“Thank you so much for this opportunity,” Mrs. McDowell said. “I know you can’t tell me what this is about, but I presume it’s something important, and I am so pleased to play a part in it.”

•   •   •

Of course, she violated every admonition within minutes. She looked aggressively into the mosques. After ablutions and prayer from the carefully delineated women’s section, she rose and wandered. She tried closets and stairways. She peeked in men’s rooms. She went into offices, recreation centers, basketball courts, weight rooms—all the appurtenances of the modern American house of worship, as much community center as prayer platform. Her hijab made her bold in this world, as it always did. She looked for burly security types, and, with the first four mosques, found none. She asked other women worshippers about changes in mosque operating procedures, or evidence of heavy traffic or other business at night, when all was supposed to be quiet. She wondered if the calls to prayer were on time. She wondered about strange deliveries. In all places, the women were eager to gossip, and she had no problem. The fact that no one paid her any attention she took as the ultimate indication that nothing was amiss or held in secret in each building. Twice she spoke to an imam and found both to be charming, educated men, eager to make conversation with an American convert and sympathetic to the tragic death in Baghdad of Saleem Abdullah, M.D., at American hands.

She came to the last mosque on the list, another domed building with administrative wings off of it. It was far from majestic, but, at the same time, far from shabby. It was no storefront, with an angry young imam in blue jeans and teenagers hanging about, talking of jihad. It looked sedate, unlit, almost slumbering. But even though the last evening prayer was done and darkness was falling on Dearborn, she entered the dim space and quickly noted three women performing ablutions. She joined them and started to chat them up, and it seemed to be going quite well, when one said to her, “Sister, you have many questions.”

“As a visitor,” she said, “I like to learn of new places. This city is almost a shrine in itself. To walk the streets, to buy from the shops, to hear the calls to prayer, it’s like the trip to the homeland I’ll never make.”

“Many of the men here are suspicious. My suggestion is, enjoy the closeness of Allah but not the closeness of men. It seems Imam el-Tariq has surrounded himself with some tough ones. I tell you this only for your own good. I should not even be seen talking to you. But God be with you, sister.”

With that, Janet was abandoned.