by Trish Doller
“Hey.” Dad touches her chin and she looks up at him. “There was no scenario yesterday that would have left the world a better place today. If you’d been there, I’d have lost my wife and Caroline would have lost her mother, but someone would still be dead. I get that it’s hard not to blame yourself, Beck, but none of this is your fault.”
“When I spoke with the regional director from OneVision, he reminded me that everyone knows the risks when they agree to the job,” Mom says. “But I was supposed to do that surgery. I was supposed to be there.”
“You’re not Wonder Woman.”
“I have a cold, Casey,” she says. “If I had just sucked it up and gone to work—”
“Do they know who did it?” I interrupt, trying to derail her guilt. “Was it ISIS?”
“No, but it was a young sympathizer who wanted to impress the Islamic State by targeting a foreign-run clinic in a predominantly Christian neighborhood,” she says. “He bragged about it on Twitter and was reported to the police by one of his own friends.”
Dad finally asks the question that’s been on my mind since yesterday. “So what happens now, Beck?”
“OneVision believes this was an isolated incident, but they have to decide if they are going to continue operating in Cairo or relocate.”
“What do you want to do?”
Mom sighs. “I don’t know. Part of me wants to turn tail and run, but that’s not who I am. I made a commitment.”
“Don’t forget about the commitment you made to me,” my dad says. “When I said till death do us part, I didn’t think you meant to put yourself directly in its path.”
The corner of her mouth trembles a little, like she can’t decide whether to laugh or cry. She does both as she rests her head on his shoulder. “I know.”
He kisses her hair. “I need you, Beck. Maybe it’s time to go home.”
Mom goes back to bed and Dad sits on the balcony making calls. We don’t know if the bombing made the national news back in the States, so he fills in the details to my grandparents and Uncle Mike. I can only imagine the “I told you so” from Grandma Irene. I go to my room, where I find a text on my phone from Adam: How is your mother?
She feels responsible for her coworker’s death and guilty that she is alive.
I’m sorry, he writes. Then, Teta has been cooking all day. She would like to bring food for your family. Would that be okay?
I go out onto the balcony and walk quietly past my parents’ bedroom to where my dad is sitting. “Adam’s grandma wants to bring over some food.”
“I haven’t even thought about dinner,” he says. “That would be welcome.”
Yes, I text back to Adam. Please.
• • •
All five members of the Elhadad family turn up at our apartment, and any disapproval, any anger, is hidden beneath an avalanche of food. Adam’s grandmother, laden with shopping bags filled with plastic containers, disappears into the kitchen. Mom gets out of bed and brushes her teeth. If this were a proper visit, we would offer an appetizer, but today the world is upside down and our guests have brought their own baba ghanoush.
Mrs. Elhadad wraps her arms tightly around my mom, who dissolves into tears again. Adam’s mother touches her forehead to Mom’s and the two women stand this way, with Mrs. Elhadad speaking softly in Arabic, until my mother pulls back, nodding, and wipes her tears. Whatever transpired between them was private, but as the two women settle on the couch, Mom looks lighter somehow. Her smile, though fragile, is still a smile.
The elder Mrs. Elhadad comes from the kitchen with food and drinks. While the adults talk about the bombing, Adam, Aya, and I take our sodas into my bedroom. I leave the door open.
“Will you have to go home?” Aya asks as she looks at the photo of Hannah and Owen. For all the time we’ve spent playing soccer together, this is the first time she’s been to my apartment.
“I hope not,” I say. “Three months ago I didn’t even want to come here, but now I want to keep playing soccer with the Daffodils and school starts next week.”
The thought of leaving is painful, but I know going home isn’t the worst thing that could happen. The worst has already happened.
“Do you guys want to go for a walk?” I ask.
Dad and Mr. Elhadad give their permission for us to go, provided we don’t go far and we’re back in half an hour. The bombing has rattled us all, as if danger knows where we live now, as if it followed us right to our front door. The three of us cross the road and walk down to the park. Once inside its leafy confines, Adam holds my hand. We haven’t had a chance to talk since Alexandria. His excitement over scuba diving got lost in the shuffle and even now it feels improper to talk about happy things, but as a dinner cruise boat motors past, Adam takes the leash off his enthusiasm.
“It was as if the world had suddenly doubled in size,” he says. “And it felt like touching history. I can’t . . . I have no words to explain it.”
“Were you frightened?” Aya asks.
“Only at first.”
She offers him a reluctant smile. “You are like a cork that has been freed from the neck of a bottle. I worry that you have grown too large to fit back in the bottle.”
“You sound like Ummi.”
“Do you think our mother’s concerns are not valid?”
“No,” Adam says. “Which is the reason I am going to speak with her and Baba about attending culinary school. I do not want to go back into the bottle.”
His sister’s dark eyes go wide for a moment, and then her dimples appear. “Very good. I was afraid you were willing to accept being a waiter at the Ritz-Carlton. I’m happy you have a plan.”
I lift myself on tiptoe and kiss his cheek. “I’m proud of you.”
Adam slips his arm around my waist and presses his lips to my temple. “I hope your family will stay in Egypt.”
“Me too.”
When we return to the apartment, the dining room table is spread with bowls of lamb stew, small stuffed zucchini, pickled onions, and tomato salad. We take our places around the table; despite the circumstances, this meal is less awkward than our last together. The line between guest and host has blurred, and all of us are united in the goal of helping Mom feel better. She looks less stressed and Adam’s grandma seems genuinely happy to provide comfort by way of enough food to feed a small army.
Even after the meal has been cleared away and the leftovers stowed in the refrigerator, we sit around the table until late into the night. At some point, both my mom and Mrs. Elhadad moved closer to their husbands. Dad’s arm is stretched along the back of Mom’s chair, and Mr. Elhadad holds his wife’s hand.
“How did you get together?” my dad asks.
Mrs. Elhadad explains that they were introduced through family members. “It was not a forced marriage,” she says. “Both of us could say no, but I met Ahmed and—”
“She could not resist me.” Mr. Elhadad is joking, but the way she smiles at him makes it clear that it’s not really a joke. She does the same little shrug-nod combination as I’ve seen Adam do, and it’s kind of adorable. “It was the same for him.”
Mr. Elhadad laughs. “True.”
“I was a deckhand when Beck and I met,” Dad says. “I was living at home in the Bronx with my folks and she was going to medical school at Fordham. We saw each other in a club one night, she let me buy her a drink, and we got married about a month later.”
Adam’s eyes meet mine across the table and my cheeks flame. Our parents are proof that love can happen fast. Maybe Adam and I are proof, too. But our parents lived in the same city. Shared the same faith. And were old enough to make a real commitment to each other. How can our relationship last if I have to go home? Six thousand miles is so far.
I stand and collect the stray dessert plates, needing to get away for a few minutes. As I’m loading the dishwasher, Dad comes into the kitchen. “It’s not like you to voluntarily do the dishes. What’s up, Bug?”
“Nothing.”<
br />
“Sure?”
“Yeah. I’m just tired.”
“It’s been a long few days,” he says. “Leave this be and go to bed.”
Adam’s grandma comes into the kitchen and starts gathering her plastic storage containers. I mime an offer to wash them before they leave, but she waves me off. Back in the dining room, Mr. Elhadad finishes the dregs of his coffee. “It is getting late,” he says. “We should go.”
“Thank you for the food and the company,” Mom says, hugging both women and Aya. “I didn’t know how much I needed this until you arrived.”
“You are welcome,” Mr. Elhadad says. “This we do for friends.”
It is after midnight when the door finally closes behind them. I go to my room, and as I change into my pajamas, I receive a text from Adam.
I am not ready for good-bye.
CHAPTER 33
Our time in Cairo ends the same way it began: in an empty apartment surrounded by cardboard with Adam Elhadad helping us.
OneVision decided not to open another clinic in Cairo—at least not this year—and gave my mother the option of working in either Haiti or Malawi. After a quick week in Ohio, Mom will fly to Port-au-Prince and then take a bus to her new clinic. Because she’ll be bunking with other aid workers in a hurricane-devastated area of the island, Dad and I will live with Grandma Jim and Grandma Rose until the lease runs out on our house. I’ll start my senior year with Hannah and Owen. Like I never left.
Our furniture is like new, no worn spots on the chairs or accidental drink rings on the coffee table. It still even smells a little bit like IKEA. Adam’s dad will sell the furniture for us, but we box up everything we can’t carry in our suitcases, including all the decorative items from the markets. I decide to leave Stevie G. with Aya because birds imported into the United States must be quarantined for a month—too long for a little lovebird accustomed to getting lots of love.
I pick up the Kelleys Island stone from my nightstand. There has never been any question that Dad and I would go to the island one more time, but I thought it would happen after our year in Egypt.
“I want you to have this,” I say to Adam. “To, um—I guess to remember me.”
He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear and holds his fingertips against the side of my neck. “Do you think I will forget you?”
“You probably should.”
“I won’t.”
“Is that all we’ll ever be to each other? Memories?”
“I don’t know how we can be anything else,” he says. “Six thousand miles is a very long distance.”
“I just—I hate the thought of living in the same world as you and not knowing you anymore.”
Adam holds my face in his hands as he kisses me, slowly. Softly. Heat rushes through me, warming me to my toes. I slip my arms up around his neck, sinking my fingers into his hair as I catch his lower lip gently between mine. We press close, then closer. Kiss for days. Until our breathing is ragged and my lips come away feeling as if they are still being kissed.
His forehead is against mine as he says, “Staying in contact would feel the same as standing outside the kitchen door at the hotel and knowing what is on the other side is not for me.”
“I don’t want you to become a memory.”
My eyes burn with tears as we make another go-round on this endless circle of wanting what we can’t have.
“I always believed dating was haram because it could lead to sinful behavior,” he says. “But now I think it’s because you carry the other person with you forever. I have been changed by you.”
“You made my world bigger.”
“And you did the same for me.”
“So what do we do?” I say. “Torture ourselves by following each other on Facebook? I mean, I want you to be happy, but I really don’t want to see it when your mother finds you a wife.”
“I think our only choice is to say good-bye.”
A tear trickles down his face, and as he reaches up to wipe it away, I take his hand. I kiss his cheek, trapping the tear against my lips, and I think sadness tastes the same everywhere in the world. “I’m still going to love you.”
“And I will love you.”
My dad taps on the open door frame and I pull back, wiping my eyes with the sleeve of my shirt.
“I’m sorry to rush you,” Dad says. “But we need to leave soon. Are you finished packing?”
My duffel bag looks bloated as it sits on the floor beside my empty desk, and my backpack might be too full to fit in the overhead compartment, but I nod. “Yeah.”
Dad grabs the bags and takes them into the living room.
“Caroline,” Mom calls. “There’s someone here to see you.”
Vivian stands in the path between boxes. She wraps me up in a tight hug. “I was so looking forward to hanging out with you at school this year,” she says. “But I guess we’re going to have to look for each other in New York next fall, right?”
I smile. “Right.”
“I can’t stay because my driver’s got the car idling at the curb.” Vivian releases me. “But stay in touch, okay?”
“Definitely. You too.”
My friend is gone as quick as she came and then it’s time for us to leave. There are so many things I’m going to miss about Cairo: the Nile right outside my bedroom window, buying fresh bread in the morning, the incessant noise, even the call to prayer. But mostly I am going to miss the people.
“We are sad to see you go,” Mr. Elhadad says as we gather up our bags. “I am sorry my country has driven you away.”
“Egypt has given us far more reason to stay,” Mom says. “And I’m sorry we have to leave.”
“I count you as friends.” He hugs Dad, Mom, and then me. We’ve come so far from the first day, when I didn’t even know if I should shake his hand. “And I will hope a day will come when you return.”
Mr. Elhadad stays behind to sort out what will be sold and what will be sent to us. He’ll meet with the rental agent to give him our payment for breaking the lease. Dad also left Mr. Elhadad with an envelope containing enough money to cover the driver’s fee for September, even though the month has only just started.
Adam drives us to the airport, rocketing through traffic, zipping in and out of spaces that seem too small for the car to fit, and making too-sharp turns. “You know, if cooking doesn’t work out,” I say, “you could always get a job as a stunt driver in Hollywood.”
He laughs. “Only if I do not have to play the villain.”
“Never,” I say. “Always the hero.”
The departure lanes are flooded with cars and taxis, but Adam manages to squeeze the car into a spot between a battered taxi and a shiny Mercedes. He takes our bags from the trunk, and when they are lined up in a neat row on the curb, it is time for the real good-bye. There are people all around us—just like when we arrived—and some of them might be staring at my beautiful mother or my tattooed dad, but my eyes are locked on Adam. My vision blurs as he shakes hands with Dad and accepts a hug from Mom. The tears spill over when Adam and I are as alone as we can be at a crowded airport, standing face-to-face.
“I want you to have the best life,” I say. “Even if I’m not a part of it.”
He kisses me good-bye in front of my parents, in front of everyone, his hands on my face and my fingers tangled in his hair. The moment is sweet and perfect and it obliterates my heart. He strokes my cheek one last time. “Ma’a salama.”
“Good-bye.”
I follow my parents through the sliding doors into the airport, which makes me shiver after living in the Cairo heat. I look back. Adam is leaning against the car—just like always—and I’m flooded with longing. To run back to him. To stay. He touches his hand to his chest and then walks around to the driver’s door. I start to wave, but a random shoulder bumps against mine, forcing me to pay attention to where I am going. When I look back once more—through yet another haze of tears—Adam is gone.
CHAPTER 34
Today the sway of the N train transports me to a crowded ladies’ car on the metro. Especially when, across the aisle, an elderly lady reads her Bible. I watch her for a few seconds, then look out the window at the October sky and smile to myself as the memories overtake me again.
The sky is bright blue and the air is crisp. Cool enough for a sweater but not so cold that I need my coat. I wear my favorite scarf—the red one with multicolored tassels—that I bought at the Friday Market. My new roommate, Maggie, thinks I’m an Egyptophile because my bed is draped with an Egyptian quilt, a tapestry hangs on my side of the room, and a star-shaped lantern decorates my desk along with a little stuffed camel. On move-in day, I told her I’d lived in Cairo for a few months last year. I like Maggie, but I don’t know her well enough yet to admit I have all these things because they make me feel like I’m still there—a little bit, at least.
As the train passes over the East River, I glance down at the postcard in my hand. On the front is a sunset-over-the-pyramids scene with GREETINGS FROM CAIRO (my Arabic is slowly improving) written across the bottom. Super touristy, just like the rest of the postcards pinned to the bulletin board over my desk. The first one arrived about a month after I got back to Ohio. It was a picture from Khan el-Khalili and on the back it said: “If there is a way to stop myself from thinking about you, I have yet to discover it.”
The soccer team captainship had gone to someone else, Hannah was still crazy in love with Vlad, and Owen wasn’t really speaking to me. So I sent back a postcard with a picture of Lake Erie that said: “My life doesn’t fit me anymore.”