super-size Cleopatra cigarettes to save some money. Danana walks the streets of Chicago in the same manner he took walks for exercise in the late afternoon on the rural road in the village of Shuhada in the Minufiya Governorate, his birthplace. He moves slowly, no matter how much in a hurry he is, looking around with a glance in which suspicion is mixed with arrogance, confidently moving his right foot forward followed by his left, straightening his back, causing his huge potbelly, resulting from his fondness for big rich suppers every night, to stick out.
That is how Ahmad Danana, president of the Egyptian Student Union in America, creates an aura of respectability around himself. The union was established during Gamal Abdel Nasser’s time; several students became presidents and returned afterward to Egypt to hold important state posts. Danana is the only one who became president three years in a row by acclamation. In addition he enjoys several exceptional privileges: he has been preparing for a PhD in histology for the last seven years, even though the law regulating scholarships limits the maximum time to five years. He had gone around that rule by spending two whole years learning English, then another two years studying industrial security at Loyola before beginning the doctoral program at Illinois. And even though the law prohibited work for Egyptian students in the United States, he was able to get a part-time job for a hefty wage that he receives in dollars and transfers to a special account that no one knows anything about at the National Bank in Egypt. He was able, thanks to his connections and the support of the Egyptian embassy, to organize a concert for the popular Egyptian singer Amr Diab that realized for him a fat profit that he added to his savings, amassing a considerable sum of money that enabled him last year to marry the daughter of a rich merchant who owned a big bathroom fixture store in Ruwai‘i, Cairo. All these privileges came on as a result of his close connections with different arms of the Egyptian state. The other students here treat him more like their boss at work than as a fellow student. His older age and his dignified demeanor make him more like a government director general than a student. Besides, he does have control over their affairs, beginning with the Egyptian newspapers and magazines that he distributes among them for free, including his extraordinary ability to help them overcome any obstacle that they confront, and finally his ability to punish and make examples of them. One report from him, confirmed by the Egyptian embassy at once, is enough to get Cairo to cancel the scholarship of the “offending” student.
Danana came out of the station to the street and entered a nearby building. He greeted the old black security guard sitting behind a glass partition, then took the elevator to the fourth floor and opened the door to the apartment. A musty smell resulting from the apartment’s being closed all week long greeted his nose. The living room was small; it had a rectangular sofa and several leather chairs. On the wall was a large picture of the president of the Republic, under which the Throne Verse from the Qur’an in gilded letters was hung, then an Arabic poster whose letters were printed in a small blue font with the title written in the cursive
At the end of the corridor were two adjacent rooms, the smaller used by Danana as an office and the other as a meeting room with a rectangular table in the middle with chairs around it. The whole room and the furniture had that old wooden smell of university lecture halls and classrooms in Egyptian schools. Actually, even though the apartment was in Chicago, it had mysteriously acquired an Egyptian bureaucratic character that reminded one of the Mugamma building in Tahrir Square or the old court building in Bab al-Khalq. Danana sat at the head of the table, watching the students as they came into the meeting room. They greeted him with respect and took their places around the table while he took time, in a ponderously royal manner, before he returned their greetings in a hoarse voice and a tone somewhere between standoffish and welcoming, knitting his brow and assuming the pose of a high-ranking state official, busy with grave matters that couldn’t be postponed or divulged. Danana looked at the students sitting around the table, then he struck the table with his hand, whereupon all the whispering ended and a profound silence fell. He broke that silence by clearing his throat, an act that usually preceded his speaking and usually ended with a fit of coughing as a result of his excessive smoking. He extended his hand and turned on the tape recorder in front of him. Then his hoarse voice reverberated clearly and strongly in the room: “In the name of God, the Merciful and Compassionate, and prayers and peace on the noblest of creation, our master, the Messenger of God, the one chosen by God, peace be upon him. I welcome you to the Egyptian Student Union in America, Chicago Chapter. We are all present today with the exception of Shaymaa Muhammadi and Tariq Haseeb. Shaymaa had a big problem this morning.”
The students looked at him inquisitively. He took a drag on his cigarette and said in obvious relish, “Sister Shaymaa was cooking and almost started a big fire had not God intervened, and our brother Tariq, may God recompense him well, is now standing behind her to console her.”
He uttered that last part of the sentence in a tone full of insinuation, then laughed loudly. The others felt puzzled and awkward and fell silent.
That was one of Danana’s various methods of exercising control over the students: to surprise them by finding out their innermost secrets then making sly comments that could have different interpretations. He extended his large head forward and clasped his arms on the table and said, “I have good news for you, news that will gladden you all, God willing. Yesterday the City of Chicago agreed to designate a four-story building in the fanciest part of town on Michigan Avenue as a mosque and Islamic center, God willing. His Excellency the ambassador has written to Egypt to send over an imam from al-Azhar. In two months at the most we will pray together, God permitting, in the new mosque.”
There were murmurs of approval and appreciation and one student cried enthusiastically, “May God recompense you well, Doctor!”
Danana totally ignored him and went on. “Approving the establishment of a mosque in this place was almost impossible, but God Almighty willed us to be successful.”
The same student shouted flatteringly, “Thank you, Dr. Danana, for this great effort you’re exerting for us!”
Danana fixed him with a disapproving glance and said, feigning anger, “And who told you I am doing that for you? I only expect reward from God Almighty.”
“Praise the Lord, sir!”
The other students felt they had to take part in the praise, and murmurs of thanks filled the room, but Danana ignored them and bowed his head in silence, like an actor bowing before his audience and wishing the applause would never stop. Then he said, “Another very important subject: some students are not attending their classes regularly. Yesterday I reviewed rates of absenteeism and found them to be too high. I am not going to mention them by name so as not to embarrass them. They know themselves.”
He took a long drag on his cigarette then exhaled hard and said, “Forgive me, folks. I am not going to cover for anyone or intercede for anyone. I’ve overworked myself a lot for you. If you don’t help yourselves, I cannot help you. Anyone exceeding acceptable absence rates I’ll report to the educational bureau and they’d take it from there in accordance with the rules.”
A tense silence prevailed and Danana kept scrutinizing the students with his fierce stare. Then he announced moving on to the agenda, which, as usual, was filled with various requests from the students: facilitating travel to Egypt, getting discounted tickets or getting free transit cards, and other issues. One student was complaining that his adviser was biased against him; another had exceeded the upper limit for the scholarship; a female student wanted to change her housing arrangement because her American roommate was receiving her lover in the apartment they shared. Danana would listen attentively to each problem, ask for clarification of some details, take a drag on his cigarette and look pensive, then announce the solution simply and confidently. Thereupon the student would look grateful and thank Danana, who would ignore him as if he were not there. He liked, at such moments, to have a rough joke at the student’s expense or to insult him, this way tightening his psychological control over him, by saying for instance, “What matters is for you to study and pass, dummy.”
Or by wondering sarcastically, “And what would I do with ‘thank you’? Which bank can I cash it at? You’re such a loser!”
The suddenly humiliated student, weakened by need and silenced by gratitude, would have no choice but to ignore the insult or laugh nervously or fall silent and turn his face away as if he had heard nothing.
“We finished all items on the agenda. Any new business?” Danana asked. No one spoke except a bearded student who said, “Dr. Danana, the Palestinian butcher from whom we bought halal meat has unfortunately closed his store and left Chicago. You know, sir, that meat in ordinary stores is not slaughtered in the Islamic way—”
Danana interrupted him with a gesture of his hand as if saying it wasn’t a big deal, then turned around and pulled from the bookcase behind him a sheet of paper that he handed to him, saying, “Here, Ma’mun, is a list of the addresses of all halal butchers in Chicago.”
