At a perfume shop, I let the shop man convince me to try a bit of lotus oil. He rubs it on the inside of my wrist and I bring it to my nose. The scent is lush and sweet and almost tropical, and if Hannah were here, I would turn to her for a second opinion. Even Owen would be able to tell me if the scent was right for me.
As I bring my nose to my wrist a second time, I look at Adam. His eyes—already watching me—go wide, as if my wrist would be his undoing. He gives a quick shake of his head and develops a very sudden, very intense interest in a hookah pipe. I sniff my wrist again. Maybe he’s wise to play it safe. The scent is definitely tempting.
The evening call to prayer begins as I pay for the oil. Outside, some of the shopkeepers hang signs in the window that say CLOSED FOR 10 MINUTES TO PRAY. The sun hangs low in the sky and it will soon be dark.
“Don’t you need to pray?”
“The true answer is yes,” Adam says. “But I do not want to leave you alone in the souk. So I will try to make it up later.”
“You can do that?”
“It is not the best.” He motions toward all the people around us, still going about their day. “But this is also life in Egypt.”
My phone beeps with an incoming text from my mom. About to close up. Should we try going out for dinner tonight?
I’m at Khan el-Khalili. Come here?
How will I find you?
“Where can we meet my mom if she joins us?” I ask Adam. “Maybe at a restaurant?”
He names a place in the middle of the souk and I text Mom, telling her we will wait for her there.
“I’m sorry if this ruins your plans for the day,” I say.
“Nothing is ruined,” he says. “I was going to suggest a taameya cart, so if you would like to have dinner with your mother, I can return when you are ready to go home.”
“Will you join us?”
“I should not.”
“Adam, it doesn’t make sense for you to hang around by yourself until we’re finished,” I say. “And you need to eat too. Please stay.”
He hesitates and there’s a struggle between his eyebrows over whether he should be Friend Adam or Driver Adam. Finally he says, “For you, I will stay.”
“Thank you.”
“So before your mother texted, my plan was for you to try taameya and then perhaps go see the tanoura dance at Wekalet El Ghouri,” Adam says. “Perhaps she would like to see it too.”
“I don’t know what that even means, but if it’s an Egyptian thing she probably would.”
The lights come up in the shops as Adam and I walk to the restaurant, casting a carnival-like atmosphere over the Khan. I can’t help thinking that walking through the souk, sharing a meal (even street food), and going to a show seems a lot like . . . a date.
CHAPTER 16
We take our time walking through the Khan, pausing at a shop that offers belly-dancing costumes in every color imaginable. The skimpy outfits seem incongruous in a country where women don’t show much skin, but Adam explains that modern belly dancing has evolved from a form of folk dancing that women did in the presence of other women.
“There are dancers who are held in high regard and tourists pay to see them dance on the Nile dinner cruises,” he says. “And there have been belly-dance competitions on the television, but many Muslims believe the dance is haram and that the dancers are no better than prostitutes.”
“What do you think?”
He shrugs. “Some men find it sexy, but I do not think about it at all.”
I toy with the idea of buying a belly-dance costume for Hannah, then laugh to myself as I imagine how outraged her mother would be. Not so different from the Muslims who think it’s haram.
By the time we reach the restaurant, Mom is standing beside the front door. I give her a hug. “How was your day?”
“A very sweet old lady tried to give me a goat as thanks for a pair of bifocals.”
“A goat? You said yes, right?”
Mom laughs. “This was not a cute little thing like you see on YouTube, Caroline. He was big and beardy and I’m pretty sure he wanted to trample me to death.”
“Sigh.”
Saying the word—instead of actually sighing—is a goofy Hannah-and-me thing, but it makes my mom laugh again. She bumps her shoulder against mine. “If you want to get a pet, you can, but maybe think smaller. Like a goldfish or a bird.”
I remember the birds that Adam and I saw at the Friday Market.
“I can drive you,” he says, and I smile at the way he read my mind.
“Yeah, maybe. Since I can’t have a goat.”
Mom just shakes her head, smiling as she links her arm through mine, and says, “Let’s go eat.”
The restaurant calls to mind the Hanging Church, with ornate wooden carvings on the walls and an arched ceiling painted with arabesque designs. We are seated at a brass-topped table with two wooden chairs and a tiny burgundy velvet couch that I claimed for myself. Adam excuses himself to wash his hands.
“So I asked OneVision to hire a male doctor for the clinic,” Mom says. “And he started today. His name is Jamie and he only just finished his residency—he’s so young—but I think our patients are going to like him.”
“That’s great,” I say. “Now maybe the old man with the cataracts will come back.”
“I hope so.”
Adam returns and Mom asks him to order for us.
“Choose your favorites,” she says. “Or better yet, what you would make if you had the chance.”
The way his eyebrows creep close together as he studies the menu makes me feel bubbly inside. His seriousness is adorable, but I know that as a cook this decision is probably important to him. If Mom wasn’t with us, I’d just sit and stare at him. Instead I show her my market purchases and tell her how I am slowly getting the hang of haggling.
“Very slowly,” Adam says, not looking up from the menu.
“Hush, you.” I reach across the table and give his shoulder a playful shove. “I did okay.”
The waiter arrives and Adam speaks to him in Arabic, then translates. “I have ordered shai—hot tea with sugar and mint—and, to start, a meze plate with hummus, baba ghanoush, feteer meshaltet, gebna makleyah, warak enab, and taameya.”
“I know hummus and baba ghanoush,” Mom says. “But you lost me with the rest.”
“Feteer is a layered pastry that is sweet or savory,” he says. “This one will have cheese, olives, and red peppers as the filling. Gebna makleyah is cheese that has been fried. Warak enab is grape leaves stuffed with rice and beef—”
“Oh, I know this one,” she says. “We just call it stuffed grape leaves.”
Adam nods. “You may know taameya as falafel, but in Egypt we use also fava beans instead of hummus.”
“All of this sounds wonderful,” she says.
“My favorite to eat is gebna, but my favorite to prepare is feteer because there is no end to the combination of ingredients for the filling.”
“Do you cook at home a lot?”