The Butterfly Mosque Read Online Free PDF Page A

“Pick up, quick.”
    I did.
    â€œHello?”
    â€œIs this Willow?” The voice was male and spoke in a pleasant Anglo-Egyptian accent. He introduced himself as Omar, whom I remembered from Ben’s e-mails—he was a physics teacher at LS, as we called it, and one of Ben’s closest friends in Egypt. Worried about all the trouble a couple of American girls could find in Cairo, Ben had asked him to keep an eye on us.
    â€œI remembered today that you arrived on the fifteenth,” he said. “I wanted to make sure everything was okay. Ben said you brought someone with you?”
    â€œA friend,” I said. “She’s going to be working at LS as well.”
    â€œOh good,” he said politely. “Is there anything you need?”
    I decided not to tell him about our state of enforced veganism. He apologized for not having called sooner—he had been in Sinai for the past few days.
    â€œCan we invite you over for some tea?” I asked, grateful for his concern. “I have a book that Ben asked me to bring you.”
    â€œSure,” he said. “What time should I be there?”
    He arrived an hour later and I opened the door to a tall, olive-skinned man in a button-down shirt and khakis. His expression was kind and curious, and faintly amused; he reached out to shake my hand when I hesitated, unsure of the polite way for an American woman to greet an Egyptian man.
    â€œThis room has changed since the last time I was here,” he said as I ushered him inside. He stood in front of the coffee table and narrowed his eyes. The watercolor that hung in the living room while Ben lived there was gone, replaced by a framed print of the Ninety-Nine Names of God.
    â€œWhose is that?” he asked, turning to me. “Not yours, surely.”
    â€œActually, it is mine,” I said.
    â€œReally?” He raised his eyebrows.
    â€œYes.” I excused myself and went to help Jo with the tea. I looked back at Omar from the doorway of the kitchen. He stood with his arms crossed, head tilted to one side, gazing at the calligraphic names. Light from the window glazed his cheek, turning it honey-colored. He smiled.
    *  *  *
    Omar must have noticed how little food we had in the house, perhaps because we had none to offer him. When he pressed us about what we were eating, we admitted that we mostly weren’t. “Language School usually sends someone to look after the foreigners for the first week,” he said. “You shouldn’t be left alone like this.”
    â€œAre there supermarkets here that sell meat?” asked Jo.
    â€œThere are, but they’re very expensive—only for rich people and those who get paid in dollars,” said Omar.
    â€œWe can’t do expensive,” I responded.
    Omar nodded.
“Khalas.
Tomorrow I’ll show you the souk. That’s where ordinary people shop. Okay?”
    Too eager for protein to say no, we agreed.
    Omar arrived promptly the next morning, bringing with him stewed fava beans and bread from a street vendor. When we’d finished eating and cleaned up, he led us out into a late morning mottled with glare and watery shadows. We took a cab a short distance to the underside of a bridge that ran over the Maadi metro stop. Here was the edge of the souk, an open marketplace that meandered through a series of cramped, unpaved alleys strung with tarps. Vendors sat behind piles of green and yellow mangoes, guavas, carrots, sweet potatoes, purple and white eggplants, and tomatoes as heavy as fists, all in dusty profusion. In stacked bamboo cages, chickens and ducks muttered to each other in the heat. Today the market was full: men and women wearing long robes and head cloths moved from stall to stall and called to their friends and neighbors.
    â€œYou get your meat from a butcher, like that one,” said Omar, pointing at a reeking stone terrace, above whichhung several carcasses that might