The Televangelist

by Ibrahim Essa

  “The other solution is you back out of the program and I continue by myself,” Hatem panted.

  He stood up, left Anwar’s prostrate body, and opened the wardrobe door. He lifted Anwar’s back from behind till it was upright, then gave the body a big push, over the edge of the chair and toward the wardrobe door. Anwar’s head smashed into the door and his body slumped onto the floor.

  “Help, guys!” Hatem shouted. “Mr. Anwar tripped and slammed into the wardrobe door and passed out.”

  The red light went on after a twenty-six minute break for commercials. Sheikh Hatem was alone on screen.

  “Assalam aleikum, we’re back again after a rather long break, for which we thank God,” he said. “That means our program is a great success and the advertisers are showing great interest, a sign of high viewer ratings, and we hope and pray to God that they will always think well of us. Unfortunately my dear friend the great star Anwar Othman became indisposed during the break. It seems he had too much fatta for lunch, so he says he’s sorry he can’t come back for the rest of the show and he promises you he’ll stay away from fatta. So I’m here with you on air, with the help of God. I’m going to ask you questions and you answer, or you ask me questions and I’ll answer. And in line with the theme of the show, which was set by our friend Anwar, let me speak to you about the etiquette of disagreement in Islam, as we learned it from the Companions of the Prophet and the generation that followed, may God be pleased with them all. Unless it’s a friendly disagreement or a disagreement simply for the sake of disagreement, then it’s the kind of discord that God and His Prophet would not approve of.”

  Hatem took the first call: “Hello? No, I can’t hear your voice, madam. What? You’re busy changing the ringtone on your cell? Is that really necessary? Hello? Hello?”

  But what Hatem was really wondering about was if and when someone would call in and ask him about Mukhtar el-Husseini.

  Hatem wanted to ask Omayma if she remembered the girl who had come to visit a while back.

  Of course she would remember Nashwa. Omayma had sat with her and spoken to her and had breakfast with her. The way she looked that day suggested that Omayma hadn’t digested either her breakfast or the presence of that girl in her house so early in the morning. Omayma’s face suggested she was suspicious. But somehow Nashwa’s visit and Hatem’s recent ordeal had shaken things up and restored some warmth to the relationship between Hatem and Omayma. The passion Hatem had felt for Nashwa had made him more passionate about Omayma, maybe because he felt guilty or remorseful.

  When he got home, he felt wrecked, shattered, wounded, and threatened. He hadn’t received any phone calls asking about Mukhtar el-Husseini. In fact, after he went back on air alone, without Anwar Othman, he received only two phone calls, and they had both been set up by the production team. They were dull questions from fake viewers and he felt that orders had arrived to wrap up the show quickly, especially since they were puzzled about the mystery of Anwar Othman getting injured in his room. After the show he found out that Anwar hadn’t told anyone that Hatem had attacked him. It may have been pride, or fear of a scandal. Nader also vanished after the show, as if he had accomplished his mission, the purpose of which Hatem hadn’t quite fathomed. Had he really wanted to save Hatem from a trap? The idea that he would be motivated by affection must be suspect, given that Nader loved only himself. Or maybe the fact that he had come was a sign that the people who set the trap were unsure what they wanted the outcome to be. Some of them wanted to destroy Hatem completely, while others wanted him to survive with just an arm missing or a foot ripped off.

  He wanted to say to Omayma, “I betrayed you with that girl that tricked me.” But no, he wouldn’t say “I betrayed you,” because he hadn’t betrayed her. For a start they were living almost separate lives, albeit under the same roof. The last time they had had sex was so long ago that he could hardly remember when it was. Second, he hadn’t slept with Nashwa. It was just a quick hug and some fondling. Under sharia law that wasn’t adultery, sexually it wasn’t intercourse, and it hadn’t amounted to anything. Third, he was in love with Nashwa. If Omayma was sensible she could forgive him for a hundred reasons, because a man of his age couldn’t live as a virgin, even if he had forgotten what sex with love was like. He hadn’t asked Omayma how she put up with celibacy, or why she no longer saw him as a means for sexual gratification. In fact she had never rejected him, any time he felt like sleeping with her, but she accepted so grudgingly, and her body was so cold and she made the minutes he spent on top of her seem so tedious that he lost interest and desire. She didn’t criticize him or complain. She just asked, with casual disrespect, “Have you finished?” He would ignore her and get up, numbed psychologically and physically.

  He hadn’t betrayed her, so he wanted to tell her about the person who had betrayed him, about Nashwa, who had dragged him to the edge of love and then turned out to be an actress, playing with this sheikh, while someone had fun at his expense by recording his conversations with her or taking pictures of him with her. They were definitely spying on him and eavesdropping and maybe taking pictures too. It’s true it might have been her that made the recordings and took the pictures, and he was sure she was the one who stole the things that Sheikh Mukhtar el-Husseini had left with Hatem. He had looked for the flash drive and the files and the papers and he couldn’t find them. He had accused everyone in the house of taking them, and then accused himself of negligence, but now he knew how State Security had obtained them. That morning when Nashwa had visited him and slept in his office while she was waiting for him, she had stolen Mukhtar’s things. He had opened the door that day and found her asleep on the sofa. She was pretending to be asleep, but she had accomplished her mission. Would he find the pictures of him with her in his arms on the Internet the next day? A one- or two-minute show of the famous, upright sheikh in the arms of a young woman lying on him in his bed. Not only that but he came quickly too. What virility! Of course the woman might be his wife, so why would people think he was doing anything wrong? But even if there was nothing wrong about it, it was an affront to his prestige and an insult to his worth, and there would be endless comments about it, and they would fill out the scandal with the girl’s story and her allegations. Hatem wondered what she would allege he had done. Would she even need to make up allegations? Surely she wouldn’t need to, since everything had really happened.

  He wanted to tell Omayma, but he was afraid he would cry out of weakness, not for fear that the world would collapse on his head, but weakness toward Nashwa. He hated the fact that he couldn’t bring himself to hate her even now. He had a horrible stabbing headache, not from the flood of disasters that had almost overwhelmed him but from the deceit of a pretty woman he had thought was his angel, sent to bring him mercy. Where was God in all this?

  Why didn’t he find himself impatient to pray, on his knees, prostrate, imploring God to save him from the thunderbolt that was coming?

  He was ashamed in God’s presence. He hadn’t even said one of the hundreds of prayers he taught people. He didn’t address God as you might expect from someone who’s been struck by disaster and who asks God to ward it off or to give him some relief. He was shy and embarrassed, because what could he tell God when God already knew? He just stayed at home with the door closed, staring up at the ceiling all the time as if he could see through it to the sky, silent because there was nothing to be said.

  So immobilized that he couldn’t even pray, he found himself drawn toward an abyss, feverish with a fear that made his body tremble.

  He wanted to tell Omayma that he wanted to see his son and to ask her where Omar was. He no longer thought about anything but Omar.

  OMAYMA PREPARED EVERYTHING. SHE SAID it would be a bad idea for them to go to visit Omar in the clinic. They might assume he was trying to escape or realize how dangerous it would be if he was free and far away; they might take stringent measures to stop him coming back, or drive him into exile. Hatem was gratef
ul to Omayma for her conspiratorial way of thinking, which stemmed directly from her female cunning. He took the opportunity to tell her, half in conjugal teasing and half in philosophical speculation, that all the conspiracies in the world originated in the feminine side of men and that Islamic civilization was indebted to palace slave girls, who taught men the art of refined living and were not just pretty concubines.

  “Your high opinion of women gets you into trouble, Sheikh Hatem,” Omayma threw back.

  Omayma couldn’t be unaware. Her intuition was better than her information. Hatem took the right hook with the desperation of an old boxer who knows that taking a punch is in itself a form of heroism when you can’t punch back.

  Omayma thought the best solution was for them to take a holiday soon, and not necessarily a short one. She had agreed with him ever since the day after his last show that he was in the last stage of his life as a famous sheikh and a preacher with a mass audience, and that winning now meant cutting one’s losses. Neither of them could take it if they cooked up a charge against him and threw him in jail. The disgrace would threaten everything. All he could do then was bide his time for a chance to get out of the country, because all the evidence suggested he had broken the law of loyalty and he didn’t think he could easily win back the trust of the security people and, behind them, the presidential palace and the approval of the president’s son.

  He clearly wanted to win back that approval. He hadn’t yet become the obstinate hero.

  Omayma made reservations at a resort in Hurghada on the Red Sea. In the winter there was hardly anyone there. Rain pelted down on the balconies and roofs of the wooden beach houses, adding to the sense of desolation and gloom, especially with the long silences between them, interrupted only by remarks about food or about Omar. Their cell phones didn’t ring because she had turned them off and used them only when necessary or behind his back. He had no computer, no iPad. They had left technology alone at home. As soon as she went into the hotel room, Omayma pulled out all the wires to the television. At the last moment Hatem had brought with him the complete set of Sayed Qutb’s In the Shade of the Quran, and lived off it. To make him inconspicuous during the daytime when he was sitting by the pool or by the sea, Omayma forced him to dress like a tourist—in Bermuda shorts and a colored African-style shirt and the kind of hat that the English wear on safari. It may have been the first time in the history of beaches and swimming pools that anyone sat reading Sayed Qutb’s work of Quranic exegesis while a blonde European woman walked past him in skimpy beachwear. The contrast between what he was reading and the scantily clad women around him made him laugh at times. Omayma understood how he felt and although she sympathized with him, all she did was look at the water and eat. There was nothing she could say that would help him. On the third day the boredom was killing her and then he felt guilty for imprisoning her with him, and told her he was willing to go back to Cairo with her, to whatever awaited him there, in return for escaping the boredom.

  “Don’t be silly, Hatem, it doesn’t suit you,” she said. “If they wanted to do you harm, do you think they would wait till you came back to Cairo? They’d come right to the door of the beach house. We’re not hiding from them here, because they knew we were coming before we even arrived. The hotel reservations office, the tourist police, and the State Security office in Hurghada all know. We’re hiding from your viewers—the ones who love you and the ones who hate you.”

  Hatem had to admit she was right. “It is hard to hide. I mean, anyone who reads Sayed Qutb on the beach would have to be a sheikh disguised in a funny hat,” he said.

  But at the time he felt safe, as if he had escaped. It seemed the president’s son hadn’t yet decided he was a threat to his reputation because he knew the story of Hassan, his brother-in-law, in every detail. Perhaps he realized that the intimidation had had the right effect, and Hatem had been frightened into silence. What they had done to Sheikh Mukhtar el-Husseini had also helped to deter Hatem, especially now that they had stripped Hatem of the strength that his popularity gave him. And God alone knew what incriminating documents Nashwa had got hold of and handed over to the security people, or maybe they would accuse him of sexually assaulting or raping her if they wanted. The last he had heard before coming to the Red Sea was that all the programs and shows he was doing had been suspended, which confirmed what he was already sure of: that all the television stations would boycott him. In short, as far as they were concerned, he was under control. He didn’t pose a risk and they didn’t need him.

  Hatem and Omayma sat drinking tea on the terrace of the beach house, next to the puddles of water on the gravel surface. It was still raining and there was a chilling wind, while the sun lurked behind a thick cloud that promised more rain.

  “Where do you think Hassan is now?” asked Hatem. “Do you think he’s left Egypt? Would they let him go abroad and do what he wants there? His sister was terrified they might do something to him, especially when it was clear I’d failed to bring him back to his senses.”

  “Do you really feel you failed to bring him back to Islam?” Omayma replied.

  “He never abandoned Islam, so he didn’t need to come back, Omayma. He didn’t know anything about Islam and he never found out much about Christianity. I told him his problem was with his father, not with his religion. Sometimes I felt he was just a stupid kid, and sometimes I was sure he was a stupid kid, but it was like he was my kid and sometimes I was frightened how much anger and rebellion he had inside him. When it came to knowledge about religion, he was like everyone in his generation, or rather like everyone in the country. It doesn’t go beyond hearing a couple of Friday sermons, in which they dozed off toward the end, or a couple of church services where they don’t understand half of what the priest says. But even so, I have to respect his intelligence and worry about how mysterious he is.”

  Omayma poured more hot water into her cup and the tea bag gradually turned it brown.

  “And Nashwa? Did you find out who was behind her?” she asked. His discomfort at the question turned into surprise that his wife was behaving like a sister.

  “She’s an actress. The Interior Ministry put her up to it, and she probably stole the documents and other things that Sheikh Mukhtar left with me.”

  “Didn’t you ever suspect her?”

  “Did you have any suspicions about her?” Hatem replied.

  “I didn’t have any suspicions because I knew who she was.”

  Hatem was shocked. “You knew she was an actress and she was playing me for a fool?” he asked.

  “As for being an actress, she used to be one but then she gave it up. As for her playing you, well, you like to play, and I didn’t think you’d lose that game with her. But it looks like you did.”

  Omayma stood up with a smile. He took her hand and pulled her back down to her seat. She was surprised but gave in.

  “You haven’t slept with me for ages, Omayma,” he said.

  “Have you asked yourself why?”

  “Often. But I haven’t found an answer.”

  “Maybe the answer’s clear. For four nights now you haven’t even thought of giving me a hug, even though we’ve been together twenty-four hours a day and we’ve been sleeping a few inches apart.”

  The confrontation made him feel embarrassed.

  “Don’t you desire your wife any longer, Mawlana?” she asked.

  “But it’s you who became cold toward me. The last time we were together I was hurt, but I tried to be a gentleman. I didn’t force myself on you and I didn’t touch you, out of respect for your decision to reject me. What would you expect me to do if you throw up after sleeping with me? That happened the last two times, and before that you pushed me away so hard I almost fell off the bed. I felt like a disgusting rapist and I didn’t put any pressure on you and I didn’t have any suspicions about anything.”

  When he said the word ‘suspicions’ and saw her reaction, his suspicion became a terrible certainty that was lik
e a slap in the face. When Omayma saw that he had understood, she ran into the beach house in tears as if she couldn’t bear the weight of her secret and wanted to throw it off. Hatem stood transfixed, paralyzed by the surprise and unable to think clearly. He followed her in and found her lying on her stomach on the bed sobbing. So Omayma had thrown up because she was disgusted with herself, not with him, because she hated what she had done and not because of what he had done to her. She wasn’t cold; she was remorseful that she had betrayed him.

  *

  Omayma tired of sobbing and her sobs changed into a suppressed whistling because her face was buried in a pillow and she had put another pillow on her head. Hatem was sitting in the corner of the room and, for the first time since he had arrived, the room seemed cramped and oppressive. He stared at the floor in silence, his senses overwhelmed. He went through a gamut of emotions—shock, anger, crushing sadness, denial, a raging sense of humiliation, contempt for his own carelessness, a desire to hurt her, an inability to imagine anything he could do, pity for himself and then for her, growing hatred of her, and, strangely, a desire to have violent sex with her. The questions that tormented him seemed to pull him deep into a dark sea. Who had she betrayed me with? Had she make love to a man in my bed? Is she still doing it? Had she seen his penis, and had he squeezed her breasts? Was it just one man or had Omayma, the wife of a man of religion and good morals, been whoring around?

  Omayma was shocked and terrified. Her arms and legs moved under the bedding but she didn’t turn and look at him. She just listened and the bed creaked as her body trembled.