Cairo, Egypt, December 19, 2009, 3:20 pm.
Nadine sat alone in the investigation room, shaking her legs, and rubbing her left balm with her right thumb. Nervous is a simple word to what she was feeling. The room was a small one with a big square mirror across from her who kept looking at the door next to it.
She took a deep breath and rested her elbows on a metal rectangle table across from her chair. She impatiently waited for anyone to tell her what was happening, but from the moment she landed in Cairo, everyone she saw on her way to the investigation room eyed her with curious yet intimidating eyes.
The door opened rapidly, causing Nadine's breath to be suppressed inside her shaking lungs for a long second. A middle-aged prosecutor closed the door behind him. He locked eyes with Nadine, who stared back, then sat across from her.
A creepy smirk laid slowly on his face, making her breathe harshly. "I will ask you some questions and I want you to answer honestly" — she nodded her head and looked at his now steady poker face — "good, now, tell me your real name."
"Nadine Azmi." — what a dumb question, she thought — he was already holding her ID between his hands. A smile crawled into the right corner of her mouth. The prosecutor looked oddly familiar. He reminded her of someone. His bushy eyebrows pulled down together in an almost comedic way and the tips of his ears turned to a soft darker shade of red.
A whispered chuckle escaped her lips when her mind reminded her of his resemblances. It was a manga character who had identical reactions to the prosecutor. Both had bushy eyebrows and overgrown black mustache, and the same stating-the-obvious-type of questions. The character had a memorable name, yet she could only remember his last name, Mori.
The prosecutor sighed and his eyes shifted darkly with an impatient look and the creepy smirk appeared again on his lips, covered slightly with his black mustache. "I told you to answer honestly."
"I did," she said.
The prosecutor's smile disappeared and said, "You need to stop before you get yourself in more trouble."
"I don't understand what you want me to say. That's my real name." She narrowed her eyes, truly bewildered by his meaningless question.
"No, it's not. There is no one by this name," he said firmly.
"I am!" Nadine said and felt a powerful sensation of anger rising inside her chest.
"We already checked your ID, your blood, and your fingerprint, you don't exist in our system."
"How is that even possible? So, what am I now? A ghost?" she shouted, not able to bottle up her angry sarcastic thoughts any longer. He looked at her sharply. She sighed and said, "I swear I don't understand how I don't exist in the system! Or why I'm even here!"
"You are accused of espionage," he said calmly, which made Nadine even more furious.
"Espionage!" — she moved her hair behind her ears and looked at him — "a minute ago, you said I don't even exist in the system! And now I'm a spy! That makes little sense," she intoned as if she were talking to a five-year-old.
He didn't even blink. "We're investigating your partner in another room and apparently, neither of you want to admit the truth," he said, sounding like a machine repeating a programmed message.
"Partner... Who!?" she was practically screaming.
"He called himself Adam Magdy," he said, resting his back and looking antagonistically at Nadine's confused face.
"Adam..." Nadine was shocked why the prosecutor was accusing her of spying, and what brought Adam into all of this. "You're mistaken, prosecutor! We have nothing to do with spying!"
He got up and told someone outside to get him a laptop. In seconds, he brought it to him. "Explain this footage." Security footage showed Nadine and Adam in the middle of the night receiving two bags full of money from a black-suited man for information.
Nadine's eyes widened in shock and confusion; the deadly information that they said was like threatening-national-security-type of deadly. "That's... not... me," Nadine said, narrowing her eyes.
"Your face is pretty obvious." he paused the video and pointed at her face on the screen.
"I'm telling you that's not me," Nadine said, looking at him, then at the screen. "I don't know any of this... I don't even know how a citizen like me would ever know this type of information."
He took a long breath, closed his eyes, and clenched his jaw, then said, "I tried to be calm and asked you nicely, but what are you facing here could lead to the death penalty, be smart and confess."
"Execution! But I did nothing wrong. Why I would be a spy!!?" Nadine said with widened eyes and an astonished face.
He stared motionlessly right into her eyes. "Where have you been on the 16th of December?!" he yelled suddenly.
She was startled, blinking fast at his sudden change of mood. "I went to Dubai for several hours, then got back."
"There are no records of you leaving the country," he said in a lower tone. "We have been following you and Adam for months and we have all the evidence to prove you guilty, but we need your confessions to finish the entire picture."
"No offense, but you're hallucinating," she said.
He banged both his hands on the table. "You think it's funny! You're one call away from being dead!"
"All your pieces of evidence are fake!! don't you know who I am? I'm the daughter of the Azmi family! We are well-known in the country! I want to call my father right now."
"You already called him. No need to tell more lies. We know that you're not his daughter." Nadine couldn't believe her father denied her existence. The door opened; it was another officer. "What is the update with him?" the prosecutor asked him, who also shared the same steady comedic face.
The officer eyed her disgustingly — They looked like robots, Nadine thought — "Nothing," the officer answered, cutting Nadine's thoughts.
The prosecutor shot Nadine the same disgusted look and said, "Did you show him the evidence?"
"I did. He said he doesn't know how he got here," the officer said and shrugged his shoulders. The prosecutor looked deeply into Nadine's confused face and told the officer to bring Adam.