Free Zeitoun by Dave Eggers Page A

church? Did they not appreciate the connection this church created with their lord Jesus Christ? He went on and on, shaming the congregants for their miserly ways. The lecture lasted twenty minutes.
    Kathy was aghast. She’d never seen the collection counted during a Sunday service. And to ask for more! The congregants were not wealthy people, she knew. This was a working-class church, a middle-class church. They gave what they could.
    She left that day shaken and confused by what she’d seen. At home, after putting Zachary to bed, she turned again to the materials Yuko had given her. She flipped through the Qur’an. Kathy wasn’t sure that Islam was the way, but she knew that Yuko had never misled her before, that Yuko was the most grounded and sensible person she knew, and if Islam was working for her, why wouldn’t it work for Kathy? Yuko was her sister, her mentor.
    Kathy struggled with the question of faith all week. She lived with the questions in the morning, at night, all day through work. She had just started her shift at Webster one day when a familiar man walked in.Kathy recognized him immediately as one of the preachers at the church. She came over to help him with a new sport coat.
    “You know,” he said, “you should come to our church! It’s not far from here.”
    She laughed. “I know your church! I’m there all the time. Every Sunday.”
    The man was surprised. He hadn’t seen her before.
    “Oh, I sit in the back,” she said.
    He smiled and told her that next time he’d look for her. He made it his business to make sure everyone felt welcome.
    “You know,” Kathy said to him, “this must be a sign from God, seeing you here.”
    “How so?” he asked.
    She told him about her crisis, how she had been disappointed with aspects of the Christianity she knew, in some of the things she’d seen, in fact, at his own church. She told him that she had actually been considering converting to Islam.
    He was listening closely, but he didn’t seem worried about losing a member of the congregation.
    “Oh, that’s just the devil toying with you,” he said. “He’ll do that, try to tempt you away from Christ. But this’ll only make your faith stronger. You’ll see come Sunday.”
    When he left, Kathy already felt more certain about her faith. How could his visit not be a sign from God? Just at the moment she was having doubts about her church, a messenger from Jesus walked straight into her life.
    She went to church that Sunday with a renewed sense of purpose. Yuko may have found comfort and direction in Islam, but Kathy wassure that she herself had been personally called by Christ. She walked in and sat near the front, determined that her new friend should see her and know that he had made a difference.
    It didn’t take long. When he looked down at the congregation and upon her, his eyes opened wide. He gave her an expression that made clear that she was the one he’d been looking for all day. She’d seen the same expression on kids spotting a birthday cake with their name on it.
    And then suddenly, in the middle of the service, her name was being called. The preacher, in front of a full room of almost a thousand people, was saying her name, Kathy Delphine.
    “Come up here, Kathy,” the preacher commanded.
    She rose from her seat and stepped toward the blinding lights of the pulpit. Onstage, she didn’t know where to look, how to avoid the glare. She shielded her eyes. She squinted and looked down—at her shoes, at the people in the front row. She had never stood in front of so many people. The closest thing had been her wedding, and that had been only fifty or so friends and family. What was this? Why had she been called forth?
    “Kathy,” the preacher said, “tell them what you told me. Tell us all.”
    Kathy froze. She didn’t know if she could do this. She was a talkative person, rarely nervous, but to recount something she’d said privately to the reverend in front of a thousand