by Ibrahim Essa
“I swear, after God on High no one could possibly do me more honor than these men,” he said, pointing to one or two police generals and some brigadiers sitting there.
“It’s you who brings bounty and grace to the whole country, pasha,” they would mumble in response. They knew how to answer flattery with flattery.
The question of how much good Khaled Abu Hadid really did the for the whole country was of course open to different interpretations by those present, but there was no doubt about the good he did these generals. Some of them were very upright and did not put out their hands for the gifts the man bestowed liberally on religious and security figures, but even they willingly and gratefully accepted jobs for their children and sons-in-law in Khaled Abu Hadid’s companies at salaries everyone knew would not be available anywhere else. All of this could be in jeopardy whenever the interior ministry moved police officers around, because they might end up in a place where they had no influence in Khaled Abu Hadid’s electoral constituency or economic empire.
Once during a reception, Abu Hadid had stood up and told a story about how the workers in one of his factories had gone on strike. He went to address them and told them he wouldn’t be shaken by their senseless agitation. He said he knew who was inciting them to behave in this way, which would ruin the livelihoods of their colleagues and their families.
“I spoke to Kheirat Bey and he came himself with all the officers and the riot police trucks and criminal investigation department, and the kids in the factory shat their pants. The guy who five minutes earlier was on strike, was suddenly working away as if he owned the factory. I tell you, if I’d given way that time, they would have completely ruined me.”
He went on to list the benefits he had brought the workers—the televisions he’d put in the dormitories so they could watch Egypt winning the African Cup of Nations, the food from the finest restaurants, the comprehensive health insurance that covered relatives even to the third degree, the compensation for injuries or illness, the annual and monthly bonuses he paid the workers, and a number of other benefits with which he almost broke the hearts of the audience. The only thing that marred the scene was Hatem’s laugh and the remark he made, with obvious sarcasm.
“Not even Abdel-Rahman ibn Awf provided such benefits to the tribesmen who worked for him in Medina in the days of the Prophet, Khaled Pasha,” he said.
Khaled Abu Hadid loved Hatem’s cheek, even asked for it. Maybe there was something masochistic about it. He laughed heartily till his lips were wet with saliva.
“You’re making fun of me, Mawlana,” he said. “I’m nothing compared to a venerable Companion of the Prophet such as Abdel-Rahman ibn Awf, who financed the Prophet’s raiding expeditions, spent money on the poor of Medina, and donated his caravans as alms to the Muslims.”
Hatem knew how to play the game and stir the pot.
“It’s true you’re not a touch on Abdel-Rahman ibn Awf, neither you nor the whole Egyptian-American Chamber of Commerce, but your caravans don’t feed Medina. They feed the whole of Egypt, Khaled Pasha,” he said.
“Now you’re talking politics, Mawlana.”
Hatem laughed, along with others. Some laughed sincerely and others just for show.
“You can report me to the security people, Khaled Pasha, but you’d be wasting your time. They know I work for them and for my country and my government, and I’m also a coward and I have nothing to do with politics,” he said.
He pointed to the group of generals, who were smiling and laughing. He put his hands up in a sign of surrender.
“President Sadat, may he rest in peace, used to say, ‘No politics in religion, and no religion in politics,’” he said, “but my motto is ‘No politics in politics, and no religion in religion.’”
Mukhtar el-Husseini knew this mission of Hatem’s and Hatem knew that he knew, and although he didn’t care what the other sheikhs thought, because he saw them all as compromised, he did care that Mukhtar should understand why he condescended to play this role with Khalid Abu Hadid. In the same place some years earlier, when he was not yet established and at a time when he was tired of jumping through hoops, he had discussed all this with Mukhtar.
“You know what, Uncle?” Hatem had said, looking deep into Mukhtar’s eyes as if he wanted him to believe he was telling the truth. Hatem always called Mukhtar ‘uncle’ out of respect for his age and experience.
“You are my uncle, and anyone with an uncle has nothing to worry about,” Hatem continued. “Did you know they’re waging war on me? They’re trying to keep me from earning my daily bread. Those programs are all I have to live on. I still have a job in the Ministry of Religious Endowments and my salary there is seven hundred pounds a month, which I leave for the accountant and the cleaners there. There’s a war on against the programs and a fight between the television channels and the advertising agencies and they’re all throwing accusations at each other, but Khaled Abu Hadid pulled a fast one on me. He trapped me in his cage and has been financing and sponsoring my programs ever since. At the end of the program you can see it says ‘This program is sponsored by the Abu Hadid factories’ and in the breaks in the program all the ads are for his factories and his companies. This has made a big difference to me. It’s brought me millions in income and made me big, compared with all the other stations and sheikhs. That’s automatically made me inseparable from Abu Hadid, and he’s a pleasant man who loves to joke frankly with me and speak to the absurd and playful part of me. He just about has me by the throat, but I too have him by the balls, if you’ll pardon the expression. It’s true that he gets publicity and it helps to clean up his image, but he also gains something more important. He knows how much those in power admire me.”
“Those in power or high-class people?” asked Mukhtar in response.
“No, not high-class people, Uncle,” said Hatem. “I wouldn’t suit them. People in power of course, people who live in palaces, from the Qubba Palace to the State Security palace and so on. The people who govern live in these palaces and they like what I say and the way I say it to people. Abu Hadid knows this and when he’s around he acts as if he’s one of my fans, though he probably doesn’t watch a single one of the programs he finances and he doesn’t know what they’re for or what they mean, but that doesn’t matter.
“You’re my doctor and my sheikh, Uncle Mukhtar,” Hatem continued sadly and slowly. “You’re only five years older than me but you have a radiance that warms and lights up something inside me, and as long as I live I’ll never forget that you brought something to life inside me. But Uncle, don’t give these people the honor of coming here, because this place is like a nightclub without the alcohol, and the vested interests are the dancer that dances for them all.”
Mukhtar el-Husseini roared with laughter, but then restrained himself. Hatem stood up, satisfied and smiling.
“Imagine if Abu Hadid brought in a fully dressed Islamically approved dancer right now!” he said.
*
Hatem now found Khaled Abu Hadid expounding on the question of adult breastfeeding, a source of controversy in Islamic law. He wanted to have fun and amuse his generals and other guests with a reality-show style contest between sheikhs who had personal disagreements, rather than disagreements over points of Islamic law—sheikhs trained to meet the needs of the shahbandar, the head of the merchants’ guild. They were pursuing a profession that has existed throughout history—the profession of preachers to sultans. Khaled picked first on Sheikh Fathi, relying on his stupidity and rudeness.
“Mawlana,” he said, “did you see Sheikh Hatem making fun of the fatwas on adult breastfeeding and saying that the sheikh who gave that fatwa needs suckling himself?”
Aware that Abu Hadid was playing the role of lion tamer in the circus, Hatem stood up.
“I never said that,” Hatem said. “I said the sheikh who made the fatwa and said that adult breastfeeding was permitted was a man who was missing something.”
Everyone laugh
ed, apparently a sign that the bell had rung for the rival boxer to enter the ring, because Fathi’s hackles had risen.
“What’s it to you, Hatem? You give fatwas to adolescents that you borrow from sheikhs who are superior to you and more knowledgeable and could teach you a thing or two about good manners.”
Sheikh Hatem stood up.
“Sheikh Fathi is mistaken,” he said, with restrained contempt.
Sheikh Hatem knew what was behind this antagonism, from which poisoned well Sheikh Fathi had imbibed such hatred that he couldn’t speak coherently or suppress his rage. Ever since they were together in lectures at college, where Hatem had sat listening to him, trying to memorize what he said, there had been a wall between them that grew higher and thicker. Fathi was a doctor because a doctorate raised your status, meant a higher salary, and was a source of joy in a family whose most educated member had been ignorant. He was an ambitious young scholar, the son of a humble stableman in a south Egyptian village that wallowed in the mud of poverty. In southern Egypt poverty isn’t just an economic reality that holds people down, deprives them of basic necessities, and restricts their ambitions to the level of subsistence. Poverty also weighs on the pride of the poor in southern Egypt, offending their dignity and reducing them in status to something close to slavery. Southern Egypt, forgotten and abandoned, works on the basis of cruel social divisions; those who are poor are low in status and treated as worthless. If a man is both poor and low-born, his grandchildren will reap the scanty harvest planted by their forebears. Ashamed of their poverty and mistreated by others, they produce children who are either rough and ready to explode against oppression, or malleable and adaptable enough to slip through the cracks and escape the stifling environment and the weight of poverty. Sheikh Fathi was of the second kind, or became so with the passage of time. At eighteen he came to al-Azhar in a city that seemed vast but at the same time claustrophobic and crowded to a boy who was alone. It had bright lights but it made him feel miserable. Most of the students at al-Azhar came from the same level of society as him—drained of wealth and of declining influence. Yet the limited inequalities between them were glaringly obvious; the difference between someone who has a monthly allowance of five pounds and someone who receives one pound might seem almost insignificant from a distance, but for the people involved it is a vast chasm.
One morning in the university corridors small groups of people gathered and linked up to form the beginnings of a demonstration. They caught the attention of Fathi, back then still a freshman, who publicly and in private hated people who talked about politics or took an interest in current affairs. He hated them with a vengeance because he saw them as extravagant wasters living in luxury. Why would a young man who could hardly pay his own keep be interested in anyone else? His world was a cruel and desolate place while colleagues lucky enough to receive financial support from their families were wasting time over a sheikh who had been arrested, and then it turned out that this sheikh lived in a mansion and owned cars and spent money lavishly. How could this wealthy man waste the money he had accumulated on opposing the government and arguing with those in power?
The demonstration was gathering and growing, to the surprise of the campus police and the faculty, who seemed aghast at this unexpected blow. In outrage Fathi stood defiantly at the top of a stairway and started to make a speech in his stentorian, melodious voice. It was an animated, enthusiastic though somewhat labored performance. At first the organizers of the demonstration ignored him, either in error or in the belief that he was on their side, but when it became clear what he was saying, they were seriously upset. Fathi had started urging the students to abandon the demonstration, which he called an abomination on earth. He criticized them for following the lead of what he called a decadent and deranged group and reminded them of the threats made by the university authorities. He tried to frighten them about being thrown in prison and throwing away their futures. When the organizers of the demonstration decided to respond, things were already out of control. People leaving the gathering to go home were pushing and shoving, and a trained group of students who were cooperating with the security and the police intervened, saying Amen to what Fathi said and cheering him. Skirmishes and fights broke out, the gathering broke up, and the demonstration came to an end.
After that Fathi was the darling of the university administration, especially the security officials. He had left his dignity at the gate where the campus guards and political police were posted, though in fact he had already abandoned it when he was growing up. He kept an eye on friends who were attracted to extremist ideas, which were rampant at about that time forty years ago. But Fathi had qualities that other informers in the university did not have: he had an excellent memory and a fine voice that projected strongly. He prospered, especially because he always flattered his teachers, wrote traditional poetry eulogizing the president of the university, and read poems at official events as a student representative. Then he had the genius idea of volunteering to give Quran lessons to the children of generals and brigadiers. He was invited into their houses and built up relationships with important people and their wives. Then came his appointment as an assistant lecturer in the university, a quick doctorate, and frequent appearances on the radio station that broadcast the Quran. Then he started to take part in religious programs on television and had one day a week in a program called Hadith al-Rouh, where a sheikh appeared alone for several minutes before the most important news bulletin. This won him special allowances, travel abroad, university assignments, bonuses, and the approval of his bosses. Fathi got married after several unsuccessful attempts to find himself a wife in his home village. Apparently the social equilibrium there had not yet changed enough for people to forget his origins, but he did manage to snag a wife who could help his career through contacts in the official hierarchy. She was the daughter of a late professor of his who came from an old family with a name that still resonated among those who moved in Azhar circles, though its fortunes had declined.
Dressed in his elegant Azhar vestments, he gave the impression that he was an established sheikh. He enjoyed official approval and regularly helped to issue fatwas that supported the government’s laws and decrees with legal arguments based on watertight authorities in the works of recognized imams. As such, Fathi was comfortably seated in a better position than the sheikhs who tried to flatter and curry favor. He had an audience that really liked him, believed what he said, and followed him: they were the kind of people who wanted a version of religion that would serve their worldly aspirations and ambitions. But there was one powerful phenomenon that threatened to undermine Sheikh Fathi’s privileged position—those preachers who didn’t look like sheikhs, who took religion into the world of adolescents and women, and who shifted the focus of religious broadcasting from state television to the private satellite channels. He made fun of two or three of them in the beginning and launched a campaign of criticism and denigration against them. This served its purpose until a certain moment, the moment when his student, Hatem el-Shenawi, appeared on the scene, dressed as an Azhar sheikh but performing in the style of the new televangelists. As Hatem’s fame spread, Fathi grew bitter. The competition drove him to revert to the traditional solemnity expected of sheikhs and to an uncompromising language carved from the rocks of the linguistic past. His fatwas were rigidly orthodox, perhaps because this was the only way he could set himself apart from the kinds of people who were making inroads into the field of religious learning. He set himself a target that would give him peace of mind. He thought that these new people like Hatem would never be able to compete with him in solemnity and gravitas and so the state would never think of giving them senior positions in the Azhar hierarchy or appoint them as mufti of Egypt. His real aspiration was to obtain that office, and he seemed very confident, acting as though the job was already his, until the storm created by his fatwa on adult breastfeeding.
“So you want to convince me, venerable sheikh, that Aisha, the
wife and Companion of the Prophet Muhammad and the Mother of the Believers, told other Muslim women, who were devout and worshiped God, that they should bare their breasts—brown ones, white ones, red ones, small ones, or big ones—and sit down with men with mustaches and beards and eyes and whatever they have between their legs, and let every man suck their tits five times? Just so that the men could go and visit Aisha and sit and chat with her?” Hatem said. “Only someone who hates Aisha could make such a claim and only a madman would believe it.”
Sheikh Fathi fumed with rage. He clenched his teeth and the veins in his cheeks throbbed. He studied the eyes of the people sitting around and realized that they wouldn’t let him walk out grumbling or stay aloofly silent. They would read that as weakness and possibly as an insult, and he was of such a jittery and fragile disposition that he couldn’t allow himself to stand on his dignity in the presence of officers, after spending years proving to them that he had abandoned it. Besides, his host was Khaled Abu Hadid, the lavish billionaire who had never begrudged him presents or money or jobs for his relatives and his in-laws. He couldn’t deprive him of the entertainment that he wanted.
His fatwa on adult breastfeeding had ruined him as far as the important people were concerned. It meant a rapid and drastic reduction in his official credibility, because he became the laughing stock of the newspapers and the television channels. The experience taught him that when the media comes across a victim they don’t check what they say or the allegations they make. On the contrary, the butchers work together, hastily and indiscriminately, to slaughter the calf that has stumbled or fallen. They don’t read the classical texts or know anything about them, and their ears, which are their only source of knowledge, don’t do research or make inquiries. They just listen and repeat. The fatwa had been lying in books and was tucked away in classical works that no one consults and no one has troubled to explain. It had been sealed in a little bottle for dozens of years, known only to a specialist clique of researchers, but when he opened the bottle the genie sprang up right in his face and dashed his dream of the promotion, which he had been about to pick ripe from the branch: the office of mufti of Egypt.