His dad’s car is parked outside the building and Adam opens the door for me. It’s strange to be sitting in the back, especially when there are only two of us in the car, but he seems intent on keeping as much space between us as possible. I don’t know if it’s a Muslim thing or an Adam Elhadad thing, but it makes me feel pretentious. As we stop-and-start through traffic over the Abbas Bridge into Giza, I pull out my phone to check the score of the Liverpool friendly summer game against a team from Australia.
Like most kids back home, I started playing recreational league soccer out at Osborn Park when I was five. Everyone gets a T-shirt and every team has at least one little kid (on my very first team it was Hannah) who spends more time picking clovers out of the grass than actually learning the game. But it wasn’t until I started dating Owen that I had a favorite professional team. His uncle Sean spent a college semester in England and sent back a Liverpool supporter’s scarf as a gift for his nephew. I first liked the team because of Owen’s obsession, but as I followed along for three years, they grew on me. Even when they’re losing. Which they are right now.
“Oh, come on, Liverpool. Seriously?”
The games are usually on television early in the morning back home—six hours behind England—so Owen sometimes came over to watch with me. When he was home, Dad would join us, and Mom would make peanut-butter-and-banana French toast. The tears that come with the memory take me by surprise and I am wiping them on the sleeve of my shirt when Adam says, “You support Liverpool?”
Looking up, I catch a glimpse of his eyes in the rearview mirror as he waits for my answer. We are sitting in a veritable ocean of cars. Everyone is at a standstill.
“It’s my own special brand of torture,” I say. “But yes.”
A smile wakes up his face, erasing the serious-lipped guy who walked into our apartment that first day. He is transformed. Not as intimidating. Adorable in a way that makes my heart beat a little bit faster. “They are my favorite too. An unpopular choice among my friends, who are all mad for United or City.”
I crinkle my nose at the mention of the Manchester teams, earning a laugh. It is just one tiny, tentative thing, but for the first time since we met, we’ve made an actual connection. “Favorite Liverpool player?”
“Any?” Adam asks. “Or from the current squad?”
“Either.”
“Pepe,” he says, referring to the former goalkeeper. “Yours?”
“Gerrard.”
Adam smiles again. “I was going to say Gerrard.”
“I almost said Pepe.”
He looks at me in the rearview mirror again, this time as if he is actually seeing me, and I realize what I miss most about home is not Owen; it’s hanging out with people my own age. I want to see the pyramids with the people who are related to me, but I want to talk to someone who’s not. “Hey, um—Adam?”
“Yes?”
“Do you think maybe we could do something else? It’s just—I’ve been stuck in the apartment all week and I’m homesick, and today doesn’t feel like the right day to see the pyramids.”
He is quiet for a moment and then he nods. “I know what you need.”
We are caught up in a current of cars committed to making a left turn, but Adam navigates across the lanes, amid the blaring horns of angry drivers. It is not unlike a salmon swimming upstream and I pinch my eyes closed, hoping we don’t share the same fate as the fish, until we are heading straight. He falls back into silence and I’m not certain if it is because he’s concentrating on driving—maybe it takes a lot of effort to be terrifying behind the wheel of a car—or if he’s already said too much.
Finally he double-parks in front of a small restaurant tucked into the lower level of a sand-colored building, leaving the engine running. “Stay in the car. I will be back.”
On my left, the passing traffic comes within inches of the sedan, and on the right, the owner of the car we double-parked next to shakes his fist at me, as if I am the one who boxed him in. Two minutes later Adam comes out of the restaurant with a plastic bag hanging off his fingers. He waves off the man—who is now shouting at him—and climbs back into the driver’s seat. As we motor away, the scent of warm starch, tomatoes, and a note of vinegar fills the car.
“What did you buy?”
“You will soon see.”
We end up back over the bridge on the island where I live. Adam drives past the apartment building and comes to a stop at a riverfront park just down the road. This time, though, he actually pulls into a parking space and kills the engine.
I follow him down the brickwork path into the park, where he selects a bench beneath the shade of a leafy tree with a view of the Nile. We sit on opposite ends of the bench and the bag between us rustles as Adam takes out two plastic tubs—the size of large margarine containers—filled with a mixture of rice, macaroni, spaghetti, lentils, and garlic, topped with a tomato sauce, and sprinkled with chickpeas and fried onions. It’s like someone opened their pantry, dumped all the random leftovers into one pot, and called it dinner.
“Koshary is Egyptian comfort food,” he explains. “I thought maybe it would help you to feel better.”
“That was . . . really sweet. Thank you.”
The koshary is both starchy and crunchy, and the sauce a little bit spicy. None of the flavors and textures should go together but they do, and I take another bite because it is—inexplicably—comforting.
“I cannot imagine moving so far from my home,” Adam says. “Cairo must be a difficult place for you with the noise and the language and—”
“Bad drivers.”
His laugh is low and quiet, the same way he talks. “If I were a bad driver we would have gotten into an accident, but we did not, so clearly you are mistaken.”
“If you weren’t stuck driving me around today, what would you be doing?”
“Making koshary.”
“Really?” I poke my fork around in the plastic tub, looking for spaghetti noodles.
“In reality I clean tables, sweep the floors, and serve koshary to takeaway customers because I am an apprentice,” Adam says. “But sometimes my boss allows me to do the cooking. Don’t tell him, but my own koshary tastes better.”
“That’s a strong claim.”
“Maybe one day I will prove it to you.”
I’m not sure what to say because it seems like he is flirting with me, but Owen was my boyfriend for so long that my own skills are rusty. What if I’m wrong? What if Adam is just being a nice guy? Eventually, after thinking about my answer for far too long, I say, “Maybe.”
As we eat, we watch the other people in the park. A young mother hovers as her toddler tosses pebbles into the river with chubby little fingers. Not far away, a young guy perches on a railing with a girl standing between his knees. His face is close to hers as they talk privately and a pang of melancholy cuts through me.