In a Perfect World

by Trish Doller

  “So we’re going to hear this five times a day, huh?” Dad slides his arm around Mom’s waist.

  She nods. “The morning call happens before sunrise.”

  “We probably should have considered that when we rented a place a block from a mosque.”

  “Cairo is the city of a thousand minarets,” Mom says. “There are mosques everywhere. This is just something we’re going to have to get used to.”

  “Those words”—he kisses her, then grins—“are going to come back to haunt you at four in the morning.”

  “Hello!” A deep male voice calls out from the open doorway and a tall man with a thick black beard enters the apartment, half hidden by the potted palm he carries. “I am Mohammed Taleb, the rental agent. Welcome to Cairo.”

  “Thank you.” Mom is polite, but her words are clipped, her tone frosty. And her eyebrows have resumed the position. This is Dr. Rebecca Kelly when she is trying not to Hulk out on someone. “Where is the furniture?”

  “The furniture?” Mr. Taleb blinks and swings his head in my dad’s direction, but Dad just lifts his shoulders like can’t help you, dude.

  Mom takes a file folder from her tote bag and holds up a screen capture from the real estate website that touts the apartment as furnished. “I paid the deposit for a furnished apartment.”

  The rental agent places the palm on the floor. “Well, you see—”

  “We have just spent two days traveling from the United States. We are very tired and we have no beds. I do not want excuses, Mr. Taleb. I want solutions.”

  His mouth snaps shut and again he looks to my dad for support. Mom pulls the rental agreement from the folder and clicks her pen. “If I could just get your signature here, we will adjust the price to reflect the apartment’s unfurnished status.”

  “No, no,” Mr. Taleb protests. “I have a cousin who will bring you furniture tomorrow.”

  “Will it be the furniture in the photos?”

  “No, but—”

  “Then we will provide our own.” She hands him the pen. He scowls as he scrawls his name at the bottom of the contract. “Now,” she says. “Which hotel will you be booking us into for the night?”

  CHAPTER 3

  The last place Mom and I expected to end up on our first full day in Cairo is IKEA, but after spending a lumpy-bed night in a run-down hotel that Mr. Taleb claimed was world-class—with cars honking outside our window all night long—my mother was determined not to spend a second night. There is a kind of comfort that comes with walking the familiar pathways through the IKEA displays, smelling the sawdust-meets-cinnamon-roll scent as we scoop up things we need. Especially when everything outside the store feels so alien.

  Mom arranges to have the larger furniture delivered, but we overfill Mr. Elhadad’s sedan with bedding, bathroom supplies, and all things kitchen for the new apartment.

  “My son has the afternoon off from his job,” he says, gently pushing the trunk closed. What didn’t fit in the trunk is piled in the backseat, leaving just enough room for me. “I will send him to help assemble your furniture.”

  “We can’t ask your son to give up his free time for us,” Mom says.

  “He is skilled with his hands,” Mr. Elhadad says. “And he will be grateful for the money.”

  That last part takes up the extra space in the car, and I feel squished between my privilege and a giant blue IKEA bag filled with whisks and bath mats and lightbulbs. Guilty for being able to pay someone to drive us around, to assemble furniture we could assemble ourselves.

  My parents have done well for themselves, but we aren’t extravagant people. Grandpa Jim built washing machines in a factory until he retired. He and Grandma Rose were survivors of the Great Depression who raised my mom and her siblings to live modestly. Dad’s father worked in a body shop in the Bronx until the day he died. My old yellow Honda was Mom’s first car out of college and my dad spends more time under the hood than I spend behind the wheel. Our house in Ohio is not a mansion by any stretch of the imagination, but living under budget is how we can afford to be in Cairo now, packed into a car with enough home goods to fill . . . well, a home. Except none of that can erase the divide between us and our driver, or my feeling embarrassed by it.

  Mr. Elhadad doesn’t seem bothered as he hurtles through traffic, humming along with the jangling Arabic music playing on his car radio. He chats cheerfully with Masoud as the two men tote the bags up to the apartment. Both men are tipped and barely away when my dad comes home with a dozen plastic grocery bags dangling from his fists.

  “The closest supermarket is about a three-minute walk from here,” Dad says. “It’s tiny by American standards, but they have a lot of the basics, just different brands and Arabic labels. I stocked up on canned goods, but maybe Caroline and I can track down a fresh produce market and a butcher before I have to leave.”

  Exploring the city with him would be better than doing so by myself. “I wish you could stay longer.”

  He kisses the top of my head. “Me too, kid.”

  We stock the kitchen and unpack the bags from IKEA, and soon our apartment isn’t quite so empty. While we wait for the delivery truck, I sit on the floor in my bedroom with the balcony doors open. The noise from the traffic on the street below floats up and the breeze that comes in off the Nile does little more than push the heat around. Back home, I could jump in my car, pick up Hannah, and go cool off in the lake. Instead it’s me vs. sweat (sweat is winning) and there’s nowhere I can escape. I power on my laptop for the first time since we left Ohio. Waiting in my in-box is an e-mail from Hannah.

  C—

  I started my first day at Cedar Point and it was not nearly as much fun as I expected, especially without you. It rained, some of the tourists were total jerks, and the guy who works with me at the admissions gate is from Romania. His English is pretty terrible, so explaining the simplest things takes forever. I miss you, so write soon and tell me all about your exciting new life in Egypt.

  Love you to the moon,

  —H

  P.S. Owen is miserable.

  Until two weeks ago, Owen was my boyfriend, but as soon as Dad and I returned from Kelleys Island, I went straight to Owen’s house. He smiled when he opened the front door and I felt crushed with sadness. I would miss the way his face brightened whenever he saw me and I wanted to kiss him right there on his back steps. Instead I said, “We need to talk.”

  His smile faded—those words are the universal signal that whatever comes next is not going to be good—and I regretted not kissing him first.

  I’d spent the rest of the ferry ride thinking about Egypt. About how so many Americans never have the chance to leave their home state, let alone get to live in another country. About how my mom had worked for this. She deserved to go. But as Owen and I walked hand in hand to the park, I wanted to stay in Sandusky with him, with my friends, with everything that was familiar and safe. I told him about the move, about OneVision, and he stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, his smile renewed. “That is so awesome. Your mom has wanted that for a long time.”

  On our very first date, Owen showed up on our front porch and rang the doorbell, and Dad told him that if he was going to keep coming around our house, he needed to start using the back door. Dad also asked Owen to call him Casey, but that never happened. Owen slid so effortlessly, so thoroughly, into my life that it was no surprise he remembered that OneVision was my mom’s dream.

  “I think we should break up.”

  He laughed at first, then stopped when he saw the tears in my eyes. “Why?”

  “I’m going to be gone for a year,” I said. “Do you really want to spend the whole time video chatting with a girl seven times zones away when you could be dating someone else?”

  “I don’t want to date anyone else.”

  “It’s easy to say that now, but—”

  “Caroline, I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  “Then why are we talking about this?�
� He pulled his hand up inside his long-sleeved T-shirt and offered the floppy cuff to dry my eyes. That was the sweetness of Owen. “A year isn’t all that long.”

  “What about after that, when we graduate and go to different colleges?”

  I’m good enough at soccer that I might be able to play for a college team, but Owen could be a professional someday. He’s already had college coaches looking at him, so he’ll probably end up at a powerhouse school like Duke or Notre Dame, places I couldn’t (and probably wouldn’t) follow.

  “I figured we’d worry about that when it happened,” he said.

  “It’s happening now. We have to think about it.”

  We sat on the swings in the park, holding hands until the streetlights came on and the crickets started chirping. We didn’t talk for a really long time, neither of us wanting to spoil the moment and neither of us really wanting to break up.

  “It shouldn’t make sense,” Owen said finally. “But it does and it sucks.”

  I walked my swing up close to his and kissed him. Instead of saying good-bye, we went to his house and watched a superhero movie we’d already seen. Owen put his arm around me the way he always did and I shifted against his shoulder the way I always did. We kissed again when we said good night on his front porch, until my lips were chapped and my dad texted to remind me that my curfew was closing in.

  “I don’t think I can handle staying in touch with you,” was the last thing Owen said to me. “No texts. No phone calls. No e-mails. It has to be a clean break.”

  But as I walked home, I wasn’t sure such a thing really existed. Not after a lifetime of being friends and three years of dating. Feelings are knots; they have to be untangled.

  Hannah’s e-mail swirls up a pang of homesickness. For her. For Owen. For everything. But before the prickling behind my eyes can turn into actual tears, a heavy knock falls on the front door and the echo travels through the apartment to my room. The furniture has arrived.

  • • •

  We are knee-deep in cardboard, and the delivery men are emptying the last of the truck into the living room when a dark-haired guy somewhere around my age knocks on the open door frame. He scans the mess, probably wondering what he’s gotten himself into, as Dad navigates the maze of boxes to greet him. “Are you here to help?”

  The guy gives an almost imperceptible nod, his voice low and his mouth set in a serious line as he says, “Yes.”

  “Great. Come on in,” Dad says. “What’s your name, kid?”

  “Adam Elhadad.”

  Even though his pronunciation carries an accent, his name is the same as two guys I know back home and it throws me. I guess I expected something more unusual than Adam. More Egyptian? More Arabic? Either way, Adam Elhadad stands a couple inches taller than Dad with tousled black curls and eyes a shade of light brown I’ve never seen before. “Beautiful” seems like the wrong word but it’s the only word that fits, and as soon as the thought enters my head, guilt washes through me because P.S. Owen is miserable.

  “I’m Casey Kelly.” Dad shakes Adam’s hand, then gestures toward Mom and me. “My wife, Rebecca, and our daughter, Caroline.”

  Adam nods and cracks the barest hint of a smile as he says hello to my mother, but when he turns toward me, his gaze drops and he mumbles a hello to the floor, making me wonder if I have food stuck in my teeth or have broken some unknown Egyptian rule of etiquette.

  “The beds are most important.” Dad leads him away, into the master bedroom. “If we get those assembled tonight, we’ll call it a win.”

  Adam Elhadad is no one to me, but I can’t help feeling slighted. I mean, not staring is an improvement over the men at the airport, but it seems like there should be some sort of middle ground. Maybe looking at me as if I exist.

  “Don’t take it personally,” Mom says, reading my mind. “He was lowering his gaze out of respect for you.”

  “Looking at you wasn’t disrespectful?”

  She laughs a little. “I’m an old lady to him, Caroline, someone’s mother. Hardly a temptation.”

  My face flames at the suggestion that a guy like Adam could be tempted by a girl like me, but I roll my eyes. Mothers are genetically programmed to think their daughters are the most beautiful creatures on earth. “I’m going to go build something.”

  The little man on the IKEA assembly instructions is confusing me when Adam enters my room and tears into the box containing the pieces of my bed. He doesn’t acknowledge my presence, doesn’t speak to me as he works, and the silence in the room grows so thick that I open the balcony doors to let some of it out. Cueing up a playlist of my favorite songs, I try to ignore him, but Adam has a way of tucking this one stray curl behind his ear that makes it virtually impossible. In my superlimited time in Egypt, I’ve noticed that the most popular hairstyle among guys my age seems to be buzzed short on the sides and longer on top, sometimes slicked with gel, but Adam’s curls spring out from his head in every direction and I am half tempted to offer him an elastic band to hold them back.

  He glances up just then, catching me watching him. Heat rushes to my cheeks as I look away, turning my attention back to the directions, forcing myself to figure them out. The bookcase is small enough to double as a nightstand, so it doesn’t take long before I’ve finished.

  Adam is attaching the footboard of the bed to one of the side supports as I slide the assembled bookcase against the wall.

  “Do you, um—do you need some help?” I ask the back of his head.

  “No, thank you.” He doesn’t look up and his tone is neither hostile nor cold. It’s just . . . neutral.

  “Okay. Whatever.” Leaving the music to play (and not caring if he doesn’t like it), I go out into the living room to help Mom attach the legs to the couch.

  “With me at the clinic every day, you’re going to be on your own a lot this summer,” she says. “The school will have some events where you can meet other American kids, but I was also thinking maybe you could explore the bazaars and shops to find things that will make this place feel less like an IKEA showroom. Make it a challenge. Get to know the city, learn to haggle, and pick up a little bit of the language along the way.”

  I don’t want to admit that I’m afraid to venture out into this loud, crazy city alone. Or that hanging out with Mr. Elhadad is not exactly my idea of a good time, but I nod anyway. “Sure.”

  By the time the evening call to prayer begins, the couch is finished, along with both beds, the dining room table, and three of the four dining chairs. Even though he’s not very talkative, Adam Elhadad is very good with his hands. In a building furniture kind of way, I mean.

  “Join us for dinner?” Dad asks Adam, who politely declines as Dad digs his wallet out of his back pocket. He thumbs through the bills and hands over several. “Thank you for your help.”

  “I can come again tomorrow in the evening, if you need me.”

  “That would be appreciated.”

  Mom thanks Adam in Arabic and he offers her a fleeting smile as he responds in kind. “Afwan.”

  “You know what would be great right now?” Dad says after Adam has gone. “Pizza. It’s about a five-minute walk to the Pizza Hut.”

  “Casey, you gave that boy too much money,” Mom says.

  He shrugs. “I gave him next to nothing.”

  “We have to be careful here,” she says. “If we give the Elhadads more money than they are used to having, they will get accustomed to having it. What happens when we leave and they have to go back to what they were earning before?”

  “That’s a harsh way to look at it, Beck.”

  “I’m being realistic.”

  “And I’m being altruistic.”

  Mom can’t stop herself from smiling. “This is exactly why I fell in love with you, but we’re going to burn through our savings if we aren’t careful.”

  “We make more money than we spend,” Dad says. “If we can’t use it to make other people’s lives better, what’s the point of having i
t?”

  She shakes her head, still smiling. “I hate it when you’re right.”

  “You know what else I’m right about?” He rubs his hands together. “Pizza.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Living aboard a tugboat has made my dad impervious to thunderstorms. He can sleep through early morning lawn mowings and college football games on TV, so he is unaffected by the predawn call to prayer. Instead of trying to fight it, Mom and I sit on the new couch with the balcony doors open and just listen. In the dark, the call is haunting and I worry that I’ve absorbed some of Grandma Irene’s fears.

  When Dad told her we were moving to Egypt, she tried to get him to change his mind. She clipped out newspaper articles about suicide bombers. Brought over library books written by ministers and political talking heads about the dangers of Islam. Suggested I stay behind with her so I wouldn’t be kidnapped. At the time it seemed like the exaggerations of a little old racist lady, but I would feel better if I understood the song coming from the minaret. Hopefully the difference between Grandma Irene and me is that I want to understand.

  “It’s not much different from church bells,” Mom says, and I think about how all the churches in downtown Sandusky ring noon bells, slightly staggered and playing different melodies, but not unlike the calls to prayer. “In Arabic, the word for the call is adhan and the man who performs it is the muezzin. Each muezzin has his own style, which is why some calls are longer than others, but all of them are proclaiming that there is only one God, who is great, that Muhammad is the messenger of God, and—in this case—that prayer is better than sleep.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Basically. For Muslims the actual prayer comes next, but the adhan is simply a reminder that it’s time to pray.”