Bird Summons

Leila Aboulela

Also by Leila Aboulela

novels

The Translator

Minaret

Lyrics Alley

The Kindness of Enemies

short story collections

Coloured Lights

Elsewhere, Home

Black Cat

NewYork

Cover design by studiohelen.co.uk

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First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson an imprint of the Orion Publishing Group Ltd

Published simultaneously in Canada

Printed in the United States of America

First Grove Atlantic edition: February 2020

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available for this title.

ISBN 978-0-8021-4915-2

eISBN 978-0-8021-4916-9

Black Cat

an imprint of Grove Atlantic

154 West 14th Street

New York, NY 10011

Distributed by Publishers Group West

groveatlantic.com

Assembly of birds, the Hoopoe spoke, I am the Messenger Bird . . .

A bird who carries Bismillah in its beak is never far from the wellspring of mysteries.

Farid’ud-Din Attar, The Conference of the Birds

It is travel which lifts up the curtain hiding people’s characters.

Al-Ghazali, On Conduct in Travel

Chapter One

She had hired a coach, then when the women started pulling out after the anger over the photo, a minibus, then when the numbers fell still further, a people carrier, then when there was just the three of them, Salma decided to take her own car. She had fought a battle and lost. The next time the Arabic Speaking Muslim Women’s Group held their annual election, she would be voted out and someone else would be in charge. She had misjudged the situation. ‘How was I meant to know that the grave had been defaced!’ This was a lame defence. If her rivals in the group could find a news article and post it to the group chat, Salma hadn’t done her research properly. But even if she had known, it wouldn’t have deterred her. It certainly wasn’t deterring her now. She still wanted to go and offer her respects. She still believed in the purpose of the visit – to honour Lady Evelyn Cobbold, the first British woman to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca, to educate themselves about the history of Islam in Britain, to integrate better by following the example of those who were of this soil and of their faith, those for whom this island was an inherited rather than adopted home.