"You mean renounce Islam?" A chill went through her. What a disaster for all of them that could have been. She could well understand how the thought of that might frighten him.
"Yes. I had to put that possibility out of my mind. So I hated Simon de Gobignon without knowing why. Because I did not understand my hatred, I hated him all the more."
If only we could stop talking about Simon.
But the man she loved was telling her something very important about himself. She had to set her own discomfort aside. She had to listen.
"And now you do not hate him?" She turned over in the bed. She wanted to see his face.
There was a peacefulness in his eyes such as she had never seen before. Always, they had seemed to burn, white-hot. Now they were clear and fathomless, like the sky.
"I do not hate him. I realized, as I rode along with Lorenzo, that if your new faith is strong and your new people are good, you can remember without danger what you loved of the old. I will always love the sound of the Christian priests chanting in the cool dark of a church. I will always feel especially at home in a Christian castle. But the voice I hear in the depths of my soul today is the true voice of God, and that, Simon de Gobignon will never hear. Unless God's all-powerful hand reaches out for him as it did for me."
Awed, Sophia said, "I have never heard anyone speak as you do. With so much wisdom. Except, once or twice, a priest."
He closed his eyes. "I speak as I am inspired to speak. In Islam there are no priests that stand between God and man. There are the more learned and the less learned, but each man and each woman can hear God."
Daoud had bared his soul to her. She wanted to do the same. Love was not merely the coupling of naked bodies, but the union of naked minds. How could she ever be happy with him while lying to him?