April 23rd, 2016

My wife and I recently began frequenting an Albanian restaurant where we met a Turkish waitress named Ecgut. Laurie (my wife) later pointed out that almost nothing about her seemed Muslim, from the way she dressed to the way she talked to men to the way she served and drank alcohol. Over the first few times I spoke with Ecgut we discussed spiritual things a fair amount. She, like many college age people, has become less and less religious as she has gotten older, to the extent that she now tends to refer to herself as non-religious. One night I asked her: “If you could ask God a question what would it be?”

She borrowed an answer she heard someone else give me: “I would ask Him, what is the point of this life?”

Then I asked her, “How valuable would the answer be to you? Would you be willing to do whatever you needed to do to find out?”

She said, “Yes, I think so.” Then we started discussing how she might go about finding the answer. We discussed the possibility of reading the Bible but she explained to me that it was always her mom’s hope for her to read the whole Koran, so she would feel guilty reading the Bible before the Koran. I proposed maybe reading them at the same time. She thought, and then replied, “I would like to but I feel like I have so little time for things like this.” I reminded her of how she just said that she would do whatever it takes to find the answer to her question. At this she started to laugh, and I did, too.

Then we started talking about God’s love. I used my wife and I as an illustration. I said, “If I fully love my wife, I should be willing to die for her; in the same way, Christians believe God came to earth to die for us to show us how much he loves us.”  

Then Ecgut said, “But I don’t believe you should die for your loved ones for no reason. “ 

I said, “But there was a reason.”

She replied, “Why did Jesus need to die?”  

I said, “Well that’s a big topic, how about we talk about that next time…”

By Shahob Salem in NYC