“Okay,” I said to Ben, “better run before they change their minds.”
“Totally. Hey,” his voice changed, “smile, okay? It’s your wedding. Everything is going to be fine. Look outside.”
The rain had stopped. The sky was still gray, but the clouds were high and thin, and I held out hope that we would at least stay dry.
“That’s the driver,” said Omar on his cell phone. He looked, if possible, more relieved than I felt. “Are you ready? Let’s go.”
The image of my wedding that stands out in my mind is this: Omar and I are crossing the Nile by sailboat toward a garden, in which stands a billowing white tent. Looking out, the water is the color of slate; looking down, it’s the color of tea. All along the edge of the garden stand people I know: my family and my friends, wearing party dresses and suits and galibayyas and veils, pale-skinned and olive-skinned, copper-skinned and dark. My mother stands between Ben and Ibrahim looking anxiously at the water; she holds Ben’s arm, and though I can’t tell from far away, I later learn that she was worried the rocking of the boat would pitch us into the river. Ben reassures her and leans over to say something to Ibrahim, who laughs. When we reach the stone steps that lead out of the water, Ibrahim will take one of my favorite photographs: in it, I am stepping out of a peeling turquoise boat, framed by an embroidered veil, and a disembodied hand—Omar’s—helps me to shore. It captures the energy of that final moment between uncertainty and solid ground.
The rest of the wedding was a pleasant blur. Everyone danced. I remember smiling at the sight of my grandmother’s henna-painted ankles. My sister looked radiant in a lavender silk dress, borrowed for the occasion from a Syrian-Dutch friend. Over the course of the next few weeks I would get several offers for her hand in marriage, all of which she turned down with polite good humor. At one point I spotted Sameh in the crowd, smiling in an impeccable dark suit. I waved and he made his way toward me.
“You came,” I said.
“I had to come.” He paused. “You are not just my student. You are my friend.”
I bit my lip. Then, on impulse, I reached out with my right hand: he grinned and shook it. It was the first and only time we would ever touch.
I heard cheering and turned: a group of Omar’s cousins was gathered together with interlocking arms, collectively tossing Omar up into the air. He laughed, boots and vest askew, as he came back down, was caught, was hurled into the air again.
When the invitations to my wedding were sent out, I only expected a small handful of American friends and family to make the long and unpredictable trip to Cairo. Twenty showed up. Ben came with his family; Jo with her father; my parents, sister, and maternal grandparents came; and six or seven friends from high school and college, one of whom was a fire spinner and put on a show when the sun set. The regional director of the Red Cross, a famous Cairo University linguist, and several luminaries of the Egyptian left came at Sohair’s invitation, along with a hundred aunts and uncles and cousins and second cousins from both sides of Omar’s family. Omar’s musician friends—Mohammad and his brother Mostafa, the blind virtuosos; and several others—brought their instruments and played for us. The result was that our wedding, originally intended to be a small private gathering, was a society event, and kept our wedding planner in business for a long time. For a party that almost didn’t happen, it was a triumph: one of the rare moments when things that should logically go wrong go right instead, and better worlds become possible.
An Appointment
Follow those who ask of you no fee.
—Quran 36:21
AFTER MY INTERVIEW WITH THE MUFTI I HAD WRITTEN AN essay that I wanted to try to publish abroad. Egyptian media was saturated with his often controversial rulings, but outside the Muslim world he was virtually unknown. I sent a copy of the essay to the mufti’s office first, as a courtesy, so he could verify that I’d quoted him correctly. I was told his daughter translated the essay, and was impressed enough to tell her father it was a good read. A few weeks later, at a family gathering in Doqqi, Uncle Ahmad pulled Omar and me aside.
“The mufti liked the essay you wrote,” he said. “He has more time this Saturday to answer your questions.”
I blinked. “I’m flattered he liked the essay,” I said, “but I don’t have any other questions prepared. Please thank him for the offer—”
Uncle Ahmad looked at Omar, who looked at me.
“You don’t understand,” said Uncle Ahmad with a firm but patient smile, “the mufti would like to see you. This Saturday. At eleven a.m.”
In the Middle East, opportunity sometimes comes as a command. “Of course,” I said. “I would be honored.”
At that point, none of the high-ranking sheikhs at Al-Azhar, nor any of the leaders of the various Sufi paths, nor even the more fashionable Muslim televangelists were really on the radar of the western media. There were several reasons for this: first, Azhari and Sufi sheikhs are very selective about which journalists they speak to, and about what. By and large, western journalists are seen by the Arab Sunni establishment as ignorant and exploitative, reporting only the most sensational stories and ignoring the difficult work the moderate opposition does to hold back the tide of Islamic extremism.
This view is not without merit: in the years since 9/11 there have been repeated calls by western pundits for the Muslim opposition to step forward; after total silence in the western press, these pundits smugly concluded there is no Muslim opposition to speak of. Though Sufis have taken up arms against extremists in Iran and Pakistan, though bumper stickers pasted on the walls of Cairene shrines refute militant Wahhabi doctrine, the western press has chosen to turn a blind eye. Determined Islamophobes often claim that no fatwas have been issued against terrorism in response to the fatwas that call for it—this is blatantly false. Dozens of fatwas against terrorism have been issued since 9/11, many by high-ranking clerics. The silence of the press with regard to positive gains made by moderate Muslims has enabled damaging misconceptions about the religion and its leaders. Because of this endemic misrepresentation, sheikhs from across the political and sectarian spectrum turned press shy, granting few personal interviews with western reporters.
The second reason has to do with access: it’s difficult for all but the most dedicated western journalists to figure out ways to approach sheikhs and sheikhas in the first place. Non-Muslims can only enter certain mosques, and only at certain times. Outside of organized colleges like Azhar, most sheikhs don’t have Web sites or hold office hours. In today’s sectarian environment, Sufi sheikhs can be very reclusive, and their contact with the curious and the press is often screened by protective lieutenants and followers. It’s easy for stories about the inner workings of the Muslim establishment to be stymied by suspicion on the part of the clerics and exasperation on the part of the reporters, resulting in more bad blood on both sides.
I prepared for my second interview with the mufti feeling more than a little nervous. I wasn’t sure what I would do with the result, but I knew I must do something. Clerics of the mufti’s importance and authority did not hand out personal interviews every day. I wrote and discarded question after question. I finally settled on a theme: dissecting the fatwa, that much-maligned Islamic legal tool, for a western audience. When the day of the interview came, I dressed conservatively and with care: a floor-length black skirt and a black tunic, with slim black sandals. As Omar and I were leaving I reached for a black silk veil, then hesitated, reached out, and took one that was deep red.
When we reached the mufti’s office at Dar al Iftah, the section of Al-Azhar responsible for answering requests for fatwas, Omar and I were shown straight into Sheikh Ali’s office. He sat behind a large wooden desk and smiled when we came in. After glancing at his face—the striking Turkish-Mongolian features only a little hardened by six months in a demanding office—I dropped my eyes and murmured my as-salaamu alaykum, leaving Omar to make a more extensive greeting.
“Come sit here, my daughter,?
?? said the mufti. More at ease, I looked up and smiled. Omar and I took the chairs drawn up in front of his desk. Eyes twinkling in an otherwise serious expression, Sheikh Ali offered me a chocolate from a bowl sitting at his elbow.
“Shofti el film El Samurai il Akheer?” he asked, speaking slowly in colloquial Egyptian for my benefit. Have you seen the movie The Last Samurai?
Charmed, I laughed. “Yes,” I said, “I liked it very much.”
His smile held just a hint of bitterness. “I am the last sheikh,” he said. Humorous though it was, there was some truth to the metaphor: Sheikh Ali was the champion of unpopular—some would say lost—causes. He preached reconciliation between Sunnis and Shi’ites, spoke against face veiling, and fought for room to admit the secular demands of modern life into orthodox Islam. In many ways, he was one of the few Sunni religious authorities who could fill this role—his credibility was unassailable, even among his enemies. Though he would come to be loathed by the fundamentalists, I would never hear an unflattering rumor or a hint of scandal about him. Yet despite his potential as a leader in the moderate bloc, I knew, even then, that he was too conservative to appeal to the West, every sheikh’s looming second constituency.
“Now,” said Sheikh Ali, folding his hands, “what would you like to talk about?”
The mufti was an eloquent speaker. His answers to my questions were never less than the questions deserved, and he seemed to intuitively understand the difference between addressing a Muslim audience, for whom legalism is a way of life, and a non-Muslim audience, to whom the modern Muslim obsession with rules must seem bizarre and counterintuitive.
“A fatwa is a statement clarifying the position of Shari’a law regarding a particular human act, whether that act has to do with ritual—something between a person and God—or social, political, or economic dealings between human beings,” said Sheikh Ali. “It can include family, state, and international relations. Fatwa follows certain criteria taken from the Quran and Sunnah: no one should pay for someone else’s deeds, because the theory of inherited sin is not present in Islam. Actions must be judged by their intentions and goals, so the intention of the action in question must be good, and must be for God. In addition, suspicion is not a substitute for certainty. This is one of the foundations of straight thinking.”
As Omar translated, this in particular impressed me. Islamic law stipulates that in order for someone to be convicted of adultery, four people must have been witness to the act of adultery itself—a caveat meant to make it nearly impossible for the state to interfere in the private lives of its citizens. The mufti’s statement was a reprimand to the moral policing that resulted in scandals and honor killings based on suspicion and rumor.
“Also, when crafting a fatwa one must remember that God forgives those who repent—He does not want them to live with eternal guilt,” the mufti went on. “Shari’a aims to protect human dignity and human rights within the context of humanity’s social rituals and its stewardship of the Earth. Islam forbids tyranny, prostitution, suicide, drug abuse—anything that treats a human being as an object. A fatwa is determined under all these rules and goals, so that human beings can live more happily, safely, and peacefully.”
Women
If I cannot liberate myself, then no one from outside can liberate me.
—Orzala Ashraf, board member
for Afghan Women’s Network
THOUGH MY WORK FOR CAIRO MAGAZINE AND OTHER PUBLIcations was increasingly important to me, most of the time I felt like an unusually intellectual housewife. The work I loved most was being Omar’s spouse, and by extension a member of our family. As the months passed, I came to understand the group mind that develops when a large number of people are interdependent. When I ran out of milk, Ibrahim would appear with a fresh half gallon before I could even ask; on the birthday of an uncle I would spend hours in the kitchen helping my cousins-in-law bake cakes. Determined not to be a fragile foreigner, I learned to do many more things than wives of my generation were expected to know—like their counterparts in the West, young Arab women were becoming less preoccupied with setting a good table and more focused on their careers. Nevertheless, family was still synonymous with civilization in Egypt. People lived for feast days, weddings, and birth celebrations. The poorest relative would scrape together money to give a cousin a wedding gift, or buy a gold medallion for a newborn niece. As difficult as life was, Egyptians were never too cynical to celebrate it.
Henna parties, open only to women, were the events I most looked forward to. The night before her wedding, the family and girlfriends of a bride-to-be gathered at her house to dance and eat sweets until dawn, donning clingy dresses they would never consider wearing in public. I would emerge from one of these parties half deaf, exhausted from dancing, and practically diabetic with sugar shock, hands and feet covered in henna designs. The bride, always flushed with triumph, was a symbol of fruition, poised on the brink of social and sexual independence. Unmarried girls looked up to her in adoration, while married women gave her frank advice. It was a celebration I had seen nowhere else: part rave, part fertility festival, part crash course in sex education.
“It’s so nice to get rid of the men for one night!” said an aunt at a henna party for one of Omar’s maternal cousins. “They’re sleeping at the mosque, poor darlings. I told them they couldn’t come back until after the dawn prayer.”
I grinned. “They’re the lucky ones,” I said. “They’ll have energy at the wedding tomorrow. We’ll all be asleep in our chairs.”
She laughed and patted my hand. “You miss Omar, of course,” she said with a wicked smile. “And he misses you. You’re still a bride and groom.”
“It’s only for one evening,” I protested, blushing. “We’ll survive.”
“He dies in her!” said one of the other aunts, carrying a plate of food. “It’s so romantic.” In colloquial Egyptian, to die in someone is to love her so intensely that the feeling consumes you.
“Of course he does,” said the first aunt, pinching my chin. “She’s a moon.”
I hid my face in my hands, squirming under so many extravagant compliments, and both aunts laughed.
“Go dance!” said the second. “Omar will think badly of us if we don’t teach you how to dance.”
I got up and let one of the littlest cousins tie a bell-covered scarf around my hips, feeling lucky to be alive at this moment among these people. It was such a tantalizing contradiction, being a woman in the Middle East—far less free than a woman in the West, but far more appreciated. When people wonder why Arab women defend their culture, they focus on the way women who don’t follow the rules are punished, and fail to consider the way women who do follow the rules are rewarded. When I finished an article or essay, all I received was an e-mail from an editor saying, “Thanks, got it.” When I cooked an iftar meal during Ramadan, a dozen tender voices blessed my hands.
“Why aren’t women allowed to lead men in prayer?” I asked Omar one day as he sat on the couch reading Ibn Arabi. He closed the book over his index finger to keep his place and slid over to make room for me. I felt a surge of affection; he never dismissed or belittled my questions, and when I asked them, they took precedence over whatever else he was doing.
“Women are the manifestation of God’s beauty, which on Earth is veiled from men’s eyes,” he said. “So to put women on display in front of men is unworthy.”
“That’s a Sufi answer,” I said with a smile.
“I am a Sufi,” he said, smiling back at me. “But it’s the truth.”
In recent weeks, I had gone looking for other Islams. By now I was comfortable enough in my own faith to be curious about different interpretations. Though I was a westerner and a Muslim, I wasn’t quite a western Muslim; my religious ideas and practices were products of North Africa. Using the internet, I started to read about Islamic movements in the West, hoping for a clearer picture of Muslim life in my own culture. That was how I discovered the Progressives. They
were a group of American Muslims dedicated to reform, bringing the practice of Islam into line with its original humanitarian vision. One of their main goals was gender equality in the mosque, the linchpin of which was a campaign to allow female imams to lead mixed-gender prayers.
As precedent, the Progressives cited the story of Umm Waraqah, a matriarch from the time of the Prophet Muhammad who was given permission to lead both men and women in prayer. However, with this exception, all four schools of Sunni jurisprudence held that women should only lead congregations of other women, not of women and men. The reasons why were a contradictory mishmash of man’s earthly superiority and his sexual weakness; he was more fit to lead, yet he could be undone by the sight of a woman bending over in front of him. Having no desire to lead congregational prayer myself, the issue had never bothered me, but the opposition to the Progressives’ argument was so pathetic that I had to say something.
“What about Umm Waraqah?” I asked Omar. “They’re saying she set a precedent for women leading men.”
Omar sighed. “Umm Waraqah was a very old woman when that decision was made,” he said. “And the story only says she led her dar—her own house. Younger men and boys, who were all related to her. It was a specific situation.”
“If she was only leading men in her house,” I said, pulling out the linchpin of the Progressives’ argument, “why did the Prophet assign her a muezzin?” A muezzin is the person who gives the call to prayer—something you wouldn’t need if the people gathering to pray lived in the same house. Traditionally, one muezzin serves an entire district.
Omar looked at me more closely. This kind of reasoning was somewhat alien to Islamic jurisprudence, which favored the inductive over the deductive.
“That,” he said, “is an interesting question.”
“Besides,” I continued, “dar doesn’t always mean house. Dar es-salaam is Heaven, which is far more than a house. And dar el-harb is realm of war, not house of war.”