His mouth snaps shut and again he looks to my dad for support. Mom pulls the rental agreement from the folder and clicks her pen. “If I could just get your signature here, we will adjust the price to reflect the apartment’s unfurnished status.”
“No, no,” Mr. Taleb protests. “I have a cousin who will bring you furniture tomorrow.”
“Will it be the furniture in the photos?”
“No, but—”
“Then we will provide our own.” She hands him the pen. He scowls as he scrawls his name at the bottom of the contract. “Now,” she says. “Which hotel will you be booking us into for the night?”
CHAPTER 3
The last place Mom and I expected to end up on our first full day in Cairo is IKEA, but after spending a lumpy-bed night in a run-down hotel that Mr. Taleb claimed was world-class—with cars honking outside our window all night long—my mother was determined not to spend a second night. There is a kind of comfort that comes with walking the familiar pathways through the IKEA displays, smelling the sawdust-meets-cinnamon-roll scent as we scoop up things we need. Especially when everything outside the store feels so alien.
Mom arranges to have the larger furniture delivered, but we overfill Mr. Elhadad’s sedan with bedding, bathroom supplies, and all things kitchen for the new apartment.
“My son has the afternoon off from his job,” he says, gently pushing the trunk closed. What didn’t fit in the trunk is piled in the backseat, leaving just enough room for me. “I will send him to help assemble your furniture.”
“We can’t ask your son to give up his free time for us,” Mom says.
“He is skilled with his hands,” Mr. Elhadad says. “And he will be grateful for the money.”
That last part takes up the extra space in the car, and I feel squished between my privilege and a giant blue IKEA bag filled with whisks and bath mats and lightbulbs. Guilty for being able to pay someone to drive us around, to assemble furniture we could assemble ourselves.
My parents have done well for themselves, but we aren’t extravagant people. Grandpa Jim built washing machines in a factory until he retired. He and Grandma Rose were survivors of the Great Depression who raised my mom and her siblings to live modestly. Dad’s father worked in a body shop in the Bronx until the day he died. My old yellow Honda was Mom’s first car out of college and my dad spends more time under the hood than I spend behind the wheel. Our house in Ohio is not a mansion by any stretch of the imagination, but living under budget is how we can afford to be in Cairo now, packed into a car with enough home goods to fill . . . well, a home. Except none of that can erase the divide between us and our driver, or my feeling embarrassed by it.
Mr. Elhadad doesn’t seem bothered as he hurtles through traffic, humming along with the jangling Arabic music playing on his car radio. He chats cheerfully with Masoud as the two men tote the bags up to the apartment. Both men are tipped and barely away when my dad comes home with a dozen plastic grocery bags dangling from his fists.
“The closest supermarket is about a three-minute walk from here,” Dad says. “It’s tiny by American standards, but they have a lot of the basics, just different brands and Arabic labels. I stocked up on canned goods, but maybe Caroline and I can track down a fresh produce market and a butcher before I have to leave.”
Exploring the city with him would be better than doing so by myself. “I wish you could stay longer.”
He kisses the top of my head. “Me too, kid.”
We stock the kitchen and unpack the bags from IKEA, and soon our apartment isn’t quite so empty. While we wait for the delivery truck, I sit on the floor in my bedroom with the balcony doors open. The noise from the traffic on the street below floats up and the breeze that comes in off the Nile does little more than push the heat around. Back home, I could jump in my car, pick up Hannah, and go cool off in the lake. Instead it’s me vs. sweat (sweat is winning) and there’s nowhere I can escape. I power on my laptop for the first time since we left Ohio. Waiting in my in-box is an e-mail from Hannah.
C—
I started my first day at Cedar Point and it was not nearly as much fun as I expected, especially without you. It rained, some of the tourists were total jerks, and the guy who works with me at the admissions gate is from Romania. His English is pretty terrible, so explaining the simplest things takes forever. I miss you, so write soon and tell me all about your exciting new life in Egypt.
Love you to the moon,
—H
P.S. Owen is miserable.
Until two weeks ago, Owen was my boyfriend, but as soon as Dad and I returned from Kelleys Island, I went straight to Owen’s house. He smiled when he opened the front door and I felt crushed with sadness. I would miss the way his face brightened whenever he saw me and I wanted to kiss him right there on his back steps. Instead I said, “We need to talk.”
His smile faded—those words are the universal signal that whatever comes next is not going to be good—and I regretted not kissing him first.
I’d spent the rest of the ferry ride thinking about Egypt. About how so many Americans never have the chance to leave their home state, let alone get to live in another country. About how my mom had worked for this. She deserved to go. But as Owen and I walked hand in hand to the park, I wanted to stay in Sandusky with him, with my friends, with everything that was familiar and safe. I told him about the move, about OneVision, and he stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, his smile renewed. “That is so awesome. Your mom has wanted that for a long time.”
On our very first date, Owen showed up on our front porch and rang the doorbell, and Dad told him that if he was going to keep coming around our house, he needed to start using the back door. Dad also asked Owen to call him Casey, but that never happened. Owen slid so effortlessly, so thoroughly, into my life that it was no surprise he remembered that OneVision was my mom’s dream.
“I think we should break up.”
He laughed at first, then stopped when he saw the tears in my eyes. “Why?”
“I’m going to be gone for a year,” I said. “Do you really want to spend the whole time video chatting with a girl seven times zones away when you could be dating someone else?”
“I don’t want to date anyone else.”
“It’s easy to say that now, but—”
“Caroline, I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“Then why are we talking about this?” He pulled his hand up inside his long-sleeved T-shirt and offered the floppy cuff to dry my eyes. That was the sweetness of Owen. “A year isn’t all that long.”
“What about after that, when we graduate and go to different colleges?”
I’m good enough at soccer that I might be able to play for a college team, but Owen could be a professional someday. He’s already had college coaches looking at him, so he’ll probably end up at a powerhouse school like Duke or Notre Dame, places I couldn’t (and probably wouldn’t) follow.
“I figured we’d worry about that when it happened,” he said.