In a Perfect World

by Trish Doller

  September arrives with my dad’s return from the tugboat. Summer is almost over and school will start soon. Mom is at the clinic the day he gets back and our kitchen is in total disarray as Adam sets out to prove to me that his koshary is better than the recipe served at his old restaurant.

  “What’s going on in here?” Dad asks, surveying the tower of pots in the sink.

  “Well, sometimes when a boy and girl are alone together . . . ,” I say. “They make koshary.”

  He laughs as he kisses my forehead and pats Adam on the back. Dad’s caught in a weird middle place because he’s the only parent who keeps his concerns to himself. He says the consequences of my relationship with Adam—regardless of the outcome—are part of growing up and we’re just going to have to deal with them. “Nice to see you, kid.”

  My dad unpacks his duffel and takes a short nap, and then we put Adam’s claim to the test. It takes a special ability to know what a dish needs without seeing it marked down in cups and tablespoons, but Adam possesses that ability. I can’t say what makes his koshary better than the restaurant’s—as most of the ingredients are the same—but there is something more refined about it. Like it belongs on a plate instead of scooped into a margarine tub. Like this boy is destined for greatness. (Maybe I’m biased.)

  “We’ve been thinking about taking the train to Alexandria for a day,” I tell Dad as we eat. “It’s only a couple of hours away and the fare is supercheap. Would that be okay?”

  “Have you asked your mom?”

  “Not yet.”

  “We’ll need to talk before I answer this question,” he says. “When you went to Fayoum you had guides responsible for you, so I’m not completely cool with this going-alone plan. I’d worry about both of you.”

  “You could come with us and, you know, pay for everything.”

  Dad chuckles. “Now I see what you’re really after.”

  “We could dive on Cleopatra’s palace.” I know as I say it that I’m pushing one of his buttons. Scuba diving is one of my dad’s favorite things that he doesn’t get to do very often. The last time we went was two years ago in the Florida Keys.

  “Count me in,” Dad says. “We’ll go tomorrow.”

  “I thought you needed to talk to Mom.”

  “I’ll convince her.”

  When my mom gets home from work, she rubber-stamps the trip only if Dad goes with us. “Just be supercareful,” she says, then eyes my dad. “Including you.”

  “Come with us,” he says.

  But Mom begs off. “I’ve got a summer cold brewing and a cataract surgery first thing in the morning. I’m going to overdose on vitamin C tonight, get some extra sleep, and hope I’m feeling better in the morning.”

  • • •

  The atmosphere in the car feels heavy and the radio is silent as Mr. Elhadad drives us to Ramses Station. He speaks in quiet Arabic to Adam, who responds in kind. I don’t understand what they are saying, but I look out the window to give them privacy anyway.

  “Be sure to buy tickets for the special,” Mr. Elhadad says to my dad when we reach the station. “It is a nonstop express with comfortable seats and air-conditioning. Much nicer. More tourists, fewer Egyptians.”

  Adam says something to his father and Mr. Elhadad pulls him in for a hug. He pats his son’s shoulder before getting back into the car.

  “Are you okay?” I ask as my dad pays for the tickets. Adam looks a little dazed.

  “I have spent my entire life in Cairo,” he says as we walk down the platform to the train. “But in three hours I will be in Alexandria, the farthest from my home I have ever been, and I will swim in the sea.”

  “Are you nervous?”

  “Yes,” he says. “My family worries you are taking me to a place from where I cannot return.”

  The platforms are busy with people waiting to board trains that look ancient, trains that are run-down by use. The special train is painted in the colors of the Egyptian flag—red on top, white in the middle, black on the bottom—and looks newer. Not all that different from Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited train that runs past Sandusky every day.

  “Is it possible that you’re not meant to return?” I say as I choose a seat beside the window. Adam sits next to me with my dad across the aisle.

  “What do you mean?” Adam asks.

  “My grandparents have lived in the same town all their lives and they are completely content with that choice,” I say. “And that’s fine, you know? But not everyone is meant to stay in one place. Maybe Alexandria is just your first step.”

  “Perhaps.” He toys with his lower lip as he considers and I wonder if I’m projecting my vision of his future onto him. It could be that he wants to stay in Cairo, with his family. That he’s happy right where he is.

  “I’ve never ridden in a proper train before.” I wiggle a little in my seat, changing the subject and making him laugh a little. “I feel like I’m on my way to Hogwarts.”

  “In which house will you be sorted when we arrive?”

  “You know about Harry Potter?” I ask, and his eyebrows hitch up, as if he can’t believe I’m asking this question. After the whole reggae band thing, I should probably know better. “Sorry.”

  “My mother has a cousin who lives in America. He sent the first book to Aya and me, and my father read it aloud, translating to Arabic. When he finished, he bought the second book in English and said if we wanted to read it, we must learn to read it ourselves.”

  “Is that the real reason your English is so good?”

  “The books were very good motivation for me,” he admits. “Harry Potter was yet another thing that made Geddo angry because Islam considers magic to be blasphemous.”

  “A lot of Christians get twisted about the magic, too.”

  “My parents did not let us go blindly into that world,” Adam says. “We read the books together and talked about what was false and what was true. But as far as Geddo was concerned, the only book Muslims should read is the Quran.”

  “So which house are you in?”

  “No. No. I asked you first.”

  “Hufflepuff.”

  “Of course.” He laughs. “Same.”

  “Really?”

  “I shared the book with my friends,” Adam says. “Magdi’s parents paid no attention and Omar read the books in secret. Afterward, we took the sorting quiz and they teased me without mercy about being a Hufflepuff.”

  “Did Bahar ever read the books?”

  “He refused because his parents forbid it.”

  “It’s too bad,” I say. “You could have used another Hufflepuff in your corner.”

  Adam laughs. “This is true.”

  There are too many people around, including my dad, for me to kiss him, but I give his hand a squeeze. “Trade seats with me.”

  “Why?”

  “If we’re going somewhere you’ve never been, you should see it.”

  “You have never been to Alexandria,” Adam says.

  “I know, but I can see it on the way back.”

  “You make no sense, but I would like to look out the window.”

  We swap places. He puts his arm around me and I lean into him for most of the ride, so I can see out the window too. Once we are out of the tightly packed Cairo skyline, the railway runs along the Nile where the land around us is green. Scrawny cows dot the riverbank and men in little skiffs fish the water. We pass ramshackle villages and farmlands, all pushed up against their liquid power cord. As we near Alexandria, urban sprawl seeps back into the landscape until we are in the heart of the city.

  CHAPTER 31

  We take a taxi from the train station to the diving center, a small waterfront complex that is reminiscent of those found in the Florida Keys. The shop sits beside a tiki-hut restaurant, and their jetty is lined with dive boats and inflatable dinghies. The day is clear so both the sky and the Mediterranean Sea are intensely blue, and the circular harbor is filled with boats of all sizes. Some are moored while others
kick up small white wakes as they move across the water.

  Dad books a day trip and our team is the dive master Ramy and his assistant Khalid. Ramy outfits us with gear and takes us to a small pool where he instructs Adam on how to use the scuba equipment. My dad and I have official dive certification, but Ramy puts Adam through an introductory course that will allow him to dive without certification.

  “Cleopatra’s palace is in about five meters of water,” Ramy says. “Good for a beginner since it’s not very deep. You won’t need to decompress on the way up, so if you feel uncomfortable for any reason, swim to the surface.”

  As we motor out toward the dive site, the beaches rimming the harbor are thick with people and beach umbrellas. A few white tourists are wearing bikinis, but most Egyptian women walk fully clothed along the shoreline. A couple women wearing abayas and hijabs are farther out in the water.

  I opted for a long-sleeve rash guard and boy-short bottoms, but my choice of swimwear is less distracting to Adam than his state of shirtlessness is to me. I keep stealing glances at the light dusting of dark hair in the middle of his chest and the definition of his back muscles, and I’m thankful I’m wearing sunglasses.

  “The visibility here isn’t as good as Sharm El Sheikh or Hurghada because the water is shallow and choppy,” Khalid explains. “But I think today won’t be so bad. Many of the intact artifacts were removed to museum collections, but you will see some granite pillars, food storage bowls, and two of the sphinxes that guarded Cleopatra’s temple.”

  The dive site isn’t very far from shore, not even as far as the middle of the harbor. As Khalid ties the boat off to a mooring ball, Ramy points out the spot where the lighthouse of Alexandria once stood. Although the lighthouse is long gone, it’s still kind of exciting that I’ve visited two of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Infinitely better than staying home in Ohio with my grandparents.

  Dad and I start putting on our gear, but Adam just sits in the boat looking a little dazed. “Is this too much?” I ask. “We could snorkel or just swim.”

  “No.” He looks back at Alexandria, then smiles at me. “I’m fine. I’m ready.”

  Khalid remains on the boat while Ramy takes the rest of us into the water. We make a human chain, holding each other’s hands as we descend, because the water is kind of murky. As we near the bottom, dark shapes begin taking form. Unlike in Florida, there is no elaborate coral growth and only a few colorful fish, but the sea floor is littered with square and cylindrical segments of the pillars that once supported Cleopatra’s palace. Everything is crusted with barnacles, but Ramy points out a number of large stone bowls and Dad swims through a tunnel formed by large blocks of rubble. We follow our dive master—and a school of tiny silver fish—to the body of a sphinx about the size of a horse. The head is missing but the shape is intact. Not far away is a second sphinx, this one barnacle-free to get a better idea of what it originally looked like, but again headless. I wonder if the heads were stolen and make a note to ask when we surface. We stay down for about an hour and even though pillars make up most of what we see, it is clear that the palace complex was huge. Fit for the queen of Egypt.

  Finally, Ramy taps his watch, signaling that our time is up, and we swim to the surface.

  Adam yanks the regulator from his mouth, and his face is nothing but smile.

  “This was the most exciting thing I have ever done,” he says. “I had difficulty not shouting bubbles at everything we saw.”

  “You should see the reefs down in the—”

  “Your phones have been going crazy,” Khalid interrupts from up in the boat. “Many text messages and missed calls, I think. I did not read them, but someone is trying desperately to reach you.”

  We scramble into the boat and Dad grabs his cell phone with wet hands. A stricken look crosses his face as he listens to his voice mail. “Shit,” he says. “We need to leave. Now.”

  “Dad, what’s wrong?”

  Adam’s phone and mine are both filled with messages from my mother saying Call me right away and I am okay, but call me ASAP.

  The dive team quickly unties the boat, and Ramy drives us back toward Alexandria as my dad phones Mom.

  “Beck, are you hurt? Where are you?” he says, and my hands start to shake. What is happening? Adam takes my hand, but he looks worried too. “We’re on our way . . . no, I’ll rent a car . . . we’ll be there as fast as we can . . . I love you, too . . . I’ll be there soon.”

  “Dad?”

  “A car bomb exploded outside the clinic.” His tanned skin has gone pale. “She wasn’t there.”

  “Oh, thank God,” I say at the same time Adam, Ramy, and Khalid all say, “Alhamdulillah.”

  “She was feeling worse this morning when we left,” Dad says. “So Jamie went to the clinic in her place. He was killed in the blast, along with two patients. Your mom is blaming herself. So we need to get back fast.”

  “The distance to Cairo is the same by car or train,” Adam says.

  “Yeah, but the train doesn’t leave until this afternoon,” my dad points out. “We don’t have that kind of time.”

  “I will have to drive.”

  If this were any other situation, I would laugh. But just like on the day of Mr. Elhadad’s heart attack, Adam’s utter fearlessness behind the wheel might be exactly what we need right now.

  We reach the jetty and Dad jumps out of the boat. Khalid follows. “I will take you to the car rental.”

  Twenty minutes later, outside the rental agency, Dad thanks him and offers him baksheesh for everything he’s done. Khalid pushes it away. “I hope your wife will be okay.”

  “Thank you,” Dad says. “I hope so too.”

  We are a damp mess as we enter the rental agency, but Adam takes over, laying out the situation in Arabic. Dad signs the paperwork and offers up his credit card, but once the car is pulled around to the front of the building and we have the keys, Adam takes the wheel. I use the GPS on my phone to guide us out of Alexandria, and once we are on the highway, Adam’s foot rests heavy on the accelerator. In the backseat, Dad calls Mom again.

  “We’re on our way,” he says. “Adam is driving . . . aw, Beck, don’t . . . you’re not a terrible human being for laughing at the kid’s driving skills . . .”

  Dad stays on the phone with her the entire way back to Cairo, talking softly, telling her comforting stories she already knows about when they met, reassuring her that he’ll be there soon. One thing he never says is that everything will be okay, which worries me, because will everything be okay? He flings open the car door before the car stops in front of the apartment building and runs toward the vestibule.

  “Go to your mother,” Adam says. “I will take care of the car.”

  I sprint after my dad, up the stairs, and arrive at the apartment just behind him, just as Mom launches herself from the couch and he catches her in his arms. She sobs into his shoulder and the sound is one I have never heard. My mom is always strong. She rarely cries. To see her so broken brings tears to my own eyes. Through the blur I see Mrs. Elhadad rise from the couch.

  “I will go now,” she says quietly to me.

  “Thank you for being here.” I step forward and she lets me hug her. The soft pat of her hand on my back is comforting.

  “If you need something,” Mrs. Elhadad says, “please say.”

  Nodding, I thank her once more. She looks to the door when Adam comes in and speaks softly to him in Arabic. He glances at me as he follows his mother out the door, his eyes filled with questions and concerns.

  “You and your crazy driving came through again,” I call after him. “Thank you.”

  I want to ask my mom what happens next. Will OneVision send us home? Or open a new clinic in a different part of the city? What if whoever was responsible for the bombing wants to try again? What if Mom isn’t so lucky the second time? My breath catches in my chest. Even though she wasn’t killed today, she could have been. People who were alive this morning are de
ad now. They were loved and now they are gone. But I can’t ask her anything because Dad leads her into the bedroom and closes the door.

  CHAPTER 32

  Yesterday morning, according to witnesses in Manshiyat Nasr, a car pulled to the curb alongside the clinic. A man wearing an ordinary blue button-up shirt and jeans got out and walked away. Just a little more than a minute later, the car erupted into a giant ball of fire and the ground convulsed like an earthquake. Windows in the bakery across the street shattered. Stucco and brick spewed out in every direction. And when the fireball subsided, the car was nothing but a burning frame and the clinic was a pile of rubble.

  “I was still asleep.” Mom’s eyes are still puffy and pink from crying, even after eleven hours of sleep. She leans against Dad as they sit on the couch like he’s the only thing holding her up right now. He might be. “Safa, our office assistant, woke me up to say she was running late, then called back to tell me the clinic was just . . . gone.”

  Tears well up in her eyes and she pauses, takes a deep breath and a small sip of coffee. “I threw on some clothes and went to Manshiyat Nasr, but the police would not let me inside the cordon, even after I showed them my OneVision identification.”

  She tells us that she didn’t want to sit at home doing nothing, so she stayed at the scene and treated people who had been injured in the blast—shrapnel injuries, mostly, from glass and brick—until a police commander agreed to speak with her.

  “He confirmed that three bodies had been found in the rubble but had not yet been identified,” she says. “I called Jamie’s phone over and over. Then I called Sarah, who told me he’d forgotten his lunch when he left for work. If he had just gone back—”

  Mom’s face crumples and she breaks down again, crying into Dad’s shoulder. He strokes her hair and I struggle with my own tears. How can someone justify blowing up innocent people? How can anyone believe that is what God wants?

  “He—he had his whole career ahead of him.” She blows her nose and blinks rapidly as she continues. “If I had been there—Casey, it should have been me.”