The Televangelist

by Ibrahim Essa

  “Mawlana,” Abdel-Basir replied, “we didn’t want to arouse suspicions and have people calling us Islamists, and besides this is a victory we’re proud of, so we can spite our enemies with it. It’s not just any wedding.”

  Hatem wondered whether a drunk who restored furniture really deserved to be designated the enemy in the village.

  A few minutes later Abdel-Basir rushed over and grabbed him by the hand. “Come along,” he said, “we need to show you off to the important people and let me introduce you to the chief of police and his deputy and the State Security officer. They’ve just arrived.”

  “Arrived? What are they here for?” asked Hatem.

  “To give their congratulations.”

  “God bless them,” Hatem said with a smile.

  That night he avoided looking toward the bride.

  The mysterious man stood up to greet Hatem and came forward to embrace him. “Should we apologize or do you understand what happened?” he asked.

  The man stood there waiting for Hatem to answer. “Sleeping in jail was very hard,” Hatem said with a tired smile. “And the police were really brutal when they surrounded us and threw us in the cell. Note that word ‘threw,’ sir, because it’s just the right word.”

  The man laughed and Hatem sat down in the chair facing him across the desk. “But I thought the guys here in headquarters had made a deal with you and you agreed they’d put you in the cell with the kids so they would trust you and you could get to know them better,” the man replied.

  Hatem began to take in details of the office as he struggled to overcome his exhaustion and indignation. These offices were always vast, to make you feel uncomfortable. It was deliberately a long way from the door to the official’s desk, so that the official could assess you as you came in. Over many meters he had a chance to read the way you walked, how nervous you were, how confident, or how disgruntled. The fact that you can’t take in the whole room in one glance helps to make you feel lost, even if only a little. Then there is the fear, the awe that a security official wants to create. He also has the advantage of a massive budget for furniture and other furnishings, probably including things specially commissioned for important people from the prison workshops.

  The man who shook Hatem’s hand and spoke to him as if they had been together in elementary school was not in fact the director of security. But he was apparently so much more influential that the director’s office had been vacated for his use. He sat there in his well-cut suit, with a cigar in a holder, a gold lighter, and three cell phones that lit up constantly. One of them was vibrating, shaking the small table between them.

  “We appreciate the fact you agreed to go through with this charade and I’d like to keep this meeting short in case the kids get suspicious. But I would like to hear your assessment of the situation as it stands,” said the man.

  Earlier that morning Hatem had suddenly heard the door opening noisily, as well as the sound of boots rubbing against boots, bolts sliding, and keys turning. The noise woke up Hassan and Tadros. Then it got even noisier and everyone stood up rubbing their eyes, looking around in confusion, and throwing quizzical glances at Hatem. A few long seconds later several policemen in civilian clothes came in. They got Sheikh Hatem politely to his feet, grabbed the kids gently, without the usual roughness, and led them out of the cell.

  They went up some narrow, dark flights of stairs at the back of the building. There were no clues as to the time of day or to their whereabouts. Then they found themselves in another small room. But when they looked around they saw that Sheikh Hatem was no longer among them and, Hassan was surprised to find that he felt a sense of panic and missed the presence of the sheikh.

  “Set them free immediately,” Hatem told the man, whose name he still didn’t know. “Those kids converted to Christianity for reasons that have nothing to do with Islam or with Christianity. When you harass them and detain them, you only give them an incentive to dig in their heels. To tell the truth, sir, even if they do convert to Christianity, is it the end of the world? Islam won’t lose out and Christianity won’t gain.”

  The man bristled and his face turned red behind the rings of smoke from his cigar. “Is that what you think, Mawlana?” he said.

  Hatem smiled. “With all due respect. I’m saying that for your master’s sake,” he said.

  The man stood up, as if he were recovering his strength and authority. He went and sat down in the chair behind the desk. “But those guys will cause trouble in the country,” he said. “There’ll be chaos. This affects national security, especially as there are foreign forces behind them.”

  “More obviously, they have psychological and family problems and they’re ignorant and highly strung,” said Hatem. He immediately regretted what he had said.

  “You’re talking politics, Mister Hatem!” the man bellowed.

  So I’ve changed from ‘sheikh’ to ‘mister’ in a matter of seconds, Hatem thought to himself. “Well, you were talking religion so I thought I’d talk politics,” he said.

  The man smiled, as if to melt the ice that had suddenly built up between them. “Let’s talk religion, especially as we have instructions to listen to your advice,” said the man. He paused, as if for a comma. “On religion,” he added, with a firm period. He looked at a telephone that was vibrating insistently, but decided to ignore it.

  “We were thinking of getting a priest from the bishop’s office and arranging a debate for the kids to watch. Don’t worry, we’d arrange with the priest that you’d beat him,” the man volunteered.

  Hatem laughed. “You don’t have confidence in me, or in Islam?” he asked.

  The man laughed back. “Because they’re a wily bunch and you can’t be sure,” he said.

  “That would be doomed to fail,” said Hatem. “Firstly, the kids would see it was set up and would be suspicious of everything about it, even if the priest seemed strong and straightforward in the debate. Second, those kids basically don’t know anything about Islam or Christianity, and the conversation would go over their heads even if he and I really dumbed it down, and third, they are so stubborn and stressed out that a one- or two-hour debate wouldn’t do any good.”

  “So what’s to be done?”

  “Let them out and tell them to go home right away.”

  “As simple as that?”

  Frightened, on his guard, and exhausted, Hatem gave in. “That’s what I think, but it’s, it’s up to you,” he stammered.

  The man got up and stood in front of Hatem, who also stood up, out of respect and as a precaution.

  “Of course you realize that if we let them out we can’t let Hassan go home till we get instructions from the big boss, and he’s going to ask whether the boy’s given up the idea of converting. We’ll have to tell him the truth: that Hassan is still Boutros. He’ll be angry with you, and angry with us while he’s at it. Maybe you can take his anger but we certainly can’t.”

  Hatem’s fatigue got the better of his hesitation and he sat back down.

  “Sir,” he said, “if the boy was a soccer fan and supported Zamalek and we wanted him to support Ahli it would take us months, if we succeeded at all, and if he supported Ismaili and we wanted him to support Ahli, we would need eons and we still wouldn’t succeed, and then you want me to reconvert him to Islam overnight?”

  “You’re right,” the man said sympathetically. “But what should we do?”

  Hatem showed signs that he had had enough. “Let him support Zamalek,” he said.

  He saw the man sneer menacingly.

  “Just leave it to me. You release them all and I’ll take Hassan with me,” Hatem suggested.

  “Where to?”

  “To my place.”

  “Speak to the big boss,” Hatem added after a long sigh, “and tell him I’ll put Hassan up in my house temporarily, and hopefully God will come up with a good solution.”

  Hatem knew at the time that in this case he would need a clear definition of a good s
olution.

  WHEN HE REACHED HOME HE knew he faced many arduous tasks. He and Hassan had arrived in a car driven by a police officer. Hatem shook hands with the officer and said goodbye, though the officer was clearly determined to come in with them and have a cup of tea. Hatem ignored him and the officer left before Hatem gave way and invited him in. Hatem took Hassan’s hand and pulled him away from the car to the gate, which opened to reveal the Nubian doorman smiling and thanking God for Hatem’s safe return.

  Then Sirhan rushed over. “We were worried about you, Mawlana,” he said.

  “In you go, Hassan, please,” said Hatem.

  Hassan froze on the lawn outside the house. The gardener had clearly forgotten to trim the lawn because parts of it looked like an African jungle.

  “What’s wrong, Hassan?” said Hatem. “Are you shy?”

  “We agreed that my name’s Boutros,” Hassan said, with all the petulance of a spoiled teenager.

  Hatem laughed. “Wow, so that’s what’s upset you! Okay then, how about Peter?”

  “Okay.”

  “Good, then please go in, Mister Peter. Or should I say Your Grace or Your Holiness?”

  “No need for sarcasm,” Hassan said emphatically.

  “My boy, this is my house and I’ll be as sarcastic as I like when I like,” Hatem replied. “You can be sarcastic too,” he added, putting his hand on Hassan’s shoulder and pulling him toward him to embrace him. “Because this whole business is farcical,” he added as he opened the door.

  Only then, when he found that Omayma was out, did Hatem realize the immensity of the three tasks he faced: persuading Hassan to come with him, explaining to his wife why he had brought this problem home with him, and eventually finding a way to get the problem out of the house.

  He had promised the president’s son he would take Hassan home with him to stay with him so that he could bring him back to his senses, though Hatem was certain Hassan didn’t have any common sense in the first place. The president’s son had agreed, after consulting his wife, Peter the Apostle’s sister, which took all of six seconds. The speed with which she agreed suggested she wanted to get the worry off her chest and throw the hot potato into Hatem’s lap. They clearly imagined that Hatem was the grandson of Harut and Marut, the two magician angels, and that he had the power to cure idiots and imbeciles in the commercial breaks in his programs, just as he issued fatwas to callers in the program, who thanked him and the problem was solved. The way they saw it, it was as simple as that.

  Several logistical problems remained. Hassan’s clothes would come that evening from his father’s house. Hassan would sleep in the guest room on the top floor, which was largely self-contained, with a fridge, a full-feature satellite television, an en suite bathroom, and a microwave, as well as a comfortable bed and a wardrobe. Thanks to his wife’s foresight, guests could keep to themselves in their room without the permanent residents ever having to run into them.

  Hatem took him up to the room. “If you find it’s too much trouble to come up the stairs we could have an elevator installed,” Hatem told him, with the levity of someone in despair at the task he faces.

  Hassan received the sarcastic remark with as much seriousness as you would expect from a young man who wants to go to sleep immediately and avoid having a nervous breakdown. Hatem offered him some of his own fancy sports clothes.

  “I’ve never worn them myself,” he said, “and they’re probably not my size. They were probably a gift from the owner of a sportswear store.”

  Hassan threw himself down on the bed, muttering things that would have made Omayma throw the two of them out of the house, had she heard them.

  “Well, the room’s better than that prison cell,” he said.

  As he was going downstairs, Hatem realized that he missed Omar. The feeling lifted him up and then slammed him down again. He missed going into Omar’s room to find him playing on his PlayStation, oblivious of his father, looking straight ahead and answering his father’s greetings with childish silliness. “Hi dad,” he would reply, rapid and dismissive.

  “Answer me nicely, my dear. Look at your father and tell him you missed him.”

  Omar would turn his head slowly toward Hatem and look at him for a few moments. “Missed you,” he’d say.

  “Okay, sir,” Hatem would reply with a loving smile. “Thank you very much.”

  Omar’s room had been empty since he lost his memory. When Omar came out of his coma, Hatem had been delighted. He fell to his knees and thanked God. In his happiness that Omar escaped death, he hadn’t worried about the boy losing his memory, but as the days passed it became clear that he had lost some of his motor skills as well. Either he had forgotten how to move, or the brain damage had affected the motor centers in a way that made him walk like a young child. He didn’t crawl but he didn’t walk either. He stopped doing schoolwork of course and started physiotherapy sessions. Hatem was completely devastated. He was worried sick about whether his son could lead a normal life. He drew on all his reserves of patience and faith but couldn’t get over the sense of defeat at seeing that there was no longer a sparkle in his child’s eyes and that the words he spoke were twisted and broken like the speech of a foreign child learning Arabic. The fact that the boy had escaped the clutches of the angel of death and that Hatem had purged himself of pride and anger by cleaning the mosque toilets had given him some strength and taken away some of the pain, so when Omayma decided the boy had to go to England for further treatment, he agreed.

  When Omar went away, Hatem was about the only father in the world who didn’t have a telephone number for his son, who had relearned how to have a basic phone conversation. But Omayma had prevented Omar from taking his cell phone or the SIM card with his Egyptian number. She stayed there with him for a few weeks and then came back. The doctors promised her the boy could come home soon, once he recovered. Omayma didn’t give Hatem the telephone number of Omar’s room in the clinic and only allowed him to browse through photographs of the place on his iPad. The clinic had a garden on a stunningly green hill overlooking a lake in the middle of a thick wood of tall trees. The building was small and the rooms were very simple and practical. Hatem never missed an opportunity to tease Omayma by admiring the blonde nurses who would supposedly restore Omar’s memory. He didn’t know where Omayma found the strength to endure her son’s absence. Maybe it was because she loved him so much and wanted him to be her bright-eyed boy again. Somewhere along the way she had turned hard and cold as stone toward her husband. Maybe this had started when he wandered off while Omar was in the intensive care unit and she sat alone on a plastic chair outside his room.

  Hatem stretched out on the bed in his room overlooking the garden and caught a whiff of the mint that grew on the edge of the balcony. It relaxed him and brought him peace of mind. He remembered that he had to change his clothes, then he realized he needed to shower to wash away the dreadful night he had had. As he was preparing what he would say to Omayma, he saw her in their wedding photograph hanging on the wall. In the picture he was sitting on a chair in a dark suit that exactly reflected his poverty at the time. He laughed to himself when he remembered how much it cost. Omayma was standing behind him in her white wedding dress and a modest hijab under her bridal veil. Her mother had suggested she do without the hijab at the wedding but she had refused. She consulted him and he told her she was free to do what she liked, and his answer shocked her and she decided to wear it. Since then, he had grown fatter and she had lost weight and the gap between them had grown wider.

  He couldn’t pin down the moment when he realized that Omayma had changed, and he didn’t like to ask himself which of them had changed first.

  People are defined by their circumstances more than by their personality. Their circumstances and their interactions with other people affect them, and are affected by them. People create their circumstances and sometimes circumstances make what they want of people. He had married Omayma when he was an imam in a small mo
sque run by the ministry, and the term ‘small’ applied to him as much as to the mosque. It was a historic mosque but dilapidated, large but in a sparsely populated area. The term also applied to the world at that time: there was only local television, no Internet, no cell phones, and he never needed to go further than the Citadel. His income included his basic salary, fees for sermons at funerals, and gifts acquired through baraka. Omayma didn’t have a job at the time, or ever. She had graduated from the faculty of commerce and heard him preach in the mosque next to her father’s house every Friday. She waited to hear his voice, listened to what he said, and stood outside every Friday to see him. After the congregation came out of the mosque, he would shake hands with the people waiting around outside with questions and with the shopkeepers who sought his blessings. He acquired a growing number of admirers and his remote mosque started to get crowded. He began to receive invitations to have lunch in the houses of people who lived around the mosque where he preached on Friday. (Friday prayers themselves were banned inside the historic mosque where he worked as imam and preacher, in case it became too crowded and the building collapsed). Eventually he went to the house of Omayma’s family and she spoke to the young sheikh, asking him about many points in his sermons. She seemed very attentive and focused and definitely interested. After that he visited her a second and a third time, and on the fourth time he brought his father to ask if Hatem could marry her.