It has been a long time since I have been so utterly fascinated with a book! I just finished reading The White Mosque by Sofia Samatar.
I was so engaged by this book because of the fantastical but true story at its heart about a group of hundreds of Russian Mennonites who in the 1880s left their Molotshna colony in Ukraine and travelled to Uzbekistan.
They were led by a man named Claas Epp who had convinced them that Christ would return in 1889 and they needed to be in Uzbekistan to meet him. After many trials and tribulations, which Sofia Samatar describes in graphic detail, Epp and his followers established a village in a place called Ak Metchet- the White Mosque and lived there for some 50 years before they were all arrested by the Bolsheviks and sent into exile.

I was moved by this book because of the way it describes things near and dear to me from my Mennonite heritage. Take for example Sofia Samatar’s description of Mennonite hymn singing.
“The beautiful harmony of Mennonite singing, taken in like breath in childhood so that even young children show a wonderful facility and ease with music…….“
“Music that most transportable of the arts accompanied the early persecuted Anabaptists, it murmured in their nights as they fled, it carried their stories from place to place, it sheltered their history, it bore them like an ark.”
My curiosity was aroused by this book because it introduced me to so many intriguing real-life characters that I want to learn even more about…….
– the Mennonite photographer Wilhelm Penner who helped birth the art of photography in Uzbekistan
– Irene Worth a famous star of stage and screen, who was a descendant of one of the Mennonite families that trekked to Uzbekistan
–Ella Maillart a Swiss photographer, travel adventurer and Olympic athlete who found her way to Ak Metchet in the 1930s and took photos of the Mennonite settlement there
-Diary keeper Elizabeth Unruh who was just a teenager at the time of the Claas Epp Trek but who writes about it in evocative powerful language
I was intrigued by this book because besides being a history book it is also a travel diary and personal memoir.
Sofia Samatar is the daughter of Lydia Glick, a Swiss Mennonite from South Dakota whose masters thesis on Beowulf left a life- long impression on her daughter, and Said Sheikh Samatari a prominent Somali writer and scholar, and a professor at Rutgers University who worked for the American news show Nightline with Ted Koppel.
In the book, you learn about what it is like for Sofia to be part of a family with parents from such different places and backgrounds and religious heritages. How do you find a place to fit in? Sofia compares growing up amidst this diversity to being in ‘an electrical storm.’
Sofia is a fascinating person. She is a professor of Arabic and African literature at James Madison University and the writer of four award-winning fantasy novels. She and her husband Keith Miller, who grew up in Kenya, lived in South Sudan for three years and in Egypt for nine. They are the parents of two children and I laughed out loud when Sofia illustrates their style of parenting with an image of them running after the school bus with their kids’ forgotten lunches.
The White Mosque is also a travel diary because Sofia describes in her beautiful and lyrical way a tour she went on to Uzbekistan in 2016. She was with a group of people some of whom were descendants of the Claas Epp pilgrims, to find the places important to their almost unbelievable trek across harsh and unforgiving terrain and the unique settlement they finally established at Ak-Metchet.
Sofia’s book also made me look at things from my religious heritage in a new way.
After reading her reflections on the Mennonite devotion to the Martyrs Mirror, I wondered why the people of my religious heritage are so enamoured with stories of suffering.
Her reflections on North American Mennonite service workers made it clear that their assignments in other countries perpetuate the false notion of people ‘saving’ those assumed to be less fortunate when really what service work does is provide rich opportunities for personal and professional growth for those who sign up for it.
Her story about Johann Drake who tried to swallow a Bible whole, made me think about why so many of us were taught to swallow the stories of the Bible whole without asking hundreds of questions about their origin and purpose or realizing the current Bible was a book of stories cobbled together over time by men with a political agenda.
I could probably write a dozen posts about different aspects of The White Mosque, and maybe I will, but this will have to do for now.
Huge thanks to Erin Unger who reviewed this book on her blog Mennotoba in October and brought it to my attention.
Other posts……….