The Butterfly Mosque by G. Willow Wilson

bones. I saw a girl named Saraa coming toward me from across the room. We had met at the cousin’s engagement party; with her wide dark eyes and expressive mouth, she was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen. She had been happy then. Now when she kissed my cheek, her face was wet. I took her hand. She led me to a room where five or six other young women were sitting together. In hushed voices we introduced ourselves, giggling at the inadequate words to which we were limited.
    Marwa, Uncle Ahmad’s daughter, began reciting a prayer for her grandfather’s soul. The other girls cupped their hands in front of their faces. I did the same. It’s a strange feeling, praying to your hands, filling the air between them with words. We think of divinity as something infinitely big, but it permeates the infinitely small—the condensation of your breath on your palms, the ridges in your fingertips, the warm space between your shoulder and the shoulder next to you. I spent hours there with these women and girls whose names I couldn’t yet keep straight, but who were already my family. They told stories I didn’t understand, laughing and weeping by turns. I went back and forth to the kitchen for tissues and glasses of water, or sat silently, hoping they somehow understood what I didn’t know how to say.
    After that day, whenever I went to a family gathering an arm would slip through mine and pull me away to be kissed and fussed over by the other girls. As I learned more of their language, their conversations would burst colorfully to life; they were articulate, funny, frank, opinionated about news and politics. Marwa likes to tell the story of my odd entrance into the family. “One day she danced at a wedding, the next she sat through a funeral, and on the third she was one of us,” she says, usually with a laugh. And that is how I felt.
    Writing
Muslim
on employment and visa forms was harder than I expected. Modest as it seemed, this was the first public affirmation of faith I’d ever made. Finding the courage to write those six little letters took a long time. After thissmall triumph, I was shocked when the forms were returned to me labeled
Christian.
Religion is not a private affair in Egypt; if you have a Christian name, the government will not acknowledge your conversion to Islam until you take the
shaheda
in front of a state-approved sheikh. I had to laugh. In a bizarre, autocratic way it reminded me not to take myself too seriously—as monumental as religion is to a believer, its public face is usually ridiculous. If I was going to survive as a Muslim in a Muslim country, I needed to develop a healthy appreciation for the absurd.
    There was no avoiding it—I would have to go to Al-Azhar, one of Sunni Islam’s most highly respected judicial institutions and the oldest continuously operative university on earth, for a state-sponsored conversion. I had a reason beyond bureaucratic necessity: tired of being questioned by police when we were out together, Omar and I had decided to “register the certificate,” the first of several steps necessary to formalize an Egyptian marriage. Registering the certificate, or
katb el kiteb,
refers to the drawing up and signing of a marriage contract, in which the price of the dowry is fixed, the terms of divorce decided, and the legal status of any shared property set out. In some senses
katb el kiteb
more closely resembles a western prenuptial agreement than a marriage contract; while a couple is considered religiously married after they sign their
kiteb,
they are not considered socially married—and are expected to abstain—until their wedding.
    The period between the registration and the wedding is confusing for young couples, who are married in the eyes of God yet prevented by their families from spending toomuch time alone. This waiting period has no basis in religion and in modern Egypt it has become an excuse to