim’s handcuffs and told him to keep talking.

He was taken to a cell and beaten mercilessly for twelve hours. When the beatings finally ceased, he was brought to an interrogation room and placed before a senior SSI man, who ordered him to reveal everything he knew about planned Islamist terror operations in the Minya region. He answered the question truthfully—that he knew of no plans for any attacks—and was immediately returned to the cell, where he was beaten on and off for several days. Again he was brought before the senior officer and again he denied knowledge of future attacks. This time the SSI man led him to a different cell, where an adolescent girl, naked and unconscious, hung by her hands from a hook in the ceiling. She had been flogged and slashed to ribbons with a razor and her face was distorted by swelling and bleeding. It took Ibrahim a moment to realize that the young girl was his daughter, Jihan.

“They revived her with several buckets of cold water,” he said. “She looked at me and for a moment didn’t recognize me either. The senior man whipped her savagely for several minutes, then the others took her down from the hook and raped her in front of me. My daughter looked at me while she was being mauled by these animals. She pleaded with me to help her. ‘Please, Papa,’ she said. ‘Tell them what they want to know. Make them stop.’ But I couldn’t make them stop. I didn’t have anything to tell them.”

He began to shiver violently. “May I have my clothing now?”

“Keep talking, Ibrahim.”

He lapsed into a long silence. For a moment Gabriel feared he had lost him, but eventually, after another spasm of trembling, he began to speak again.