by Ibrahim Essa
“Is everything all right, Uncle?” Hatem asked.
Mukhtar began to tell him the secret reason why he had asked him to come: “I’m being subjected, Hatem, to a vicious war that’s getting fiercer day after day. They are using a variety of methods—harassment, trying to freeze our activities, and even attempting to force us out of the country.”
At first Hatem felt that Mukhtar must be exaggerating.
“Good heavens, why all that?” he said.
Mukhtar continued, a look of resignation on his kindly face.
“It’s been going on for two years and it hasn’t stopped, even as we’re having lunch together now,” he said. “As soon as you leave here, you’ll see a piece of the picture. Imagine a family descended from the Prophet having to put up with this harassment and persecution, including criminal acts by thugs. They’ve set fire to houses, damaged private property, arranged traffic accidents, and deliberately cut off services such as water and electricity.”
Hatem was stunned. He could hardly believe what he was hearing from Mukhtar, whom he considered a reliable source and a good friend. Mukhtar noticed that Hatem’s expression had changed.
“Imagine,” he continued, “when I came back from abroad with my whole family, as we were standing in line for the passport control, my wife and I were pulled aside and held for no reason. We sat in a small cold room all by ourselves and no one spoke to us or offered us a glass of water for two hours. They took away our telephones and a police brigadier came in and treated me very provocatively and arrogantly. In front of my wife he said, ‘I hear that you Sufi types aren’t interested in women.’ I jumped up and he said, ‘Okay, never mind, I guess they are.’ Then he stamped our passports and said goodbye. I didn’t know at the time that this wasn’t the end of it, but when we came out we found ourselves in a long hall, then a corridor that branched into other corridors. It all seemed to be underground, and we got lost, I swear, for about an hour, from one corridor to another and from one hallway to another, and we didn’t see or hear anyone and of course when they got bored of tormenting us someone suddenly appeared and said, ‘Ah, you’re lost.’ He opened a door and we found ourselves in the airport car park.”
“Did you complain to anyone or take it up with someone at a higher level?” Hatem asked.
“Yes,” said Mukhtar, “I spoke to one of our members who works in the office of the airport manager, but the manager called me and swore he didn’t know about it and that this was the work of the security people and not the airport staff. I was upset and I thought it was a message, from the Interior Ministry for example.”
“Why? Why the Interior Ministry? And why a message?”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Hatem. I know I’m boring you with my story but the airport part is the least of it because there’s been a whole series of incidents. The Minister of Religious Endowments gave orders that a new preacher be appointed to the big mosque where our ancestors are buried, and the new preacher goes up in the pulpit every Friday, Monday, and Thursday after the sunset prayers, exactly the same time we meet our guests in the courtyard next to the mosque, and starts insulting and attacking Sufism and Sufis, and describing them as polytheists. We complained to the minister but that made matters worse and he insisted that the preacher would stay in office. Since when has a mosque preacher given sermons three days a week? We found out that the Minister of Religious Endowments had received direct orders from an unknown official that someone hostile to Sufism should be in charge of the mosque. Imagine! In the mosque where your father was the Sufi leader, a preacher comes along and condemns Sufism and Sufis and says they’re not proper Muslims. Imagine how insulting that is, and then there’s the damage to your prestige among your followers. It was a clear provocation designed to start an argument and make trouble, because our members, and the neighbors and the local people, wouldn’t shut up when they heard things like that from the minaret of that mosque. That led to big confrontations between the local people and the Sufis on one side, and this sheikh and a bunch of Salafists who were brought in to pray in the mosque or, God knows, maybe they were plainclothes policemen or the police karate team, and a big fight broke out. In the newspapers there was a story, if you remember, about people breaking into a mosque and attacking the preacher. In fact that day it was our people who were beaten back when they tried to stop the preacher from preaching hate against us. So now I look like a Sufi sheikh who incites violence. And don’t forget that we’re constantly being followed, in taxis, pick-up trucks, or private cars, some of them without license plates or with false license plates, because we’ve asked about them and there’s no trace of them in the traffic department. The drivers of these cars attack us or swerve their cars at us to cause us as much damage as they can, and every time the cars drive off. We’ve had four traffic accidents in the past two weeks, not counting the repeated harassment on the road wherever we go, whether at home or in Alexandria. Even in hotels and at the beach with our families, we’re followed everywhere.
“At the same time the provincial governor issued orders that people should make use of the square where we’ve been holding our religious celebrations for the past hundred years, to set up a circus tent for example, or to display and sell goods, and for almost two or three months the place has been turned into a chaotic market that completely prevents us from performing our ceremonies on various special occasions. We’ve strongly objected to this but it looks like that official has more clout. Now the square has been turned into a marketplace for riffraff and peddlers and there are fights and acts of thuggery and muggings. Last year we put up a marquee in the square to commemorate the anniversary of the death of my father, may he rest in peace, who was one of the most important scholars of religion and Sufism of his age, and when the marquee was up and full of about ten thousand guests, the police came and surrounded the marquee and asked us to remove it. An assistant minister of the interior, who’s the director of security for the region, was there in person, which is unprecedented. Yet we had all the necessary permits and had paid all the fees. The plan to undermine our reputation in the eyes of all those people was drawn up in cooperation with the National Council of Sufi Orders, which was ordered to intervene on instructions from the hidden hand. Everyone in the country wants to win the hidden hand’s approval and avert its wrath at any price.”
Hatem was alarmed by these revelations.
“And where are your followers who are generals and judges and other powerful and influential people, or the tens of thousands of other followers across the country?” he asked.
“My dear brother, what can I say to the members of the order?” said Mukhtar. “They look to me for baraka and miracles. They think that with a single glance I can change things. They believe I have secret powers and I can call them by telepathy when they’re at home hundreds of miles away. They beg me to strike at those who treat them unjustly and to save them from oppression. The Sufi devotees imagine I’m one of God’s saints and I can perform miracles like destroying the world and splitting mountains down the middle. They depend on my powers and rush to kiss my hand and do me honor, and now you’re asking me to tell them that their sheikh, for whom they would be ready to die if I told them to, is completely powerless, that a policeman can push him around and intimidate him, that in the face of bureaucratic decisions or police brutality or harassment by a provincial governor or a police officer their sheikh can’t say a word or do anything to stop them. If I said this to one of our members I would lose face and my prestige would collapse. Then he would say, ‘Why don’t you smite them with one of your prayers, or paralyze them or give them hell with your powers?’ and I’d have to tell him that it was all a fantasy or wishful thinking on the part of followers and that doesn’t work when God decides to try us with misfortunes.”
Hatem bowed in deference to Sheikh Mukhtar’s honesty.
“It’s true you’re a prisoner of the way people see you and love you and the ideas they have about you,” he said. �
��You’re supposed to be a miracle-worker but in fact you can’t get yourself out of a detention cell at Cairo airport.”
Mukhtar continued, as though his gallbladder had burst and he couldn’t stop all the bile spilling out.
“In the oldest mosque in the province, which was built more than a hundred and twenty years ago, some of the descendants of the Prophet’s family are buried. It’s a place that large numbers of Muslims from various places often visit because the tombs produce certain fragrances and spiritual energy that only people with good hearts can detect. Then along comes a private charity created by someone we know nothing about claiming that he’s submitted a request to the prime minister, who has issued a decree that the mosque be razed to the ground because it’s about to fall down. This is a mosque that belongs to the Ministry of Religious Endowments. It’s listed as a building of historical value and it has religious significance, and the ministry hadn’t asked for it to be demolished. Yet someone came and got a decree from the prime minister and the ministerial committee on public services to demolish the mosque. Does that make sense? The antiquities committee and the ministry dismissed the decree as invalid, but mosques are now a toy the hidden hand is using to fight us. The guy has worn us down and rattled us with these ploys. We’ve wasted many months fighting this injustice and protecting the mosque from sabotage and destruction under cover of a decree from the prime minister.
“Then it got really out of hand and we had a gang of thugs suddenly turn up in front of our house to pick a fight. Out came the swords and the knives and the petrol bombs and the jerrycans of sulfuric acid. I swear, Hatem, sulfuric acid! Then there was a battle, with people who have nothing to do with the square where we live or the streets around us. They were attacking each other and setting fire to car tires, which went on smoldering for hours after the fight broke up. In the middle of the fighting, when it was clear that calling the police was a waste of time because they never came, the thugs broke into the house, broke down the gate, and knocked down the fence and the railings and the guardhouse where the doorman sits. They were fighting with each other and trampling on everything in their way. They could have come to the upper floors where we live but it was obvious that they only wanted to intimidate us—they hadn’t yet made the decision to go beyond frightening us and wrecking stuff in the house to humiliate us.
“And while we were away at one of our events, some lowlifes slipped into the house and tampered with the fuse box, which caused a short circuit and a fire that destroyed all the furniture and appliances in the house. The transformer caused massive explosions and if it hadn’t been for God’s protection we would have suffered even more serious damage. We brought an electrician and he told us that someone had played with the connections in the fuse box so that the wires would melt quickly and start a fire, and of course that was deliberate.”
Mukhtar stopped and bowed his head.
“It’s clear from these incidents that you’re not up against someone ordinary,” commented Hatem. “This is someone more important and powerful, someone people obey when he speaks, or rather when he whispers, not just speaks. He’s the one behind all these incidents. Who could you have upset this much, Sheikh Mukhtar? You’re an easygoing, good-natured person who prefers to be discreet. You don’t talk about politics or government, if you don’t mind me saying so, Uncle.”
Mukhtar calmed down and regained some confidence when he heard the word ‘uncle,’ because he realized that Hatem still respected him and the stories had not changed the way Hatem saw him. So he didn’t think too hard about what Hatem had said before ‘uncle,’ and continued with his story.
“Of course I know there are cameras spying on my house, even on my bedroom,” Mukhtar said. “The strange thing is that when me and my wife are alone and being intimate with each other, there’s a cement mixer under the bedroom window that starts up. It’s a great beast of a machine and it makes a horrible noise that gives you a headache. They run it empty without any cement or anything else in it and there’s no building site there, and it only runs under the bedroom and makes a noise at moments like that. When the kids go downstairs to ask the driver to drive it away they find a group of people around the mixer claiming that it’s broken and they’re trying to fix it.”
Now Hatem began to have some doubts. Maybe Sheikh Mukhtar was suffering from paranoia and was convinced that someone was persecuting him. Perhaps Mukhtar, because of the pressure on him from being treated as a saint from an early age, had become simple-minded. They venerated him as a miracle-worker, whereas the only miracle he had really performed was resisting the temptation to exploit people’s emotions for profit or personal advantage or sexual favors. But Hatem soon ruled out the possibility that Mukhtar was sick, because his mother appeared and corroborated what he said, and besides, there were bound to be witnesses to all his stories.
“Do you realize, Sheikh Mukhtar,” said Hatem, “that you really are one of God’s holy men?”
Mukhtar’s spirits fell and he was worried Hatem might be making fun of him.
But Hatem continued, “A man in whom people see mythical powers, although he doesn’t believe them himself, a man that people think is a saint, although he doesn’t believe it and doesn’t exploit it and doesn’t want it and can’t even live with it. A man who puts up with all that pain and all that harassment without kicking up a fuss really is a saint in my book.”
“God bless you, Hatem,” Mukhtar replied. “But I want to add something just to finish off my story. A while back we found out that the security agencies are using something called harassment patrols, which means vehicles full of thugs that surround us and play music so loud we don’t get a moment’s peace. Or trucks that come with their annoying engines and park in front of our house for hours on the pretext that there’s something wrong with them, and there are trucks that dump rubble in front of the house to make it hard for us to get the car out. And we get notices that they’re going to cut off the water and the electricity, just ours, and our telephones are constantly tapped blatantly to make sure we know that all our calls on the landlines and the cells are being monitored. It’s done in a really intrusive way. They break into every conversation and then you get another call after the conversation to play back to you everything you said a few minutes earlier to the other person.
“You know, Hatem, everything I’ve told you and more has been reported to the police and to the prosecutor’s office, including this incident—after which you won’t need to hear any more. My wife and my mother-in-law were on their way back from visiting family in Cairo when the police stopped their car at a checkpoint. They took the driver and beat him up without any warning. They didn’t even try to provoke an incident so they could claim he’d insulted them. Then they started verbally abusing my wife and her mother in an outrageous way. They forced them out of the car and threw the contents of their handbags on the ground, and then a senior officer turned up at the checkpoint in a police car. He got out and saw the scene and started shouting at the policemen as if he was their savior and God’s mercy had descended from the heavens. He apologized to my wife and her mother, and even to the driver, and they went back to the car after being insulted and humiliated, and when the driver was about to drive off the officer came up to the window on my wife’s side and said with a smile, ‘Tell Sheikh Mukhtar that no one can save him from us. Goodbye, Mrs. Suha Abdel-Hamid Abdel-Mungi Ahmed Atef.’ Her full name, right back to her great-great-grandfather, tripped off the officer’s tongue. It seemed to be a double message—that I couldn’t escape and that the target of their vengeance would be my wife.”
Hatem was completely outraged. “Who’s behind all of this, Mukhtar?” he asked.
“Your friend,” Mukhtar replied, sadly but firmly.
The man in question was the president’s son. He wasn’t in fact Hatem’s friend but Hatem was reluctant to deny the allegation and the idea had become widespread. He could sense the effect this had on everyone he knew, above him or below
him. Some people thought Hatem even had influence over the security men who controlled the puppet strings and that had held the country by the throat for ages. Everyone was convinced that he had a friendly relationship with the president’s son. Even the generals in State Security, who he assumed should know whether there was any basis for the story, were taken in by it. Although Hatem knew, like everyone else, that the world was fickle, for a long time he felt reassured by the idea that an influential sponsor was providing cover for his activities as he progressed up the ladder of fame in this lousy business.
One night at the studios he had gone into the green room where the guests sat before they went on air. He was his usual wise-cracking self and the staff were chasing him with questions that required quick-serve fatwas that were packed and ready to go so that their empty minds could handle them. He saw the actor Nader Nour, whose real name, he later discovered, was Shaaban Abdel-Samie el-Sayed. Nader jumped into his arms, showering him dramatically with praise, making it up as he went along in a way that showed he was an actor of modest talent when he deviated from the script he had memorized.
“Sheikh Hatem, I’m a great admirer of yours, a disciple. Whenever I see one of your programs I pray for you,” he said.
“And whenever I see one of your programs, I curse you,” Hatem shot back, punching him in the chest. “You’ve made me cry so many times,” Hatem continued. “When I was watching you in that program when your mother, Inaam Salousa, died in the serial, I had tears rolling down my cheeks and my wife was laughing at me. Remember, the one where you threw yourself into her arms and said, ‘Who have you left me for, mama?’”