by Ibrahim Essa
We later found out that it was Abul-Makarem in person who ran the campaign of intimidation against us: he supervised it daily and sent his boss reports morning and evening on what was happening to us.
Saying that he wanted to put his mind at ease, he asked us to come to a meeting at the mansion that the president’s son has in a beach resort, because it was the height of summer, may God protect all of us from the heat of Hell. I went willingly and enthusiastically without any companions other than a driver and a member of the order, but they wouldn’t let them into the mansion, an arrogant gesture that upset us, though we let it pass because we didn’t want to make too much of something minor. Until the president’s son came in, we thought he would respect the status of the person who was coming to see him in his house, but his coldness and his hostile disdain prevented him from seeing the truth about himself or his visitor. He dashed all our hopes in him and we soon lost all sympathy for him. It quickly became clear that the man we were sitting with was destined to be useless. Despite his arrogance, he seemed troubled when he opened the subject, after some introductory remarks that made us even less sympathetic toward him because they showed that he was ignorant about us and about others. Attached to this file you will find an audio file with a complete recording of our conversation with him and what he said to us. The president’s son said, “I’ve heard things about you that made me ask to meet you to consult with you on a private matter. It should be clear of course that we will be sharing a secret that no one else should be privy to. You appreciate how serious it would be if any of these private matters leaked out and what a bad effect it would have if what I tell you in confidence was disclosed to anyone else.” Even a deaf ear could not have mistaken the threatening tone. “In fact,” he continued, “the subject is not grave but it is troubling, and I’d like to find a solution through a man of religion such as you, since you are said to resolve such matters.”
It was then that I realized that the man’s intelligence staff had got their information from ordinary uninformed people, without checking it, so they had set him up to seek help from someone who wasn’t going to help him and were implicating me in the failure of something I had never said I could succeed at.
The president’s son continued: “A while back I started to have a recurring dream. In fact it’s a nightmare. At first I took it lightly and tried to ignore it, but it started to occur again and again and put severe strain on my nerves. I started taking tranquilizers but they didn’t help in dealing with the nightmare. Because of the headaches, the tension, the loss of concentration, and the lack of sleep, I went abroad and consulted a doctor in London who prescribed some medicines for me, but they were all designed to deal with the side effects of the nightmare. They were anti-depressants or drugs that stop disturbing thoughts, but they didn’t stop me thinking about the same subject.”
I waited for him to explain, without asking him directly what the dream or the recurrent nightmare was because I gathered that he didn’t want to tell me.
“Here’s the problem, Mister Sheikh,” the president’s son continued. “How can I get rid of something that dominates my thoughts and forces me to behave in a way I don’t want? I won’t lie to you. This conflict is unnerving me and worrying me. I’m worried it will affect my work, and you know how sensitive and important that is, and that it will affect my family life too. In view of my responsibilities I have to keep my stress under control so that I look composed in public, and that makes me even more stressed, and I don’t know how to break out of this cycle, especially, and I’m going to be frank with you, given that my situation is so critical I’ve resorted to doctors in America as well, but they told me that the cultural and social differences mean I have to resort to a doctor from my own country and my own culture, language, and religion. As soon as we got to the word ‘religion,’ I said ‘That’s that.’ I did research until I decided to resort to you and ask you, in confidence.”
He had used the word ‘resort’ several times, but his arrogant tone was incompatible with the idea that he thought he was seeking refuge. I couldn’t avoid asking the president’s son the inevitable question about the nature of the dream. When he replied, he was not only hesitant but also aggressive.
“I dream that someone naked is taking my clothes off, then throwing me down on my stomach. I’m submissive and I can’t resist him, and then, you can guess the rest of course,” he said.
I found his dream as puzzling as he did. But I noticed that his face relaxed once he had gotten the dream off his chest.
“Does the dream recur in the same form every time?” I asked.
“Well, it can vary,” he said.
“Does the same person always appear in it?”
“At first it was the same person, but later that changed.”
“Are they people whose faces you recognize?”
“Some of them.”
“Did the dream occur in your childhood, your adolescence?”
“I can’t say I had the same dream when I was young, but it’s possible. You forget things easily as a child, you know. Anyway, this began not so long ago and started to recur.”
“May I know how long ago that would be? Do you mean a year ago? Or more? Or less?”
“Some time ago.”
“Is it connected to a situation you were in recently, and then the dream started after that?”
“It is.”
“Might it be possible for you to tell me about the situation?”
“I don’t think it’s important,” he said.
At that point I made the biggest mistake of my life. I looked at his fingers drumming on the arm of the chair, at his blank stare, the pallor of his face, his chin held high, his head turned toward the void, and his dry smile. Suddenly black rings seemed to spread under his eyes.
“This isn’t a dream, is it?” I said. “It’s real, and we want to find a solution, if I’ve understood correctly.”
His veins bulged, his eyes glazed over, and his face twitched. He jumped to his feet and I had a feeling they were going to come across me drowned somewhere that very night. I was too frightened to move but he went back to his seat and sat down after a tense moment of hesitation. The strange thing was that he resumed his air of superiority, though now it seemed to be just a defense mechanism.
“So, do you have a solution, Sheikh Mukhtar? And please, don’t tell me to read the Quran and seek God because I’ve already read the Quran several times to try to overcome this weakness. I’ve gone on pilgrimage, I’ve prayed, I’ve fasted, and given alms to try to get rid of this weakness, which has started to take control of me.”
Then, as if he had finally thrown off his protective shell, he said, “I hate my weakness. I don’t want it to break me. I can’t stand my secret.”
In fact I was very understanding and sympathetic but I didn’t have any solution to offer. I don’t know that there even is a solution in such cases.
“Really, sir,” I said, “I’ll try my utmost. I’ll pray for you until you find peace of mind.”
I wanted the meeting to end, because each of us had just discovered that the other was powerless. He had confessed his own secret weakness and I had admitted my own inability to help. Thank God he said a quick and abrupt goodbye and told me to get in touch with Abul-Makarem if there was anything I wanted to tell him, and off he went. A few minutes later Abul-Makarem came in, apparently quite unaware of what had happened. He kept up his cheerful, welcoming tone as he escorted me to my car.
A few weeks later a relentless campaign of harassment began. One of the members of the order took me by surprise by taking my hand one day and slipping into it what I later discovered was a recording of everything that had taken place in my meeting with the president’s son. I still don’t know who was eavesdropping on the man who holds the keys to the country and has access to reserves of influence and money. Who decided to give me the thing that I believe has so far given me immunity from the most serious consequences?
&
nbsp; Sirhan came in to tell Hatem that Brigadier Faisal had called him from the car a few minutes earlier but he hadn’t replied, and now the brigadier was waiting for him at the gate.
Hatem hurried to pull himself together. He shut the office door and then went back, opened it, went to the open window, locked it shut, then went out again. He put the key in his pocket for the first time, and went off to where he was awaited, dispirited and confused.
Ahmed el-Faisal got out of the car as soon as he saw Hatem coming. He rushed toward him, embraced him, patted him on the back, kissed him on the shoulders. Hatem had the distinct impression that the man was deranged. Such a transformation in someone who has been tormenting you, humiliating you, trying to deprive you of your livelihood, spying on you, strangling you with his own hands and who then puts on a show of warmth and affection, as if you were old friends meeting after a long absence, must be, if not a sign of an illness that needs treatment, then at least of the kind of disease that would persuade you to steer clear of a person who behaves in such a manner. Hatem sat down next to him in the back seat of the car. He was wearing his religious vestments—the kakoula, the gown, and the turban on his head. Someone else, apparently of lower rank, was sitting next to the driver. Hatem greeted them. Hatem was in an emotional state after what Nashwa had done and what Mukhtar had confided to him. He had completely overcome his anxiety about returning to the life of a celebrity. As he was going out to meet Faisal, he had caught sight of Omayma. She was looking at him sympathetically, with none of her old distaste for him. He realized he had forgiven her because she had not forgiven herself.
“Look after yourself,” Omayma said.
“As soon as I get back we have to go and see Omar or you can call up and have him come back,” he replied with a smile.
*
Faisal noticed that Hatem’s mind was elsewhere, so he decided to make conversation.
“Was all well in Hurghada?” he asked.
“What about Hurghada?”
“Your holiday, Mawlana.”
Hatem smiled and his spirits started to lift.
“I bet you know all about it, you people. So what do you think? Was it pleasant?” he said.
Faisal sighed. The car had reached the ring road, which was unusually empty.
“Mawlana, all of us in this world have a machine that we stand at and it’s our job to operate the machine, whether that makes people angry or happy,” he said.
“Okay,” said Hatem, “I’d like to oil your machine and ask you what news you have of Sheikh Mukhtar el-Husseini.”
Faisal’s lips quivered a little, then broke into a sly smile that he made no attempt to hide. “I told you, Sheikh Hatem, that he’d be released and the case would never go to court,” he said.
“Because there was no case in the first place,” Hatem said defiantly.
“No, because we didn’t want there to be a case,” Faisal replied sharply.
“Please, Ahmed Bey, I’d like to be sure the man’s safe.”
Faisal’s face relaxed. “Rest assured, Mawlana,” he said, patting Hatem on the shoulder.
“We released him a few days ago and he went to Sudan and he’s living in a house in Khartoum. I can give you his address, but we’ve asked him not to appear in public until things calm down and not to speak to any television stations or newspapers. You know how the Salafists there have been denouncing him as an infidel and saying he should be killed. We were worried the Iranians might try to meet him in Sudan, so we warned him before he left.”
Hatem tried hard to digest the news. “And why Sudan in particular?” he asked.
“You may well be surprised. The truth is he had to leave the country quickly and Saudi Arabia refused to give him a visa. We tried to have him go to Kuwait but apparently they were worried that a sheikh accused of converting to Shi’ism would provoke a crisis there. You know about the suppressed tension between the Sunnis and the Shi’a in Kuwait. It was the same story in Bahrain and the other Gulf states, and quite honestly we refused to send him to Lebanon or Libya, so all we had left was Yemen or Sudan, and he chose Sudan, saying he had lived there for two years when he was young.”
Faisal changed key. “We want to make a fresh start with you, Mawlana,” he continued. “There’s a very good chance you’ll become the number one sheikh in Egypt, and we know you, and you know us, so we can coordinate with complete confidence and trust. With everything the country’s going through—the enemies in waiting, the traitors, the foreign agents, the terrorism that’s trying to drive a wedge between the country’s Muslims and Christians—everyone in the government has to pull together to win this war. A sheikh like you who’s popular, and everyone knows you’re independent and you’ve had your ordeals, even from the government itself, but you’re patriotic, and an agency like ours and decent people in the media and politics and even in the opposition parties, we all have to coordinate and plan with each other, just like our enemies and the foreign agents are coordinating with each other to destroy Egypt.”
Hatem nodded in agreement. He felt that the face of the man sitting next to the driver was not unfamiliar. He searched through the files of his memory but he couldn’t pin down his face or where he had seen him before, but he knew that he had.
The car had driven into the courtyard at the offices of the Sheikh of al-Azhar. Hatem and Faisal got out and walked to some stairs. At the bottom of the stairs some men were standing in black uniforms and with walkie-talkies. They saluted Faisal as a senior officer, greeted Hatem, and took them off to a hall. As soon as he went in Hatem felt the power of the machine that Faisal had spoken about, the machine where he stood all day doing his dirty work. All the evangelists and preachers from the satellite channels, and the Salafist sheikhs who filled the programs of the religious channels, had gathered together as if it were the day to pay homage to Yazid ibn Muawiya.5 There were about twelve of the most famous, influential, and popular evangelists of the elegant variety that wore Italian suits and whose programs were interspersed with adverts for soft drinks, bathroom tiles, potato chips, steel factories, and banks. Then there were the ones in short galabiyas and Saudi-style shawls with hennaed beards and whose programs carried adverts for blankets, pots and pans, mountain honey, nigella seeds, and Kardasa cloaks at a hundred pounds each plus delivery charges. The minister of the interior might give a bonus at the end of the day to the religious activities department in State Security, and the president’s son and the secretariat of the ruling party might reconfirm their confidence in the interior minister and the information minister for their extraordinary ability to muster all these sheikhs in one funeral tent. Some of them exchanged cursory greetings with Hatem, tinged with shock at his presence since his name had almost been struck off the lists they kept of their rivals and competitors. The sheikhs kissed each other mawkishly on the shoulder or on the head.
Hatem kept to himself in a corner, took out his cell phone, and called Sirhan, who answered after a minute that felt like an age. He whispered into the phone, his mouth shielded by his cupped hand.
“Take the car and go at once to Sheikh Mukhtar’s mother. . . . Yes, in their village, Sirhan. And tell her that Sheikh Hatem wants to know if they’ve really released Sheikh Mukhtar and if he’s gone to Sudan. If she tells you this is true then get his address and telephone number from her. . . . Yes, you idiot, in Sudan.”
Before hanging up, when he felt the people around him wouldn’t notice because they thought that maybe the Sheikh of al-Azhar was coming, or the interior minister himself, he said to Sirhan, “Did you find Father Mikhail’s number?” Sirhan’s answer took him by surprise.
“Really?” Hatem replied in response. “He called on your phone? It’s strange he thought it was my phone. My God, and I’ve been looking everywhere for him. Okay, I won’t be able to call him now. Tell him I’ll be in the delegation of sheikhs in the cathedral in Abbasiya with the Pope, and I’ll call him later.”
When Hatem hung up, he was still wondering w
hy Father Mikhail had called him. Did he want to check on Hassan through Hatem, just as Hatem had wanted to check on Hassan through Mikhail? It would be a disaster if the massacre at the church drove Hassan to do something crazy that would be the ruin of us all. It looked like Father Mikhail had the same worry.
The Sheikh of al-Azhar came in through a side door and walked to the seat of honor at the large round table. Oddly, he was holding the hand of the information minister, who looked happy that the Grand Imam was treating him with such honor, and in the presence of other imams who were grand themselves.