As though he had been waiting for the sheikh’s words to unburden himself of his sorrows, Taha said in a husky voice, “They humiliated me, Master. They humiliated me till I felt the dogs in the street had more self-respect than me. I was subjected to things I never imagined a Muslim could do.”
“They are no Muslims. Nay, they are unbelievers, according to the consensus of the jurists.”
“Even if they were unbelievers, wouldn’t they have an atom of mercy? Don’t they have sons and daughters and wives that they care for and have pity on? Had I been held in Israel, the Jews wouldn’t have done to me as they did. Had I been a spy and a traitor to my country, they wouldn’t have done those things to me. I ask myself what offense could merit that horrible punishment. Has the observance of God’s Law become a major crime? Sometimes in detention I’d think what was happening before me wasn’t real, that it was a nightmare that I’d wake up from to find it was all over. Were it not for my faith in God, Sublime and Magnificent, I would have killed myself to escape from that torment.”
The sheikh’s face registered his pain and he remained silent. Taha made a fist and said, “They blindfolded me so that I wouldn’t know who they were. But I have made an oath and committed myself before God to hunt them down. I will find out who they were and take revenge on them one by one.”
“I advise you, my son, to put this painful experience behind you. I know what I ask is difficult, but it’s the only thing to do in your situation. What happened to you in detention is not something peculiar to you. It is the destiny of all those who speak the truth openly in our unfortunate country. Those responsible are not just a few officers but the criminal and unbelieving regime that rules us. You must direct your anger against the whole regime and not particular individuals. The Almighty has said in His Noble Book, You have had a good example in God ’s Messenger (God has spoken truly). The Chosen One — God bless him and give him peace — was fought against in Mecca and abused and hurt so much that he complained to his Lord of his weakness and the contempt with which people treated him. Yet despite this he did not consider his struggle to be a personal feud with the unbelievers. On the contrary he directed his energy to spreading the Call and in the end, when God’s religion was victorious, the Messenger pardoned all the unbelievers and freed them. This is a lesson you have to learn and act upon.”
“That was the Messenger — God bless him and grant him peace — and the best of His creation, but I’m not a prophet and I’m not capable of forgetting what those criminals did to me. What happened to me pursues me without rest. I’m unable to sleep. I haven’t been to the mosque since I got out and I don’t think that I shall go. I spend all day alone in my room speaking to no one, and sometimes I think I’m losing my mind.”
“Don’t give in, Taha! Thousands of Muslim youth have suffered detention and been subjected to ugly tortures but left detention more determined than ever to resist injustice. The regime’s true objective in torturing Islamists isn’t just to hurt them physically. What they want is to destroy them psychologically so that they lose their capacity to struggle. If you surrender to melancholy, you will have realized the objectives of these unbelievers.”
The sheikh looked at him for a moment, then grasped his hand on the table and said, “When will you return to the mosque?”
“I will never return.”
“No, you must return. You are an outstanding student who is committed to the struggle and a glorious future awaits you, God willing. Trust in God, forget what happened, and go back to your studies and your faculty.”
“I cannot. How can I face people after…?”
Taha suddenly fell silent. His face crumpled and he groaned out loud.
“They violated my honor, Master.”
“Stop!”
“They violated my honor ten times, Master. Ten times.”
“I told you to stop, Taha!”
The sheikh shouted these words vehemently, but Taha struck the table with his fist, shaking and rattling the cups. The sheikh rose quickly from his place and whispered agitatedly, “Pull yourself together, Taha! Everyone’s looking at us. We must leave immediately. Listen, I’ll be waiting for you in front of Cinema Metro in an hour. Take precautions and make sure no one’s watching you.”
Over two months Hagg Azzam used persuasion, temptation, intimidation, and violence. He tried every method on Souad, but she adamantly refused the very idea of an abortion. Soon their shared life came to a complete standstill — no endearments, no tasty food, no pipes of hashish, and no times in bed. The only thing they had left was the subject of abortion. He would come every day and sit in front of her. He would talk to her gently and calmly. Then little by little he would lose his temper and they would fight. He would shout, “You made an agreement and you went back on it.”
“So hang me.”
“From the start we said no pregnancy.”
“You think you’re God, so you can allow things and forbid things?”
“Be sensible and get me out of this fix, for God’s sake.”
“No.”
“I’ll divorce you.”
“Divorce me.”
He said “divorce” with feigned casualness because deep down inside he wanted to keep hold of her, but the idea of having a child at his age was impossible. Even if he allowed it himself, his sons would never allow it, and even though Hagga Salha, his first wife, didn’t even know about his second marriage, how would he keep it from her if he had a child?
When Hagg Azzam gave up on persuading Souad, he left her and went to Alexandria where he met with her brother Hamidu and told him what had happened. Hamidu hesitated and bowed his head in thought for a while. Then he said, “Listen to me, Hagg. We’re both decent people and doing the right thing shouldn’t upset anyone. It’s true I’m her brother, but I can’t ask her to have an abortion. Abortion is forbidden by religion and I’m a God-fearing man.”
“But we made an agreement, Rayyis Hamidu.”
“We made an agreement and we broke it. We’re in the wrong, my friend. We started things on a friendly basis and we should finish them on a friendly basis. Give her her rights according to God’s Law and divorce her, Hagg.”
Hamidu’s face at that moment looked to him ignoble, mendacious, and hateful and he wanted in fact to slap him and hit him, but in the end his good sense prevailed and he left, boiling with rage. On the way back to Cairo an idea suddenly came to him and he said to himself, “There’s only one person left I can trust to save me.”
The war in the Gulf was keeping Sheikh el Samman extremely busy.
Every day he organized lectures and seminars and wrote lengthy articles in the press to explain the legal justification for the war to liberate Kuwait. The government brought him to speak on television numerous times and called on him to deliver the Friday sermon in the largest mosques in Cairo, and the sheikh set about presenting to the people all the legal reasons for the correctness of the Arab rulers’ position in inviting American troops to liberate Kuwait from the Iraqi invasion.
Hagg Azzam spent three whole days searching for Sheikh el Samman before he was finally able to meet with him at his office in El Salam mosque in Medinet Nasr. The first thing he said to him as he anxiously scrutinized his face was, “What’s wrong with you, Master? You look exhausted.”