The Televangelist

by Ibrahim Essa

  Hatem stopped and watched Hassan’s eyelashes blinking. “Do you in fact know anything about the Council of Nicaea?” he added calmly.

  “Of course,” Hassan added, still tense and defiant.

  “Clever boy! So what year was that?”

  Hassan didn’t reply, and Hatem didn’t give him much time. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “We’re not on ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.’ It was in the year 325, by the way, and the important thing is that the things we have in Egypt, even the religious things, are a complete mishmash. So tell me, sir, what happens when the Home of the Converts invites you all to meet in the park? That wouldn’t be the zoo, would it?”

  Hassan was taken by surprise. “How did you know that?” he asked.

  “Are you serious? They meet in the zoo?”

  “Yes. Of course we don’t write that on the website, but there’s a code on another website you can crack, especially if you’re a regular visitor. The websites have a phone number you can call and you listen to a voicemail that says: ‘The meeting is where we stand like lions in the jungle, taking refuge with Jesus when the sun is in the middle of the heart of the day.’ ‘Lions in the jungle’ means at the lion cages in the zoo and ‘when the sun’s in the middle’ means twelve o’clock noon.”

  WHEN HATEM WENT INTO THE room where they were being held, he realized at once that the guards at Giza police headquarters had put them there on instructions from on high. The bodies were curled up on the seats, and in the dark their faces were all a blur, like those ultrasound images of babies in their mothers’ wombs.

  Hatem told Hassan to sit down. He sat down next to him behind a small table with bottles of mineral water on top, along with white plastic cups with tea bags in them. On a piece of paper on the table there were pieces of bread, cheese, cold cuts, and, surprisingly, sesame halva with nuts. “Okay, guys,” said Hatem with a smile he thought was sincere, trying to ease the tension. “They’ve brought you some sesame halva, seeing as how you’re in detention. See how generous the Interior Ministry is—halva with nuts for five-star detainees!”

  From the faces in the gloom the only response to Hassan’s feeble attempt at solidarity was one of defiance toward what they saw as a sheikh in turban and gown who had come in the belief that he was a guide who could undermine their belief in Christ.

  Hatem continued. “You know why we always hear people telling prisoners ‘We’re going to get you some bread and halva?’ It’s true and goes back a long time because sesame halva, especially in the olden days, keeps you warm, and in the deep cold of detention what the prisoner needs most is warmth. It also prevents diarrhea, so you don’t need to go to the bathroom, I mean the toilet, because there’s no way we could call the toilets in prisons bathrooms. This spares the prisoners the misery of using a dirty toilet shared with so many other prisoners.”

  There were eight of them. All Hatem could see of them was their bright eyes, looking him up and down inquisitively and with suppressed anger. As soon as Hassan told him about the arrangement to meet in the zoo, Hatem had known it was part of a trap, and his intuition had been proven correct.

  When he arrived at police headquarters, he was met at the gate by the kind of escort that the police would provide only for a celebrity whose loyalty to the government was well-attested, such as Hatem. He exchanged quizzical glances with Hassan, who was sitting at the end of a large hall that had a large desk and a table big enough to seat the representatives of the member states of the UN Security Council.

  “It was the investigations department that put out the invitations to meet in the zoo,” said the police brigadier who met Hatem in his office. “It was a trap to draw the young converts. As soon as they felt that the kids were suspect they quickly surrounded everyone who was standing in front of the lion cages and arrested them. An hour ago they released six people who turned out to have nothing to do with it and who just had the misfortune to be there at the same time. Three others were so insistent that they were innocent and hadn’t converted to Christianity that as soon as they heard the accusation they started assaulting the others. They were shouting ‘convert bastards!’ and hitting them in the ribs and the balls and the back of their necks and kicking them in the back. Hassan received a particularly vicious blow because he was insulting and provoking them and the policemen, and just as he thought he was going to be beaten to death he shouted, ‘I’m Hassan the son of so-and-so, and my brother-in-law is such-and-such,’ and to tell you the truth, Mawlana, we were worried the kid might be talking seriously and we weren’t sure what to do. We spoke to the security chief and we told State Security and luckily we did all that before they went down to the cells, or else Hassan might have, how shall I put it, undergone a sex change down there.”

  “He would have been lucky to come out as a woman,” said Hatem. “He might have come out with four legs. But tell me, general—”

  “Brigadier, Mawlana.”

  “Who knows? You might be in luck and get promoted to general before we get out of the building.”

  “No, on your honor,” said the brigadier. “I just don’t want to be pensioned off because of this mess. How do you rate my chances of keeping my job now that I’ve met Hassan in person?”

  He took another look at Hassan. “I don’t know why the children of nice respectable people do things like this to their parents,” he mused.

  “I’m sure they’re respectable, general, but ‘nice’ would require some detective work,” said Hatem.

  The brigadier laughed. “You’ll get us into trouble that way, Mawlana,” he said.

  Hatem returned his laugh. “No,” he said. “I’d like to assure you we’ve already been in trouble.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it.”

  “But before I go in to see the boys, I’d really like to ask you something: why did you arrest them? If they convert to Christianity, or even set fire to themselves, what’s that to the Interior Ministry?”

  “Oh my God, Sheikh Hatem!” replied the brigadier. “What’s that to the Interior Ministry! Those kids, who only stopped wearing diapers a year or two ago, might set fire to the country. You’ve got the extremists, who might exploit the story and accuse the state of covering up heresy. You’ve got the church, which will conclude that it’s free to act and will get itself into deep water, and you’ve got the forces that are hostile to Egypt that will treat the kids as heroes and use this against us. Besides the kids themselves are crazy and think they’re prophets. They want to convert everyone and destroy the country.”

  “Brigadier,” Hatem began.

  The man looked up at Hatem in puzzlement. “So you’ve withdrawn my promotion, have you? Wasn’t I a general five minutes ago?”

  “Mister general governor, minister as well, do you think kids just a year out of Pampers, as you put it, could do all that to the country?”

  “And more than that, Mawlana. My only fear for the country is from kids and from gays,” said the brigadier.

  “Yes, you mean boys and those who like boys.”

  Hatem was briefed on the plan: he would sit with the young men and give them some advice and then the police would set them all free unconditionally. The purpose was very clear: to make sure that Hassan wasn’t upset or angry and that he felt guilty about the others, who were now expected to give vent to their grievances and their thoughts.

  “Of course,” Hatem told them, “don’t get the idea you’ve been beaten and humiliated just because you converted to Christianity. The truth is that anyone who comes in here—pious Muslim, sheikh in a turban, Buddhist monk, Companion of the Prophet, either from Mecca or Medina—they’d all get slapped around because here there’s complete equality between citizens. They all get a kick in the ass, and there’s no distinction between Arab and non-Arab, whether you come from the slums or some fancy compound in the suburbs. It’s kicks in the ass for everyone.”

  “And does Islam tell you to assault people and insult them and abuse them?” one of them shouted. H
atem was relaxed and listened with a smile, almost inciting the others to ratchet up the rhetoric.

  “You’re always saying how Islam is the religion of freedom and how it respects freedom of belief and how it invented human rights!” Hassan cut in excitedly, as if he had drawn strength from what the other convert had said.

  “They brought us here because we’re Christians, not for any other reason,” added a third kid. “Just becoming a Christian makes you a criminal in the eyes of the state.”

  One of them stood up and grabbed hold of Hassan’s arm roughly. “How did you get out, and why did you come back?” he said. “Are you a spy or an informer? And what’s that guy doing here? Does he think he’s the voice of Islam that’ll show the way to the silly kids who’ve misbehaved and turned Christian, that we’ll cry on his shoulder and go back to Islam?”

  Hatem offered one of them a piece of bread. “Go on, eat,” he said. “You look hungry.” Then he pressed a piece of bread and cheese into the mouth of one of them. The kid resisted but chewed it in the end. He offered a cup of tea to another of them.

  “For a start,” he said, “I’m not in the least interested in the fact that you’ve converted to Christianity. You’re free to do what you like and it won’t bother me for one second or even one femtosecond what religion or denomination you are or, to be honest, whether you go to hell or you get burned at the stake, whether you become Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, or atheists, or whether you worship Satan or Iblis himself. You’re free, and I don’t want to convert you back to Islam anyway. I want to get you back to your homes or whatever dumps you’re living in, and this session is a piece of theater by me and Boutros here (he pointed to Hassan, who seemed rather lost by what Hatem was saying) in which I pretend that I’ve had a discussion with you and given you advice so that you sign the piece of paper that the police will give you and go home to sleep and even catch the late-night movie on television.”

  Hatem stood up. “Okay, that’s it. I’ve given you my advice and you’re all convinced, so off you go to your homes, and goodbye, and hope to never see you again,” he said.

  Strangely, they dawdled, dragged their feet and generally hung around waiting. Hatem headed for the door, opened it, and shouted at the policeman standing there at attention. “Tell the brigadier we’re done and the kids are going home if he wants to say goodbye to them, but it would be better if he didn’t because they can’t stand him,” he said.

  Then he went back and pushed one of them through the door and then another, and the rest started moving.

  Hatem put his arm on Hassan’s shoulder and whispered, “Looks like Christianity attracts all kinds of people.”

  He was going down the stairway with Hassan but the other young men, though emboldened by their rebellion against their religion, were still too timid to let him out of their sights. They walked right behind him as if he were in charge of a school trip and if they lost him they wouldn’t know how to find their way back. They tracked his every step, although they found him irritating and suspected he was hiding something from them. They looked to him for protection, like frightened sheep following their shepherd. Two policemen and some security men in plain clothes were walking a little behind them, but they suddenly dispersed and disappeared into the dark. At that time of night the police headquarters was suspiciously and unnaturally quiet. Hatem preferred not to turn around. He felt that someone had their eyes on his distinctive gown and on Hassan, who was holding his hand like a child going to see the principal with one of his parents.

  Hatem and the young Christians ended up together in the courtyard surrounded by walls with metal spikes at the top. The noise from the street nearby gave them a sense of security and there was a faint light from lamp posts inside the courtyard. Suddenly someone turned on searchlights aimed directly at Hatem and the little group, dazzling them. The Christians huddled around Hatem in fear and suddenly they found themselves surrounded by dozens of policemen armed to the teeth and dressed in tight-fitting black uniforms like panthers, ready to jump on their prey. The policemen, brandishing long, scary, gleaming weapons, were arranged in blocks like phalanxes on every side. Hatem and the confused kids almost died of fright. Hatem looked back and forth among the policemen for a senior officer who might be able to explain what was going on or call off the siege and let them go on their way. The eight kids, who thought that Hatem had secured their release, could see that he was trapped along with them. Now they were really worried. Then the police advanced on them, grabbing them and pushing them.

  Hatem was almost knocked over in the melee but he found his feet and shouted, “What’s going on, guys? I want to see Brigadier Wagih. There’s been some misunderstanding. What in God’s name has happened? Let me speak with a senior official!”

  Some of the boys were crying and others were trying to protest, but then the police threw them down a staircase, one after another, to a small dark room with a steel door. The police pushed them violently into the room, and they lay prone on cold wet tiles. A faint light seeped through a window that was tightly closed except for a hole that was roughly circular. Apparently many people who’d been locked up here had scratched out the hole to let in a ray of light, and a glimpse of hope.

  The kids were stunned. “What’s going on, Uncle Hatem?” they muttered after a time of uncertain duration.

  Hassan seemed to be recovering from the shock. “See how unfair it is, Sheikh Hatem?” he said. “You think you’re dealing with respectable people, but they’re savages who have no respect for people’s freedom or religion. They set a trap for us, and for you. Didn’t they give you an assurance that we could leave? Didn’t you make an agreement with them?”

  Hassan stood amid the tangle of legs and arms and exhausted bodies. “They’re afraid of us,” he said with the courage of someone who feels important. “They’re terrified. We’re the ones who have seen Christ and have realized that they are oppressive, loathsome unbelievers.”

  The young Christians rallied to Hassan’s heated words and turned on Hatem, as if he were the target they had long been seeking. “We are ready for martyrdom!” one of them shouted.

  Hatem was angry at what was happening and had been hurt in the jostling. “Don’t get martyred or do anything else stupid,” he shouted. “I assure you I’m not interested. How many times have I told you? How can I convince you that I’m not interested in whether you’re Muslim or Christian. I just want to know why I’m here. Okay, so you’ve converted to Christianity and you’re acting as if you’re martyrs in the Age of Persecution. Fine. But I’m just a sheikh and a preacher, why should I be thrown in with you? Is it to punish me or to punish you?”

  The shouting subdued them. Nobody had asked after them or brought them any news and they couldn’t hear a sound.

  “Can they apply the penalty for apostasy on us as apostates from Islam, Sheikh Hatem?” asked one of them, a young man of about twenty or twenty-one with a childish face. He had woken up the sheikh, who had dozed off from exhaustion and boredom.

  “And where did you find out what the penalty for apostasy is?” answered Hatem.

  Another young man intervened. “It’s on websites all the time,” he said.

  “I’m sorry to ask, forgive me: does all your information come from websites?” asked Hatem.

  “You know, you can find interesting lectures and debates and information on websites,” Hassan added.

  Hatem looked up at the dripping ceiling and the peeling paint and the damp beneath him as he lay on the broken, dirty tiles in a darkness that brought home to him what a mess he was caught up in.

  “Of course,” said Hatem, “but I told you, Boutros, that converting from Islam to Christianity or from Christianity to Islam is not an ordinary decision. It’s a serious, significant decision, not in the sense that you’re adopting a new religion or turning against your old religion. No, it’s something more difficult than that. It’s a decision that goes against human chemistry, that upsets the whole balance in o
ne’s life. Belief is just like love.”

  He paused a moment. “Have any of you ever been in love?” he asked.

  Some of them smiled in the gloom. It didn’t seem quite so dark now that their eyes had gotten used to it.

  Hatem continued. “So you have been in love. Belief, like love, isn’t driven by reason but by the heart. Reason in religion comes at the stage of interpretation, analysis, and corroboration, but the submission stage, which is fundamental, is centered only on the heart. Bring me any religion and I can offer you a critique of it, an attack on it. I can point out loopholes in it and ask questions about it and find mysterious elements in it, but the religion will continue regardless. Whether we’re talking about two thousand years of Christianity or one thousand four hundred years of Islam—it’s true there have been some conversions from one to the other but they’ve been very limited compared to the amount of belief passed down from father to son. Do you know why? Because religion has become chemistry. It’s in the genes, deep in our psychological and nervous systems. If Muslims or Christians left their children free to choose whether to stick to the same religion or choose another one, the chemistry of the universe would be disturbed, because searching is confusing. It’s tiring and it makes you tense, and looking for a religion is something that requires deep study and comparison and thought, and also free time. You can’t be an engineer or a doctor or anything when you’re preoccupied with choosing which religion you like most. Religion grows with you as part of your body and your way of thinking. When you’re in middle school, it’s different from when you’re in secondary school, and that’s different from when you’re married and have children, and it’s different again when you’re old. Religion interacts with you, so you never stand at a point and say, ‘Okay, I’ve arrived.’ No, it never ends. You have inside you a bit of the pious Muslim, a bit of the good-for-nothing layabout, a little of the undecided, and a little of the resolutely indifferent. There’s a back-and-forth interaction between you and religion. It evolves inside you as you make adjustments so that it suits you and you suit it. If we were all born to choose, life would be even bleaker than it is already.”