The Family Hightower Read Online Free PDF

believing when it’s 1994 , he’s gone back to his father, and they’re leaving again, only four months into their stay, in a car Peter still isn’t sure they own.
    In 1994 , Rufus’s idea, like I said, is to drive from Cairo to Casablanca. There’s a David Lean movie in his head about it, Peter thinks, one where it’s their lone car racing on a highway through the Sahara, because his father still falls for the romanticism, even after he’s lived in Africa so long. But the highway itself is dusty and dry; the car’s filthy before they leave the city. There’s traffic. They almost can’t see out the windows. Then there are the long, long delays at the border between Egypt and Libya, Libya and Algeria, while the guards try to square Rufus and Peter’s obvious Americanness—maybe you can never lose it, no matter how hard you try—with the fact of their non-U.S. passports. Rufus loves it. He never quite says this to Peter, but he’s at his happiest like this, like it was when Peter was a kid. The two of them skating across the surface of the world, houses and trees and people standing with blue plastic buckets by the side of the road just blurs in their eyes. His son is all he needs, all he wants.
    They don’t know that guerrillas invaded the Atlas Asni hotel in Marrakech and shot two Spanish tourists dead, or that three young French Muslims from the slums of Paris will be charged for the attack. As a huge manhunt continues, the network they’re a part of will seem ever bigger, and more than thirty men will see the insides of courtrooms in Morocco and France, be jailed or slated to be executed. But Morocco points its finger at its neighbor, too, right from the start, accuses Algeria of funding the whole thing. Then the border’s really shut down, and reader, it will still be closed years later. So Rufus and Peter find the gate between Morocco and Algeria lowered. Two mustachioed border guards lounging outside the customs office, machine guns lying across their laps, looking at the dusty Peugeot as it drives up. They don’t even act like they’re going to stand up.
    â€œTurn around,” Peter says.
    â€œWhy?” Rufus says. “We need to know what’s going on.”
    â€œNot from them.”
    Rufus nods, puts on the brakes, and backs up. The wide cafés along the road are all empty. Only two are still open, one playing faint raï from a tiny radio, which a man with a broom turns off as soon as he sees them.
    â€œThe border is closed,” the man with the broom says to them, in French.
    â€œWe don’t speak French,” Rufus says in Arabic. Peter doesn’t correct him.
    â€œThe border is closed,” the man says again, in Arabic.
    â€œWhy?”
    The man with the broom takes in Rufus’s accent, squints at them. It’s too much to explain.
    â€œThe border is closed,” he says again. “Go back. And get out of this country.” He knows how hostile he sounds, but he’s trying to save them.
    They stand in the road for a minute, the car idling. Peter leans against the hood, stares at the metal. His father walks in front of the car, looks at the border again, back at the road they came down. Then turns back to his son, smiling.
    â€œLooks like Casablanca’s out,” he says. “It’s just us again.” And Peter takes a good, long look at his father. I can’t do this anymore, he thinks to himself. I just can’t.
    â€œNo, Dad,” he says. “It’s just you.”
    Rufus’s smile leaves him.
    â€œI’m not going with you this time,” Peter says. “Or any time.”
    â€œPlease,” Rufus says. “Just come.”
    â€œWhy? For the next scheme that gets us tossed out of somewhere? The next plan that falls through?”
    â€œNo,” Rufus says. “Because I’m your dad and you’re my boy.”
    â€œTell me what the hell