“Oh! Al-Azhar! Inshallah” exclaims our taxi driver. This cabbie has realized he has no ordinary passenger, but a student of Egypt’s and Sunni Islam’s premier university. “Sheikh Adam” enunciates the driver, bestowing an honorific upon the rider and bringing home Al-Azhar University’s prestige to viewers of Tarik Saleh’s film Boy from Heaven. Our boy hero, Adam, has a common first day experience—crammed move-in, first brush with the library (where he floats through aisles, grazing precious covers softly), first bunk bed night. We catch an inkling of a smile as Adam lays himself down, tired body soon to rest. Beneath the minarets and shady arches, though, Al-Azhar is in flux. The institution’s presiding Grand Imam, a quasi-Pope figure in the Sunni world, dies—setting off a succession crisis between extremist Islamists and a more moderate, pro-secular government contingent.
I went into Boy from Heaven (released as Cairo Conspiracy in English-speaking countries) knowing very little about Al-Azhar and its Cairo surround. This world was new to me as it was to Adam—son of a fisherman from a fishing village far from the big city. A viewer must quickly discern Al-Azhar’s alliances and politicking, since Adam gets wrapped into an Egyptian government scheme—the State is out to replace the Grand Imam with their own candidate.
Saleh’s movie won best screenplay at Cannes and has drawn critics’ attention. The Times, Guardian and Variety have all run short reviews. Their summaries don’t do much more than tell us Saleh’s movie is a good thriller with news about Egypt’s corrupt powers-that-be. But Boy from Heaven is meant to be more than “a mostly familiar conspiracy movie.”
In interviews, Saleh has underscored his deep feeling for Le Carré. He credits the clear-eyed Brit for pushing him to make a script that didn’t have “anyone that you could hide behind.” Saleh seems to have inherited Le Carré’s ability to build complex, conflicted worlds.[1]
In Boy from Heaven, Al-Azar turns into a battlefield. Class lectures become war cries: a Muslim Brotherhood imam bemoans a world in decline—”ignorance of religion… usury… Women appear purely naked in the streets.” Across the sahn, in earshot, another imam answers back: “The Muslim Brotherhood, Salafis, Daesh…aim to burn the home of Islam to the ground.” This latter response might seem like it’s coming from a good source, but Saleh isn’t with dictator Sisi’s goons. Adam’s handler’s commandant is a mad murderer. When it becomes clear the government’s plot is coming undone this officer in a hurry—wide eyed, almost grinning—offers his go-to solution: “we kill.” He’d off his own informant Adam and an innocent, popular cleric too—whose death at the hands of the government could start a civil war. It’s clear Saleh means to implicate Sisi in these imagined state machinations—the autocrat’s portrait hangs prominently in all the rooms where Egyptian intelligence agents cop to their designs. Not that Saleh is content with caricatures. He fashions odd men out and peculiar insiders. That Muslim Brotherhood imam turns out to be a furtive McDonald’s fan. (It’s halal, he swears.) Adam’s handler, Colonel Ibrahim is a brutal manipulator, but he still has an old detective’s charm and moral bone.
Amid this world, the question posed to Adam by another student “what have you gotten yourself into” seems apt. In the collective storm of Cairo Conspiracy, Saleh somehow manages to affirm the individual. At Al-Azhar, we find an unexpected model: Adam’s blunt bunkmate, Raed—”do you snore” is his intro of choice. He’s always got his headphones on, you know the type—would rather be listening to music. During one school day, Saleh pans down and we can catch Raed’s Gucci flip flops. The mic is turned up so we can catch him using his Dark Vader impression to mock a solemn imam. (Adam has to suppress his laughter.) Raed, though, isn’t a comic figure.
When Adam infiltrates Al-Azhar’s Muslim Brotherhood cell, he commits a faux-pas by singing his Koran verses. These Qutub-readers (Adam brandishes his own copy of Milestones to sneak into the fanatics’ “reading group”) won’t allow such blasphemy. Adam changes his way of praying to further his spy mission, but Raed counters Islamist iconoclasts at Al-Azhar’s Quran recitation contest—a competition that’s one of Boy from Heaven‘s peaks. Facing off against a tight-lipped Brotherhood punk, Raed is slow to get to his mic. He takes big breaths. And then, he lets it rip. Eyes closed, he draws out each syllable—quivering, soaring, flying. Raed’s opponent loses composure, his light blue eyes dart back and forth. A rousing orchestra accompaniment comes in under Raed’s verses lifting his song to a new, holy summit.
Raed wins the contest, but the night after triumph he’s framed and assaulted by Brotherhood thugs. Post-ordeal, Raed, flashes his back to the camera while nursing his wounds: his shirt reads “EXTREME MUSIC FOR EXTREME PEOPLE.” It’s a band shirt. Maybe from the metal group playing on his headphones before the attack. But that merch cleverly sums up Raed’s performance. Staking his claim to scripture, Raed shows out with own beautifully extreme (yet tolerant) version of Islam.
Saleh gives Raed his moment, but the “Boy from Heaven” is Adam. One could fairly complain the movie is too plotty. It might be iffy—and a little jarring—when Adam, who we took to be a novice, turns into a master spy. Adam’s feats, though, are more than entertainment. In one scene, Colonel Ibrahim tries to peg his spy down: “Do you think you have a gift? Is that why you got this scholarship? You are nothing!” In another, Sheikh Durani, a powerful Al-Azhar imam, disdains Adam: “Who are you? Who will listen to you?” At the movie’s climax, Adam is asked again “who are you?,” but this time, the inquirer—another, wiser imam—assumes an admiring tone of genuine wonderment.
Adam has been sent by his handler to get this imam—a moderate “Blind Sheikh”—to withdraw his confession (privately) to a crime committed by the Security Service, quashing the danger of him testifying at trial where the cleric had planned to highlight the government’s dirty plays with a dramatic public recantation. Our op tries a couple approaches. They fall flat before the imperious holy man. Adam’s endgame is to recount an episode from the history of Islamic factionalism. He tellingly (and gracefully) links Muhammad’s rash companion, Omar, with the Blind Sheik: Omar had drawn his sword after the prophet’s death, and Adam’s citation implies the Blind Sheikh’s coming confession would set off a disastrous civil war. The elder imam is stunned by Adam’s poise. The anecdote’s precision makes it come across as Adam’s own conception—a truth from his actual core, not a Sisi/state-induced gambit. This arc of self-actualization might seem beyond belief. It’s surely a stretch within the world Saleh has depicted. I’d stick up for Saleh’s ending, but he’s his own best defender: “I was much more cynical before I had children. I would have ended with him dying before I had kids. Now… I cannot, he had to survive. It’s bittersweet. He loses his innocence. I think the big question in the film is what is the price of an education. I felt I could not let him die.”[2]
Saleh made his movie in exile. He was kicked out of Egypt for an earlier film The Nile Hilton Incident. Boy From Heaven condemns Egypt’s current lack of political options, but it’s not a vindictive smear job. Saleh explains: “I’m not a nationalist, I love Egypt because of the soil, because of the people… If you really love a place you’re willing to tell the truth about it.”[3] The director has gone out of his way to praise the current Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, who has been known to resist Sisi (as well as denounce female genital mutilation). At Cannes, Saleh claimed his success was Egypt’s—“we should be proud” —despite knowing that his movie would probably end up banned in the country. I suppose someone could call him out for having delusions about his audience. But it won’t be me. I felt happy for him even as I cringed at his celeb-mongering Cannes interviewers. Saleh has made a movie that should have a deep resonance for Muslims in many societies. (Secular citizens of nations dealing with endemic corruption will find Boy from Heaven speaks to their circumstances too.) PR pageantry shouldn’t dilute Saleh’s accomplishment. He’s teaching us not to look away from politics and vision in the Islamic world. The film’s shots of Al-Azhar’s student body, Saleh’s assemblies seem intentional, evoking the range of Muslim identities: we see Arabs, Maghrebis, North Africans, Sub-Saharan Africans, South Asians, East Asians etc. When we leave the premises for the City, we see all Cairo pray—from the military brass down to the street urchins. During election proceedings for the next Grand Imam, the scene transitions back and forth from high preceptors to everyday people who watch the broadcast on their phones.
Boy from Heaven reminded me of a 70s movie about youth and nationhood I’d caught at another university screening. Wan Pipel (One People) follows a young Surinamese student navigating his return from university in the Netherlands, Suriname’s ex-colonial overlord. It’s one of those improbable movies, you wonder how it got funded. Boy from Heaven is a thriller, so it has that pop element, but Saleh must’ve had a tough time pitching his movie. (And he did simplify his title for Anglos…”Cairo Conspiracy.”) It’s wonderful when a director like Saleh manages to get his vision on screen. I’m excited to see what he’ll do in the future. His musing-aloud hints Cannes-glam won’t go to his head:
“I was like wake me up, wake me up. I’m gonna be humiliated when I wake up from this dream. Like who do you think you are. I mean you’re Tarik. You’re here in Stockholm with your, you know… Billy needs to change her diaper. That’s who you are. You thought you were Rossellini or Visconti… No you’re a schmuck.”[4]
NOTES
1 The Honorable Schoolboy might be my favorite Le Carré, with agent Westerby’s tour of insurgent Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand—his melancholy, aristocrat’s farewell to empire. I can almost smell Hong Kong newspapermen’s smoky pool rooms, Westerby’s last holdout. (It’s a damn shame it was too expensive for the BBC to bring this Le Carré to TV and instead opted for Smiley’s People.)
2 Boy From Heaven: Tarik Saleh & Tawfeek Barhom / Conversations from Scandinavian House / Cannes 2022)
3 Ibid.
4 California Film Institute: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5YyAgQygL0