I’d been dreading the last day of summer term. I knew Faisal and I would be apart for three whole months! And even worse, I’d be stuck in Egypt.
Baba called it a holiday, but for Mum, my siblings and I, going to Cairo was less of a holiday and more of an ordeal. The streets were heavily polluted with litter. When you got out of a car you had to mind where you put your foot in case you stood in a heap of rubbish or a stream of sewage. There were no car lanes; vehicles surged in hordes across the roads, and most of them didn’t have air conditioning. If you got stuck in traffic, in a hot taxi, you’d need the windows wound all the way down and you’d be gasping for air. If you wiped your face with a tissue it would turn black from the particles of smoke that had embedded themselves in your skin.
Females had to deal with men catcalling and wolf-whistling, and there were always random street fights breaking out.
In the flat Baba owned next door to his sister, the electricity and water would get cut off on a daily basis. We didn’t do any of the fun touristy things. We spent most of our so-called holiday at Baba’s relatives’ houses trying to make small talk in the little Arabic we knew, batting away incessant flies.
We couldn’t even take refuge in the delicious food, because we always ended up with at least one case of food poisoning, and it wasn’t like the food poisoning you got in the UK. Whatever strain of bacteria they had in Egypt was merciless, leaving you either shooting projectile vomit out of one end and diarrhoea out the other end simultaneously, or it would have you doubled up on the floor crying from excruciating gut pain.
“I’ll try to go to an Internet café with Ahmed and send you an email, or I’ll use my cousins’ computer when I get the chance,” I reassured Faisal on the last day at school.
We had met in our secret spot in the small, abandoned classroom one last time before the summer holidays began.
“I’ll miss you,” I told Faisal, standing up on my tippy toes so that I could wrap my arms around his neck.
“I’ll miss you too,” he said, holding me tight.
“I think I love you.” I don’t know where the words came from and I’m not sure I even knew what love was. The words just tumbled out of my mouth.
“I love you too.”
I looked at him and he looked at me and we planted a kiss on each other’s lips. It was nothing passionate or prolonged, just a peck, but it made us blush. My heart fluttered like a bird flapping about in a cage.
“When we’ve both graduated from high school I’m going to persuade my parents to let me marry you,” he said.
“I’d love that!” And at the time I meant it.
Home was depressing. I had many sleepless nights worrying that my parents were on the brink of a divorce and that our family was at risk of being broken up, I felt like being a high school bride was a perfectly acceptable idea. The Gulf girls did it; they got married as soon as they finished high school, so why couldn’t I? Faisal and I could grow into adulthood together and take care of one another. Plus, his family was rich, so we wouldn’t have to worry about money.
We said our goodbyes and I left the classroom first.
On the ride home with Baba after school, Ahmed wasn’t his usual jokey self. He sulked the whole way home.
“You alright, Ahmed?” I asked as we walked up the stairs to our flat on the first floor. He didn’t answer. “Was it someone at school? Did someone say or do something to you?”
He scowled and turned his face away from mine. I couldn’t think of anything I might have said or done to make him so upset. So I brushed it off and told myself he was just being a hormonal, prepubescent boy.
Later that evening, when Baba and Ahmed had gone to pray at the mosque, Mum called me to her bedroom and shut the door behind us.
“Ahmed is really upset. He said one of his classmates told him after school that he saw you kissing a boy. Is this true?”
“No!” I exclaimed. I couldn’t let this get to Baba. “I swear to God it’s not true. The boys at school love spreading false rumours about the girls.”
“You had better be telling the truth,” Mum hissed. “I’ll tell Ahmed the boys at school are just making trouble and to forget about it. I doubt he’ll say anything to Baba and you better hope Baba doesn’t hear it from anybody else.”
“I promise you, it’s all lies,” I said, looking her straight in the eye, trying to keep my facial expression as blank as possible.
Mum sighed. “I only just spoke to you about following Baba’s rules a few weeks ago. I hope for both our sakes that you’re telling the truth.”
*
A few days later, we were sat in economy class on an aeroplane bound for Egypt. I missed Faisal like crazy, and couldn’t wait to go to my aunt’s house so that I could send him an email.
Oh, how I hated flying to Egypt. The air stewardesses were lazy and rude, and would tut when you asked them just for a cup of water. Women changed their babies’ dirty nappies on their laps and left the poo-filled nappies in the little elastic net at the back of the seat in front of them, stinking up the entire aisle. Children climbed all over the seats. I turned around several times to give the kids behind me death stares when they kicked my chair. It felt like my nightmare holiday had already begun.
When we landed in the airport and finally got through customs and baggage collection, we were greeted at the main entrance by Baba’s two younger brothers and his brother-in-law. After having lived for almost a year in the constant sweaty sauna that is the Gulf, Egypt’s dry heat was a welcome surprise. The flies were still annoying though. There were no flies in the Gulf, probably because it was too hot for anything to survive.
I knew that this so-called holiday was cursed when my youngest uncle was texting while driving, then dropped his phone under his legs and proceeded to try and pick it up with one hand while holding the steering wheel with the other. The car took a sharp swerve across the highway and we all screamed as we thought he’d lost control of the car. He panicked and managed to regain control, just as I thought we might veer off into the River Nile.
A couple of days later, while Baba was taking a shower in our dusty Cairo flat, I found our return air tickets. They were poking out of his little black travel bag which he had left on the dining table.
All the furniture in our flat was the classic wooden furniture fashioned in 17th-century French style. You would find the exact same style of furniture in every Egyptian household. I liked the woody smell of the hardback chairs in the living room and the sounds the crystals of the chandelier made when they knocked together as the breeze came through the open balcony.
Baba had told us that we were only going to be here for three weeks, and when I looked at the return date, I discovered that he’d lied. We were going to be here for double that amount of time!
I went to Mum, who was sipping her morning cup of coffee on the balcony, and told her what I’d found.
“Did you know about this?” I asked her, furious that I was going to have to bear this country for over a month.
“I didn’t but I’m honestly not surprised. It’s just another one of his lies,” she replied nonchalantly as she ate a digestive biscuit.
“Why aren’t you as angry as I am?” I demanded.
“I’m tired,” Mum said. “I carry on for the sake of you children. I want you all to have a good education and go to university. I don’t want to jeopardise your futures by making unnecessary trouble with your father. You need to learn how to pick your battles.”
I sat across from her silently on a brown leather pouffe, and peered down at the streets below; the caretaker’s wife was sitting on the steps of the building’s entrance, her head cradled in her hand. She was watching the people walk by, a look of misery etched into her face. The caretaker might have been much poorer than Baba, but I doubted Baba’s attitude towards women was any different to the caretaker’s.