“That sounds like someone else talking.”
“While I was driving you and your parents home, my whole family came together—aunties, uncles, cousins—and when I returned, they all had opinions to share, very loudly and very late into the night,” he says as the waiter brings tea and karkadeh. “They believe that if I am old enough to be thinking of you in a romantic way, then perhaps it is time for me to be married.”
“What do you believe?”
“I am Muslim.” He rotates his coffee glass one way, then the other. Stalling. He clears his throat. “This is what I meant that first day in the park. I thought—well, I closed my eyes and pretended it would be different for us. There is no future in which we live happily ever after.”
My heart burns and I want him to hurt as badly as I do. “Maybe you should get married. Have a bunch of kids and spend the rest of your life living in the same apartment building as your mother, dreaming about how you might have been a chef.”
My poisoned words hit their mark and pain registers across Adam’s face, except hurting him makes me feel even worse. Especially since I used his culture and hardship against him. Getting married, having kids, and living near his mother isn’t a bad alternative fate at all. It’s a normal Egyptian fate.
Before I can take back the insult, the warmth drains from his eyes and he lifts his shoulders in a careless shrug. “Perhaps instead I should turn my back on my family and faith for a girl who can never be anything but temporary.”
My chest feels torn open and hollowed out as I scoot back my chair. The table wobbles, spilling my drink, and the red liquid cascades over the edge onto the cobblestones. “I’m going home.”
“Caroline, wait.”
Tears burn in my eyes because I still love the way he says my name, but the pain pushes my feet forward. “Go away, Adam.”
“It is a long walk and a hot day. Let me drive you.”
I don’t want to be in the same city with him, let alone the same car. “No.”
“Please.” The crack in his voice is all it takes to make me get in the car, but the air is heavy between us. I want to apologize, but all I can think about is how I am a temporary girl. By the time we reach my building, the opportunity feels lost.
As I reach for the door handle, Adam leans across the console and cradles my face with both hands. His kiss is a desperate plea and I let him make it. The second time, I kiss him back, tasting the good-bye on his lips the same way I taste the salt of my tears. But the thought of not having a tomorrow with Adam hurts more than the terrible things we said to each other.
“If I could be more like Magdi . . . ,” he says.
I sniffle and laugh at the same time. “I’m so glad you’re not.”
“Bahebik.”
I open the door. “What does that mean?”
Adam’s smile is sad. “Already you know.”
I pass Masoud for the second time this morning and he holds up his Quran, silently scolding me. My middle finger itches to aim itself in his direction but instead—even though he doesn’t understand a single word—I say, “Save it for someone who cares.”
CHAPTER 24
Mom is dressed for work as I come into the apartment, and when she sees the tears staining my cheeks, she wraps me up tightly in her arms. “Are you okay?”
“No,” I say to her shoulder.
“You did the right thing.”
“Please don’t. Not now.”
She kisses my forehead. “I’m so sorry.”
I untangle from her embrace and hide out in my room, crawling beneath the covers, where I cry myself to sleep. Mom is long gone when I wake, and Dad’s sitting on the balcony with his laptop and his Deadpool mug filled with coffee.
“Hey there, Bug,” he says.
When I was about three or four, I invented a game I called Lightning Bug where I’d dance around the room and pretend to flash. Dad would “catch” me in an imaginary jar and after I made a sufficiently sad face, he’d set me free and the game would start over. He took to calling me Lightning Bug and over the years the nickname became abbreviated to Bug.
Below us the city keeps moving noisily forward. “Hey.”
“Thinking about going for a walk,” he says. “Wanna come?”
I’d really rather not do anything at all, but my dad’s time in Cairo is not unlimited. “Yeah, okay.”
Mom believes that talking about your feelings is healthy, which is probably true, but one of the things I love best about Dad is that he knows when not to talk. His philosophy is that sometimes the only way to get over feeling like shit is to feel like shit.
We cross the road and walk south along the river. No one hassles me when I’m with Dad. A couple of guys stare too long and he growls at them like a dog, making me laugh. By the time we reach the southern tip of the island about twenty minutes later, I’m feeling . . . not exactly good, but not quite so bad.
“I was doing some reading up on our island,” Dad says. “And down here at this end is one of the last remaining nilometers, used in ancient times to measure the yearly flood levels. Let’s check it out.”
The nilometer looks kind of like a church steeple without a church, sitting on top of a low stone building in the middle of a landscaped, green park at the very tip of the island. There are no tourists around and Dad offers the caretaker a small baksheesh to let us go inside, where a series of stone steps lead down into an empty well. Running up the middle of the structure is a stone pillar with markings carved at intervals. The whole thing reminds me of one of those M.C. Escher optical illusion drawings where the stairs seem to go two directions at once.
“The water levels were measured in cubits,” Dad says. “Twelve or thirteen cubits meant hunger and suffering. Basically, drought conditions. Fourteen to sixteen was an indication that it would be a happy, abundant year. Eighteen or more was a flood disaster.”
The caretaker takes us down the stairs to the bottom of the empty well. Above us, the steeple-like top lets in the light. The man holds up three fingers. “Three tunnels bring water into the nilometer,” he says. “Now closed up. No more.”
Dad explains that dams and reservoirs control the flooding now, minimizing the risk of disaster. The nilometer is pretty impressive in terms of ancient technology and architecture. It’s beautiful and has lasted for more than a thousand years, but watching my dad geek out over this stuff is more entertaining than the actual building.
Afterward we stand on the terrace, looking down the Nile as cruise boats, fishing skiffs, and feluccas drift past.
“So did you bring me here as some sort of metaphorical life lesson?” I ask.
He laughs. “Nope. I just wanted to spend some time with my girl. But if you’re desperate, how about this: Sometimes life gives you an eighteen-cubit flood of unfairness and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”
“Did you just dad-pun me?”