The extraordinary story of a young North American's conversion to Islam and her ensuing romance with an Egyptian man, The Butterfly Mosque is a stunning articulation of a Westerner embracing the Muslim world
After graduating from university, Willow Wilson, a young American - and newly converted Muslim - impulsively accepts a teaching position in Cairo. There, she meets Omar, a passionate young nationalist with a degree in astrophysics. Omar introduces Willow to the bustling city, and through him she discovers a young, moderate nationalist movement, a movement that both wants to divest itself of western influence and regain cultural pride. When the two find themselves unexpectedly in love, despite their deep cultural differences, they decide that they will try to forge a third culture, a new landscape that will embrace some of each of their cultures, and give their fledgling romance some hope of survival.
Wilson weaves this engaging personal story with deep insights into faith in a fractured world, and gives westerners rare insight into an important young reform movement. Butterfly Mosque is an inspiring account of an unlikely cross-cultural love, and the moving story of two young people working within the boundaries of contemporary religion and culture to forge a life together against the odds. WILLOW WILSON's articles on modern religion and the Middle East have appeared in major media including the Atlantic Monthly and the New York Times. She has also published a graphic novel, Cairo, with Vertigo Comics. Wilson and her husband divide their time between the U.S. and Egypt. Kun
We say unto it: Be! And it is.
-Quran 16:40
In a way, I was in the market for a philosophy. Five months into my sophomore year of college at Boston University I was hospitalized, in the middle of the night, for a rare and acute reaction to a Depo Provera injection I'd received several days earlier. Up until then I'd been lucky enough never to see the inside of an emergency room. The most dangerous things I'd ever done were take the Chinatown-to-Chinatown bus from Boston to New York, walk home alone late at night once or twice, and get my lower lip pierced at a dimly lit shop in some basement off Commonwealth Avenue. At the turn of the millennium, even rebellion was fairly sanitary. Landing in the hospital because of legal medication seemed like a violation of the way things were supposed to work.
For days I was in and out of doctors' offices with the mostly untreatable symptoms of adrenal distress: heart palpitations, sudden attacks of sweating and dizziness, and insomnia so severe that no amount of tranquilizer could keep me asleep for more than four or five hours. In a blow to my vanity, I was losing hair. Later I would learn that I was also losing bone mass. At seventeen I was immortal; at eighteen I was a short and arbitrary series of events.
I wasn't very good with pain. And having always been the kind of person who could catnap at will, I wasn't very good with sleep deprivation, either. By chance, the three people who watched over me most diligently during the first days of my illness-a classmate, his mother, and a nurse-were all Iranian. Semidelirious, I took this as a sign. Addressing a God I had never spoken to in my life, I promised that if I recovered in three days, I would become a Muslim.
As it happened, the adrenal distress lasted a year and a half.
