“I hear there are some big fish intending to nominate themselves for Kasr el Nil.”
“Don’t worry about it. If we come to an understanding, God willing, you’ll win in Kasr el Nil even if the devil himself stands against you. Just leave it to me, Hagg.”
El Fouli then laughed and leaning back and rubbing his big belly said complacently, “People are naive when they get the idea that we fix elections. Nothing of the kind. It just comes down to the fact that we’ve studied the Egyptian people well. Our Lord created the Egyptians to accept government authority. No Egyptian can go against his government. Some peoples are excitable and rebellious by nature, but the Egyptian keeps his head down his whole life long so he can eat. It says so in the history books. The Egyptians are the easiest people in the world to rule. The moment you take power, they submit to you and grovel to you and you can do what you want with them. Any party in Egypt, when it makes elections and is in power, is bound to win, because the Egyptian is bound to support the government. It’s just the way God made him.”
Azzam pretended to be confused and unconvinced by El Fouli’s words. Then he asked him about the payment details and the other said simply, “Listen up, Hagg. If it’s in cash, I’ll take it. If it’s a check, make it out to ‘Yasser el Fouli, Lawyer’ and make a contract with him for any case, as though you were hiring him for it. You understand, of course, that these are mere formalities.”
Hagg Azzam was silent for a moment. Then he took out his checkbook and said as he undid his gold pen, “Fine. Let’s do it. I’ll write a check for half. Then when I win, God willing, I’ll pay the rest.”
“No way, sugar! Shame on you — you’ll get me upset if you go on like that. Keep that kind of stuff for school kids. The way I do things is pay first, take later. Pay the whole amount and I’ll congratulate you on getting into the Assembly and read the Fatiha with you right now!”
It had been Azzam’s last ploy, and when it failed, he surrendered. He wrote out the check for a million pounds, examined it carefully as was his custom, and then handed it to El Fouli, who took it and gave it to his son. Then El Fouli grinned all over his face and said gaily, “Congratulations, Hagg! Come on, let’s read the Fatiha. May the Lord be generous to us and grant us success! You’ll find the contract ready with Yasser.”
The four of them — El Fouli, Azzam, and their two sons — closed their eyes, held their hands before their breasts in supplication, and set to reciting the Fatiha under their breath.
Hagg Azzam paid the money to El Fouli and imagined the elections had been decided in his favor, but that was not the case. There was fierce competition in the Kasr el Nil constituency among a number of businessmen, each of whom wanted to win the Workers’ seat in the People’s Assembly. Hagg Azzam’s strongest competitor was Hagg Abu Himeida, owner of the famous Approval and Light clothing store chain. Just as the two poles repel one another in nature, so the sharp dislike between the two Haggs derived in essence from their many points of similiarity. Thus Abu Himeida, like Azzam, had originally been a simple laborer in Port Said. Then in less than twenty years his wealth increased vastly till he became one of Egypt’s millionaires.
People had heard about Abu Himeida for the first time some years before when he opened a chain of large shops in Cairo and Alexandria. He had flooded the newspapers and television with advertisements undertaking to give any woman a number of new, “modest” dresses and colored headscarves if the same woman would take the decision to observe religiously sanctioned dress and agreed to hand in her old, revealing clothes to the store management as a sign of her seriousness. At the time people were amazed at this strange offer and their astonishment grew when the Approval and Light stores did in fact receive the old clothes of dozens of women, to whom it handed over new and expensive Islamic garments as free replacements. The project’s noble objectives did not prevent the infiltration of certain women who already wore “modest dress” but who wanted to take advantage of the free clothes. These would pretend that they had not worn modest dress before and present the store with revealing garments that did not belong to them so that they could receive new ones in return. The Approval and Light stores caught on to this ruse and published announcements everywhere warning these tricksters of the punishment they faced in law, as the contract that the woman signed in the store included a penalty clause if she lied.
Despite these setbacks, the project achieved enormous success and helped thousands of Muslim women to adopt modest dress. Paid advertisements in the form of journalistic reports about the project appeared in the press where Hagg Abu Himeida went on record as saying that he’d sworn to set aside a large sum of money to be spent on charitable works in the hope of winning the favor of God, Almighty and Glorious, and that following consultation with qualified men of religion he’d discovered that the best method by which he might serve the call was to help Muslim women to observe modesty, as a first step toward a total commitment to God’s true path. When he was asked how much the distribution for free of thousands of new modest garments had cost him, Abu Himeida refused to say how much he had spent, asserting that he anticipated that God, Almighty and Glorious, would compensate him for the money; and there can be no doubt that the “modest dress” project catapulted Abu Himeida’s name into the world of celebrity and turned him into one of Egyptian society’s leading figures. Despite this, rumors constantly circulated that Abu Himeida was one of Egypt’s biggest heroin dealers, that the Islamic project was a money-laundering front, and that the bribes he paid to top officials protected him from arrest.
Abu Himeida had expended enormous effort to get the Patriotic Party nomination for the Kasr el Nil constituency, and when the party nominated Hagg Azzam, he was furious and made strenuous representations to important people, but in vain. El Fouli’s word was supreme. In fact, a high official who was a strong friend of Abu Himeida’s listened to him complaining against El Fouli, then smiled and said, “Listen, Abu Himeida. You know that I love you and look out for your interests. Under no circumstances escalate your differences with El Fouli. If you don’t get into the People’s Assembly this time, there’ll be other times, God willing. But you don’t ever lose El Fouli because he has backers and contacts beyond anything you can think of. Plus, he’s cunning, and if he gets mad, he’ll cause you problems you can’t even imagine.”
Abu Himeida wouldn’t, however, back down. On the contrary, he put himself forward officially as an independent, flooding the Kasr el Nil constituency with hundreds of election posters bearing his name, his portrait, and his election symbol (the chair). He also erected large election marquees every night in the downtown area where his supporters would gather and he would make speeches to them attacking Hagg Azzam and hinting at the illicit sources of his wealth and his dedication to the pleasures of the senses (an allusion to his new wife). Azzam got angry at this smear campaign, went to El Fouli, and told him frankly, “What’s the benefit of being the party’s candidate, if it doesn’t protect me from being insulted every night in public?”
El Fouli shook his head and promised that everything would be all right, then the next day put out a statement that was prominently displayed on the front pages of all the newspapers, in which he said, “The Patriotic Party has one candidate in every constituency and it is the duty of all party members to stand with all their strength behind the party’s candidate. By the same token any member of the party who puts himself up against the party’s candidate will be tried by the party and stripped of his membership once the elections are over.”