Abdel Fattah took a job in a state-owned soap factory when he was 12. He learned the call to prayer; his voice quieted the machines as workers washed their hands and praised God. Economic reform and privatization decades later made jobs tight, and he accepted early retirement. The nation was changing. It was getting tougher to live.
He and his wife raised four sons and a daughter, including one son who is a bank accountant and two who fix sewing machines. The family got used to his daily rituals that began before dawn and ended after sunset. God kept tugging and Abdel Fattah kept calling the faithful. His is the voice the young here have grown up with, like a coaxing uncle in a large family, a voice that soothes the devout and reminds those who have fallen that they need to return.
"When someone stays away from God, there is a terrible void," he says. "But when you get closer to him, your soul is overwhelmed and it's enough to go into the mosque and bow before him. It is difficult for hypocrites and demons. It's God who decides whether to allow someone into his grace and it doesn't matter if he's rich or poor. You have to be content with what God gives you, even if it's only a bit of salt in your hand."
The mosque has expanded from one floor to three; its brown- and ivory-colored minaret, tipped with a crescent moon, rises over satellite dishes and fading flags from weddings past. Abdel Fattah has the key to the big wooden doors. When it's time, the men sitting on the steps make way, and he glides through sunlight and shadow to the microphone. The loudspeaker crackles like a cicada, then quiets. After a breath:
"I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God. Make haste toward prayers."
The old men come first, creased faces, loosely tied turbans; then the workmen, dusted in mortar and paint; the shopkeepers, breathless and scurrying; the religious men in their prayer caps and beards; fathers trailed by little boys who want to be them, mimicking every gesture, the slipping off of sandals, the washing of hands and feet, the hugging of friends, the bowing in the dimness and kneeling in prayer as Abdel Fattah sends another verse into the late morning sky.
"This is the best place to be when you get old," he says. "The best place to be at the end of your life. At the mosque, one should only think of paradise. He should leave his mundane troubles behind."
When the last foot slides into the last sandal and the mosque empties, Abdel Fattah locks the doors, descends the steps, turns the corner and walks past vegetable bins and meat dangling on a butcher's hook. The alley fills with sound: the mattress makers beating cotton; the boys gathering tin and garbage; the broom seller, weighted down as if balancing a clutch of rifles, yelling out his prices.
Abdel Fattah will return to the mosque in a few hours, slipping back into the cool half-light, his voice lifting over rooftops.
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jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com
Noha El-Hennawy of The Times' Cairo Bureau contributed to this report.
