by Trish Doller
“Oh, come on, Liverpool. Seriously?”
The games are usually on television early in the morning back home—six hours behind England—so Owen sometimes came over to watch with me. When he was home, Dad would join us, and Mom would make peanut-butter-and-banana French toast. The tears that come with the memory take me by surprise and I am wiping them on the sleeve of my shirt when Adam says, “You support Liverpool?”
Looking up, I catch a glimpse of his eyes in the rearview mirror as he waits for my answer. We are sitting in a veritable ocean of cars. Everyone is at a standstill.
“It’s my own special brand of torture,” I say. “But yes.”
A smile wakes up his face, erasing the serious-lipped guy who walked into our apartment that first day. He is transformed. Not as intimidating. Adorable in a way that makes my heart beat a little bit faster. “They are my favorite too. An unpopular choice among my friends, who are all mad for United or City.”
I crinkle my nose at the mention of the Manchester teams, earning a laugh. It is just one tiny, tentative thing, but for the first time since we met, we’ve made an actual connection. “Favorite Liverpool player?”
“Any?” Adam asks. “Or from the current squad?”
“Either.”
“Pepe,” he says, referring to the former goalkeeper. “Yours?”
“Gerrard.”
Adam smiles again. “I was going to say Gerrard.”
“I almost said Pepe.”
He looks at me in the rearview mirror again, this time as if he is actually seeing me, and I realize what I miss most about home is not Owen; it’s hanging out with people my own age. I want to see the pyramids with the people who are related to me, but I want to talk to someone who’s not. “Hey, um—Adam?”
“Yes?”
“Do you think maybe we could do something else? It’s just—I’ve been stuck in the apartment all week and I’m homesick, and today doesn’t feel like the right day to see the pyramids.”
He is quiet for a moment and then he nods. “I know what you need.”
We are caught up in a current of cars committed to making a left turn, but Adam navigates across the lanes, amid the blaring horns of angry drivers. It is not unlike a salmon swimming upstream and I pinch my eyes closed, hoping we don’t share the same fate as the fish, until we are heading straight. He falls back into silence and I’m not certain if it is because he’s concentrating on driving—maybe it takes a lot of effort to be terrifying behind the wheel of a car—or if he’s already said too much.
Finally he double-parks in front of a small restaurant tucked into the lower level of a sand-colored building, leaving the engine running. “Stay in the car. I will be back.”
On my left, the passing traffic comes within inches of the sedan, and on the right, the owner of the car we double-parked next to shakes his fist at me, as if I am the one who boxed him in. Two minutes later Adam comes out of the restaurant with a plastic bag hanging off his fingers. He waves off the man—who is now shouting at him—and climbs back into the driver’s seat. As we motor away, the scent of warm starch, tomatoes, and a note of vinegar fills the car.
“What did you buy?”
“You will soon see.”
We end up back over the bridge on the island where I live. Adam drives past the apartment building and comes to a stop at a riverfront park just down the road. This time, though, he actually pulls into a parking space and kills the engine.
I follow him down the brickwork path into the park, where he selects a bench beneath the shade of a leafy tree with a view of the Nile. We sit on opposite ends of the bench and the bag between us rustles as Adam takes out two plastic tubs—the size of large margarine containers—filled with a mixture of rice, macaroni, spaghetti, lentils, and garlic, topped with a tomato sauce, and sprinkled with chickpeas and fried onions. It’s like someone opened their pantry, dumped all the random leftovers into one pot, and called it dinner.
“Koshary is Egyptian comfort food,” he explains. “I thought maybe it would help you to feel better.”
“That was . . . really sweet. Thank you.”
The koshary is both starchy and crunchy, and the sauce a little bit spicy. None of the flavors and textures should go together but they do, and I take another bite because it is—inexplicably—comforting.
“I cannot imagine moving so far from my home,” Adam says. “Cairo must be a difficult place for you with the noise and the language and—”
“Bad drivers.”
His laugh is low and quiet, the same way he talks. “If I were a bad driver we would have gotten into an accident, but we did not, so clearly you are mistaken.”
“If you weren’t stuck driving me around today, what would you be doing?”
“Making koshary.”
“Really?” I poke my fork around in the plastic tub, looking for spaghetti noodles.
“In reality I clean tables, sweep the floors, and serve koshary to takeaway customers because I am an apprentice,” Adam says. “But sometimes my boss allows me to do the cooking. Don’t tell him, but my own koshary tastes better.”
“That’s a strong claim.”
“Maybe one day I will prove it to you.”
I’m not sure what to say because it seems like he is flirting with me, but Owen was my boyfriend for so long that my own skills are rusty. What if I’m wrong? What if Adam is just being a nice guy? Eventually, after thinking about my answer for far too long, I say, “Maybe.”
As we eat, we watch the other people in the park. A young mother hovers as her toddler tosses pebbles into the river with chubby little fingers. Not far away, a young guy perches on a railing with a girl standing between his knees. His face is close to hers as they talk privately and a pang of melancholy cuts through me.
“Do you, um—do you have a girlfriend?” I ask, watching as the guy lays a gentle hand against the girl’s cheek. He smiles at her as if she is his whole world. As my question hangs in the air, I worry whether it’s an appropriate question to ask a Muslim guy I barely know.
“Relationships before marriage are not something Islam encourages. Some of my friends have girlfriends, but . . .” He trails off, leaving me to wonder what he was going to say. He’s shy? Conservative? A jerk who can’t get a girlfriend? I bite back a smile at the ridiculousness of that last thought. He knew what I needed even when I didn’t. Adam Elhadad is definitely not a jerk.
“So if Muslims are not supposed to have relationships before marriage, how do you find someone to marry? Aside from breaking the rules, I mean.”
“Friends. Family members. Sometimes parents will arrange the marriage.”
I try to imagine my mom and dad picking out a husband for me, and I wonder if they would have picked Owen. “How do you know they’ll choose the right person?”
“Who knows you better than your family?”
“Um . . . me?”
The corner of his mouth lifts. “Sometimes families do not choose well.”
“So why not just date?”
Adam shifts a little on the bench, angling himself in my direction. “Islam says the goal of any relationship should be marriage. Dating has the potential for sinful behavior.”
One of the most embarrassing moments of my life was the time I was grocery shopping with Grandma Irene and she asked me if I was having sex with Owen. When I said no—which was the truth—she said, “Good, because premarital sex is a sin and you will go straight to hell.” At that moment, I’d kind of wished a portal would open and drag me there, because hell could not have been worse than talking about sex with my grandma in the bread aisle at Kroger.
“There are some who believe the two of us sitting here alone is haram,” Adam says.
“And haram is bad, right?”
He nods. “Right.”
Over the course of my lifetime I’ve spent tons of time alone with boys. Luke Corso lets me bum a ride to school whenever my car is out of commission. Whenever I see Fernando Leal—a defend
er on the public high school soccer team—kicking around in the park between our houses, I’ll go join him. And there have been countless times I’ve watched TV alone with any one of Hannah’s brothers. None of those encounters led to anything remotely sinful. “Do you think what we’re doing is haram?”
“I would not be here if I were not your driver, but . . .” He trails off as his shoulders lift and drop.
Maybe he’s not thinking about marrying me, but buying a girl comfort food and taking her to a quiet park in the middle of a chaotic city are not listed in the job description. Also, now I’m pretty sure he’s flirting with me, intentionally or otherwise. I nudge him with my elbow. “Good thing I’m the boss of you then, huh?”
He looks away, his expression inscrutable, leaving me to wonder if I’ve stuck my foot in my mouth. I was only joking, but what if Adam took it seriously? The crinkling of the plastic bag seems unnaturally loud as I pack away the empty koshary tubs. “I mean, I’m not your boss. I’m just—I, um—I should probably go. Since my house is just down the street, I can walk from here.”
My face burns as I take my wallet from my purse, feeling as if I’m adding insult to injury. I hand him some bills. Hopefully enough to pay him back for lunch, as well as a respectful tip. I need to get better at Egyptian money, but more important, I need to figure out how not to crash through cultural boundaries. “Thanks for rearranging your life for me . . . and the koshary was exactly what I needed.”
Adam says my name when I’m just a few steps away from the bench and the little roll of the r as it moves across his tongue makes me want to hear him say it several thousand times. I turn back as he catches up to me. “You’ll never walk alone.”
I crack up laughing at his perfectly timed, deadpan reference to the Liverpool anthem. “I hope your dad feels better soon,” I say when we reach the car. “And thanks again. Today was nice.”
His mouth softens and he offers a shy smile, along with a nod. “Yes. It was.”
CHAPTER 7
I wait a few days before calling Mr. Elhadad again. Partly to give him time to recover, but mostly because having a driver makes me hyperaware of my privilege. My mother’s driver has the legitimate task of driving her to and from Manshiyat Nasr, but Mr. Elhadad is saddled with an American teenager. A tourist, basically. Except when Dad calls from the tugboat and wants to know what fun things I’ve done in his absence, I have no answer.
The next day I ask Mr. Elhadad if he will take me to the souk at Khan el-Khalili, one of Cairo’s most popular bazaars.
“Tomorrow my son will take you to the Friday Market.” His voice is creaky from sickness. “The prices are much better.”
“But—”
“He will come very early so you can arrive at the market before the crowd.”
Mr. Elhadad hangs up before I can offer to wait until he feels better. I don’t want Adam to have to shuffle his schedule for me again. He also leaves me wondering what the Friday Market might be—and how early is very?
With an entire day to fill, I decide to venture out alone again. I start out in the direction of the park but stop when I reach a tiny bakery. The sidewalk is half-obstructed by wooden racks piled with cooling loaves of fresh bread in different shapes and sizes, and the air around me smells yeasty. My stomach growls as I watch a woman buy several flatbreads, trickling coins into the bread seller’s palm.
Their transaction complete, she walks away and I approach the man as I dig into my jeans pocket for some Egyptian coins. I point to a pita-style round and extend my hand to him, not knowing if what I have is enough or which coins are the right ones. The bread seller plucks a small bronze coin from the cluster—one that doesn’t seem adequate for something homemade and fresh—and hands over the bread.
As I continue on my way, it hits me that both the bread seller and I touched dirty coins, then touched the bread. There is no bag. No nutrition label. Everything American in me says don’t eat this, but it would be wasteful to throw it away, even if it was practically free. I tear off a bit of bread and shove it into my mouth. It’s warm and delicious, and by the time I reach the park, both the bread and my worries are long gone.
I find a bench close to the river, where I sit and read my latest e-mail from Hannah.
C—
I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to write back. Your apartment is gorgeous and I am superjealous you have your own balcony, especially because it overlooks the freakin’ Nile! You should buy some plants and maybe a big comfy chair to make your own little indoor/outdoor reading nook.
Anyway, I think the full moon is making people crazy around here. Vlad (the Romanian guy from work) asked me if I would help him improve his English, so we’ve been kind of hanging out. And when we were at a party the other night at Emilee Yeager’s beach, Owen was there with Jessie Roth.
I have to get ready for work, but I’ll write more soon. La revedere! (That’s “good-bye” in Romanian.)
Love you to the moon,
—H
Her letter creates more questions than answers. Particularly, why was Owen at a party with a girl when he claimed he didn’t want to date other girls? I was the one who initiated the breakup and agreed to his terms, but it throws me that he’s moved on so fast. I’ve only been gone two weeks. Except a little zing of pleasure runs down my spine whenever (which is often) I think about the way Adam Elhadad said my name, so maybe I’m being unfair. Jessie Roth is sweet and I want Owen to be happy. Still, if I returned to Ohio today, I’d want my boyfriend back.
The next e-mail is from Grandma Irene. With her, you never know what you’re going to get. Some days she sends me videos of adorable baby goats and other days she sends me warnings about weird stuff, like how the colors in woven friendship bracelets supposedly have secret sexual meanings. According to Grandma’s bracelet code, the blue-and-gold one I’m wearing now—the one Hannah made me in our school colors when we started as freshmen—apparently means I’m down for oral sex and hugging. (Only half correct.)
This e-mail is worse than her urban myths, though, because she asks me if I’ve met any nice American kids yet and urges me to stay away from Muslims. I’m in a country composed almost entirely of Muslims. I can’t avoid them even if I wanted to do that, and it makes my stomach hurt when she says these things. No matter how often Dad tries to explain to her that her views are racist, she excuses herself by saying she is a product of a different era when people weren’t so politically correct. I understand she’s coming from a lack of understanding and a fear fueled by television news, but she is not too old to change. It’s hypocritical to think going to Mass on Sunday excuses her from being racist the rest of the week. Shouldn’t we be the same people all week long?
Finally, there’s an e-mail from Uncle Mike because Grandma looped him into her warning about Muslims. She lives under a delusional cloud that because he was a career Marine, he shares her opinions. Instead he describes how he became close with a family in Tikrit, Iraq, on his last tour of duty. The family had small children who made him miss his own kids just a little bit less. When extremists regained control of the city after the US troops left, Uncle Mike had been beside himself with worry about that family, those kids.
“The vast majority of people you meet will treat you with kindness, especially since you’re not carrying an assault rifle,” he writes in his response to both me and Grandma. “Don’t let fear hold you back.”
Taking Uncle Mike’s advice, I summon my courage and head down to the movie theater. As I walk, I look up Arabic numbers on my phone and practice them in my head: wahid, itnayn, talata, arba’a, hamsa, sitta. Eventually I should learn more, but there are six screens at this multiplex. Maybe knowing the first six numbers will help me order a ticket and find the right theater.
“Wahid,” I say to the man behind the ticket window, then say the name of the film in English. It’s a popular American book-to-movie adaptation, and to my relief, he knows what I’m talking about. I slide a few Egyptian bills through
the opening, and my ticket spits out from the counter.
The lobby inside is plastered with posters of upcoming films, just like back home, and the snack bar sells overpriced candy and enormous tubs of popcorn. The ticket taker speaks to me in Arabic as he gestures to the right and I recognize hamsa. My movie is in theater five.
I get a few curious glances and too-long stares, but no one bothers me as I position myself in a row behind a group of teenage girls. The chairs are outdated but appropriately squishy, and the floor a bit sticky (so not all that different from my usual moviegoing experience, really). It is kind of strange to be going alone to a movie that I was planning to see with Hannah—even more strange to be seeing it in Cairo—but when the lights go down and the previews begin, I get lost. Just like everyone else.
CHAPTER 8
So where exactly are we going today?” I slide into the car as Adam stands beside the open door. I still don’t like sitting in the back, but it seems clear he is not ready to invite me up front. Also, when Mr. Elhadad said early, he wasn’t joking. The sun is still really low in the sky.
“The souk al-Gomaa,” Adam says. “It is not such a tourist place as el-Khalili and you will find better values. I can help you.”
I studied up on the Khan el-Khalili. The heart of the marketplace is in an ancient mausoleum in the oldest part of Cairo, and the bazaar spiderwebs out through streets and alleyways filled with shops, coffeehouses, restaurants, and street vendors of every stripe. The pictures online capture the old stonework buildings, tables outside shops covered with shiny trinkets, doorways surrounded by rugs and tapestries, and colorful barrels of fragrant spices.
Al-Gomaa, as it turns out, is not the same at all. It’s more like a garage sale on the surface of the sun. Very little shade and crowded shoulder to shoulder with locals—mostly men—looking to buy anything and everything. Clothing. Shoes. Appliances. Toys. Car parts. There are vendors who have blankets spread on the ground, covered with broken clocks and watches, selling for piastres—the Egyptian equivalent of pennies. Other vendors have tables filled with obsolete computers, bulky old-model TVs and VCRs, and row after row of cell phones—many of which, Adam says, might be stolen.