“Good questions.”
“At first I think it was because it is impossible not to look at you when you shine like the sun,” he says. “But then—”
“It was Liverpool, wasn’t it?” I deflect with a joke because there is an intensity in his eyes that overwhelms me. Falling in love with Adam would be such a short, easy leap.
He laughs. “If you were a Chelsea fan, I would not have introduced you to koshary.”
“If you were a Chelsea fan, I wouldn’t have let you.”
“This is what draws me to you,” he says. “The things you say make me smile, and you try to understand my language and my culture, even when it frightens you and makes you angry. Since we have met I feel both happy and terrible all of the time.”
“I . . . don’t know what to say to that.”
Adam reaches across the center console and laces his fingers through mine. His palm is a little damp and my heart melts into a puddle. “Never before have I been so confused about what is right or wrong,” he says. “My faith says I should not be with you, but this happiness . . .”
I nod as he trails off. “I feel it too.”
The afternoon sun moves toward the horizon as we drive through the city, beyond Manshiyat Nasr, and up into a low, dun-colored range of hills. Adam keeps hold of my hand and tells me how he used to let Aya play with his hair when they were little. “She would make tiny braids all over my head,” he says. “And Geddo—my grandfather—would be angry, saying it was improper for my hair to be in a girl’s style, even though Aya would take the braids out as soon as she finished the last one.”
“My grandma Irene has old-fashioned ideas about gender roles, too,” I say. “Once I was helping her buy Christmas gifts for my cousins. Henry—who was about five or six at the time—wanted a book about a princess who disguised herself in a black costume to help people in need, but Grandma wouldn’t buy it because the character was a girl. She thinks boys should read books about boys.”
Adam nods. “Geddo also did not approve of Aya playing football with me, but my parents encouraged us to play together when we were small. It has changed a little bit as we got older, but they still believe we should be treated equally.”
“I feel like having a good relationship with your sister is probably more important than your grandfather’s opinion.”
Adam laughs. “Geddo would have not agreed, but my sister and I do not fight often because we were raised to be friends.”
“Do you get along with your grandma?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says. “She has taught me everything I know about cooking, even when my grandfather did not approve. I think my father has an open mind today because he did not want to be like his father.”
I tell him about some of Grandma Irene’s missteps when Uncle Mike eloped with a black woman he met in Grenada while on leave from the Marines. “The first time he brought his new wife home, Grandma expressed surprise that Aunt Delphine had graduated from college. I guess Grandma thought everyone in the Caribbean lived in tin shacks or something. She was trying to be nice, but Uncle Mike said he could see her fretting over whether the oil in Aunt Delphine’s hair was going to rub off on her couch. Grandma Irene tries to be better about that stuff now and she adores their kids, but that doesn’t mean she’s not still racist. She would panic if she knew about you.”
“Because to her all Muslims are terrorists?”
“I love her because she is my blood, but sometimes she makes it hard to like her.”
“Geddo was the same for me.”
“I guess we’re stuck with the family we get, huh?”
Near the top of the highest hill we come to a small city with a road running along the edge of a cliff. From this high up we can see all across Cairo, even the pyramids in the distance.
“So this is Mokattam.” He pulls the car off the road. “And just down below is the City of the Dead.”
“What does that mean? Like zombies?”
He laughs. “No, it is el-Arafa—the cemetery—but there are people who live there, making their homes in the tombs and the mausoleums.”
“The people live in the mausoleums? With the dead bodies?”
“Some were forced out of the city by the rising costs,” he says. “Some stay to be with their ancestors.”
I shudder a little. Although I don’t believe in ghosts, I’m not sure I would want to live among the dead.
“Muslim families are very close,” Adam says as we get out of the car. “My grandmother lives in the next apartment, my father’s sister and her family lives down the hall, and my mother’s brother lives on a nearby street with his wife. Always someone is visiting and life is not too private. The best thing about the dead”—he makes a sweeping gesture toward el-Arafa—“is that they keep their opinions to themselves.”
We sit together on the hood of the car, and Adam takes my hand once more. His thumb grazes the back of my hand, raising the tiny hairs on my arms. Our shoulders press together. Knees. Even our feet touch as they rest on the front bumper. We’ve come a long way from our first day at the park when we had an entire bench and a takeaway order of koshary between us.
The sun has dropped low in the western sky, painting the world gold as it sinks toward the pyramids. “This is—wow.” I push a tear away with my fingers as I try to laugh off the embarrassment of crying. “This is so beautiful.”
“Caroline.” The way he says my name is different now too. Lower. Softer. With a husky note that makes me want to capture the sound with my mouth, to feel his lips on mine. He says my name again and I hear the question in it, the words he can’t articulate. Except I need Adam to lead the way, even if it means we both stumble a little.
I turn my head to look at him, smile at him, and my heart is a balloon that could float away, carrying me along with it. “If you do it exactly the way you just said my name, there’s no way to get it wrong.”
His fingers are featherlight against my skin as he touches my cheek, and then his mouth is against mine, soft and warm. Just a brush, then gone. The word perfect takes shape in my mind but is erased and rewritten when his lips find mine again.
Our smiles are bashful as we separate, our gazes meeting and skittering away as we adjust to this next new thing. The sky around us has darkened and the sun has spread fire along the edge of the world. The minarets and skyscrapers are black silhouettes, and the windows of the night city are beginning to come alive. Adam kisses me again with lips more confident, and I let my fingers steal up into his curls. We both sigh at the same time and I smile against his mouth.
“Perhaps—” Adam clears his throat, making me think touching his hair was too much for him to handle. It might have been too much for me to handle. “Would you like to take a walk? There is a café just down the road.”