The Televangelist

by Ibrahim Essa

  “I tell you, I’m used to the sports center at the Citadel. This really is the first time I’ve seen a millionaires’ sports center,” Hatem remarked.

  “What do you mean, millionaires? Billionaires, okay. The poorest of them is worth something like two or three billion,” replied Nader, who realized that the president’s son was waiting for them.

  “There’s no need to grumble,” said Hatem. “Personally I’ve made more money out of religion than any of the early caliphs made, or Bukhari or Muslim, Ibn Kathir, Ibn al-Athir, al-Qurtubi, or al-Zamakhshari.”

  As Hatem murmured the list of names, an officer in civilian clothes, looking like a public relations official, appeared and asked them to come in. When they went in they found the president’s son alone in the room in front of a large television screen, with a cup of steaming hot tea.

  “Sorry, Nader, but could you leave me with Mawlana for a minute?” he said with a big smile.

  “Of course, of course,” said Nader, withdrawing from the room and closing the door obediently behind him.

  The big man asked Hatem to sit down and went straight to business.

  “Of course, Mawlana, you realize it was me who asked you to come. When I found out that Nader was friends with you, I told him to invite you here,” he said.

  “In fact I didn’t realize that at all, because Nader didn’t tell me anything,” Hatem said candidly.

  “I asked him not to say anything, and anyway I’m also asking you not to tell Nader why I wanted to see you, under any circumstances, and I hope you appreciate the seriousness of the situation.”

  Trying to act normally, Hatem smiled.

  “The truth is I can see the seriousness, but I haven’t yet seen the situation itself,” he said.

  The president’s son showed no reaction.

  “It really is a serious situation, and I think you’re the only person who can help me with it,” he said. “Not just the only person, but also the last. We’ve tried everything, but nothing has worked. In fact things have gotten so serious that we’ve thought of getting him out of Egypt just to limit the damage, now that we’ve failed to stop the disaster from happening in the first place.”

  Hatem was baffled and had no idea what this was all about, though he felt he was on the edge of an imminent calamity.

  “Could you explain a little more?” he asked.

  “Of course I’ll explain everything to you, more than you might expect, but not now and not from me exactly. Tomorrow morning at nine the car will take you to my father-in-law’s house and you can hear everything from my wife.”

  THE CAR ARRIVED RIGHT ON time, with an elderly driver of the kind that in the old days would have worked for an important person, and who, when that important person died, went on to work for someone new and even more important. He was dignified, taciturn, smartly dressed, and imperturbable, though his whole façade would no doubt collapse in the face of one friendly question from Hatem, who had woken up ahead of schedule. Not that Hatem really had a schedule. Gone were the days when he had specific appointments that meant rising early. They always say that Cairo never sleeps, but Hatem thought that it never fully woke up, that it had constant insomnia as the inhabitants breathlessly pursued a chance to rest that never came. Cairo had become very nocturnal. What with the crowds, the long distances, and the clogged streets, dinner invitations were for ten o’clock, appointments were made for midnight, and deals were done shortly before dawn. His social activities were sufficiently extensive and diverse for him to be quite sure that very few financiers, businessmen, celebrities, or famous sheikhs woke up as early as this. As he looked around that morning, something told him that this time of day was for drudges, while the dead of night was the preserve of the wealthy.

  He sat in the seat next to the driver, who asked him proudly, “Would you like me to put the Quran on, Mawlana?”

  “Which reciters do you have?” Hatem said with a smile.

  “The car has a computer with every recording from Abdel-Samad to el-Tablawi.”

  “That’s nice but, you know, I’d like to read myself.”

  “Wow, Mawlana, now that would bring us baraka!” said the driver.

  Hatem felt a heavy cloud hanging over him that morning, a legacy of the previous evening. He hadn’t said a word to Nader, though he knew the poor man must be insane with curiosity after the president’s son had asked to meet Hatem alone. Nader hadn’t dared ask him what the president’s son wanted, and Hatem had tried to make amends by changing the subject:

  “How many billions were they worth, the men on the pitch tonight?” he had asked.

  Nader didn’t answer, so he went on.

  “So what’s this club really called?”

  “This is a new private club, Mawlana, and some of the people you saw tonight are members. Membership isn’t open to anyone outside a limited circle.”

  “Ah, I see a narrow circle can come here, and it isn’t possible to expand it,” Hatem mused.

  “I don’t quite understand, but that sounds right.”

  Hatem laughed.

  “Of course, as you know, what happened between me and the big man is a secret and he doesn’t want me to share it with anyone, but if you want to know what exactly happened, I’ll tell you anyway, right now.”

  Nader panicked.

  “No, please. If he wants it to remain a secret and he doesn’t want me to know what happened, then there’s no need to say.”

  “So you won’t be upset?” asked Hatem in surprise.

  “Of course not.”

  Hatem slapped his fist on his thigh.

  “Bare-faced liar!” he said. “You’re dying to know but you don’t want the responsibility of knowing and you’re afraid he might be angry.”

  “It’s true, Mawlana, and I’m worried for your sake as well.”

  “Mine too! Okay, Nader. But you’re right, it is something worth worrying about.”

  Since early morning Hatem had been praying that the meeting would be to ask for a fatwa on something to do with the wife of the president’s son: an oath of divorce the son had made, for example, or a foolish vow uttered in bed in a moment of anger, or one of those questions that pursued him everywhere, from people at both the top and bottom of society. He often felt much like a visitor who happens to be a doctor and when people find out there’s a doctor in the house they start imagining illnesses. They remember old, insignificant pains that don’t bother them in the least and describe them to him, or ask for a free check-up, just because they happen to have come across a doctor who is available for free.

  In much the same way, he was like a religious doctor. As soon as people met him, they would ask him about trivial things, matters they weren’t really interested in or bothered about. They were just taking advantage of the fact that a sheikh was around. They were making up questions to obtain a service that was there for the asking, though these days some people were crazy about seeking fatwas on anything. He was worried the driver might suddenly ask him, for example, “Are soap suds halal or haram?”

  He remembered an exchange he’d had with another driver: “I have some money in the bank but I don’t take any interest on it because people say that’s haram.”

  “Okay, so what are you worried about?”

  “No, but is it haram to keep the money in the bank?”

  “Why would it be haram?”

  “Because the bank deals in interest.”

  “But you’re not taking interest!”

  “Yes, but isn’t it haram?”

  “You mean you’re worried it might be put in the safe alongside money that isn’t ritually pure?”

  In fact this driver didn’t ask him for a fatwa on anything, a rare occurrence these days. But the driver was waiting for him to recite the Quran. He thought that Hatem was going to recite aloud in the car like a proper Quran reader. His ears and other senses were all at the ready. He slowed down and kept turning to look at Hatem, until Hatem realized what he wanted.
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br />   “Ah, you thought I was going to recite the Quran instead of the CD?” he said.

  He laughed and the driver still didn’t register.

  “I meant I was going to recite it silently to myself,” he added.

  “Ah, now I understand,” said the driver.

  “But if you want us to recite, we can recite,” said Hatem.

  Without the driver asking him, he began reciting the Quran aloud. He was an experienced professional reader and so he could recite the Quran in the traditional style while thinking about something completely different—having a cup of tea or coffee, leaving the tent when the ceremony was over, the faces of the important people who had come to pay condolences, rival Quran readers, the wife waiting for him at home, even the meat he would be served after the recitation. He could do a complicated mathematical calculation in his head while reciting the Quran. But now this practiced professionalism annoyed and even sickened him. He knew fatwas by heart like someone who has memorized the technical manual for a fridge or a television: with all the instructions and operating procedures, the maintenance schedule, the specifications, and possible defects. These unusual talents of his gave him a bad conscience.

  He tried to drive such thoughts out of his head as he stopped reciting and turned to the driver.

  “You know the Quranic verse and the morning when it breathes?” he asked.

  The driver was quick to show off how religious he was. “By the night when it wanes, and the morning when it breathes,” he quoted.

  Hatem leaned forward, holding his prayer beads in both hands.

  “‘Wane’ here means to fade, pass, go away, of course, and ‘breathe’ means to appear or begin, and breathing is when air comes out from the inside.”

  He looked out of the car window thoughtfully, and went on with a sigh:

  “But when you hear the word ‘breathe,’ you get the impression that the morning has a smell, the smell of breathing, not the sound of breathing, because the sound of breathing is faint and, if it’s loud, it’s a sign of disease or a death rattle, so the focus is all on the smell. The morning has a smell, and you’re a peasant like me so you know that. With ‘the morning when it breathes’ you can smell the morning right away.”

  “True, quite right, Mawlana,” said the driver.

  “You’ll never hear that from any other sheikh. That interpretation is especially for you,” said Hatem. “Exclusive,” he added, using the English word.

  “But, you know, the morning in Egypt now smells really bad,” he went on.

  They laughed together.

  Although they were driving over the flyovers along the ring road that bypasses the congested center of Cairo, the roads were all clogged with the drudges for whom the morning symbolized hard work and the pursuit of a livelihood.

  “People look really miserable in those crowded buses,” said Hatem, “and even in the work buses and school minibuses with the crazy drivers, even if there are lots of fancy cars and cell phones and CD players in the cars. The misery embarrasses me, and it offends me too.”

  The driver didn’t fully understand, but he was about to say something anyway. Hatem jumped in with a direct question.

  “Do you think the people you work for understand the country and know how people suffer?” he asked.

  The driver was taken aback. But, undaunted, he answered feebly, “Mawlana, those people like you very much.”

  Hatem laughed, humoring the driver’s timidity.

  “You mean I should shut up and not talk about such things,” he said.

  “No. Sorry.”

  “Sorry why? It’s me that should be saying sorry. You think there’s a sheikh under this turban!”

  Now the driver was completely confused, and Hatem laughed again.

  “You must be sitting there wondering whether the sheikh overdid it last night!”

  The driver laughed and decided to take Hatem’s remarks as a joke.

  “Safely arrived, thank God,” he said solemnly.

  Hatem was surprised to find that the car had stopped outside an old building in Heliopolis. He had imagined the meeting would take place in a villa or mansion in some compound out of town, but here he was getting in the elevator in a building—an architectural gem with a hall that evoked the glories of the 1940s—flanked by a couple of bodyguards who smiled in silence. The lift stopped and the door opened into a large reception room. The guards left him and went down again, while Hatem was met by a woman in a smart gown and a scarf wrapped elegantly over her head. She welcomed him admiringly, delighted to meet a sheikh she had seen on television.

  “I’m really pleased to see you, Mawlana,” she said. “I’m a big fan of your lessons, and your learning. I watch all your programs.”

  “God preserve you. Thank you very much,” he answered. He gathered that she worked in this vast, imposing household.

  She led him from one room to another through an apartment that seemed to be endless. It was divided into several sitting rooms and reception rooms that suggested refined taste and costly old-fashioned splendor, with none of the frigidity or vulgar opulence of twenty-first-century design.

  “What would you like to drink, Mawlana? Coffee, or tea with honey?”

  “Why tea with honey in particular?” asked Hatem.

  She smiled in confusion and said, “How about tea with milk, or anise, or Turkish coffee?”

  “I like that coffee called ‘Sultan Selim the First.’ Make it Turkish, but authentic Istanbul-style, please.”

  She laughed and was still laughing when the president’s son came in. “That’s wonderful, you’ve made Fawzia laugh!” he said.

  Fawzia stopped laughing immediately.

  “Good morning, sir,” said Hatem, standing up.

  The president’s son shook his hand and welcomed him.

  “Delighted you could come, Sheikh Hatem. Please have a seat, please.”

  They sat down together.

  The president’s son gestured to Fawzia. “Have you asked the sheikh what he’d like to drink?”

  “Coffee,” she said.

  “Fine, make that two,” he said.

  All Hatem’s attempts to stop his courage from flagging in the face of this moment were a complete failure. He sat there helpless, in pieces, awaiting the inevitable surprise.

  “Look, Mawlana, I don’t need to explain that this is a serious matter, or point out the need for absolute discretion.”

  “No, there’s no need to explain, sir,” said Hatem.

  “Were you ever in the army, Sheikh Hatem?”

  “No, sir, but if you want me to join, I’ll do so right away,” answered Hatem.

  Fawzia smiled, until the president’s son looked at her disapprovingly, suggesting he was not in the mood for jokes. But then he smiled too, and said: “Okay, just consider it a military secret.”

  “As you say, sir.”

  A moment later, a woman in her late thirties appeared, wearing a dress that was simple, elegant, and modest. Her face was without make-up, and joyless. Her dignified beauty, though obvious, was swathed in a sadness that almost smothered it.

  Hatem stood up to welcome her as the president’s son introduced her. “Farida, my wife,” he said.

  “Good morning, Madam. It’s an honor to meet you.”

  She sat down quietly, in a way that suggested a woman who was well brought up.

  It seemed to be time for serious talk, especially as the coffee had arrived and Fawzia had put it on the table between them. The son stood up and brought the sheikh a cup in a gesture that put Hatem at ease because it struck him as unusually respectful.

  “Sheikh Hatem, did you know that my wife is the daughter of Ahmed Kamel Mansour?” asked the president’s son.

  The name rang in his ears. How could he not know? Mansour was the richest of the rich in Egypt, in fact number twelve on the list of the richest people in the world, or so he had read and heard.

  “I married Farida more than ten years ago,” he conti
nued, “and we have been blessed with twin daughters, Mariam and Reem.”

  “May God protect them, sir, and preserve them for you, Madam,” said Hatem.

  “My wife will tell you the rest of the story.”

  As soon as she started speaking, Hatem knew that the problem had something to do with her.

  “My father brought us up to have principles and to be religious,” she said in a frail voice, “and in our family religious didn’t mean either narrow-minded or liberal and free of all responsibility. In fact Father was busy all the time and perhaps because he married late, he spoiled us slightly more than usual, but we all grew up with traditional values. I’m the eldest and then there’s my sister Nourhan, who’s married to Dr. Fathi el-Samadi. I think you know of him. He’s the chairman of a bank.”

  Hatem nodded. He was well aware of him and knew that the bank was owned by Mansour.

  “The last child was my brother Hassan. Mother had him after she’d had problems getting pregnant for some time, and the gap between me and him is about fifteen years. Of course you can imagine how happy a father of over fifty would be to have a newborn son after all those problems, and so he spoiled him even more than he spoiled us. Also, Hassan brought Father good luck. His businesses expanded and he went international, as you’ve no doubt read and heard, with oil fields, gas companies, banks, and contracting work, and he wanted his son to work with him and learn from him and manage all his businesses.”

  Hatem was interested in the story but it was hard for him to steady his nerves because of the host of questions he had about why they had invited him and what this was all about. He tried to maintain his composure by smiling incessantly, but this was bound to come to an end as soon as Farida finished speaking.

  “The problem is that Hassan’s recently started to have some strange ideas,” she said.

  Hatem sighed. Finally he understood.

  “Hmm, he’s become a religious extremist?” he proffered.

  She looked away and tears began to well in the corners of her eyes, while her husband squirmed in his seat in discomfort. She raised her head and looked at Sheikh Hatem with doleful eyes. “No,” she said. “He’s converted to Christianity.”