The Televangelist

by Ibrahim Essa

  “In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate,” Dr. Hashem said. “And may God bless and grant peace to His beloved, the chosen and faithful one. There is no power or strength other than in God Almighty the Indulgent. We are all grievously afflicted and we all feel the same pain. Your losses are our losses, your injured are our injured. How else could it be when we are all Egyptians, born of the same nation under the same skies, living on the same land, drinking the waters of the same Nile, and worshiping the same Lord?”

  Sheikh Younis was fidgeting. Hatem, who was sitting right next to him, caught him tapping his feet on the ground like someone trying to hold back a scream. A few months earlier Sheikh Younis had devoted several programs to proving that Christians were infidels. The title he chose was “The trinity is threefold disbelief” and it brought in more advertising revenue for ringtones than any other program in the history of satellite broadcasting. So it was no surprise that Sheikh Younis found it hard to put up with what Dr. Hashem was saying about worshiping one god. Hatem leaned over toward him.

  “Rifaat Hashem is about to turn infidel, Sheikh Younis!”

  Younis looked at him reproachfully and with distaste.

  Hashem was finishing up. “We come to you with patient hearts, willing to wait for recompense in the afterlife. As God Almighty said, ‘The patient shall be given their due without us counting the cost.’ Remember that if God takes something from you, then it is His and if He gives you something it is His, so how can you be angry if He takes away what is His? ‘What God takes is His and what He gives is His,’ as the Prophet said. So if God takes away something you love you should say, ‘It belonged to God, He can take what he likes and He can give what he likes,’ because if God makes you suffer it is always in order to make you happy later. If He deprives you of something, it is always to do you a favor in some other way. If He takes something from you, it is always in order to give you something else. God will never harm you, because in fact He loves you. As it says in the hadith, ‘When God loves a group of people, He sends afflictions to test them. Those who are content win His approval and those who are discontent face His anger.’ Al-Tirmidhi cited the hadith and said it was sound.”

  Hatem felt that Dr. Rifaat Hashem was behaving as if he had come to give the Pope his condolences on the death of a grandson, assuming, that is, that the minister didn’t realize that popes don’t get married or have children. It didn’t sound as if his words were for a massacre that had been committed against Copts in a church and that had caused massive anger and deep sadness among members of the Coptic Church. For a moment Hatem was worried that Rifaat Hashem might slip up and talk about the role of the dhimmis in Islam, so he got up and crept quietly past the cameras, disappeared behind them, and walked on toward a far corner that seemed quiet and remote from the noisy meeting. The eyes of the priests and church security people tracked him as he went. He held up his cell phone as a pretext for moving away, and bowed his head into a corner between a column and a wall and called Sirhan, who had put his favorite song, sung by a young singer who preached abstinence, as his caller tune. He hadn’t wanted to deflate Sirhan’s enthusiasm by telling him how much the singer earned for a single performance. The song cut off when Sirhan answered.

  “Wa aleikum assalam,” Sirhan said.

  The driver clearly thought of the caller tune as the equivalent of saying ‘Assalam aleikum,’ so when he answered the phone he went straight to the conventional response.

  “Did you make the journey?” Hatem asked him.

  “You won’t get a word out of her,” said Sirhan. “She’s not talking.”

  Hatem didn’t understand what Sirhan meant, so Sirhan repeated it, but Hatem still didn’t understand.

  “Because she’s almost paralyzed,” Sirhan finally explained, “and she can’t speak, but she wrote some words for Khodeiri on a piece of paper. She’s very old and sick, it’s true, but she’s clearly well educated and smart.”

  Hatem hung up on Sirhan and walked slowly and sadly back to the hall, confident that his suspicions were well-founded.

  He suddenly felt sick and stopped, his head spinning. The black gowns on the men by the door suddenly looked white. In his mind’s eye he saw swirling colors and a succession of ghostly figures. He heard himself playing music with a blind musician, mixed with the sound of himself reciting the Quran in an empty funeral tent, with adverts streaming across his chest. He imagined strange creatures running between his legs, so many of them that he almost tripped and fell on the floor, but someone pressed on his shoulder and that seemed to stop the drum of the washing machine that was turning in his head. He found his footing and got his breath back and there was a young man smiling at him and patting him on the back as if to strengthen his resolve.

  “Don’t you remember me, Mawlana?” the young man said. It sounded like he was speaking from behind a fog in a dream.

  Hatem looked him over carefully and recognized him. It was the young officer who had been with Ahmed el-Faisal and had been sitting next to the driver. It was then that he realized he had seen him before.

  “Have I seen you before?” Hatem asked.

  “At Sheikh Mukhtar’s, a few years ago,” the man said. “My grandfather was a follower of the Sufi order, and I was with him that day.”

  “So why do I remember you so clearly? I must have seen hundreds of people who look like you, even thousands.”

  “Because that day you told me I looked very much like you.”

  “Of course,” Hatem said in surprise, like someone who’d been looking for his glasses and then realizes he’s already wearing them. “You look the way I looked twenty-five years ago, the way I looked in the black-and-white photo in the first passport I ever had.”

  “Do you know what they’ve done to Sheikh Mukhtar?” Hatem asked.

  The man squirmed in pain at the question, mumbled something incomprehensible, and vanished into thin air.

  Hatem was puzzled. He looked for the man to ask him to explain what he had said because it worried him. But he couldn’t find him so he went back to the hall in the hope of finding him there. He turned and saw his reflection in the mirrors in the corners of the room. He really did look as if he had changed into a black-and-white photo, either pale or ghostly.

  The audience was growing actively bored and no one knew how the meeting would end. Rifaat Hashem and the delegation of preachers couldn’t decide. They seemed to be waiting for someone else to give the order, worried that they might appear remiss if they cut it short or if there was something else required of them that they hadn’t accomplished. The Pope didn’t want to say anything that anyone would understand to mean that the time was up and thank you all very much, and those around him were worried the Pope might make a mistake out of exhaustion or illness and the others would think he was disrespectful or inattentive. Hatem wanted it to finish so he looked for any of the security men who had escorted the delegation but couldn’t find any of them in the hall, which was crammed with people. He waved to a cameraman who was a familiar face from many years of working in the satellite channels. He went up to him, whispered in his ear, and seconds later the cameraman jumped up and, with the intensity of someone pretending to be important, said, “Dr. Rifaat, do you think you could come to the press conference? The journalists and the television stations are all waiting outside.”

  It had the effect of a final-boarding announcement at an airport. Everyone stood up before the minister could respond and hurried to exchange kisses and farewells. They raced each other outside while Dr. Hashem was still asking where the press conference would be. The cameraman avoided the minister and looked instead to Sheikh Hatem for help.

  “It’s downstairs, Your Excellency, down in the lobby,” Hatem replied.

  Hatem went downstairs exhausted, thanking God that his son Omar had lost his memory, because what was worth remembering when reality produced nothing better than plausible lies. He was walking with the other sheikhs, who were asking each oth
er anxious questions about the way back and whether they would again be stoned and cursed and attacked by angry Copts. Back at the bus, more and more church fathers had gathered around the sheikhs to say goodbye, as if to protect them from the unpredictable protesters.

  “Sheikh Hatem, Your Grace,” said a young priest, speaking politely and firmly. “Please come this way. Bishop Mousa is expecting you.”

  Hatem looked at the bus and then at the priest.

  “Don’t worry, Mawlana,” said the priest, reading his mind. “We’ll call your driver and he’ll wait for you here at the cathedral, or if you want we can give you a lift anywhere you want to go. But please tell the other sheikhs you won’t be going back with them.”

  “I don’t think any of them will miss me,” Hatem replied.

  He followed the priest up the same stairs they had just come down, and then down some corridors that led to another building. The priest told him they were now in the church of Saint Reweis inside the patriarchate. There were paintings, statues, and icons everywhere—on the ceilings, the walls, the columns, the windows, the seats—and candles burning in bowls of oil and molten wax. The candle flames danced in yellows and reds in the lusters of the giant chandeliers hanging from the ceilings. The air was full of the scent of incense and perfumes. For a moment Hatem froze to the spot and a phrase rang in his ears: the words spoken by the young officer who looked like him and then vanished. The officer had spoken the words moments after Hatem asked him about Sheikh Mukhtar. Now Hatem could hear the whole sentence clearly: “God have mercy on his soul,” but had he really said that? Had Hatem really heard it?

  Bishop Mousa stood waiting for him at an arched wooden door. The bishop smiled and Hatem, exhausted by questions, reciprocated with an inquisitive smile, puzzled at what the secret might be that lurked behind this meeting. Bishop Mousa opened the door and waved Hatem in. Suddenly he was inside a room that had nothing in common with the rest of the church. It was small, the walls were bare of any decoration, and it appeared to be soundproofed. On all four walls there were massive computer screens connected to keyboards on a long wide wooden counter rather like the desks that draftsmen use. Bishop Mousa took Hatem to a small sofa and Hatem sat down. The bishop then took a chair facing him.

  “By the way,” Hatem said, trying to decipher the atmosphere of mystery and slightly irritated that he didn’t know what he was being dragged into, “I’ve begun to see computer screens as a very bad omen.”

  The bishop laughed. “They deserve to be seen as bad omens,” he said.

  At that point a man with sharp features, a sullen look, and a noticeable stoop came in carrying two cups of green tea. He put them between the two men and moved off without a word. Hatem was reminded of the mute servant in horror films.

  Bishop Mousa sighed. “In fact we’ve been trying to get in touch with you since yesterday. I asked Father Mikhail to tell you we’d be honored to meet you,” he said.

  Now Hatem understood what was behind Father Mikhail’s unexpected call. He bowed his head, confirming what the bishop had said. “That’s right,” he said. “He left me a message to call but I didn’t get it, though I did want to ask him if he knew whether Hassan was okay, or Boutros, if you like. Isn’t that why he called?”

  Bishop Mousa nodded. “Of course, it’s not unconnected with Hassan. In fact that’s exactly what it’s about,” he said.

  Now Hatem was really worried. “Has something bad happened to him?” he asked. “I’ve been worried about him ever since the explosion at the church. I’m sure you know all about him, Your Grace, and I imagine his conversion to Christianity isn’t of great importance to the Church, despite his enthusiasm.”

  Mousa bowed his head, weighed down by sadness. “Unfortunately his conversion is now something of great importance, Mawlana, but for reasons that are quite the opposite of what you might think.”

  Hatem had no idea what he meant. Mousa then turned one of the screens on with a remote control that he picked up from the table. Hatem was reminded of Sheikh Mukhtar’s testimony and Nashwa’s dance on Nader Nour’s favorite CD.

  “That’s why I was pessimistic,” he said. “I’ve certainly been subjected to quite a few of these private viewings recently.”

  The screen showed video footage of the church that had been attacked a few days earlier. It showed the façade, the gate, and a few cars parked along the curb outside. Some cars stopped and people got out and went into the church—men, women, and families with children. Hatem noticed that the footage had a date and time stamp in the bottom left-hand corner.

  “Is the date in the picture right?” Hatem asked. “The evening of the explosion and about an hour before it happened, right?”

  Bishop Mousa froze the picture by pressing a button on the remote control and turned to Hatem.

  “It’s right,” he said. “Now I’m going to show you some shots from some other cameras. The first camera, the one you’re watching now, was at the bank opposite the church. We had a cooperation agreement with the bank to share the camera with the bank to save costs. We had a camera that covers the street in front of the bank and they do the same for us with another camera, and the two cameras send images to both the church and the bank. Then there was another camera we’d put inside the church, behind the priest who’s reciting the prayers, and that one films the congregation and anyone who comes through the main door. Let’s go back to the first camera and watch what happens about forty minutes before the explosion.”

  The bishop pressed the fast-forward button until he reached the time he wanted, then put it on play. In the video a car stopped and the driver waved to a group of young church workers who were standing at the gate. They greeted the driver, removed some traffic cones, and helped him to park outside the church door. The driver got out and shook hands with them, then turned to the car and locked it with the remote key. At that point Hatem’s heart skipped a beat. He jumped up to check. Mousa helped him by stopping the picture to show the young man locking the car. It could only be Hassan.

  He sat down in shock. He realized that his anxiety and his misgivings, and Omayma’s too, were completely justified. Hassan had no doubt died in the explosion but they were keeping it a secret. He was devastated and heartbroken. Bishop Mousa ignored Hatam’s anguish.

  “Mawlana, note that Hassan has a backpack on his back,” the bishop said, pointing at the screen.

  Despite his grief, Hatem took a close look at the backpack, which looked like the ones that schoolchildren use and seemed to have a drawing on it.

  Bishop Mousa played the rest of the scene, showing Hassan go in with the church staff, the young men who had been waiting for him outside.

  The picture now switched to shots taken inside the church ten minutes before the explosion. Bishop Mousa pointed to the fourth row of seats and someone slipping out toward the door. He stopped the picture and it was clearly Hassan. Hatem’s heart raced and he felt a wrenching in his guts. Mousa then switched to a shot from the camera at the bank: Hassan appeared, hurrying out of the church and hitting the parked car with his hand, then walking past it and hitting another car with his hand. He was strolling along toward the pavement opposite the church. Mousa went back and played the footage taken from the other camera: Hassan was holding a cell phone in his hand and looking at the church. Then he dialed a number on the keypad and pressed the call button. At just that moment his face was lit up by the flash of the explosion. The shock wave hit him and panic broke out all around him. While others fled the destruction, Hassan stood his ground undaunted.

  Hatem’s nerves were in pieces. He felt crushed, as if an elephant had stepped on his chest. Everything certain he had known was shattered, along with everything he had trusted, every truth, all his peace of mind. Hatem no longer had anything to say. He was in fragments, paralyzed. He sat there stunned in front of the frozen picture.

  “Impossible! Hassan a terrorist?” he said. “Hassan?”

  Bishop Mousa sat down to get his breath
back. The pictures had shaken him too, though he had apparently seen them several times.

  “He was cleverer than everyone else. It looks like they didn’t tell you the security people had monitored him looking at al-Qaeda websites and other extremist sites on the Internet and that he tried to get in touch with them several times. Apparently he did get in touch with someone. The security people warned his family and you know what his family’s like. They confronted him and he denied it. Then he said he was just curious and they thought it was a whim or just an adventure, a young man with spare time and nothing to think about, especially as he had completely stopped looking at those websites. A few months later this conversion business started and you know what happened then. Some young Christians adopted him. They were delighted and treated it as a victory for Christianity. We warned them several times when we found out about it, given how sensitive it was both in public and in private, because of whose son he was and whose brother-in-law. But he managed to build relationships with some members of the church, and we know you tried to stop him converting. When I heard you were involved, I said at the time that they’d made a good choice asking you to help, but it’s clear that the kid was going ahead with his plan anyway. And then he carried out this operation.”

  Hatem froze. His arms and legs had turned to ice. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead and began to trickle down his cheeks, mixed with tears. His lips trembled and he ground his teeth audibly as he tried to keep a grip on himself. But the stream of images, the feelings, the voices, the conversations, and moments he remembered completely overwhelmed him.

  Bishop Mousa, distracted by the enormity of what he was about to say, didn’t notice what Hatem was going through.

  “I have a terrible problem, Mawlana,” he said, “a problem that’s way beyond our means to handle in the patriarchate, and way beyond us. It threatens the whole country and we don’t know what to do about it.”

  He finally noticed that Hatem wasn’t with him.