The Televangelist

by Ibrahim Essa

  He said how sorry he was and offered excuses, but he was worried the details might be too much for her. She forgave him and thanked him and prayed for him and assured him of something he already knew—that Mukhtar loved him and had always been his brother.

  Before he left, she said, “Did you know that the name Husseini wasn’t originally part of the family name but Mukhtar’s ancestor five generations back acquired it from spending five years in the Hussein Mosque as a servant to the mosque and the people who prayed there?”

  She said that Mukhtar’s father, like her, was a descendant of the Prophet’s family and they had all memorized the family tree of the Prophet and were buried with it when they died. She said that Mukhtar’s name was Mahmoud Mukhtar ibn Zein el-Abdin ibn Jubeir ibn Taqi el-Din ibn Ibrahim ibn Oqeil ibn Ahmed ibn Youssef ibn Oday, and the line went back to Muhammad, may God bless him and grant him peace.

  “And then this happens to us?” she said.

  “It’s a trial with which we are afflicted and from which we will recover with the will of God the Just, the One, and the Victorious, my noble lady,” Hatem replied.

  Hatem was keen to prove to himself that he could stand up like a man to being humiliated by State Security. He was well aware they would be following him and monitoring his visit as it happened. They may have put cameras and bugging devices in the house but he was determined to be there on the day after his miraculous escape safe and sound from the State Security building, thanks to God and the role of Hassan Abdel-Laah, as Hatem had called him when they said goodbye at home before he went to see Mukhtar’s mother. Hassan had packed up his stuff and embraced Omayma in front of him as tenderly as a child saying goodbye to his mother. Omayma was surprised, but Hatem wasn’t annoyed at Hassan’s show of emotion toward her. Hassan told him he wouldn’t see him again but he swore that he loved him and that he wouldn’t forget spending time with him and staying in his house, and said he didn’t want Hatem ever to be angry with him, whatever he did or whatever he found out he had done. Hatem reprimanded him for saying goodbye, saying there was no need for him to leave. He pulled his packed suitcase away from him and called Khodeiri, who had been summoned urgently to the house, and told him to take the suitcase back upstairs to his room.

  “This is your house, Hassan,” said Hatem reproachfully. “Go out and do what you want and come back at the end of the evening. Whether you come back Muslim or Christian, this is your house, and in order to divide the country into two halves, I’m going to call you Hassan Abdel-Laah until you land on one side or the other. Whatever god appears to you and however you decide to worship Him, take your time.”

  Visiting Mukhtar’s mother was his first task and he did it early in the morning, then he came back a little before noon and went to the bank where he had his accounts. He was greeted with the usual welcomes and dozens of questions about religion, about his programs and fatwas. He asked the branch manager, who had long been a friend, to fill him in on the latest developments in his accounts. The man looked at the screen in front of him while Hatem looked at the closed-circuit screens around the room showing the public areas, the corridors, the entrances, and the pavement outside and people standing at the ATM in the street.

  “There’s a deposit of three million pounds, and there’s an account with a little less than a million in it,” the manager said.

  Hatem sighed and said, “Praise be to God. We ask Him to bless us in worldly matters. Look, I’d like that deposit to be transferred to an account in the name of Omar el-Shenawi, who’s my beautiful son and a minor, and the other money to be transferred in full and to the last penny to my good wife Omayma.”

  The branch manager smiled.

  “All’s well, I hope?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Hatem. “I’m going to have my tonsils removed and I’m worried I might be declared redundant, so I thought I’d better protect my son and his mother instead of them having to go through the probate business and all that hassle.”

  “May God grant you good health, Mawlana. Sorry to hear about your tonsils.”

  “Thank God it’s tonsils. Better than it being my testicles.”

  The manager laughed but the laughing didn’t completely ease his concerns. Hatem signed the papers happily, with loving thoughts of Omar.

  Hatem expected disaster to strike and he had decided to sort out his affairs before it struck. He expected Ali el-Kaaki to get in touch with him at any minute to cancel the programs and wheedle his way out of the contracts. He expected his glorious television career to collapse when el-Kaaki blew the final whistle. He knew how close Kaaki was to the security agencies and how he was just a puppet on strings that tied him to the State Security building. In fact he had once overheard that a former director of State Security was in partnership with the owner of the Dunya channel and the son of the current director was a partner of el-Kaaki’s. He waited in silence for the inevitable phone call from el-Kaaki or his office or the program producer. He expected to hear news that Khalil had withdrawn his sponsorship of the Ramadan series. It would be quick and easy for him to abrogate the contract. A nod from the Interior Ministry to Khalil or even a malicious hint from one of his Salafist sheikhs about Hatem and his relationship with Mukhtar el-Husseini would persuade Khalil, both for reasons of faith and as a political precaution, to stop financing his program. Hatem would have to go back to being a mosque preacher, if the Ministry of Religious Endowments would agree to take him back, which probably wouldn’t happen. In fact he may already have been dismissed from his old position and State Security would make sure he never again stood in the pulpit of any mosque in Egypt. His link with Husseini would mean he could never preach in the Gulf countries, which might have been a refuge in times of hardship. Hatem was convinced he was acting out the last episode of the stage of his life to which his learning, his popularity, and his position as a television celebrity had brought him. Could he play the role of the opposition sheikh, when the only sheikhs he could see that opposed this regime were the extremist sheikhs who declared both the ruler and his subjects to be infidels? Did he have it in him to be the sheikh who spoke truth to despotic power?

  Why hadn’t he spoken out all these years about the tyranny of the sultan? While the sultan reigned Hatem had lived in comfort, spent his time relaxing in swimming pools, and frittered away millions of pounds made from preaching and learning. The learning might be useful, yet he was the one who benefited most. Why had he ignored the corruption that was said to be rife in the country? He had never shown any interest in it.

  He imagined the voice of the producer in his ear, telling him that time was passing and the end of the program was rapidly approaching. That’s why he had hurriedly transferred the money to Omar and Omayma, so that they would be safe from harm and could live the lives they were used to, and so that Omar could pay for the medical treatment that might cure his illness and then for an education if he managed to get that far, and could have money for himself and for a future that would be brighter than his past. He was grateful to Omayma despite the rift that had developed years ago. However cool their relationship was now, the experience of living together was enough to make him feel grateful. Maybe she had changed from wife to sister after all these years. He thought back to the first years of his marriage, when he and Omayma were having trouble having a child. Each of them projected onto the other feelings of guilt and suspicion that the other was responsible for Omayma’s failure to get pregnant, although all the X-rays and other tests suggested that both were perfectly capable of having children, though maybe not together. At dawn they would perform the usual prayer together and then he would say a special prayer for a child. Often they would both end up in tears. She blamed him for the fact that his prayers were not answered, while he wondered why God was punishing him and then felt guilty about even asking the question. He never thought of marrying another woman. Such an idea never came into his head, but Omayma wouldn’t believe he wasn’t thinking along those lines and she made him
pay for her suspicions, punishing him for the fact that she could never confirm them. Then one day she came back home from the doctor’s and collapsed into his arms, crying and sobbing aloud, writhing in pain and trembling, mumbling broken words as she wiped the snot from her nose with her hand. “I’m pregnant, Hatem,” she finally said.

  It was because of that day, that moment, that he would never abandon her as long as they lived. And this knowledge, that he couldn’t leave Omayma, meant that the desire that now drew him to Nashwa didn’t disturb him. In fact he was happy with it, because it was like a light in the darkness at a time when he felt anxious and tense. He tried to speak to Nashwa when he woke up after his detention. He called her after leaving the house but her phone was unavailable. He called her again after reaching Mukhtar’s mother’s house but she didn’t reply, though there was a recorded message. He loved her voice and called her four times just to hear the message again and again. He called her again when he had finished at the bank and this time the busy signal meant he didn’t even hear the recorded message, and he felt an emptiness and desolation in his heart. Was she ignoring him because of the incident at his father’s house? Was she apprehensive about him and his reaction? Was she wary of continuing the relationship? Did she now hate Hatem because he had disappointed her and ruined the good impression she had had of him?

  The only answers were that he wanted her. He wanted her copper-brown face and her large eyes, sometimes brown, sometimes black, sometimes amber, sometimes all these colors together, and her silky brown hair when it fell loose from under her hijab, when it brushed his face and he kissed it with reverent lips and reveled in its sweet, feminine smell and plunged his face in it, rolling his head in the soft hairs that made him tingle. He remembered her bronze neck, flecked magically with tiny beads of sweat as she kissed him feverishly. He remembered her slender body, tall and self-confident, with a waist that was living proof that the Creator was a master when His hand shaped a human likeness of one of the houris in paradise. He was puzzled that he still felt the same way about her after what had happened. There was no trace of remorse, as if he felt no need to apologize for that sensual encounter. Driven by deep desire, he didn’t hesitate for a moment as he tried to meet her again, though he knew that he might be monitored more strictly and that exposure might ruin him.

  Stuck at the traffic lights, he tried to call her again. He pressed her name on the screen but was surprised to see Nader Nour’s name pop up instead, demanding to be answered. He had ignored Brigadier Faisal’s suggestion that he call Nader when he came out of the State Security building, then he had ignored two calls from Nader and even his urgent text messages. He didn’t want to be bothered by chitchat with Nader, who was the reason why he was stuck in this putrid swamp in the first place, and while he missed having a friend he could confide in and tell his story to and whose advice he could seek, he could do without Nader interrogating him about things he had no doubt heard from his security contacts and from the household of the ruling family. Nader’s name disappeared from the screen and Hatem tried again to get in touch with Nashwa. Then Khodeiri, sitting in the front seat next to Sirhan, turned round to speak.

  “By the way, Miss Nashwa is waiting for you at the office,” he said.

  When he reached the office door, Khodeiri had caught up with him and then overtaken him to turn the key in the door. Ramadan, the errand boy, opened from the inside and greeted Sheikh Hatem. He asked him what he’d like to drink and said, “I spoke to Mister Khodeiri earlier and told him the lady says her name’s Nashwa.”

  The errand boy clearly wanted to give himself a role but Khodeiri cut him short reproachfully.

  “Enough, Ramadan, go and make Mawlana a cup of tea, quickly.”

  Hatem made his way toward the office door and opened it impatiently, looking for Nashwa. He was shocked to find the room empty, without even a whiff of her. He looked back angrily and, unable to stop himself shouting, he asked, “You silly idiot, where the hell is the woman who was here?”

  Khodeiri preferred to think he wasn’t the silly idiot that Hatem was referring to. He quickly pulled Ramadan by the collar as he was about to open the door again, since Sirhan had rung the bell and was muttering from outside, asking Ramadan to open up.

  Hatem was standing there waiting for an answer from the two of them. The doorbell made him more agitated and he asked the question again: “Where’s the woman who was in my office?”

  “She said her name was Nashwa and she wanted to see you,” Ramadan replied confidently. “I told her I didn’t know your schedule so she told me to speak to Mr. Khodeiri and tell him she was waiting for Sheikh Hatem, so I told Mr. Khodeiri.”

  Hatem thought she had probably left. He was disappointed and even more depressed than he had been. Ramadan went to open the door for Sirhan and Hatem heard him saying, “I didn’t want to let her sit in the sheikh’s office, so I put her in the other room, and she was praying when you arrived just now.”

  Hatem cheered up instantly and went slowly into his office, recovering his dignity on the way.

  “Very well, show her into my office,” he said.

  At first he thought it was a trick, and a silly trick at that, one that deserved an even sillier response. There were a few light knocks on the door, he said ‘come in,’ and the door opened. He thought the idiots sitting in his office must have made a mistake: it was a fully veiled woman draped in black from head to foot. The only part with any obvious shape was a head that was completely covered, with a pair of large black glasses attached.

  “Who is this thing?” Hatem stuttered. “Could this be Nashwa?” he asked, recovering from the surprise.

  The niqab made her look taller, or maybe it was because he was sitting on a low sofa that he thought it wasn’t her. She just stood there and he didn’t know what to do. He still suspected, and hoped, that it wasn’t her.

  “Nashwa?” he said.

  “Yes, Mawlana,” she replied sharply.

  “Congratulations on your new clothes,” he said. “What’s the big idea?”

  His desire had subsided.

  “God’s law,” she replied, in the same sharp, defiant tone.

  He waved his hand toward her.

  “And the expensive French designer glasses, are they part of God’s law too?” he asked.

  She took hold of the glasses with her black gloves but didn’t take them off, though it looked like she was about to.

  “Did meeting me really require this Bar Lev line you’ve built around yourself?” Hatem added.

  She didn’t answer and, since she was completely covered, he couldn’t detect any reaction.

  “Why are you standing there like that?” he said. “Have a seat.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “Choose the seat furthest from me and sit there.”

  His heart began to soften when her head began to look around the place. Then she chose a corner and went over to sit down. He felt she was uncertain and confused and that his affection for her was coming back to life.

  “When did you decide to wear the niqab?” he asked. “Was it after what happened between us?”

  She completely ignored the second part of his question.

  “The niqab is something that God Almighty has decreed for Muslim women,” she said with a forcefulness that she wanted to be clear and final.

  “Really!” he replied sarcastically.

  The sarcasm offended her and it took even him by surprise. He had long been uncomfortable with the latest innovations in religion and this time he hadn’t been able to hold back a spontaneous reaction that was colored by his anger with her and by a sense that she was trying to escape him by repeating the endless platitudes of the neo-Salafists.

  “I don’t believe you any longer and I’ve begun to realize that everything I’ve heard about you is true,” she said.

  She knew her remark would be hurtful.

  “And what have you heard in the last seventy-two hours that you didn’t k
now before, Nashwa?”

  “That you campaign against the niqab!” she said, possibly as an evasion.

  He realized she was leading him on, so he followed her lead.

  “I’ve never campaigned against the niqab,” he said. “Whenever I’m asked about it on television or in seminars I always reply that it’s a custom and not a religious requirement, but there’s nothing wrong with women wearing the niqab, since they’re free to interpret Islam as they wish. The problem is that it’s the advocates of the niqab who want to claim it’s the one and only obligation.”

  “Of course it’s obligatory. It’s the real hijab. In fact God Almighty told women to stay at home and not to go out in the first place,” said Nashwa.

  “And when exactly did He tell them that? The day before yesterday?”

  “Don’t make fun of it!” Nashwa shouted.

  “God forbid! In fact I’m making fun of you, you idiot. That’s not what you said or the way you were two days ago.”

  “God showed me the way.”

  “The way to what?”

  “‘O wives of the Prophet, you are not like other women if you are pious. So do not speak indulgently to men lest those who have sickness in their hearts start to have designs on you. So speak with decorum. Remain in your homes and do not display your finery as in the first Age of Ignorance.’”

  Hatem realized he was dealing with a parrot with black feathers.

  “That’s right, well done,” he replied. “You’ve memorized the Quran well, but I can’t see the point of reciting these verses to me right now.”

  “I’m doing what God told us to do.”

  “Yes, my dear, me too, and all of us. But you’re putting into practice what sheikhs and preachers told you to do, not what God told you to do. God said this verse, but your understanding of it comes through preachers, and notice I don’t say through people who have written works of Quranic exegesis. You’ve never ever read any of those works, and neither have any of those other people who decide to give me lessons about Islam whenever they hear me say something they’ve never heard before. They just heard it from someone who heard it from someone who heard it from some preacher.”