Ali glides downward into the cool, dark underground on a silent steel escalator. The descent makes him ponder the mission he is on. Perhaps he will descend to hell for this, but he has decided to take the risk.

Four months ago, Ali found a folded piece of paper on his balcony. Opening it, he read “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” One page, two sides, photocopied from some book.

The paper had been secretly placed by AFM missionary, John Smith. The ancient words had nearly made Ali crazy, as they again and again spoke in his head. After months of searching, he had come to the conclusion that this was the first few pages of the ancient book of the Jews.
Ali, a 31-year-old Turk, had searched all of the bookstores in his area of the city and not found the object of his pursuit. So today, Ali had taken a minibus, then a larger bus and now an underground train into the heart of the city, where, if a man wants cocaine or prostitutes or any other vile, illegal thing rejected by Turkish society, he can find it. “Surely,” Ali thought, “I can find a book of the Jews or Christians there.”

Ali now ascends out of the subway station and takes a moment to get his bearings. Buses rush past, taxis honk, advertisements beckon. A woman in a scanty bikini on a billboard the height of a building seems to stare directly at him. His eyes drop, and he looks at a pedestrian street packed with moving people and lined with dozens of restaurants and cafés. Yes, this is where he must go. Ali walks past gourmet pastry shops, jewelry shops, bars and discos. He peers into the dark entrances of tattoo parlors. People pass looking like no other Turks he has ever seen. Men with long hair, ears pierced and wearing t-shirts with Satanic symbols on them.

Ali moves quickly, swimming through a sea of people, a blur of luxury merchandise on every side. He looks above the cafés and sees the offices of lawyers, doctors, yoga teachers, psychics and neuro-linguistic programmers. He sees a whorish-looking woman standing on a balcony smoking a cigarette. Just below that balcony, Ali enters a large bookstore.

A thousand books beckon for his attention, their cover artwork designed to draw the eyes. Images of dark angels, fanged wolves and bloody knives greet him at the door. Ali walks slowly past Turkish translations of Stephen King, Dan Brown and Danielle Steel. The store has hundreds of books on every detail of Ottoman history and the Turkish war of independence. Ali moves past the school books, Freud, Marx, Ian Rand; past Muslim mystics and Sufi poets, each decorated with swirling gold font. A whole bookcase of Qurans and books of prayer.

Where is the book he wants? Ali is afraid to ask a store clerk—to reveal his secret to a stranger. So he keeps looking, wandering through books on computers, gardening, foreign language, New Age and Buddhism. His eyes catch the words Kitabi Mukkades (Sacred Book). He quickly scans the covers of the other books on the same shelf. They are all about Masons and global conspiracies.
Ali focuses back on the simple black binding of the Sacred Book. As he reaches for it, electric fear jolts through him. He stops in nervous alarm. He looks around to see if anyone is watching him, then he puts his hand on the book again. He opens the front cover and reads the table of contents. Tevrat, Zebur, Incil. (The Torah, Psalms, and Gospels). A flood of excitement sweeps over Ali. Fear, anxiety, wonder, curiosity, hope and destiny all swirl together. On that scrap of paper he found on his balcony, he had read about a forbidden fruit that would make him wise. Now he held in his hand what had been forbidden him for so long. Should he buy this book?

To see what brought Ali to this point, please read the next page.

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