From King Farouk to General Sisi, Egypt’s authoritarian regimes have all invoked the Egyptian narrative of a unified, strong, stable nation. Idris Ali, in his novel Beneath the Poverty Line, rewrites that narrative; dead is the sacrosanct monologue of a leader at the center of the nation, and born is the colloquial, polyphonic dialogue of a transnational, pluralistic and fragmented people. Ali establishes Egyptian history within the spatial and temporal movements of his protagonist. But Ali’s history is a radical reconstruction of the events, locations and shared experiences that are the pillars of Egypt’s sanctioned, manufactured national narrative. For example, on one apparently aimless walk around downtown Cairo, Ali renames the League of Arab States as “The League of Savage Tribes;” Tahrir Square becomes Intifada Square, and Egypt’s Bread Riots are the “the revolt of the poor.” Ali is self-consciously and prophetically rewriting Egypt’s national story. Ali predicts that a fierce revolution will come to bring Mubarak down, “devouring in its path all living and dead things. It won’t stop until a new a new tank rider comes along. And he’ll bring you back to the beginning again.” Six years after Ali published these words, Egypt did indeed have a revolution that brought Mubarak down and devoured living and dead things in its path. And a new tank rider named General Sisi has come, apparently bringing Egypt back to the beginning again, just as Ali predicted. We will draw the movements and historical constructions of Ali’s protagonist on actual maps of Egypt and Cairo, based on the re-imagined geography and cartography suggested in the novel. Further, we will visually map the protagonist’s downfall, positing that the spatial, temporal, historic and personal journeys all run a parallel course, ending in both a failed suicide attempt and a failed nation-state, wherein each entity is ‘reborn’ into the same place and the same condition that they started in. For the nation, this is the reinstatement of a new strongman following a revolution that brought down the previous tyrant. For the protagonist, despite attempts to soar above, he finds himself back at his departure point, on the Qasr al-Nil bridge, beneath the poverty line, hearing a woman’s voice ask, “what’s your story, I wonder?” The two journeys are one and the same story. It is Egypt’s new national narrative, unsanctioned and most unsacrosanct.