by Ibrahim Essa
Hatem paused a while. “By the way, I’m very hungry,” he resumed.
Their eyes narrowed at the sudden change of subject.
“Let’s shout at them to bring us some food,” said Hassan.
“So they’ve thrown a famous sheikh in this dungeon, someone known and admired throughout the country, and they haven’t asked after him or shown him any respect, and it’s clear that the bosses have gone home and forgotten me completely, and yet you expect them to bring us some food?” said Hatem.
Hassan stood up by the solid door of the cell and peeked through a square hole someone had made in it. “We want to eat,” he shouted, banging and kicking the door.
A few moments later a grumpy voice in the distance shouted back: “Eat your own shit.”
Hatem couldn’t help but laugh and the others burst out laughing with him.
Hatem took some bread and halva out of the pocket of his gown. They caught sight of it and a sense of triumph spread through the room. But then Hatem announced, “I told you I was hungry so that you wouldn’t be upset if I ate this all by myself.”
He wrapped the halva in the bread and was about to eat it, but then he smiled and started to break it into pieces, which he then shared out between them. They took the pieces gratefully.
Then he patted one of them on the back and said, “Were you asking me about the penalty for apostasy?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, what’s your name?”
“Bishoy.”
“Pleased to meet you, Saint Bishoy. And what was your name before Bishoy, my son?”
“It was Dandarawi.”
“No, Bishoy’s nicer,” said Hatem. “Okay, brother Bishoy, I’m giving you a fatwa that there’s no such thing as a penalty for apostasy.”
“Sheikh Hatem!” shouted Hassan.
“Look, boy, you and him. My fee for one show is three thousand dollars and yet I’m giving you a free show underground in the foulest dungeon in Egypt, so listen to me or else shut up and we can all settle down and go to sleep till someone remembers me and gets in touch with the people upstairs to let us out.”
Hatem heard them muttering among themselves until one of them finally came up with a question. “That’s the problem we have with Islam. We don’t know who represents it. There are some extraordinary contradictions in it. You say there’s no penalty for apostasy, but a thousand other sheikhs say there is. Then they call you an infidel because you say there’s no authoritative text on apostasy.”
“Clearly we’re not going to sleep tonight,” Hatem replied. “I’d just like to ask you . . . er, what’s your name?”
“Mutanassir.”3
“What a great name! No mincing words with you. Just Mutanassir is better and easier and more expressive as well. Look, Mutanassir, my boy, we have to be clear here. We’re not getting into a debate that ends with someone winning. Of course I probably see myself as the erudite sheikh, so I should feel that you’re ignorant kids and not up to my level, and if you’re not convinced by what I say, then it’s a failure on your part. But on the other hand you probably see me as a Muslim sheikh who wouldn’t be convinced by what you say because I don’t understand and Jesus hasn’t shone his light into my heart. So you should concentrate tonight on being rude about my family while I attack your ideas. Okay? Off we go. But I want Bishoy to wake up because I have a feeling he’s asleep. And you, Mister Boutros, the bane of my wretched life, are you awake? Or do you commit your crimes and then settle down and sleep till morning? Of course you know you’ll get out in the end.”
Hassan was irritated by Sheikh Hatem making fun of them. He touched his injured wrists as if the pain was troubling him again.
“I have to ask you,” Hatem continued. “Did you abandon Islam out of hatred for Islam or out of love for Christianity? Of course you can’t hate Islam unless you’re familiar with every aspect of it. Because at your age, with your experience and your culture, you’re children properly speaking and you can only be familiar with ten percent of Islam, apart from what you’re heard from sheikhs or from priests on the Internet insulting Islam. And besides, you can’t understand Christianity without studying it for years, so you must be talking superficially. Of course you’re free to talk about it any way you like, but you ought to know, when you lash out and attack Islam or even Christianity, that no one can really master all the details or even the basics of a religion. Now as for me, I don’t represent Islam, of course, and that’s the nicest thing about it—that no one represents it and no one can claim a monopoly over it. You’re free in your relationship with God in Islam and in Christianity too, because the clerics have had a disastrous effect on religion—any and every religion.”
Hatem examined their faces carefully in a light that was as meager as the prospect of mercy between those walls, which were bare except for lines and letters scratched into the plaster in an attempt at immortality. Tadros was standing on tiptoe to cut his name into the wall with the tip of a key on his keyring, followed by letters that looked like the beginning of a blessing that included the name of Jesus. There wasn’t a wall in the country, Hatem mused, without something written or drawn on it, either in celebration or in sorrow, in prisons, on the trees in parks, in people’s houses, and even in places of worship. Children were born drawing and scratching on walls, dating the events of their lives with letters and drawings on the walls of life. Here in this vault beneath a building designed to break people’s spirits and put the proud in their place, the drawings on the walls showed that the prisoners were fighting back against being ignored by writing dates and names, recording their prayers and their grievances. While the young Christians watched Tadros drawing on the wall, Hatem tried to work out who they really were behind the façade of their faces. They didn’t have any physical features in common but there were some psychological characteristics that they shared. The boy lying like a time bomb in his lap, although he came from a family of great wealth and influence, had almost the same facial expression as another young man who seemed to come from a poor family. When Tadros spoke, Hatem realized immediately he was right about the way they looked: there was a tense defiance behind their conversion, a defiance that wasn’t based on religion, because for the most part they didn’t know anything about the one they were abandoning or adopting. It was rather defiance of any authority or of all authority, including the authority that ignored them.
“Obviously, Sheikh Hatem, you think we’re too dumb to see that you despise us and think we’re infidels,” said Tadros. “With you people everything is calling people infidels and claiming you’re the best community, the best ‘umma,’ that ever existed. If your Quran is true, please tell me, sheikh, where is this best umma? Are the poverty, the backwardness, and the failure that’s all around you signs that you are the best umma? Look at the scientific and medical progress across the whole world, look at the inventions and discoveries, no, forget about that, look at the justice and equality that prevail among people in America and Europe, the democracy and freedom, and then come and preach in the mosques with the retarded sheikhs and tell me you’re the best umma.”
Hatem’s eyes opened wide at Tadros’s outburst. The other young Christians took heart from his words and comfort against the biting cold and damp and the disgusting, putrid smell. They felt the strength of their pride in what they were doing. They felt honored to pay the price for the positions they had taken, and believed in their conversion to Christianity more deeply and more intensely when they felt persecuted. That was the sign that they were special, that they stood out, that they were opposing the status quo and fighting those in authority. Hatem felt they had converted in protest, the ultimate protest, or in order to attract attention, as much attention as possible—angry attention from the high and mighty, vengeful attention from the despotic. The young converts relished provoking the complacent, those in authority, the masters, those who were confident and self-assured. They delighted in jumping over obstacles and they tried to take their antag
onism and their distinctiveness to the limit. Strangely Hatem was very sympathetic toward Tadros’s enthusiasm and the questions he posed. If they were not expressed with so much hatred, they would be constructive questions that deserved to be answered.
“For a start, brother Tadros,” said Hatem, looking toward Hassan, “the expression ‘You’re the best umma’ is conditional on a duty Muslims have to fulfill, particular obligations that the Muslim community or the umma has to carry out. If it doesn’t meet these conditions, it’s not the best umma, or the worst. And be careful, the Muslim umma isn’t the caliphate or a state that’s governed by one president or king, or else what role in the umma would there be for British Muslims, or French Muslims or Muslims born in Brazil or Muslims in Senegal and Malaysia and Turkey and Indonesia? So what’s meant isn’t the umma in the Arabic sense of the word—which is what you mean when you say it’s backward and in a terrible state. In that sense, it is a disgrace to Islam. If you want to confine the umma to the however many million Arab Muslims, then your question would be very logical and apposite. But if you broaden it out and include Muslims from China and India and Malaysia, taking in as you go Afghanistan and Iran and the Muslims in Russia and central Asia, as well as the Muslims in Brazil and Canada, then you’re talking about Muslims who live within other nations, and who play a role in the progress or backwardness of those nations, just as non-Muslims in those countries do, which reminds me, Tadros, that the Christians and the Copts here play the same role as us in backwardness and cultural decline. And besides, in the Middle Ages, when the Muslims were the inventors and explorers, they were the best umma, and the Christians in Europe and the Old World were barbarians. Of course we shouldn’t judge religions by their adherents, although we do judge people based on their religion, but I’d like to ask you, Tadros, and you, Boutros, and all you martyrs for Christ—”
“Are you making fun of us?” one of the boys interrupted, trying to counteract the effect his words might have on some of his colleagues.
“God forbid!” said Hatem. “But even if I was making fun of you, wasn’t it a feature of the early martyrs and the prophets that they put up with ridicule from their enemies and turned it into prayers that their enemies might receive guidance and enlightenment? Anyway, the question is: have you read about religion or just heard about it?”
“Ever since we were born,” Hassan replied, “we’ve been hearing sheikhs in mosques and on television and teachers at school and our parents at home, all talking about religion.”
“Okay, Boutros, but does anyone else have another answer?” Someone else spoke up: “I’m Bishoy, by the way.”
“Very well.”
“Of course I’ve read about religion.”
“What have you read and by who?”
“I’ve read a bunch.”
“I don’t mean to challenge you but I’d like to hear a sample of this ‘bunch.’”
“Clearly, Sheikh Hatem, you think we’re just ignorant kids tricked into converting to Christianity, and you see yourself as the one who’s going to save us from going astray,” Bishoy replied.
“I’ve already told you that I’m not interested in you in the least, and you can all go to hell together and it wouldn’t bother me at all. I’m quite prepared to shut up and we can sit this out together till daybreak, though our miserable day together seems to be endless.”
“We’ve read lots of books on the Internet,” said Hassan. “Books that refute all the claims that Islam makes and show how feeble they are.”
“I tell you,” said Hatem. “If you read seriously and properly and then become Christians or Buddhists then that’s your right, but the problem I have with you is that you’re taking an enormous step in life without knowing anything. I’m not interested in what books or who you’ve read on Islam but I’m asking what you’ve read about Christianity. We’re not switching allegiance from one club to another, but from one religion to another, and the question that most needs to be asked here is: ‘Where will it lead?’ Christianity may have most of the flaws that you don’t like in Islam, for example, or maybe all religions are a big trick and they all come down to the same thing and it would be best to turn atheist and keep our distance from religions that are flawed but boast about being perfect.”
“We’ve seen debates between sheikhs and priests, arguing about many things in Islam and Christianity,” Tadros replied. “We came to the conclusion that the priests’ point of view was right.”
“The problem might have been that the sheikh didn’t argue well,” said Hatem. “Maybe his wife had annoyed him and he wasn’t in the mood that day. Or maybe it was like one of those wrestling matches where they agree in advance who’s going to win, but they get all worked up and angry anyway and one of them throws his opponent out of the ring and lifts up a chair and threatens the crowd, or hits the referee by mistake to give the impression of spontaneity and maintain the suspense. Then very often it happens that we sympathize with the one who’s weakest in the match. We feel sorry for the short bald wrestler who faces the fearsome Big Show, so we root for the weakest even if we know he’s bound to lose. And then the competition over who’s the cleverest—Islam or Christianity?—is a game for freshman students, and has nothing to do with scholarship or ideas or culture. Especially on this point, I want to say that I’m not upset that you’re leaving Islam, which you haven’t read about, which in fact you’ve heard about from people most if not all of whom are ignorant, but I am upset that you’re taking up a religion that you haven’t read about and that you don’t know about and that you haven’t studied. It’s as if you’re repeating the same mistake, from a religion that’s six of one to a religion that’s half a dozen of the other.”
The young Christians had fallen silent, overcome by Hatem’s arguments or by fatigue. They also had to face the biting cold, the damp, the dirt, and the stink of sweaty bodies in an enclosed space underground. There were questions to be answered—not so much about who had persuaded them to convert but rather about who had decided to punish them for what they had done. The way they were treated seemed pointless. Harassment by the police would give them an added incentive to stick to their position, create a sense of solidarity between them, and probably postpone the process by which their conversions would cease to be personal dramas and just become a part of everyday life that they would be surprised to find was no longer surprising. If those sleepy faces were given some space to breathe, and if they were no longer made to feel that the universe revolved around them, then they could make up their minds about what they believed without anyone promoting them as heroes or accusing them of weakness.
Hatem was annoyed that the police were wasting his time and undermining his prestige.
He remembered one of the policemen who had surrounded them in the courtyard.
“Move back, Mawlana,” the man had said.
The policeman was advising him to stay away from the fighting, but at the same time he was sending him the message that he knew who he was. Hatem wondered what people would say about Sheikh Hatem el-Shenawi if they knew he had been thrown into detention with a crowd of young men who had converted to Christianity. Had any websites got hold of the news and published anything? If only he had his iPad with him to find out. How would the editor of his Facebook page respond to the rumors that must be spreading about them being held in the Giza security headquarters? The oafish sheikhs who competed with him on television and in the mosques, and the journalists irritated by his success, by his very existence, might turn these scraps of information into big stories. There might be banner headlines on the front pages, asking questions under photographs of him chosen to match the scandal that their fertile imaginations came up with. God forbid they refer to the fact that he was with young men and got it into their heads that he was gay. That would be a godsend to those newspapers and scandalous television programs that would take up the suggestions with delight.
He refused even to think about the story leaking out. Would the
president’s son, who had so much clout, allow his reputation to be dragged irreparably through the mud? That seemed impossible, because the president’s son needed him for his assignment with Hassan and wouldn’t allow his efforts to be repaid with an attack on his reputation or his livelihood. The president’s son knew, or imagined, that Hatem had agreed to take on this mission—as if he could have refused!—out of fear, or at least in order to win favor. God damn you, Nader Nour, it serves you right that your last two films flopped and you had to resort to presenting game shows that only lunatics would take part in because the production company was so poor and the producers so mean. But was it really possible that a scrap of information from a policeman would reach a journalist? Maybe the editor of the crime page in some daily newspaper was now on the phone with an officer in police headquarters looking for news, and the officer, keen to get his name in the paper as a hero, might say, “Do you know who we had in the building tonight?” and the editor would answer, “Who, Kheiri Bey?” And Kheiri Bey would say, “No, I couldn’t possibly drop this bombshell on the phone,” and that gets the editor’s attention and in the end he wheedles it out of the officer and the conversation ends with a dramatic story in the newspaper.