“Yes,” he says. “My family worries you are taking me to a place from where I cannot return.”
The platforms are busy with people waiting to board trains that look ancient, trains that are run-down by use. The special train is painted in the colors of the Egyptian flag—red on top, white in the middle, black on the bottom—and looks newer. Not all that different from Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited train that runs past Sandusky every day.
“Is it possible that you’re not meant to return?” I say as I choose a seat beside the window. Adam sits next to me with my dad across the aisle.
“What do you mean?” Adam asks.
“My grandparents have lived in the same town all their lives and they are completely content with that choice,” I say. “And that’s fine, you know? But not everyone is meant to stay in one place. Maybe Alexandria is just your first step.”
“Perhaps.” He toys with his lower lip as he considers and I wonder if I’m projecting my vision of his future onto him. It could be that he wants to stay in Cairo, with his family. That he’s happy right where he is.
“I’ve never ridden in a proper train before.” I wiggle a little in my seat, changing the subject and making him laugh a little. “I feel like I’m on my way to Hogwarts.”
“In which house will you be sorted when we arrive?”
“You know about Harry Potter?” I ask, and his eyebrows hitch up, as if he can’t believe I’m asking this question. After the whole reggae band thing, I should probably know better. “Sorry.”
“My mother has a cousin who lives in America. He sent the first book to Aya and me, and my father read it aloud, translating to Arabic. When he finished, he bought the second book in English and said if we wanted to read it, we must learn to read it ourselves.”
“Is that the real reason your English is so good?”
“The books were very good motivation for me,” he admits. “Harry Potter was yet another thing that made Geddo angry because Islam considers magic to be blasphemous.”
“A lot of Christians get twisted about the magic, too.”
“My parents did not let us go blindly into that world,” Adam says. “We read the books together and talked about what was false and what was true. But as far as Geddo was concerned, the only book Muslims should read is the Quran.”
“So which house are you in?”
“No. No. I asked you first.”
“Hufflepuff.”
“Of course.” He laughs. “Same.”
“Really?”
“I shared the book with my friends,” Adam says. “Magdi’s parents paid no attention and Omar read the books in secret. Afterward, we took the sorting quiz and they teased me without mercy about being a Hufflepuff.”
“Did Bahar ever read the books?”
“He refused because his parents forbid it.”
“It’s too bad,” I say. “You could have used another Hufflepuff in your corner.”
Adam laughs. “This is true.”
There are too many people around, including my dad, for me to kiss him, but I give his hand a squeeze. “Trade seats with me.”
“Why?”
“If we’re going somewhere you’ve never been, you should see it.”
“You have never been to Alexandria,” Adam says.
“I know, but I can see it on the way back.”
“You make no sense, but I would like to look out the window.”
We swap places. He puts his arm around me and I lean into him for most of the ride, so I can see out the window too. Once we are out of the tightly packed Cairo skyline, the railway runs along the Nile where the land around us is green. Scrawny cows dot the riverbank and men in little skiffs fish the water. We pass ramshackle villages and farmlands, all pushed up against their liquid power cord. As we near Alexandria, urban sprawl seeps back into the landscape until we are in the heart of the city.
CHAPTER 31
We take a taxi from the train station to the diving center, a small waterfront complex that is reminiscent of those found in the Florida Keys. The shop sits beside a tiki-hut restaurant, and their jetty is lined with dive boats and inflatable dinghies. The day is clear so both the sky and the Mediterranean Sea are intensely blue, and the circular harbor is filled with boats of all sizes. Some are moored while others kick up small white wakes as they move across the water.
Dad books a day trip and our team is the dive master Ramy and his assistant Khalid. Ramy outfits us with gear and takes us to a small pool where he instructs Adam on how to use the scuba equipment. My dad and I have official dive certification, but Ramy puts Adam through an introductory course that will allow him to dive without certification.
“Cleopatra’s palace is in about five meters of water,” Ramy says. “Good for a beginner since it’s not very deep. You won’t need to decompress on the way up, so if you feel uncomfortable for any reason, swim to the surface.”
As we motor out toward the dive site, the beaches rimming the harbor are thick with people and beach umbrellas. A few white tourists are wearing bikinis, but most Egyptian women walk fully clothed along the shoreline. A couple women wearing abayas and hijabs are farther out in the water.
I opted for a long-sleeve rash guard and boy-short bottoms, but my choice of swimwear is less distracting to Adam than his state of shirtlessness is to me. I keep stealing glances at the light dusting of dark hair in the middle of his chest and the definition of his back muscles, and I’m thankful I’m wearing sunglasses.
“The visibility here isn’t as good as Sharm El Sheikh or Hurghada because the water is shallow and choppy,” Khalid explains. “But I think today won’t be so bad. Many of the intact artifacts were removed to museum collections, but you will see some granite pillars, food storage bowls, and two of the sphinxes that guarded Cleopatra’s temple.”
The dive site isn’t very far from shore, not even as far as the middle of the harbor. As Khalid ties the boat off to a mooring ball, Ramy points out the spot where the lighthouse of Alexandria once stood. Although the lighthouse is long gone, it’s still kind of exciting that I’ve visited two of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Infinitely better than staying home in Ohio with my grandparents.
Dad and I start putting on our gear, but Adam just sits in the boat looking a little dazed. “Is this too much?” I ask. “We could snorkel or just swim.”