by Ibrahim Essa
“So is it halal or haram?”
“Why, Mr. Shaaban? Do you think I’m going to tell you it’s halal for that pretty girl, what’s her name, the heroine of that film with that hippie friend of yours who has his shirt unbuttoned throughout the film . . .”
“Oh please, Mawlana, spare me.”
“Okay, sir. You want me to tell you that when he takes his shirt off and kisses her on the back of the neck and then pulls her toward him and kisses her lips in a shot that fills the 52-inch screen, that it’s halal? You think I’m a sheikh from Las Vegas? Of course it’s haram—nakedness and kisses and swimsuits and steamy scenes, and cold ones too, and all kinds of scandalous behavior. It’s definitely all haram, haram, but is that all there is to acting? In fact from my own experience, no. Acting goes far beyond that, and by the way, I’ve seen several Iranian films in which all the women wear the hijab and even so the films were like magic. We’re talking about stories and parables that are like epic poetry.”
“So it’s halal?” Nader ventured.
Hatem bowed his head pensively.
“The truth is I don’t know,” he said. “What’s for sure is an actor assumes a character that’s not his own and is treated as if he’s the character he’s playing rather than his real character. Of course that’s deceit but everyone knows it’s deceit, so it’s not deceit. Then there’s the allurement, which no doubt includes entertainment, playfulness, and showing off, but playfulness is important here and the entertainment is innocent and the showing off does no harm, so it’s halal.”
Then he turned to Nader.
“My God,” he said irritably, “it looks as though it’s halal, Shaaban!”
“Looks like it, after all that it looks like it,” Nader shouted. “So what was all that complicated argument about?”
Hatem stood up and started hurling the sofa cushions at Nader with pinpoint accuracy.
“Do you think it’s easy making up fatwas, you ignorant actor?” he said.
After finishing one of his programs, Hatem left the building with some of his team as usual. He found Nader outside with dozens of adolescents jostling around him. He held onto him with one arm as he waved to his fans with the other.
“Move back so that we don’t get in the way of Mawlana the sheikh,” Nader said.
“What’s up?” Hatem whispered. “I feel like a blind man being dragged off somewhere. Where are you taking me?”
Nader got Hatem through the open door of his car and pushed in beside him in the back seat.
“So you’re kidnapping me!” Hatem said.
He put his head through the window for the girls who were pressing against the window and the body of the car.
“Girls, I want you as witnesses that I’ve been kidnapped. You’ll have to back each other up in court!” he said.
Nader pressed the button to close the window.
“Quickly, Saber,” he shouted at the driver.
“Interested in soccer, Mawlana?” added Nader, suddenly acting serious.
“I support the Ismaili Dervishes of course, because of my profession,” Hatem replied.
Nader laughed.
“We’re on our way to an important match,” he added.
“What? People play soccer at eleven o’clock at night? Are we playing by Brazil time?”
“Mawlana, I’m serious. It’s a match in the summer league. We’ll be playing together on the same side against a team including the president’s son,” explained Nader.
Hatem laughed sarcastically.
“No way. We’re going to play against the president’s son?”
“Would you rather play on the same side as him?” Nader replied.
“The truth is I’d rather go home,” said Hatem.
“You’re frightened, Mawlana,” Nader jeered.
“What would I be frightened of? It’s just that I’d be embarrassed to be running rings around the president’s son. But if this goes on too late I’ll have rings around my eyes in the morning.”
Nader laughed.
“You’re a hoot, Mawlana. That’s why I love you,” he said.
“No, I’m really serious, Nader,” said Hatem, looking stern. “I don’t want to make this trip, or play this match, or make this horrible acquaintanceship.”
Nader was surprised.
“So you call it a horrible acquaintanceship if you meet the president’s son and have a friendly chat with him?”
“It might work against me. And besides, what the hell would a sheikh in a turban be doing in a soccer league, prancing around with his belly hanging out in the presence of his honor the president’s son? Who knows, the president might be up late and decide to come and watch the match.”
“Look, Mawlana, I met the man a while back and I’ve come across him at the weddings of several respectable people,” said Nader.
“Of course they’d be respectable. I mean, you’re not very likely to meet him at a wedding in a shack in the slums.”
“Once we went to the birthday of some billionaire in Madame Tussaud’s in London. We went in his private plane and came back the same night.”
“That was in some slum part of London?” joked Hatem.
“Anyway, he’s a very polite man, well brought up and respectable, not at all a show-off or arrogant, well behaved and very modest. You’ll see for yourself,” said Nader. Hatem mulled it over and asked Nader several questions, such as ‘Does he know I’ll be there?’ and ‘Do you have any sports clothes that would fit me?’ and ‘Is it a long way?’ and ‘Does he know your real name is Shaaban?’
The answer to all the questions was yes, except for the last one, where it was no plus a ‘mind you don’t tell him.’
The car stopped at a remote spot in a new suburb for privileged people. As soon as Hatem reached such places, he understood that line of the miraculous Quran: We gave orders to the townsfolk who live in luxury. He liked the version that doubled the ‘m’ in the first word, making it ‘ammarna’ rather than ‘amarna’ and changing the meaning to “We made princes of the townsfolk who live in luxury,” and princes didn’t necessarily mean members of a royal family. They might also be members of a ruling family, ministers, or powerful people who gave orders and acted imperiously. That version no longer occurred in the readings by modern Arabs, the descendants of men who preached to sultans, who were worried the preachers might promote the version with the doubled ‘m’. The sultans preferred the single-m version, which could be read as implying that God would order the rich to live debauched lives. What kind of idiot would believe such an interpretation? And what kind of even bigger idiot could hear it recited fourteen hundred years ago without preferring the real version over the sophistical version? Hatem kept such ideas to himself, except when he was fed up with feeling he was in chains, when he couldn’t breathe because the people around him were in need and too weak to stand up to authority, influence, and money. He was as weak as they were but he drew some strength from his learning, in which he took refuge, and sometimes from humor. He tried to keep his conscience in good repair; whenever he felt that it had become too complacent he hurriedly set to work plugging the gaps and filling the holes.
As he and Nader went through the gate of the club with its high walls, Nader smiled and gave out pictures of himself to the strapping guards standing to attention in forbidding uniforms. The guards smiled back in delight and greeted Sheikh Hatem, whose arrival took them by surprise. They cleared a way for the car through the barriers of solid stone, which were carefully arranged to stop cars from driving too fast from the gate to the clubhouse.
Hatem greeted them, then leaned over to Nader and said, “I bet the High Dam in Aswan doesn’t have a quarter or even a sixth of the number of guards this place has!”
Nader was surprised that Hatem was surprised.
“But why would you want guards on the High Dam?” he asked.
“You’re right,” said Hatem. “All the High Dam does is protect us from flooding or drowning, and
provide us with electricity.”
Nader ignored Hatem’s sarcasm for a moment, then stopped the car and turned to him. “No seriously, why would we need guards on the High Dam?” he asked.
“Okay, I’m sorry. The High Dam can go to hell. I don’t want it guarded,” Hatem replied.
Hatem turned away and Nader started up the car again, driving down lanes that led to open spaces that loomed in front of them. There was a deep green soccer field and floodlights that were brighter than necessary.
“The townsfolk who live in luxury,” Hatem mused. “And by the way that includes many sectors of society—me and you and him and them.”
“Sheikh Hatem?”
“I’m just talking to myself, filling out an idea I had. Don’t worry about it. Let’s keep to the game.”
Nader opened the trunk of the car and took out two sports bags of the latest fashion and the best-known brand and handed one of them to Hatem. He closed the car door and walked toward a corridor that led to a small one-story building.
“You seem to be in a playful mood yourself tonight,” said Nader.
“No, don’t worry,” said Hatem reassuringly. “I’m just fine.”
The building turned out to contain changing rooms, elegantly designed with everything inside suggesting cleanliness and regular maintenance. It had vast pictures of famous international soccer players on the walls and a private changing room with wooden lockers, a water cooler, and an en suite bathroom paved in marble and the luxury fittings you would expect in a five-star hotel. Speakers in the ceiling played soft music and there was a cupboard with clean towels folded up, each one marked with the club logo. When Hatem came out wearing his sports clothes, he ran into Nader wearing exactly the same uniform.
“Well, well, look at the sporty modern sheikh with an open mind!” laughed Nader.
Hatem pointed to his bare thighs and calves below the shorts.
“Sure, open everywhere,” he said.
As they left Nader looked at his watch and told Hatem that the big man must be about to arrive.
When they went out on the floodlit field Hatem found himself in the middle of a group of businessmen he had met on many occasions and some of whom he was friends with. They were all in sports clothes, and although some of them were fat with large bellies, in their uniform they looked the model of elegant distinction, like the pampered few chosen to join the club. They greeted Hatem warmly and some of them seemed genuinely happy, though surprised, to see him there. They soon upgraded him in their hierarchy of important people because, if a sheikh like Hatem appeared here, it meant the president’s son approved of him and had a friendly relationship with him, and so there would be an array of security agencies ready to protect him and make sure he was free to go about his business.
As the businessmen and members of parliament reassessed Hatem, some famous soccer players, impressed to see the sheikh, ran forward to welcome him. Hatem really liked them; he had met them in his mosque, in the studios, in the grand homes of the politicians and millionaires he visited, where he sometimes gave lectures on religion or attended parties. In all these encounters the soccer players were his favorites because they were innocently and absolutely ignorant in a way that Hatem saw as a sign of honesty. They were young men in the prime of youth, climbing the ladder of fame and glory through their boots, as God had denied most of them any intelligence or intellectual ability, concentrating all their talents in their muscles and their feet. Of course they would be greedy for money, dazzled by fame, and dizzy in the face of life’s temptations, especially as most of them came from backgrounds of pure suffering and abject poverty, a hand-to-mouth existence and a culture of abysmal ignorance. When they started to climb, it happened suddenly and brought in its wake everything likely to lead them astray—money, celebrity, influence, the adulation of fans, the attentions of girls, and relationships with important people. Their lives were turned upside down and Hatem could see that they were completely shaken. He felt really sorry for them, because what they went through in three or four years would have been too much for a sane, balanced person to go through in twenty years, and one of the ways they kept a grip in the face of all these powerful pressures, whether wittingly or unwittingly, was by being religious. They mostly didn’t know anything about religion, but they were very religious. Maybe that was how the whole country was—religious without religion. They hardly knew the basics of Islam, but they clung to the rites and the rituals like men drowning in the open sea. They didn’t try to exploit religion but they really believed in it and it was their last line of defense, unlike the retired soccer players he sometimes shook hands with and embraced and who spoke to him at the end of his programs, saying things like “You really put that guy in his place” or “I watched you every day in Ramadan and if I missed a program I’d watch the repeat before dawn prayers.” These retirees, who had grown up in an atmosphere of lies and deceit, had learned, along with soccer, how to play around, how to dodge and weave, how to trick the referee and win penalty kicks by devious means, how to cut corners with the rules, how to stir up the crowd, how to elbow opponents when the referee wasn’t looking, as well as how to win rewards from businessmen who were fans or candidates in elections. They invested their celebrity status and stardom and made money any way they could.
Now Hatem was sitting on a luxuriously padded wooden bench of the kind that royalty might sit on. In front of him there was an icebox full of soft drinks, juices and bottles of water. Nader was warming up with the ball while they waited for the president’s son. On the grass in front of Hatem sat a businessman in his early thirties from a well-known family that owned franchises from French companies.
“I really admire you,” the man said, very politely, “because you’re not a traditional sheikh, even if you sometimes appear with a turban and a caftan. But you speak in simple language that people understand easily. I’m very interested in religion. I’ve read several books but unfortunately they’re written in difficult language and the way they explain things makes you feel like you’re at school. I wish we could simplify religion.”
Hatem had heard enough and he laughed.
“The problem is that if the sheikhs simplified religion, they’d be out of a job,” he said. “They live by making it complicated.”
There was a sudden commotion and the big man appeared at the far corner of the field, which was surrounded by wasteland with no neighbors or buildings. There was a screen of tall trees but when Hatem looked carefully he realized that the trees had been brought in and planted there when they were mature. The area couldn’t have been planted long enough for the trees to grow so high. Even the grass was a brilliant green, but it didn’t look fresh. People ran toward the president’s son, the way you would welcome a friend, or maybe like messengers running after their master. The play stopped, a whistle blew, and the president’s son came on to the field—slim and trying his hardest to be casual. He smiled at Hatem with a certain presumptuous humility as he approached. He gently waved some of the people out of his way, took hold of Nader’s arm, and shook Hatem’s hand warmly.
“Good evening, Mawlana,” he said.
“Good evening, sir.”
“It’s a fine thing that sheikhs play sports. It’s really great.”
Eager to insert himself into the conversation, Nader replied.
“Teach your children how to swim, shoot, and ride horses. Isn’t that right, Mawlana?” he said.
Hatem laughed.
“But they didn’t say anything about five-a-side soccer,” he said to the president’s son with a smile.
The big man turned toward them.
“The sheikh’s going to play on my team and bring us some baraka,” he said.
“So exactly how many goals does baraka bring? So I can work it out,” Hatem quickly replied.
The president’s son smiled, apparently the strongest response he could muster to Hatem’s humor. He took hold of Hatem’s arm and said, “Mawlana, you’re just as
they told me you were.”
Before he had a chance to explain who this ‘they’ were, a photographer popped out from underground and peppered them with flashes. He took another picture of them later, hugging after a goal. Hatem had blocked one of the retired professionals and passed the ball to the son, who dribbled around the defender and took a powerful shot at the goal, as if he were trying to prove to himself that he didn’t need them to give him preferential treatment on the field. When the ball reached the goal, the keeper fumbled it and it whizzed into the net.
Hatem stopped, smiled, and shouted, “We covered their eyes and so they could not see.”
Hearing the other players laughing, the president’s son came up to him and hugged him and then headed to the substitutes’ bench, where they were sitting drinking cans of soft drinks and wiping away their sweat with soft white towels. Some of them were talking about the national team’s next match.
Sure enough, the team of the president’s son won the match, after the international referee made a commendable effort to make a few calls in favor of the winning team. They went off to shower in their changing rooms, and when Hatem thought he was about to leave with Nader, they called him back to lead them in prayers on the field. Everyone stood behind him to perform the evening prayer, which he had in fact performed before he even came to the club, but when he saw how devout they were he had no choice but to perform it again. The photographer kept taking pictures, which gave new life to the rumors that he was friends with the president’s son; they were responsible for the fact that within forty-eight hours Egypt thought they were best buddies—including his wife and even his son Omar, who didn’t remember that Hatem was his father in the first place. Nobody knew that when he came out of the club in Nader’s car the officers and guards stopped them and one of them came up to them and whispered in Nader’s ear. Nader got out of the car and took Sheikh Hatem by the hand to a small building close to the soccer pitch. From the inside it looked like a luxury guesthouse.