by Ibrahim Essa
HATEM WAS BACK IN HIS office, usually the place where he unwound before he stepped back into the world again. But now, sitting in his lair, Hatem was trying his hardest to play the television sheikh, as if the cameras of the world were trained on him. He was sitting in front of Khalil el-Nahhal, who owned factories making cleaning products and was the main sponsor of his new Ramadan program. Khalil was a conformist and very traditional in religious matters. Hatem realized this when they first met at the man’s factory. He had gone to see Khalil at the insistence of the program producer, an enthusiastic, very well-educated young man from a wealthy family. Hatem thought Khalil was honest and was delighted at the considerable amount of money on offer when Khalil suggested they cooperate on a new program at a time when he wanted to break free from Ali el-Kaaki and his advertising agency. So he was going to work with someone else in Ramadan, so as not to put all his eggs in the basket of one slave trader. But apparently his new producer’s only motive for financing the program was as a vehicle for the advertising campaign that his companies were mounting.
Khalil el-Nahhal was not the smiling type and his voice was soporific. In conversation he kept quoting sayings of the Prophet and repeating memorized texts that he had read or probably heard from sheikhs from the Arabian Peninsula. Hatem knew that Khalil’s father, Mohamed el-Nahhal, had been a Muslim Brotherhood leader about fifty years ago, and he remembered clearly how his teachers at al-Azhar had spoken well of Mohamed el-Nahhal, as good company and a man who was open-minded. He didn’t have a beard and he never wore a galabiya to work. He used to preach at a mosque in Manyal and at the time neither his wife nor his daughters wore the hijab, but only small scarves that covered some of their hair. Khalil was his youngest child and when the Abdel-Nasser government launched its campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed el-Nahhal was briefly imprisoned. When he came out he moved to Saudi Arabia with his family, died the following year, and was buried there. The family stayed on in Riyadh and Khalil’s mother married a Muslim Brotherhood widower who was also a refugee in Saudi Arabia. Khalil was brought up by his mother’s new husband, who washed his hands of politics and worked in the world of finance and commerce there.
When Khalil reached university age, President Sadat had opened the door to Brotherhood members who wanted to come back to Egypt. Khalil was the only person in his family to do so, while his mother and her husband stayed in Saudi Arabia and even acquired Saudi nationality. His two sisters married an Egyptian and a Kuwaiti and lived in Kuwait, and it was said that Khalil’s factory, which he set up in the early 1980s when he was twenty-five years old and which succeeded despite his youth, was financed by money from his stepfather and his brothers-in-law. His products became well known and he was a pioneer in the field of cleaning up the country, as Hatem liked to put it. He teased the man by saying he was cleaning the whole country, not just ordinary kitchens but also the corridors of power. Khalil never smiled back at Hatem, nor did he show any sign of annoyance, as if he didn’t understand what Hatem was saying. Once Hatem got this, he abandoned his usual jovial demeanor and adopted a character that he didn’t often adopt even on television—the dignified, serious sheikh. On his first visit he felt no enthusiasm toward Khalil; he thought he was impervious, like a pane of glass. When you throw water on glass, the water just runs across the surface.
After that visit, he asked his new producer, “Are you sure this surly man wants to sponsor my program?”
“What he told you, Sheikh Hatem, is that he hopes that he and you can cooperate fruitfully for the sake of God,” the producer replied.
“I bet you he hasn’t seen a single one of my programs, because the man has nothing in common with what I say and the way I say it.”
“What do you mean, Mawlana?”
“Ah sorry, I forgot you went to the American University and were educated in an English school. Anyway, we’ll see what happens with our friend who washes whiter!”
Hatem was surprised when Hassan tried to insist on going back to his sister’s mansion at exactly two o’clock in the morning after they came back from Father Mikhail’s church. He didn’t take pleasure from the fact that a responsibility would be lifted from his shoulders, at least temporarily. On the contrary, he didn’t want Hassan out of his sight because he was worried that if Hassan went off unexpectedly, without good reason and with unpredictable consequences, he might find himself in serious trouble with the family of the president’s son. So he asked Hassan to calm down and stay. Just then he heard his cell ringing; it was his producer telling him that Khalil el-Nahhal wanted to sit down with him the following morning. He was surprised but he agreed, provided the meeting took place in Hatem’s office so that he could sleep an extra two hours. Then he remembered that he had an appointment with Nashwa. For God’s sake, he wondered, how could a devout woman have such a name?
With difficulty, as if he were dealing with an unruly bullock, Hatem persuaded Hassan to stay the night at his house and in the morning God, “the dispeller of darkness and the splitter of date stones,” would sort things out. In the morning he offered to kiss Omayma’s hands and feet for her to persuade him to wait until Hatem came back from the office so that he could have a word with what he called “this idiot that I might be tempted to finish off.” She turned down his tempting offer but agreed to do her best.
“Hello, Khalil, please come in,” said Hatem, hoping the meeting would be short and the mystery would be explained.
“Praise the Lord, whose every act brings good, even if people deem it bad,” said Khalil.
When Hatem heard this, he was worried the man had withdrawn his financing.
“I’d like you, Your Grace, to promise me two things,” Khalil continued.
“Of course.”
“Everything is in God’s hands and always has been. I was watching an episode of the program you’re doing at the moment and I heard you say many fine things in it, praise the Lord.”
“May God preserve you,” said Hatem.
“But there were two things that caught my attention and so I’m asking you to do a couple of things.”
“The first?”
“The first is, given your extensive erudition and the importance of simplifying that erudition for the masses, I hope you’ll uphold the dignity of religious knowledge, in the sense that you will maintain the atmosphere of a lecture and go easy on attempts to trivialize the material.”
Hatem understood instantly that Khalil was the real producer and not just the man who would finance the adverts and that the polite young man from the American University was just a façade.
“The second point was that in the program I heard some remarks by a young woman who accused you, sorry, asked you about the Mutazila and who thought you were a Mutazilite by doctrine. Is this true? I would have thought better of you than that.”
Hatem smiled. He could do without this arrogant lesson from a man who thought himself knowledgeable about religion and God’s ways, when all he really knew was the piety he’d been force-fed while he was being suckled by his widowed mother and the canned ideas that his stepfather had bought in a Riyadh supermarket and taught to him. But he was worried that this might be the start of a rift that could widen. He didn’t know whether Nashwa had spoken spontaneously or at the instigation of someone else, but her words beat like a hammer on the window of his fame and his livelihood.
“Mr. Nahhal,” he said, “I think you know that al-Azhar follows the Ashaari school and we study the Ashaari curriculum, so it might be said that we are Ashaars, but in fact for hundreds of years no one has asked the graduates or sheikhs at al-Azhar what school they belong to, because the knowledge they are taught comes from a pure spring.”
“But Sheikh Hatem, you know that these schools have polluted that spring, and that the Mutazila and even the Ashaaris are not qualified to make pronouncements on Islam. It is Islam that is qualified to make pronouncements on them.” Khalil said, showed off his learning and denting Hatem’s confidence.
“That’s great, but who here can say what Islam is, Mr. Nahhal?”
“The people who follow the practices of the Prophet and the consensus of Muslims.”
Hatem knew he faced a choice between, on the one hand, continuing the discussion and losing his sponsor and producer and about two million pounds in fees for thirty hours of programs and, on the other hand, curbing his desire to punch the man in the face and thereby keeping his sponsor despite the mistrust that had now arisen between them. Hatem immediately started operating on the basis of the second option, even before he had made his decision.
“Look, Mr. Nahhal,” he said, “I’m sure we agree, to start off with, that the Sunna and the pious early Muslims stand above everyone and that our task as preachers who appear on this amazing box, this world stage called television, or online too, is to bring religious knowledge into people’s homes—useful knowledge that sustains this world and the world hereafter—and not to get bogged down in theoretical debates or get carried away with things that cause divisions or dissent. Second, I must make it clear that we don’t disagree on any idea or opinion, but if you feel you could enlighten me a little by asking questions or making remarks or comments, then feel free, and I’m very happy that you watch the program so that there’s some interaction between us. It’s very important to have someone who’s sensible, mature, devout, and familiar with religious knowledge, such as yourself, to watch the program and make observations. That would be a useful contribution. For example, why did I reject Ali el-Kaaki’s offer to work with him in Ramadan even though, I swear, the man offered me twice as much as I’ll be earning from our programs here? Because I want to work with people who show an interest that complements my efforts, but are not intrusive in a way that distracts me from my objectives—as happened when they let some young woman, God alone knows who brought her along and persuaded her to ask a question that was really an accusation, or rather throw an accusation in the form of a question, as you heard, Mr. Nahhal. Isn’t that negligence in the selection process? Aren’t the producer and the program creators responsible?”
Hatem could see Khalil’s face cheer up and his knitted brow relax. His fingers played less frenetically with his prayer beads and his face was less flushed.
“This story of the Mutazila is all because the ulema are envious of each other,” Hatem said. “If you’re going to move into the field of religious programming, Mr. Nahhal, you’ll have to get used to envious ulema and understand what rivalry will do to some people, however learned and pious they might be. God protect us from mistaken pride and pernicious envy.”
Khalil said something brief about how relieved he was by what he had heard, and that he knew all this but he wanted to check for himself because he liked him and thought his work was good for the promotion of Islam and for young Muslims. Then he took out of his pocket three booklets, with fine bindings, expensive paper, and colorful covers dominated by the color green. He presented them to Hatem. “This is an anthology of quotations that I collected and arranged myself. They’re from The Meadows of the Righteous and The Victory of the Creator and they’re sayings of the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace. The first is on the subject of self-improvement, the second is on Muslim women, and the third is on the special qualities of the chapters of the Quran. I had it privately printed by a friend of mine and I give it out to my staff and the workers in my factories. I was thinking of selling it through bookshops at a nominal price so more people could benefit from it. In it you’ll find my point of view on the kind of religious knowledge that should reach people.”
Hatem flipped through the booklets and smiled happily.
“Thank you,” he said. “I see they even have hadiths that only a really diligent researcher would dig out. I swear, Mr. Nahhal, you really have proved to be a missionary for Islam and scholarship. I’ll soon have a rival, especially with your smiling face and your eloquence.”
Khalil lapped up Hatem’s flattery with such enthusiasm that when he said goodbye he told him openly that he was indeed the sponsor and producer of the program and he would raise Hatem’s fee because sheikhs of his kind deserved to find backers.
Khalil left. Hatem hoped with all his heart that Nashwa wouldn’t turn up on time because he wasn’t in the right frame of mind to see a young woman who had almost put an end to his television career and might have turned his life upside down in ways that God alone knew. When he saw her and spoke to her something in his heart opened up like a flower, but right now he preferred his heart to stay closed up like the junk room in an old house. He might have vented his anger by insulting Sirhan and Khodeiri in turn, but she was already standing at the door.
In she came, her bronze face set off by a hijab wrapped tightly around her head, her loose gown—it couldn’t be described as a dress—trailing behind her as she walked, making a swishing sound like the wind in the trees. Behind her stood Khodeiri, to introduce her to the sheikh. “Miss Nashwa says she has an appointment,” he said.
She came in without waiting for an invitation from Hatem, who stood up and moved toward her. Then he had a thought and stopped.
“You don’t shake hands with men, do you?” he said.
She shook her head nervously without answering, though he took that as answer enough. He sat behind his desk again and pointed her to a chair, but she sat on another chair, the one that Khalil el-Nahhal had been sitting in moments before. Hatem decided that after she had gone he would order Khodeiri to throw the chair out of the window.
Hatem looked at Khodeiri, who seemed to be asleep on his feet.
“Would you like something to drink, miss?” droned Khodeiri.
“You’d prefer ‘sister,’ wouldn’t you?” Hatem corrected, looking at Nashwa. “Would you like some tea?”
She ignored both questions.
“Bring two teas with the sugar on the side,” Hatem told Khodeiri.
Khodeiri took hold of the door and mumbled, “The sugar’s always on the side.”
Hatem heard him and let out a laugh that he then tried to cut off politely.
“Good to see you, sister Nashwa.”
She nodded silently.
“Tell me a little about yourself.”
She didn’t speak and Hatem paused too, wondering to himself what he liked about this damned woman with her nervousness and restlessness. She had hidden her claws in black silk gloves that he had to admit looked better than those gloves that hung loose from the fingers, the kind he often saw on the hands of women like her who were anxious to hide the parts of their body that God hadn’t even asked them to hide. Some of them then add insult to injury by wearing rings on top of the gloves.
“I’m sorry I haven’t taken any lessons in sign language,” Hatem said. She was surprised by this comment, and her face tensed up even more. “Because if you’re planning to stay silent like that throughout the meeting, I really won’t understand you. I don’t have the right qualifications for dealing with the dumb.”
She laughed, but after three bursts of laughter she regretted laughing. Something in her aborted laugh upset Hatem but he got over it when she finally spoke.
“Thank you for the invitation, Mawlana,” she said. “The truth is it was me who wanted to hear some answers.”
Now Hatem was worried.
“That’s fine by me,” he said, “and you can ask your questions later, after you’re spoken about yourself. Tell me, are you a college graduate or are you still studying?”
“I’m not as young as you think,” she said defensively.
“Ah yes, you really are old.”
“No, really. I graduated six years ago from the Faculty of Humanities, English Department, and got a diploma in missionary work from the Institute of Missionaries. I’m applying to do a master’s at the Islamic College for Girls.”
“Excellent, and what’s your master’s on?”
“The freedom of women in Islam, a study of the practice of the Prophet,” she said.
“
Very good. And do you think that women are free in Islam, based on the practice of the Prophet?”
“Of course.”
“Good, so why are you doing the master’s?”
“To prove it.”
“And who said it hadn’t been proven?”
“There are Western and orientalist claims that Islam doesn’t treat men and women as equals,” she said.
“Are you going to write your dissertation in English?”
“Why?”
“Since it’s designed as a response to the West.”
“It’s not just the West that claims that. There are secularists who claim that Islam doesn’t treat men and women as equals.”
“And does Islam treat them as equals?”
“Of course.”
“What do you mean ‘of course’? What about inheritance and as witnesses in court?”
“There are reasons and justifications for not treating them as equals in those cases.”
“So there isn’t equality.”
“There is, but . . .”
“Okay, so if someone came to you, not an orientalist or an occidentalist, and asked you how you interpret the hadiths like the ones in Bukhari, for example the Abu Hureira hadith that quotes the Prophet as saying, ‘If a woman spends the night away from her husband’s bed, the angels curse her until she returns.’ I remember it precisely. It’s hadith number 67 in the section on marriage and number 85 in the section on when a woman spends the night away from her husband’s bed. Come on then, how would you respond?”
Was she silent out of embarrassment or ignorance?
“So, if a woman’s tired and fed up and comes back from work in the factory or the office or she’s exhausted from housework or helping the kids with their homework and her husband gets it into his head that he wants sex or he has an argument with her and she walks out, does she deserve curses from the angels till she goes back home? Okay, suppose her husband’s an idiot and a brute, does she have to submit to him passively like a plastic doll or a prostitute in the red-light district? And why should the angels take the husband’s side? I mean, if the husband is useless and he leaves, why don’t the angels curse him? I mean, why’s the woman always to blame?”