Free Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

there until closing. Soon she was working fifty hours a week and making enough to cover health insurance for herself and Zachary.
    But her life was a struggle, and she was looking for some order and answers. Yuko, by contrast, seemed peaceful and confident; she’d always been centered, so much so that Kathy had been envious, but now Yuko really seemed to have things figured out.
    Kathy began borrowing books about Islam. She was just curious, having no particular intention to leave the Christian faith. At first she was simply intrigued by the basic things she didn’t know, and the many things she’d wrongly presumed. She had no idea, for instance, that the Qur’an was filled with the same people as the Bible—Moses, Mary, Abraham, Pharaoh, even Jesus. She hadn’t known that Muslims consider the Qur’an the fourth book of God to His messengers, after the Old Testament (referred to as the
Tawrat
, or the Law), the Psalms (the
Zabur)
, and the New Testament
(Injeil)
. The fact that Islam acknowledged these books was revelatory for her. The fact that the Qur’an repeatedly reaches out to the other, related faiths, knocked her flat:
    We have believed in God
and what has been sent forth to us,
and what was sent forth to Abraham,
Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob,
and the Tribes
and what was given the Prophets
from their Lord;
we separate and divide not
between any one of them;
and we are the ones who submit to Him
.
    She was frustrated that she hadn’t known any of this, that she’d been blind to the faith of a billion or so people. How could she not know these things?
    And Muhammad. She’d been so misinformed about Him. She’d thought He was the actual god of Islam, the one whom Muslims worshiped. But he was simply the messenger who related the word of God. An illiterate man, Muhammad was visited by the angel Gabriel
(Jibril
in Arabic), who related to him the words of God. Muhammad became the conduit for these messages, and The Qur’an, then, was simply the word of God in written form.
Qur’an
meant “Recitation.”
    There were so many basic things that defied her presumptions. She’d assumed that Muslims were a monolithic group, and that all Muslims were made of the same devout and unbending stock. But she learned that there were Shiite and Sunni interpretations of the Qur’an, and within any mosque there were the same variations in faith and commitment as there were in any church. There were Muslims who treated their faith lightly, and those who knew every word of the Qur’an and its companion guide to behavior, the Hadith. There were Muslims who knew almost nothing about their religion, who worshiped a few times a year, and those who obeyed the strictest interpretation of their faith. There were Muslim women who wore T-shirts and jeans and Muslim women who covered themselves head to toe. There were Muslim men who modeled their lives on the life of the Prophet, and those who strayed and fell short. There were passive Muslims, uncertain Muslims, borderline agnostic Muslims, devout Muslims, and Muslims who twisted the words of the Qur’an to suit their temporary desires and agendas. It was all very familiar, intrinsic to any faith.
    At the time, Kathy was attending a large evangelical church not farfrom her jobs. Though not always full, it could seat about a thousand parishioners. She felt a need to connect with her faith; she needed all the strength she could find.
    But there were things about this church that bothered her. She was accustomed to the kind of fiery preaching that the church offered, the extremes of showmanship and drama, but one day, she thought, they crossed a line. They had just passed the collection plates, and after they had gathered and counted the funds donated, the preacher—a short man with a rosy face and a mustache—seemed disappointed. His expression was pained. He couldn’t hold it in. He chastised the congregation calmly at first, and then with increasing annoyance. Did they not love this