Inside: a pressed rose, withered jasmine blossoms, and two ticket stubs from the Cairo opera house-relics from a romantic summer studying in Egypt. A third Quran was parrot green, with pink flowers on its cover.
Bound in blue leatherette, stamped in gilt with calligraphic script, it was one of millions of copies distributed across the globe in the 1990s as part of an official Saudi campaign. In my twenties, when I was working at an Islamic think tank in Oxford, I received a Quran for free, courtesy of the Saudi Arabian government. It sat on my bookshelf, its pages cheap and grainy, its spine barely cracked.
As an undergraduate, I bought a $5.99 paperback for a survey course on Islam. Over the years, I’d also acquired several more Qurans. By then, not only had I inherited my father’s immersive interest in the Islamic world, but my childhood fascination had been seasoned by studying and reporting on Muslim societies.
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