People travel from across the world to convert to Islam at Al-Azhar University (pictured, below right), the centre of Islamic scholarship in Egypt. The airy public office where my conversion was to take place was filled with an assortment of international visitors. It reminded me of the small claims court in California where I had once sued my landlord.
I’d come to Cairo the previous summer, in 2005, to work as a freelance journalist, and had fallen in love with a beautiful Egyptian doctor named Roda. I’d discovered that dating a Muslim Arab woman in Cairo is by no means straightforward. But we had persevered, and after a few months had decided to get married. The Koran, however, forbids marriage between Muslim women and non-Muslim men. If Roda and I were going to tie the knot, I had to convert first.
Each new arrival at the public office waited patiently for their turn to see the sheikh, who sat in the centre of the room on a Louis Farouk sofa upholstered in garish green with gold braid. He looked imperious in his spotless red fez wrapped around with a white cloth. His pebble glasses suggested long hours spent poring over arcane religious texts in dusty libraries. Sunshine streamed through the ornate windows and enveloped the sofa, the sheikh and the aspiring convert sitting beside him.
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