Chapter Twenty-Five #2
When she got off the train, she followed the walking directions Google Maps gave her, heading away from the river, the elevated Jardin des Plantes on her right.
She’d been meaning to go to the sprawling botanical garden and wondered whether Nadim’s plan for today included a visit.
She stopped short, though, when she turned right at the end of the long block and realized exactly what she was approaching.
She checked her phone just to make sure.
Yes, she had nearly reached the address Nadim had given her the night before.
But he hadn’t mentioned that he was asking her to meet him at the Grande Mosquée de Paris, a broad white building with a leaf-green roof, Moorish detailing, and a soaring minaret with stonework so detailed that it looked like lace. It was beautiful.
She hadn’t been here before, though she’d seen pictures, and as she started walking again, her stomach swam uneasily. She wasn’t sure she belonged here. And obviously his intentions weren’t romantic if he was taking her to some sort of religious gathering.
“Kayla!” She spun around, relieved but now a bit nervous to see Nadim jogging toward her from the direction of the train station. “I’m sorry I ran a bit late,” he said as he reached her, pausing to kiss her on both cheeks.
She smiled at him and then gestured to the mosque across the street. “Is this, um, where you worship?”
“No. I grew up in Belleville, actually. You know it? A suburb just to the northeast of Paris? My family is not especially religious, but I try to attend at least a few times during Ramadan. Our mosque is there.”
“How come you wanted me to meet you here, then?” She glanced up once more at the building, feeling small and insignificant next to the physical embodiment of a culture she knew nothing about.
“Because I want to tell you a story.” Nadim smiled at her. “And I think that this story is best served with tea.”
She tilted her head, perplexed, and his smile widened.
“Trust me,” he said, offering his arm, and as she looped her arm through his and followed him across the street, she realized that she did.
“It’s okay that I’m not Muslim?” she asked. “I don’t even have a scarf for my hair.”
“Everyone is welcome here,” he said. “You’ll see what I mean.”
They entered the mosque’s grounds through a large archway shaped like a keyhole. Inside was a small, sun-dappled courtyard filled with café chairs and small blue-and-white-tiled tables shaded by leafy trees. Waiters in black pants and crisp white shirts hurried around with trays.
“Please,” Nadim said, smiling at Kayla and gesturing to a chair at an empty table.
Tentatively, she sat, astonished that there was a little café inside the mosque’s walls. Pigeons poked around for crumbs on the ground, and the place bustled with people.
“I hope you’re hungry,” Nadim said, joining her at the table as a waiter carrying a large tray heaped high with an assortment of pastries approached. Her eyes widened. What was this place? “Would it be all right if I chose a few of my favorites for us to share?”
She nodded, and as she stared in awe at the selection, Nadim greeted the waiter and then rattled off an order in a language Kayla didn’t know, pointing to pastries one by one.
The waiter plucked them from the tray with tongs and placed them on a paper plate before handing them to Nadim in exchange for a ten-euro note.
When the waiter walked away, Nadim turned to Kayla with a smile. “Would mint tea be all right?” he asked. “It’s their specialty here.”
“It sounds wonderful,” Kayla said, overwhelmed.
Nadim beckoned to another waiter, who was walking around with a dozen small glasses balanced on a tray. “Two, please,” he said in French, and he handed the waiter two coins. The waiter nodded and placed the drinks on the table before hurrying off.
“I ordered a few things you may not have tried before,” Nadim said after Kayla had taken a tentative sip of her tea, which was hot and sweet.
Kayla’s mouth watered as he quickly explained the pastries between them.
“Loukoum, which I think is called Turkish Delight in America,” he said, gesturing to a wobbly, sugar-dusted cube.
“Basboussa, which is an Egyptian semolina cake with syrup; a corne de gazelle, which is a Moroccan crescent cookie with sweet almond flavoring; makrout, which is filled with date paste and soaked in honey; and a montecao, a Moroccan cinnamon cookie that melts in your mouth. Bon appétit.”
Kayla picked up the montecao first and looked up at Nadim in astonishment.
“My grandmother used to make a cookie that looked just like this.” She took a small bite, the taste taking her back two decades to the kitchen of her mother’s mother when Kayla was just a little girl.
“These taste exactly like her cookies, too.”
“The world is always smaller than we think, isn’t it?” He grinned and picked up the makrout. “Now let’s eat our pastries, and then I’ll explain why I brought you here.”
“Okay.” For the next few minutes, they said little as they filled their mouths with sugar and honey. With the exception of the montecao, the pastries were all unfamiliar to Kayla, but somehow, they all tasted like home, too.
“To the kinds of conversations that go best with sugar,” Nadim said with a smile, raising his narrow glass of mint tea and clinking it against Kayla’s.
“I’ll toast to that.” Kayla took a sip. “Now, what was this story you wanted to tell me?”
Nadim leaned back in his chair. “Once upon a time, during the Second World War, a Resistance network ran through this mosque,” he said. “My great-grandfather was a part of it.”
Kayla leaned forward, intrigued. “A Resistance network? What do you mean?”
“During the war, the Nazis mostly left Paris’s Muslim community alone, for fear of upsetting the balance in northern Africa, which gave the mosque the ability to operate under the radar, so to speak.
The mosque’s rector came up with a plan to hide some Jewish refugees here, and others were smuggled out through the tunnels beneath the city, starting right here in this mosque.
Still more were given false papers, identifying them as Muslims, which protected them from deportation. ”
Kayla stared at him. “The Muslim community in Paris saved Jewish citizens during World War II?”
“By some accounts, the mosque was responsible for saving more than a thousand Jewish lives,” Nadim said with a smile.
“My grandfather’s father was a forger recruited by the rector to create false papers.
He did that for a year before agreeing to take in Jewish refugees.
In my family home, on the outskirts of Paris, more than a dozen Jewish citizens passed through on their way to safety. ”
Kayla could feel tears in her eyes. “Nadim, that’s beautiful.”
He leaned across the table and took her hand.
“So you see, I wanted to explain how deeply immigrants are woven into the fabric here. It isn’t that those from the outside damage a society.
In fact, they strengthen it. My great-grandparents immigrated to France from Algeria just before the Second World War.
But they risked their lives to save refugees—including some whose families had been here for centuries.
It didn’t matter to them where people had come from, or even how they worshipped.
What mattered was that they were all human beings.
Just like you, Kayla. Just like me. If your father closes his mind to you, to us, to this, he’s missing all of this beauty. ”
Kayla nodded slowly and Nadim squeezed her hand.
“It’s difficult to hear words of rejection from someone whose approval we want,” he said. “But I wanted to make sure you heard a story of love, too, because that’s what this world’s really about, I think: the idea that our shared humanity comes before anything that separates us.”
Kayla sat back in her chair, the wind knocked out of her by the deep thoughtfulness of his gesture. “Thank you,” she said softly.
“We may trace our roots back to different places,” Nadim said.
“But in the end, we’re all worthy of one another’s respect, no matter where we’ve come from, as long as we’re good people.
And, Kayla, you’re thoughtful and kind and you care deeply about others.
Maybe I saw all those things in you even before we met, written across your face every time you hurried across the esplanade.
It’s why painting you intrigued me so much. You’re a very special person, I think.”
Nobody had felt that way about her before; she wasn’t even sure that she felt that way about herself. But she wanted Nadim to be right about her. “I think you’re someone very special, too,” she said softly.
“Thank you, Kayla.” He held her gaze for a long moment, and she found herself wishing again that he’d kiss her but wondering if she was misreading the situation.
“Shall we go for a walk in the botanical garden?” he asked with a smile.
“I would love that,” she said.
He grasped her hand, and together they stood, heading out of the mosque and into the sunshine, where the world somehow looked very different to her than it ever had before.
But maybe it wasn’t the world that was different; maybe it was her heart, which had been cracked open in a new and unexpected way, leaving room for the light to pour in.