In a Perfect World

by Trish Doller

  “Remind me why your dad thought this would be a good idea?” I ask as we squeeze past a man banging on a drum to advertise his air conditioners. I have a feeling the shops at Khan el-Khalili don’t sell air conditioners or carburetors.

  “At el-Khalili the prices are for tourists,” Adam says. “But this is for Egyptians. It is not all good-quality merchandise and much of it is secondhand, but this is what many Egyptians can afford. If you look carefully you can find very nice things.”

  I’d have been content with tourist prices and a picture-perfect setting instead of mass chaos and feeling so very conspicuous, but I don’t tell him that. Even when an anonymous hand slides across the back of my jeans and squeezes my butt. My fingers clench in self-defense but I don’t know who to lash out against. I feel defenseless in this bustling sea of strangers.

  Adam stops at a vendor selling furniture and chandeliers. “Maybe this is what you are looking for?”

  Amid dusty old floral couches and antique dressers there’s a tufted chair covered in fading pink velvet with gold-leaf legs. The kind of chair I imagined when Hannah suggested a reading nook.

  “So what do I do when I want to buy something?” I ask Adam. “Because I like that chair.”

  “The thing you must remember is this—never be too eager and be confident,” he says. “If the seller believes you will walk away from the sale, he will offer a better price. I will show you, but first you must decide how much you want to pay for the chair.”

  “I have no idea.” Having never shopped for antiques in the United States, I have zero frame of reference as to how much a chair like that should cost. “No more than thirty dollars?”

  “I will do what I can.”

  I step aside as Adam greets the stallholder and motions toward the chair. I don’t understand a single word as they go back and forth, but they are both smiling, as if they are having a casual conversation instead of battling over a piece of furniture. Finally Adam nods and the two men shake on the deal.

  “You have a chair,” Adam tells me. “For two hundred Egyptian, which is about twenty-five American dollars. He will put a tag on it and we can pick up the chair on our way back to the car.”

  “Thank you.”

  As we wander through the market, I ask him about his family.

  “You have met my father, obviously,” he says. “His dream as a young man was to be a professor of English, but my grandparents were very poor so he could not attend university. Instead he learned English on his own so he could hire himself as a driver to the tourists and expatriates. He likes Americans very much.”

  We pause at a stall selling the same kind of brass hanging lanterns I’d seen in photos of the Khan. There are many styles I like, but this is something to buy on our way out of the market so we don’t have to carry them around all morning.

  “My mother is Manar and she works in a wedding shop, making alterations to dresses,” Adam continues as we walked on. “And my sister, Aya, is fifteen. She is in high school, and, like my father, she dreams of going to university. I think she will be able.”

  “What do you dream?”

  “I will be a chef,” he says, and I love his quiet confidence. “Sweeping the floors in a koshary shop is only the beginning.”

  Almost immediately I realize that if he were to ask me the same question, I would not be able to answer. I have the luxury of taking the time to figure out what I want to do with my life, of being able to afford college. I’ve never had to work to help put food on the table. In fact, working at Cedar Point with Hannah would have been my first job ever.

  And then he asks.

  CHAPTER 9

  What about you, Caroline? What is your dream?”

  I deflect with a laugh, trying to push away the guilt of having a life so easy that even my dream for the future can be deferred. “Breakfast.”

  We eat at an elaborate red-and-green wooden food cart with Arabic words carved into the side panels. Adam orders two of whatever the vendor is offering, and we watch as he ladles a bean mixture—kind of like refried beans, but not quite so pasty—into shallow metal bowls. He serves the bowls with bread that is very much like pita. “This is fūl,” Adam explains, pointing to the beans. The word sounds like “fool” but longer in the middle. “It is made of fava beans with garlic, cumin, and onion. You use the aish—the bread—to scoop like so”—he dredges the pita through the beans—“and eat.”

  I pick up a pita and break off a small portion.

  “So, in Egypt, we use our right hands to eat.”

  “Really? Why didn’t you tell me that when we were eating koshary?”

  “That was not important in that moment,” he says. “But when you are Muslim, you use your right hand for all things honorable, such as eating, shaking hands, and preparing yourself for prayer. It is symbolic of the right hand of Allah.”

  “What happens if you’re left-handed like me? I’m not sure I can eat without spilling food all over myself.”

  “When I was a very small boy, my mother tied my wrist to the chair so I was forced to use my right hand,” he says. “Eventually I learned, but I still write with my left hand.”

  It makes me stupid giddy that we’re both left-handed. “I bet you have an advantage writing Arabic, though.”

  Adam smiles. “Yes, no smudges on the side of my hand. But my father . . . when he was young, the teacher tried to make him use his right hand and then marked him poorly when he made the words badly.”

  “The same thing happened to my grandma Rose at Catholic school, and after her first bad grade, she refused to try again.” I shift the pita to my right hand. “Okay, I’m going in.”

  “Because you are not Muslim, you can eat with any hand you like, but I’m telling you this in case you are ever in the company of Muslims. It is proper etiquette.”

  “I don’t mind. I’ll try it.”

  After seventeen years of eating with my left hand, I feel like a toddler and the bean mixture drips down my wrist as I bring it to my mouth. The texture reminds me of hummus but is warm and almost nutty in flavor. Garlicky.

  “This is heaven.” My mouth is full and I don’t even care about manners. “I like it even better than koshary.”

  “Fūl is a common breakfast food,” Adam says. “My mother serves it with a fried or boiled egg.”

  “See, in the United States, we really don’t eat beans for breakfast,” I tell him. “We eat eggs and meat and lots of sweetened things like cereal, oatmeal, and pancakes. But I would totally eat this.”

  “I do not like to eat this very often because it is filling and makes me sleepy.”

  I tell him about my mom’s peanut-butter-and-banana French toast. “Two or three slices and a nap is in my immediate future.”

  “I have never eaten French toast.”

  I smile. “Maybe I’ll have to make it for you.”

  He ducks his head, focusing on his food, but not before I catch a hint of a grin and a barely audible “Maybe.”

  “So, yesterday, I bought aish by myself,” I tell him. “And then I went to the movies alone.”

  Adam’s eyebrows hitch up. “Is this so?”

  “I’ve never really done that before, not even back home,” I say. “But I kind of enjoyed being alone. Is that weird?”

  “My friends, at the movies, are always talking so much,” he says. “Sometimes I go alone, so I do not think it is weird.”

  “Maybe—” I stop myself from asking if he might want to see a movie with me sometime; it feels like a step too far. Adam is here as a stand-in for his dad.

  “What were you going to say?” he asks.

  “Nothing important.”

  Adam returns the plates to the cart, then leads me to a stall where a young man pushes long stalks of sugarcane into a machine and extracts the juice. Adam orders two, and we watch as the juice funnels into a pitcher, which the vendor pours into plastic mugs. The liquid is pale green and a little frothy on top, and as Adam hands me a mug, I am no
t sure I want to try it.

  “It is refreshing on a hot day,” he says.

  “So basically every day?”

  He laughs. “In the summer, yes, but you would be surprised to know that Egypt can be cold in the winter.”

  I take a tiny sip of the juice and the first flavor to touch my tongue reminds me of the way grass smells when it’s freshly cut, followed by a sweetness that is neither syrupy nor heavy. “This tastes like . . . well, if green had a flavor, it would taste like this.”

  “I have never thought about colors having flavors.” Adam considers. “But I think you are correct. Green.”

  Like at the fūl cart, we have to give back the cups, so we drink the juice quickly.

  “There is something else I think you might like to see.” He leads me to a row of vendors selling nothing but animals. There are cages filled with all kinds of different birds—cockatoos, lovebirds, finches, cockatiels, parrots, budgies, chickens, geese, pigeons—but there are also dogs, goats, snakes, donkeys, and goldfish. I pause at a cage of lovebirds, watching a pair groom each other. I love their sweet red faces and I think about buying one, but I’m not sure how my parents would feel about that. I’ve never had a pet.

  The vendor says something to us in Arabic.

  “He asks if you wish to buy a bird,” Adam translates.

  “Maybe, but not today.”

  We move off through the market and he scores good deals for me on a couple of tapestries, a pair of scarves, some houseplants, and a junky-but-ornate old mirror that will look great with a coat of paint. We go back for three of the lanterns and return to the furniture stall to collect the chair. Arms loaded, we head to the car.

  “You did very well today,” Adam says as he ties the trunk lid down around the chair, which doesn’t quite fit all the way.

  “No, you did very well.”

  “I am sure my father would be happy to teach you a few bargaining phrases.”

  I feel a little deflated by the suggestion. Not because I don’t want to learn to haggle for myself but because hanging out with Adam has been fun. Spending time with his dad, while maybe more appropriate, won’t be the same.

  As we drive back to Manial, I share with Adam the way his father frowned when Dad paid full price for the fruits and vegetables in Manshiyat Nasr.

  “I’m certain he was disappointed,” Adam says. “He loves to haggle and lives to win, but I am sure the woman was happy to receive your father’s kindness. He seems to have a big heart.”

  Masoud lends a hand as we carry my new treasures up to the apartment, his eyes flitting suspiciously back and forth between Adam and me, as if he thinks he is the only thing keeping us from making out on the elevator floor. Warmth rises to my cheeks at the thought of making out with Adam anywhere.

  “Thanks again for rescheduling your life for me, but I think I’ll wait for your dad to get better before I call again,” I say after everything is inside and Masoud is finally gone. “I mean, you’ve got a kitchen to conquer and I definitely don’t want to stand in the way of a dream.”

  Adam’s face softens into a smile that burns itself into my brain, an image that resurfaces as I hang the largest tapestry on the wall behind the couch and as I position my new chair beside my balcony door.

  • • •

  “This is such a great start,” Mom says when she comes home and sees the lanterns hanging in a cluster in the corner of the living room and the plants perched on the sunny end table.

  I tell her about al-Gomaa, about trying fūl and drinking cane juice. What I don’t tell her is that I’m kind of disappointed that I won’t get to hang out with Adam Elhadad again.

  CHAPTER 10

  Wake up!” Mom sings as she flickers my bedroom lights to wake me up. The sun has barely cracked the horizon. “Mr. Elhadad will be here soon. Today’s the day we’re going to the pyramids!”

  I wonder if Adam might come in his father’s place again, but not long after I take a quick shower and eat an even quicker breakfast, Mr. Elhadad arrives. He looks a little tired around the eyes but otherwise recovered.

  “It’s nice to see you,” Mom says as he opens the car door for her. “How are you feeling?”

  “Much better, but the more important question is how the good work at your clinic is going.”

  My mother shakes her head. “Every day brings a new challenge. Yesterday, for instance, an elderly man brought his wife in for cataract surgery. It’s a simple procedure that takes about fifteen minutes. When I finished with her, I asked him if he would like the surgery—his eyes were clouded worse than hers—but he refused and there was nothing I could say to get him to change his mind.”

  “This is not uncommon, especially with older and more conservative Muslims,” Mr. Elhadad says. “These men believe that being examined by a woman doctor, allowing her to touch them, is fitnah—giving temptation the opportunity to occur. Only if there is no male doctor available is it permissible to see a woman.”

  Mom stifles a laugh with her hand. “I’m sorry. We’re talking about medical conditions here. There is nothing sexy about cataracts.”

  Mr. Elhadad chuckles. “I understand, but this is what some people believe.”

  “And I understand that,” Mom says. “It’s just frustrating to deal with men who would choose to stay blind when they have a chance to see. I am not leading anyone into temptation, only using the talents God gave me.”

  The driver offers a sympathetic smile in the rearview mirror. “Be assured there are many Muslims whose minds are more open, but you will remain frustrated if you allow yourself to think this way. In Egypt? Better to hire a male doctor and move forward with your work.”

  “Yes,” she says. “I supposed you’re right.”

  “Now,” Mr. Elhadad says as we reach the outskirts of Giza. “I must warn you that there are many touts offering camel and horse rides, souvenirs and such, and they can be very aggressive. Do not accept anything from them or they will demand payment. Nothing is free. And do not believe the only way to reach the pyramids is on the back of an animal. It is a long walk, but you may choose to walk.”

  Despite his warning, we are not prepared when a man comes running up alongside the car—before we’ve even reached the parking lot—knocking on the window and trying to open the door, all the while shouting, “Best camel ride! Best camel ride!” I slide closer to my mom as Mr. Elhadad speeds up, forcing the man to release his hold on the door handle.

  “I have arranged a guide for you.” The driver pulls into the parking lot. “So I am hoping his presence will keep the touts away, but the best method is to avoid eye contact with them and just say no.”

  The pyramids are closer now—more enormous than I could ever have imagined—and the sheer magnitude makes my breath catch in my chest.

  Just then a group of young men on horseback thunders past, glossy black tails streaming out behind the horses as they gallop. A younger boy—maybe twelve or thirteen—runs after them with a riding crop in his hand, cracking it as hard as he can against the last horse’s rump until the horses outpace him and he falls behind, laughing.

  “If you would like to ride,” Mr. Elhadad says. “Look for horses or camels that appear to be healthy and without sores. Your guide can make arrangements.”

  Simply walking to the ticket building is a gauntlet of pressure pitches. On both sides of us are tables filled with trinkets: pyramid-shaped paperweights, gold-plated pharaoh busts, and head scarves so tourists can look like Bedouins. Men offer us bottled water, boys offer to take our picture. They are relentless.

  “For free,” one man says, attempting to stuff a kaffiyeh into my hand, even though I am already wearing a baseball cap to keep the sun from incinerating my face. I curl my fingers into a tight fist so he can’t make me take the scarf. “For a beautiful lady.”

  The thing is, even though I know it’s not actually free, I still want the scarf in the same way I wanted a sand dollar painted with a tacky-looking sunset when I was five in
Florida, or the Niagara Falls snow globe when I was eleven. Except I am afraid that to even talk to this man, let alone try to haggle with him, will open the floodgates to every other tout on the Giza Plateau. I shake my head and keep walking.

  Our tour guide, wearing a KEEP PORTLAND WEIRD T-shirt, is waiting for us just outside the ticket building. “I’m Tarek Kamar,” he says, his accent as American as mine as he shakes hands with both Mom and me. “Welcome to Egypt.”

  As we walk through the scorching heat, Tarek explains that he is an Egyptian American, born and raised in Detroit, studying at the American University in Cairo. “My grandparents live here, so I’m staying with them while I work on my Egyptology degree.”

  “How do you like it?” Mom asks.

  “I love it now, but at first I was kind of overwhelmed,” Tarek says. “I mean, Detroit’s a big, dirty city, but not this big and not this dirty. And back home, without a mosque on every other street corner, it’s pretty easy to skip out on prayer time.”

  “And now?”

  He gives a small, embarrassed laugh. “I’m still pretty slack and my grandma is none too happy about that.”

  Tarek begins his tour, explaining that the pyramids are part of a vast complex of temples, causeways, and tombs of ancient wives and Egyptian nobles, as well as cemeteries where the people who built the pyramids were buried. I didn’t have any of those things in my elementary school diorama. “So the three largest—the ones everyone thinks of when they think of the pyramids—are Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure, all of whom were pharaohs during the fourth dynasty, around 2500 BC. The interesting thing . . .”

  The trinket vendors fall away as we focus our attention on our guide, who tells us how the three largest pyramids align with the stars of the constellation Orion, which scholars believe was deliberate because Orion was associated with Osiris, the Egyptian god of rebirth and the afterlife; how more than two million stones were used to build Khufu, the Great Pyramid; and how the surface of the pyramids were once covered with polished white limestone that made them shine. The walk is long, just like Mr. Elhadad said, but Tarek fills the time with so many interesting facts.