“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 not sure I want to try it.
“It is refreshing on a hot day,” he says.
“So basically every day?”