Dennis Covington - Revelation: A Search for Faith in a Violent Religious World

O n a star-filled night in March of 2014, I was driving west from Lubbock, Texas, to Prescott, Arizona, where I hoped to find the whereabouts of Carl and Marsha Mueller, the parents of Kayla Mueller, a twenty-five-year-old humanitarian aid worker who had been kidnapped by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham seven months before.

The public did not yet know that an American woman was among the Western hostages held by ISIS, the most brutal terrorist organization in the world. But along the Turkish-Syrian border, I had met, by chance, a man who claimed to be Kaylas husband. He was Syrian. Hed freely given me the information that his American wife was in an ISIS prison. He said theyd been kidnapped together in Aleppo, Syria, in August, but that hed been able to escape their captors. It was extremely important that what hed told me be kept secret, he added.

When I had dinner with the Syrian a few months later, he said hed been imprisoned again, but had escaped or been released. The circumstances were unclear to me. He also said he was in contact with Kaylas parents in Arizona. I asked if they might be willing to talk to me. I told him I was writing a book about faith, and about the strange confluence of faith and violenceor at least religion and violencearound the world. I wanted to ask the Muellers how they were managing to hold up under what seemed to me to be the worst possible circumstances for any parent of any child.

When he told me theyd be willing to talk, I left the Turkish-Syrian border, flew to Texas, rented a car, and headed to Arizona. From what Id found on the Internet, the Muellers address and phone number were out of date. I avoided calling Kaylas husband to get the current contact information, and I ignored a message from him asking for clarification about my intentions. I didnt trust him. I couldnt understand how he had managed to escape ISIS twice while Kayla had remained imprisoned. And I didnt believe that he was her husband. I wanted to talk to Kaylas parents directly, not through him anymore.

He wasnt the father of a daughter. I was the father of two. They were close to Kaylas age, twenty-six and twenty-eight, and they were the most precious people on earth to me. I thought that Kaylas parents would understand that we had a connection through our love for our daughters, and that they might open up to me, even if they feared I would violate their trust. That was my hope, anyway.

In the car with me that night was a photocopied article Id retrieved from the Internet about Kaylas visit back home during the spring before her kidnapping. Shed given a talk to her fathers Kiwanis Club about her work with refugees along the Turkish-Syrian border. The Kiwanis Club is an international service organization dedicated to the children of the world. Kayla was standing in front of the Kiwanis logo, and to her right, in the background, was an unfurled American flag.

Looking at Kaylas radiant and self-assured smile in the photo, I knew how proud her parents must have been of her. I could also imagine how concerned they must have been for her safety when she returned to the Middle East.

Could imagine could imagine. What inadequate words these were, given what the Muellers must have been going through that night as I wound my way toward them.

The stretch of interstate from Santa Rosa to Clines Corners, New Mexico, was sparsely populated, the kind of place I liked. When Id first moved to Texas, Id been bankrupt and living with my younger daughter in an abandoned farmhouse on the edge of a canyon, fifty miles from the university where I taught. It was the flattest place on earth and one of the happiest times of my life.

At night, wed go outside at various hours to note how the universe had revolved slowly around our heads. The Big Dipper turned on its own axis. The Milky Way, that terrifying river of light, stayed intact. But the constellations were always in motion, imperceptible unless one had been rigorous in observation and kept track. Where we lived then, unlike at any place Id lived before, it was possible to do just that.

The only sources of competing light were from a ranch house a mile away in one direction, and another ranch house a mile and a half away in the opposite direction. There were no other artificial lights as far as the horizon. We were living in a nocturnal paradise, or at least it seemed that way to me.