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.
“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.