The Televangelist Read online

  “We’re back after the break.”

  The red light took everyone by surprise. Anwar repeated the question posed by Raouf, stressing the words and clearly wanting to whet the appetite of the viewers. Then he asked Sheikh Hatem to reply.

  “We’d like to hear, Mawlana, your answer to these allegations propagated by the opponents of Islam, this skepticism about the integrity of the Prophet. Apparently they want to portray him as a man who lusted after women and who was driven by his desires, God forbid, whereas we of course deem him to be above all failings.”

  Hatem nodded and said, “First of all I’d like to affirm two truths: first, that a Muslim who is well educated and knows how to defend Islam is not afraid of questions and does not tremble in the face of accusations, and second, that Muhammad ibn Abdullah was both a prophet and a human being, in other words there is a human side to the Prophet. Now we’re talking about the story of his marriage to Zeinab bint Jahsh, may God be pleased with her. But we’re not going to say anything that isn’t in the standard texts, and what does that mean? That means the major works of Quranic exegesis by recognized scholars. I’ll keep myself out of this and tell you only what’s in their books. The story has its roots in the Quranic verse Behold! You said to one who had received the grace of God and your favor: ‘Keep your wife, and fear God.’ But you hid in your heart that which God was about to make manifest: you were afraid of the people, but it is more fitting that you should fear God.

  “In Bukhari, citing Anas bin Malik, we find this verse: You hid in your heart that which God was about to make manifest. This verse was revealed in connection with Zeinab bint Jahsh and Zeid bin Haritha and it is said that ‘God never revealed to his Prophet a verse harder on him than this verse.’ See, Anwar, how seriously it intrudes on the Prophet’s private affairs. So much so that Hassan and Aisha said, ‘If the Prophet of God had suppressed anything that God revealed to him, he would have suppressed this verse because it is so hard on him.’ And notice, Anwar, how openly that possibility is discussed—‘if the Prophet of God had suppressed anything.’ An impossible assumption and some people imagine that it discredits the Prophet, yet Hassan and Aisha say it and the books of exegesis carry it, so if something had been suppressed this would have been the most likely verse because it has a divine disclosure of private feelings, what the Prophet’s private feelings were on this occasion, and note, these are his feelings as a human being, not as a prophet, first because he wanted Zeinab for himself, second because he hid those feelings, and third, because he was afraid of people ‘and God is more worthy to be feared.’

  “In other words, folks, when we find ourselves in a weak position and too embarrassed to declare an opinion or our feelings because we can’t confront people with them and we’re worried what people will say, then this is quite natural. Even the Prophet Muhammad felt it, and the story says that ‘In the evening Zeid took to his bed. And Zeinab said, “Zeid couldn’t handle me. He wouldn’t do things with me, but not because they were things that God had forbidden, but because he wasn’t my equal.”’ Now listen carefully, no one go far from the television, folks, and don’t answer that phone that’s ringing beside you, please, because listening to only half of what I have to say would be dangerous. Zeinab herself, who would later be the Mother of the Faithful, is narrating the most intimate details of her relationship. She’s speaking, in books that will be read by millions of people until the Day of Judgment, about things that happened in the conjugal bed. She even says that her husband wasn’t capable. Of course we understand here what she means when she says he wasn’t ‘capable’ and ‘he couldn’t handle me.’ It’s clear she was surprised how bad he was in bed. Then Zeid realized. If it had been an ordinary incident, it would have passed without her noticing, and if he hadn’t been able to handle her on other nights before, it wouldn’t have mattered. But what happened that night suggested such obvious impotence, driven by God’s will, that Zeid went to the Prophet the next morning and said, ‘Zeinab is tormenting me with her tongue, and going on and on, and I want to divorce her.’ And the Prophet said to him, ‘Keep your wife, and fear God.’ People have disagreed over how to interpret this verse. Some of the commentators, including al-Tabari and others, maintain that the Prophet made some complimentary remarks to Zeinab bint Jahsh while she was married to Zeid and then Zeid told the Prophet that he wanted to leave her and complained that she had been rude and disobedient, that she had insulted him and had boasted of her high birth.

  “In other words, we have a wife finding fault with her husband on the grounds that he didn’t have a noble pedigree while she was a woman of high rank and good family. This can happen even in the household of a husband and wife who are Companions of the Prophet. So we can also understand the human side of the Companions and don’t think they were angels descended from Heaven, but human beings who tried hard to discipline and improve themselves. Then the Prophet said, ‘Fear God’—in what you say about her, that is—‘and keep your wife.’ The commentator Muqatil says, ‘The Prophet came looking for Zeid one day, and he saw Zeinab standing there. She was fair-skinned, beautiful, and buxom, one of the finest women of the Quraysh, and he fell for her and said, ‘Praise be to God, who turns men’s hearts.’ Zeinab heard what he said and mentioned it to Zeid, and Zeid saw what was happening and said, ‘Prophet, give me permission to divorce her. She’s giving me a hard time and tormenting me with her tongue.’ And the Prophet said, ‘Keep your wife, and fear God.’”

  Hatem leaned his head back and raised his string of amber prayer beads to his chest. He checked that the red light had not gone off and that the story had silenced the studio and that the director and the control room technicians were too enthralled to engage in their usual distractions. A phantom, maybe his old Rifai master, flitted behind the cameraman standing by the camera fixed on Hatem’s face. He unexpectedly did something that someone like him just does not do while broadcasting live: he stopped talking for some seconds and stared at a point far from the focal point of the camera lens. Everyone was puzzled, but the machine at work inside Hatem took over, dragging the sounds out of his prodigious memory. The words took shape without passing through any mind or monitoring. His voice was louder when he resumed, as if he were hiding the fact that he was thinking of something completely different.

  “It is said that God sent a gust of wind that lifted the curtain when Zeinab was scantily dressed at home,” he said. “The Prophet saw Zeinab and she made an impression on him and, when he came asking for Zeid, Zeinab realized that she made an impression on the Prophet. When Zeid came, she told him what had happened, and it occurred to Zeid to divorce her. The Prophet was worried people would gossip if he married Zeinab after Zeid, given that Zeid was his adopted son, since adoption was permissible in Islam at that time, although it was later banned. He had even given his name to Zeid, who was known as Zeid ibn Muhammad.”

  Hatem came to his senses and heard his voice telling the story, and he decided to stop and break in with an explanation, because he felt that Anwar was trying to interrupt him and catch the camera’s attention by reacting to his story with amazement, playing the part of a viewer watching at home.

  “But there are imams,” Hatem continued, “who think that the Prophet fell in love with Zeinab, Zeid’s wife, and there’s another text that says, and I quote, ‘Perhaps it was some joker who used the word “love” because this could only come from someone who was unaware that the Prophet was incapable of such things or from someone who had little respect for him.’ All these stories appear in the works of respected commentators but, if the story is offensive to the Prophet and discredits him, would it have appeared in a text that is recited from high above the seven heavens, the Quran, by which we will worship until the day when people rise from the dead and are gathered together? Even if it does contain things that Muslims are embarrassed about or consider shameful. Folks, would the commentators on the Quran have singled out this verse for all this explanation, of which I have given you o
nly a quarter or maybe less?

  “So Raouf, or whoever you are, the Prophet married Zeinab bint Jahsh to undo the ban on marrying the wife of one’s adopted son, because no one could marry the wife of his adopted son unless the Prophet himself had done it, thus lifting the ban. And see what it all led to? Anas bin Malik says, ‘When Zeinab’s obligatory waiting period was over after the divorce, the Prophet said to Zeid, “Let me get engaged to her.” And Zeid went off and found her leavening her dough. And Zeid said, ‘When I saw her, the fact that the Prophet wanted to marry her was too much for me and I couldn’t look at her. I turned my back on her and withdrew and I said, ‘Zeinab, the Prophet has sent asking to marry you,’ and she said, ‘I can’t do anything until God gives instructions.’ Then she went off to the place where she prayed and the revelation was revealed, and the Prophet went in to her.’”

  “There’s nothing to embarrass us in this story. On the contrary, we can be proud that the Quran has taught us to be completely transparent about the Prophet’s important private and intimate affairs. The incident of Aisha’s necklace is in the Quran and is there anything more serious than the Prophet having suspicions about his wife and refusing to have anything to do with her for a month or two while everyone is talking about her honor? Could there be anything more embarrassing than the story of Zeinab and Zeid if it were to happen to one of us at home, God forbid, but when it happens in the Prophet’s household it becomes part of the Quran by which we worship when we pray. A strong Muslim is a knowledgeable Muslim, and a weak Muslim, Anwar, is a Muslim who is ignorant.”

  The phantom had appeared and disappeared in a flash. Then it reappeared facing him and coming toward him. It walked past the cameras into the frame of the picture to appear with Hatem on the screen. Did he miss his old Rifai sheikh so much that the sheikh had come to see him? Had the sheikh come to give him his blessing, to join him or to pick a fight with him, by coming to him from his youth to remind him that he had forgotten about him? Despite his composure Hatem was stunned that Anwar hadn’t noticed, and he was unsure whether it was a silly trick and nothing to be frightened about or a phantom that reflected the guilt that was feeding on his nerves. He clammed up and looked down toward his chest, until Anwar saved him by wrapping the program up.

  They were heavy, the stones that had piled up on his heart over all the years—a burden of anxiety that showed no signs of easing. When he was left to himself for a while the anxiety ate away at him, like woodworm in the rafters of a house. What hurt him most was that he simply couldn’t speak his mind: the white corridors with high ceilings where his fame had spread and his star had risen were now walls that imprisoned him, forcing him to conform to the image that television had created. When he entered these studios for the first time, everyone ignored him or looked away. He was just a sheikh coming to earn a few pennies, a mosque imam on a salary that wasn’t enough to feed him, who wrote a column interpreting dreams in an evening newspaper and shared the fee with the sheikh in whose name it was published but who was ancient and senile. The sheikh had come to him at Friday prayers and proposed that Hatem help with the column because he was tired of doing it day after day. Then he discovered that he was expected to write it daily in exchange for half the fee—an arrangement that the old sheikh considered to be generous on his part and that Hatem saw as a gift from heaven that would help him makes ends met at a time when his income was meager and his needs expanding.

  It was through this same elderly sheikh that he came to know the novice editor who was working on the team that produced a fatwa program broadcast by an Arab religious channel from Cairo. On one occasion he invited him to take part in a program (‘you go on air in two hours, Mawlana’). It took him a while to grasp the meaning of ‘on air,’ but he soon got the idea. The sheikh who was supposed to be the guest had backed out and another sheikh was urgently needed to save the program. Maybe the producer had mixed up his telephone number with someone else’s, or perhaps he felt that this young and available sheikh wouldn’t feel insulted to be called in at short notice, only two hours before broadcast time. Naturally he agreed. It was the first time he had been driven in a car sent out by a studio to pick him up. When he thought back to that night, hardly any of the details escaped him. The job offered him a glamorous future, but with a dark side too. He might travel far, but his new life would also be a trap. The driver realized that the sheikh was new and didn’t know the basics of the job, from the way he sat next to the driver because he was confused and too humble to sit in the back, the questions he asked about the presenter, and about where the program was watched. The driver set off, displaying his experience and knowledge, explaining to him the precise details, telling him that the program paid the sheikh a thousand pounds.

  “But the producers will take advantage of you because this is your first time and so they will reduce the amount, but mind you don’t accept less than five hundred because they’ll share out the rest between them and it won’t go back to the budget, Mawlana.”

  Then he added, “And all we make out of it is a tip from the guest, I swear, sheikh.”

  Then the driver began to talk about his decision to retire so that he could get an early pension to marry off his two daughters and how he then found work driving his car for a car service and from that he discovered the offices that specialize in dealing with Arab television stations, and by making friends, by treating people respectfully and being polite, he started working directly for the station without going through the company boss, who would skim off some of his earnings.

  In spite of the depressing nature of the conversation and the fact that the driver was clearly angling for a tip, Hatem was happy to be entering this world, even through the driver. His future was still murky but through the swirling mists he could see glimmers of light that drew him into the corridors of the very same studios that he now knew by heart, preferring some to others depending on when they had last been renovated. On that first occasion he was no one compared to the people impatiently awaiting his arrival, just someone who sat on a chair in front of the presenter so that people could make a living. He discovered the rules of the job from the looks, whispers, comments, shouts, gestures, instructions, and obscenities exchanged across the studio and from the hidden room that he knew was the most important room—the control room, where the director and production team worked, along with dozens of pieces of equipment and screens. Later on, when he was confident of his authority, he asked to see the control room. He went inside and teased them, no longer intimidated and contemptuous of how routine and easy their work was.

  The basic principle in this business was that it was a job. He never ran into anyone who tried to delude him, or themselves, into thinking that it was a real vocation. As soon as anyone thought it was anything more just a way to make a living, they soon lost their job. There was a magic in it, and a touch of madness, but if you felt you were working for some goal other than making a living, then it would spit you out. From being its jailer, you would become its prisoner. The conceptual difference between a virtuoso and a session musician was very much evident in the reality of this trade.

  He had learned to play the lute, but was anxious not to let on to anyone. This was a secret he had kept to himself since he was a student at the middle school of the Azhar institute. He went to the institute wearing the compulsory uniform—a loose black caftan and that white turban that by the end of the day was full of dust and dirt after all the running and playing and throwing balls around in the institute courtyard with the high walls. He remembered the rustle of the caftan’s hem and the stomping of his feet beneath it when he ran after his fellow sheikhs at play in break time. They forgot about the dignity of the uniform and were ignorant of the roles that awaited them—roles in which play had no part. He loved the lute so much that he went to study under a lutist called Ezzat, who lived behind their street. Hatem went there diligently, twice a week after school and before the afternoon prayer. The lutist lived with his widowed and child
less sister, who had time on her hands to lament her bad luck, which had robbed her of a husband when they were both still young and of an apartment that had gone to her husband’s brother because it was registered in his name. Ezzat’s good nature made him resistant to depression, and by working at night and sleeping all day he was spared having to face his miserable sister. Hatem was a willing student and his favorite: he even overlooked delays in paying the fees for lessons. Ezzat told him that the pioneering Egyptian composers of the nineteenth century were given the title of sheikh, as in Sheikh Sayed Darwish, Sheikh Salama Hegazi, Sheikh Abul-Ela Mohamed, and Sheikh Zakaria Ahmed. Except for the Egyptian composers who were Jewish, all of them wore turbans and caftans.

  Ezzat’s sister, meanwhile, took it upon herself to complete Hatem’s education. One day she found him sitting in a corner of the sitting room waiting for her brother to wake up.

  She walked in on him and started making small talk, then she asked him, “Please, my little sheikh, would you cast a spell to protect me from evil.”