by Ibrahim Essa
Khodeiri and Sirhan undertook to stay in the house with him. They reminisced about the past, with smiles and sighs of sorrow. No phones rang because the contracts had been revoked, the programs canceled, and the lessons banned. No friends called either, because he didn’t have any friendships. His father came to visit, accompanied by his wife, who took a shot at figuring out what was going on in his relationship with Omayma.
“Are you upset with each other?” she asked. “God protect us from evil.”
The three of them—Hatem, Omayma, and Hatem’s father—ignored her. His father did refer sadly to the fact that Hatem was under siege and out of work and suggested he try to find out why the authorities were angry with him (which Hatem already knew, of course), and try to placate the people who were hostile toward him. Hatem knew his enemies had been kind to him and the only way to placate them was to submit and hide away at home until they summoned him. No group or movement saw Hatem as a hero, and neither did he. He couldn’t find anyone who felt sorry for him. Since the smear campaign against him, even his old followers on Facebook had been regularly dropping him, Omayma told him. Not many stuck with him or pinned great hopes on him. He had lived a two-faced life—the scholar and the merchant of learning, the original thinker and the conformist—and he had never let either side win total victory, out of fear for his livelihood. He really was ‘Mawlana’ in both senses of the word: it could mean ‘our master or leader,’ but it can also mean ‘our servant or follower.’
Khodeiri surprised him one day as he put a cup of coffee on the table in the garden for him.
“Mona Ramzi called, Mawlana,” he said, “and asked you to call her as soon as you find time.”
“I’m certainly not short of time. Why didn’t you tell me when she called?”
“You were asleep upstairs at the time, Mawlana.”
Hatem phoned her. Her voice sounded as soft as ever, although she had given up acting and had started wearing the hijab, a pioneer in the long list of actresses who became known as ‘the penitents.’ In fact she had tried hard to defend acting and she hadn’t renounced it in principle. She had only renounced her own acting. Acting was one thing and Mona Ramzi’s acting was something else entirely. If acting was a woman in a bikini walking in front of the camera then Mona Ramzi was a great actress because her breasts were renowned well before the invention of silicone. Hatem once met her in the lobby of a religious television channel in which she was apparently a partner and she had joked about not being able “to find a solution for her breasts,” as she put it. She couldn’t find a gown or a shawl that would disguise them. She was more than seventy years old and for twenty of those years she had been wearing the hijab and living in seclusion, but she still remembered that sheikhs don’t get embarrassed. Hatem told her that a woman’s breasts were the most important part of her body and that they were mentioned in the Quran.
“The phrase in question, Madam Mona, means ‘draw their head coverings over their bosoms.’” She laughed and said, “And the breasts they have these days, is it halal to show them off?” as she walked off laughing, leaning on the arm of an assistant.
His face lit up when he spoke to her. “To what do I owe this honor? To have Mona Ramzi herself ask after me,” he asked.
She laughed like a lewd old woman.
“The honor is ours, Mawlana,” she said.
She waited while Hatem mumbled something complimentary and thanked her.
“Of course I know our phone calls are all on air and monitored,” she continued, “but you know me, Mawlana. I’m a woman who doesn’t get frightened and who doesn’t care, because I never do anything that would make the Lord angry, and the Lord knows that, and Brigadier Salama knows too.”
He laughed at her self-confidence, and she laughed back even louder.
“You know what?” she continued. “I’d like to see Salama on the Day of Judgment and beat him with my shoes, and you know what? That would weigh heavily in the balance as one of the good deeds I’d done.”
“Okay, but he might be listening to our conversation and he might cause you problems,” said Hatem.
“I couldn’t have said that to you while he was still in the police force, but thank God, he’s gone to hell.”
“He’s retired?”
“No, he’s six feet under. I cursed him every day at every prayer, on the prayer mat. ‘O Lord,’ I said, ‘let me one day see Salama Abdel-Muhsin Fathel-Bab al-Gizi meet his comeuppance.’ And in the end he died a fitting death.”
“Oh my God!”
“You know what happened? He fell into a sewer. He really gave me hell, Mawlana, and I even complained about him to the interior minister. Would you believe it, three interior ministers came and went and none of them treated me fairly. So now, whenever someone calls me from the ministry, I say, ‘Look, Mister, if you’re going to do wrong by me, you’d better pick your sewer pretty quick.’”
Mona continued with the sewer story, until Hatem interrupted.
“Was that Salama guy from State Security?” he asked.
“No, Mawlana, he was from the waterways police.”
“What on earth did you have to do with the waterways? I know you had your ways, but waterways, that’s ridiculous!”
Mona cackled with laughter, then dropped the punchline.
“The bastard was my husband!” she said.
Hatem played back the whole conversation from the start in his head and let out a long laugh.
“Great to chat with you, Mawlana,” she said, “but look, I called you up and I swear if it wasn’t for my health I’d come and see you at home.”
“It would be an honor.”
“The honor would be ours. But look, I have a small company that my grandson’s running. He’s a young lad but very smart. It’s a ringtone company.”
“A what company?”
“Cell phone ringtones and things like that. And we wanted to make an ad for the new Islamic ringtones. The call to prayer and a few prayers. We’d like you to do us the honor of doing the ad in your voice. It’s a one-minute job.”
Hatem felt insulted, but he decided to let it pass. “Of course. Send your grandson over and we can arrange a time.”
“Thank you, Mawlana,” she said, “and by the way I’m sure we won’t disagree on the money. I know I’m just a very humble old woman and not at the same level as you, but the advertisement will have your baraka.”
“What money, Madam Mona? I’ll do it as a gift and if you want, I’ll do you a ringtone as well. In fact I’d be very good at that.”
“That’s sweet, Mawlana, really. Listen, I don’t want you to get upset about that girl Nashwa. She’s a poor girl, I swear.”
The shock made him reel in his seat and his face twitched. He felt dizzy as if her words were twisting around him, circling his neck.
“She’s had a really hard life,” said Mona. “She failed at acting and she took up the hijab here in my house. Then she went to the Institute of Missionaries and studied for a master’s as well. She’s enlightened and the Lord blessed her with a love for learning, but she got into trouble and what she did to you she did unwillingly, I swear. If you knew how she felt you’d feel sorry for her.”
“Which film is that from, Madam Mona? Is it A Very Naughty Girl or Love on the Desert Road?” Hatem asked coldly.
“God bless you, Sheikh Hatem. Do you think I’m pulling your leg?”
“No, sorry, I think you’ve already pulled it.”
“You really do have it in for her, don’t you?”
“I feel very bitter.”
“But you still remember my films, A Very Naughty Girl and Love on the Desert Road. You’re the naughty one, Mawlana. And by the way, when my grandson sees my films he says ‘You were totally hot, grandma.’ Niazi Mustafa, may he rest in peace, before he was killed, used to say to me, ‘Fatin Hamama is the lady of Arab cinema and you, Mona, are the breasts of Arab cinema!’”
Hatem tried hard to keep Mona from going throu
gh the rest of the body parts of Arab cinema. When the conversation ended, he couldn’t help praying to God to forgive Salama Abdel-Muhsin al-Gizi.
Omayma woke Hatem up in a panic and he came to with a jolt. It was still dark and the muezzin hadn’t yet called the dawn prayers. Hatem had been sleeping for about two hours. Omayma was pale and was shaking him by the shoulder.
“Has anything happened to Omar?” he shouted.
His question unexpectedly helped to calm her down by reminding her that there were things more frightening than whatever it was that had frightened her. She fell silent and thoughtful, as if she was recovering her strength.
“They’ve blown up a church,” she said.
Hovering between restless sleep and being awake and tense, Hatem didn’t understand. “What do you mean exactly?” he said.
“A church has been blown up and it looks like a lot of Copts have been killed.”
Hatem woke up properly and jumped out of bed.
“And Hassan?” he said.
Omayma nodded. “That’s what I said too. I was worried about Hassan. My heart tells me that Hassan’s in danger. I immediately connected the explosion with Hassan,” she said.
She reached out for the remote control and switched the television to a news channel that was reporting the explosion.
“I was watching a movie,” she explained, “but a friend of mine called me and told me about the explosion at the church. I went online and found the news and then I went through all the channels till they started reporting on the event.”
The details started to pour in. Hatem and Omayma moved into the living room and turned both televisions on to different channels covering the same event, and turned on their iPad to pick up any extra details. Omayma showed him a Coptic website that had pictures of the dead, with bodies blown up and mangled limbs. They looked through the faces of all the young men who appeared—whether dead, or injured, or rescuing the injured, or shouting angrily about the killing.
At midnight, hundreds of Copts had been gathered in a church hall for a performance of a play put on by young people from a church in Zeitoun when they heard a car alarm. The alarm didn’t seem to be working properly because it went on and on without stopping. Two young men went out to find out what was going on and were standing on the pavement looking for the vehicle that was making the noise when another alarm started up from another vehicle and the noise became unbearable. The young men asked the guards at the church to intervene, but the guards were pathetic and indifferent. One of them said, “The car probably belongs to someone in the church.” One of the men from the church went up to the guard and shouted, “Why don’t we figure out which car it is first?”
One of the church ushers appeared at the door to find out what was going on and called the two young men over. One of them went over to the usher to explain while the other kept shouting angrily at the guards. Suddenly the alarms stopped and the only sounds to be heard were the passing cars and the footsteps of people on the pavement opposite, where there was a bank with a big glass window, closed at that time of night. Then there was the boom of an explosion from inside the church hall and pieces of concrete from the walls of the hall flew into the air like a fireball, blasting everything that stood in the way. A gap in the shredded concrete and the twisted reinforcement bars revealed a hall choked with smoke. There was the deafening sound of wooden beams crashing to the floor, flames cracking and popping, and window panes shattering. Through the gap a man emerged from the grey smoke, reeling and staggering. He had lost an arm and his chest was spattered with blood. He fell to the ground unconscious. Dozens of Copts followed, screaming and looking around in confusion as they came running out of the hall in terror, as if on the Day of Judgment, fleeing the flames and the smoke and the bleeding bodies that covered the floor and the stairways. People were pushing and shoving to escape and to save the injured. Some shouted for people to call ambulances and others were angry that the fire brigade had not yet shown up. Then the tone shifted to expressions of defiance, and outrage at the injustice, and prayers to God and Christ and the Virgin Mary for help. Two priests soon began to organize people to save the injured and instructed people what to do. Young people still wearing their costumes for the play gathered around them and obeyed their instructions. Suddenly the alarm on one of the vehicles started up again giving everyone a start and, seconds later, the vehicle itself exploded in a ball of fire that melted the asphalt and sent a wave of death and destruction down the street, picking up and then dropping everything in its path. The blast ripped up paving stones and sent them flying in all directions, along with shards of glass and pieces of metal from the parked cars, impaling, smashing, and tearing into the flesh of the people standing nearby.
Then there was just the groaning, the sighs, the rattling sounds, the rasping, the sobbing, and the bleeding.
Hatem called Hassan’s phone but was told it was ‘out of service.’ He didn’t stop trying to call him for the next twenty-four hours.
Omayma called Farida from Hatem’s phone but she didn’t answer. There was just a short recorded message.
Hatem woke up Sirhan and did his best, with explanations and insults, to remind him of the priest they had once visited in a church outside Cairo to get him to dig out the priest’s telephone number. Sirhan started stammering drowsily, telling some story about his cell phone, the gist of which was that the phone was broken and the memory lost.
Hatem spent the rest of the day counting the dead and looking for their names. Omayma looked on websites, especially the Coptic websites, while Hatem checked the television stations. Omayma shouted out twice when she came across the name Boutros among the thirty dead whose names had been announced. Hatem stopped at the same name among the seventeen in the second batch of victims. It was a total of forty-seven killed, men, women, and children. The media were careful to give prominent coverage to an Interior Ministry statement that said there were three Muslims among the victims, ignoring of course the fact that two of them were the guards at the church, and they later found out that there was no third Muslim.
Hatem tried to get in touch with the hospitals that took in the victims through the hot line that the Ministry of Health had announced but he discovered that the line was completely dead. Omayma spoke to every doctor she had met since childhood and the ones in her new social clique in an attempt to obtain any scrap of information from the hospitals. The Coptic websites started to publish photographs of the victims, and there was only one person called Boutros left and they were worried it might be Hassan.
That afternoon, when they were both exhausted, Hatem asked Omayma, “Why are we so worried about Hassan? By what kind of crazy coincidence could he have been in that particular church at that time?”
Omayma agreed and they realized they had upset themselves more than necessary.
“Either Hassan was there or he wasn’t there, let’s hope,” she said.
Despite his exhaustion, Hatem rushed back to his iPad and, with trembling fingers, looked for something that was troubling him. Puzzled, Omayma asked him what he was looking for. He didn’t hear her, so she sat behind him as he browsed.
“Why are you looking at that website?” she asked.
It was a website that specialized in attacking Christian missionary activity in Egypt and the bombing was on its home page.
As Hatem read the lines to himself, he muttered, “I want to know what the play was about, the one they were performing when the bomb went off.”
He stopped anxiously on two lines at the end of the story. Omayma read from over his shoulder in a loud, breathless voice.
“This play, which has previously been performed in several other churches, is about a confrontation with a terrorist who breaks into the home of a Christian family. When he sees how strong the faith of the family members is, although some of them have been killed, the light of the Saviour shines in him and he converts to Christianity,” it said.
“I doubt that information is corr
ect,” said Hatem, after Omayma had finished reading. “But for sure it’s been planned. The explanation is meant to counteract the sympathy people feel for the victims and suggest excuses for the killers.”
So far no one had claimed responsibility for the explosion.
Mona Ramzi’s grandson sat on the other side of Hatem’s desk. He had brought along a computer that was way too advanced for Hatem to understand. Hatem broke into a big smile at the contrast between the amazing modern device and the way her grandson was dressed. In a loose gallabiya that stopped short of his ankles and an Afghan-style turban, and with a long shaggy beard, he looked like he had just arrived from the Abbasid era. He had dispensed entirely with a mustache and he was holding a traditional tooth stick with which he cleaned obsessively between his teeth. He had a big brown mark on his forehead from bending forward and touching the ground when he prayed. Hatem learned that the man’s name was Hadhifa and that he was twenty-three years old.
He decided to ask him a question he had asked himself dozens of times: “Why do you think it is, brother Hadhifa, that of all the Muslims in the world it’s only those in Egypt who have prayer marks on their foreheads? Is it some genetic feature unique to Egypt and nowhere else?”