The memory brings a smile to my face, and as Aya orders a McChicken sandwich and a kiwi-flavored drink, I pull out my phone so I can show her a picture of my friends in Ohio. Then I remember this is my Egyptian phone. I have photos of the Nile, the park across from the apartment, and from the Friday Market—even a picture of her brother haggling for a chair—but no pictures of Hannah or Owen. Instead I snap a picture of the menu board to share with Hannah later.
“As I said before, I am a romantic,” Aya says as we choose a table near the window. “I know the Sparks movies are not real, but they make me feel like such a love is possible. I trust my family to choose a good husband for me, but I would rather find a love match myself. Perhaps at university.”
“What if he wasn’t Muslim?” I ask, unwrapping my double cheeseburger. It looks the same as the American version. I test-drive a french fry. Tastes the same.
Aya shakes her head. “No.”
“No?”
“My parents are very open-minded compared to many people of their generation,” she says. “But this would be too much for them. Muslim women may only marry Muslim men.”
“Does that mean—never mind.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
She studies me for a moment. “Were you going to ask about my brother?”
“No.”
Maybe I say it too quickly, but the corner of her mouth tilts in a way that suggests she doesn’t believe me.
“The rules are different for men,” Aya says. “It is preferred they marry Muslim women, but they are allowed to marry Christians or Jews. His wife does not have to convert to Islam, but their children must be Muslim. But if we are talking about my brother, I think my mother would not want him to marry someone outside our faith.”
“I don’t want to marry your brother,” I say, my eyes on my sandwich instead of her, so embarrassed that it feels like my face might burst into flame.
“But maybe you would like to kiss him?”
“Oh my God. No.”
Aya laughs so hard I think she might slide off her bench onto the floor. “I’m sorry. I should not tease you. I understand my brother is very good-looking—some of my friends think so—but all the time he is cooking, cooking, cooking, and nothing turns his head.”
“Yeah, he seems really focused on becoming a chef.”
“It is better that way. Men are supposed to save up their money and establish households for their wives before they get married.”
“That’s a long time to be alone.”
Aya shrugs. “We have our families, friends, work, prayer, and Allah. We are not alone.”
She has a point, but it still seems out of sequence to me. Aren’t all those things made better with love? My parents dated enough people to know they were right for each other. They saved their money together. Worked together to make a home—for themselves and for me.
Rather than giving voice to those thoughts, I take a bite of my burger, and everything tastes . . . not wrong, exactly, but the meat, the cheese, the ketchup, even the pickles, taste different. McDonald’s is the one place in Egypt where I expected consistency, but it’s another adjustment I have to make. I put down the sandwich and look at it for a moment, as if it might miraculously conform to my American standards. Then I pick it back up for another bite.
CHAPTER 13
H?annah’s face appears on my computer screen and the first thing I notice is the new blond streak in her dark hair. It looks really cute and I tell her so. She pulls the pale color—about the same shade as my hair—through her fingers, and I feel a little sad that she dyed her hair without me.
“I finally talked my mom into letting me do it,” she says.
Mrs. Gundlach is pretty old-fashioned about . . . everything. Hannah wasn’t allowed to get her ears pierced until she was sixteen, her school uniform skirt has always been hemmed exactly to the dress-code regulation length (which is why Hannah always wears pants to school), and her mom would probably disown her if she even thought about getting a tattoo. Permission to put a blond stripe in her hair is a huge victory for Hannah.
“Jess helped me with the color,” she says. “And I have to put it back to normal before school starts.”
“That’s, um—” Bitterness lodges in my chest like a pebble in a shoe. Between Hannah and Owen, it feels as if I have been replaced by Jessie Roth. “That’s cool.”
“She’s not you,” Hannah says quickly. “It’s just—”
“I get it. We can’t freeze time until I get back.” I smile. Change the subject. “How’s the Romanian boyfriend?”
“He’s not—” She glances away shyly with a little smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. On a computer screen it’s hard to tell, but it looks like she might be blushing. “I don’t know how it happened, Caroline. On the first day Vlad was this cute-but-I-cannot-be-bothered-with-this-language-barrier-thing-right-now guy, but working together every day, talking all the time . . . he just kind of grew on me.”
“So have you been on actual dates and stuff?”
“I guess Emilee’s party was our first real date,” Hannah says. “But before that we spent a whole afternoon watching movies in his dorm room. He likes to read what the people on the screen are saying. It helps with his English.”
“Your mom’s okay with you dating him?”
“He ticks all her boxes,” she says. “Clean-cut. Polite. And he’s Catholic. She actually invited him over for dinner.”
With five siblings, dinner at Hannah’s house can be overwhelming. Two of her younger brothers—both wrestlers—are eating machines, while the youngest is still working on his hand-eye coordination when it comes to using utensils. It isn’t safe to sit near any of them.
“If he survived your family, he’s gotta be brave.”
Hannah laughs. “Right? But he has a big family too, so he gets it.”
“Have you kissed him yet?”
“Maybe.”
“Hannah!”
“Okay. He kissed me after I drove him back to the dorms the night he came for dinner,” she says. “He definitely knows what he’s doing. But we won’t tell my mom about that.”
Adam comes to mind and I wonder if he’s ever kissed a girl. Dating might be against the rules, but maybe kissing is a rule he’s broken.
“I hate to ask,” I say to Hannah. “But what happens when the summer ends?”
“I’m trying to live in the moment and just enjoy it, you know? I don’t really want to think about that.”
“Check it out.” I stand up and angle my laptop away from me, so she can see the new chair. Mom found a DIY recipe online for cleaning velvet, which not only woke up the color but banished the old-chair smell.
“Perfect,” Hannah says. “Where did you get it?”
I tell her all about my visit to the Friday Market as I pan the computer slowly around the room, explaining that Adam scored deals on everything that wasn’t from IKEA.
“Wait. Who’s Adam?”
“Okay, so the thing about Cairo is that the traffic is nuts and I don’t have a driver’s license, so when I need to go somewhere, I have a driver.” I settle back in front of my computer. “Adam’s dad is my regular driver, but he’s been sick lately, so Adam took over a couple of times. He also helped my dad build the furniture.”
“Is he cute? Or is he all beardy?”
“What does that even mean?”