PAULINE KALDAS
“You want me to go back? I’m sixty-five years old.”
My hair is gray, and my body has grown into its age. I have settled into myself. No longer the young girl you met, the one who flirted and teased, who wore her black hair like a shield, enticing you to ask for her hand. No longer the one who agreed to wrap herself around you and fly across the ocean, willing to release each strand that held me close to family and home, believing in this miracle of America. I’m old, and my steps are solid on this land where I have learned to live; they cannot turn around now and go in a different direction.
“We can retire there. Do you know how much our money is worth? I can buy a beautiful apartment. We can live on the corniche and look at the Nile every day.”
I left, only a young man with little in my pocket. My family held me back, ridiculed my dreams, told me I would never make it in America: that my life could only be wrapped in this place with a job pushing me each day to make only enough to feed us and hold a roof up, that I was a fool to imagine myself in the open space of a new land, that I would return to beg for a morsel of food. Now my money can take me back to every ice cream my mouth drooled for as a young child. These dollars I have bought and sold will multiply till they’re an endless chain of pearls. Like the rich, we can buy an apartment, two stories, with marble floors and gold faucets, and a balcony that lifts us above the city so our eyes can stretch over the Nile each day.
“We’ve been in this country for forty years.”
Forty years is a lifetime. Your mother died before she turned fifty; her heart failed after we left. You could not even tell her the truth about our immigration, trying to convince her it was only a short excursion, a youthful desire to see the magic of the other side of the world. But she looked at our faces, the anxiety of our anticipation, and she knew that her only son was leaving. My father died only years later, barely reaching the age of sixty. We could not even return so I could stand by mother’s side as she buried him. Forty years we have built a life and left one behind.
“You can have everything there. I’ll buy you whatever you want.”
Those early years, every penny we had to hold tight in our fists. I watched you cut coupons, squint your eyes at the price tags, and stretch each pound of meat with bread. Every birthday I failed you, and even a single rose was an extravagance I held back. There I can buy you dresses to sparkle on your body, jewels to circle your wrists; whatever your eye rests on, I’ll offer you as my gift. Don’t you want to enter a store and lay your finger on any item, to have it be yours like the magic of wishes coming true?
“And do you have enough money to get rid of the pollution and the crowds too?”
When we decided to go and everyone’s talk of foolish dreams and the struggle of America failed to keep our feet still, my father sold his land by the pyramids so we could have something to hold us as we began our new lives. My mother took off her gold bracelet with its snakes intertwining around her wrist and sold it so there was enough to buy the tickets. What can your money buy for us now? The streets in Egypt are brimming with the poor and hopeful, and their dreams release the stench caught in our nostrils. You can’t walk without the weight of people bumping against you and inhaling the smoke and garbage that fumes the city. Our money will not release us from its grabbing fist.
“We can go to the Red Sea. We’ll buy a chalet, and we can go when we like.”
Do you remember our honeymoon in Hurghada? We rented a small chalet, and each morning the slender waves lapped at our door. I held your hand as we crossed the sand, and we walked toward the corals beneath the surface, laughing when the tiny fish nibbled at our ankles. I unfolded my arms like a hammock to hold your body so the sea could carry you. And at night, the sand winds whistled at our door as we floated inside each other, my body surprised by the softness of your skin like the caress of each wave. The beach was almost empty that October, and we owned each grain of sand as we spoke our dreams like the drops of water glistening on our skin. We’ll buy a chalet to make it our own, a place we can inhabit at our will. We’ll own the corals and the waves and the sun’s dreams, walk across the edge of sand, marking our ground.
“After we’ve come here and struggled and built a life?”
You couldn’t find a job, and when you came home, I saw your face like a stone engraved in silence. You took a job washing dishes. Your hands became red and brittle, the fingers bending in and your knuckles hardening against the harsh soap. A year until finally you found something in a small company, each day sitting at your desk. But I knew the boss looked over your shoulder, touching his pen to your work, marking corrections. You stooped over that desk for years, the fear of losing the job etched in your eyes. I found work, punching in time cards, leaving my children in day care centers, afraid I would forget their faces. It took years till we saved enough that you could shrug off the choke of having a boss and strike out on your own. We have built this life with our hands; each stone in this house we have carried on our backs.
“We can live like royalty there.”
What do we have here? Our house we pay for each month, the bank looming over us. It is empty space, the walls turning their corners, tucking us inside their angles, keeping us cloistered. We live like monks, our lives restricted. In Egypt, our hands would touch nothing. We can purchase each task: a servant to clean the house, a man to deliver the groceries, a cook to stand in the kitchen. And we would be free to come and go as we please. We can stay at the Oberoi hotel in Giza, lounge at the pool, and watch the sun set over the pyramids, each drink and each plate delivered to us. Imagine your life at your fingertips, only making the request to have it be granted.
“These are dreams. No one lives like a king there.”
You remember only the beauty of things; maybe that is why I married you. Your eyes have always stretched their vision beyond the boundaries of the horizon; you follow a dream that no one else can see. Egypt has no more kings or queens. Its days of glory are over. The country is crowded only with leftover peasants. The kings gathered their wealth and ran, leaving only those who know how to struggle for the same bread they eat daily. Their bare feet are caked with the mud of the Nile as they carry their loads and scrape their few piasters each day. The river’s water has become poisonous and the land abandoned to those who cannot nurture it.
“Over there life is good, and the people have morals.”
A sense of decency. People look in your face. Greet you with respect. We take care of each other—not like here, abandoned, every man for himself and no one stops to help lift those who fall. People can still feel with their hearts. There, even those who have nothing share their bite of food.
“Over there people are eating each other and everyone is just for himself. You’ve forgotten why we came.”
The corruption. The bribes. The connections you need to take even a small step. The poor scramble for a few scraps of nourishment, while the rich play their Monopoly with real money. There is nothing but the hardship of each day. Each man tumbling over the next to win.
“We’ll have everything. At least people will respect us. Not like here. Forty years and the Americans still look at us as if we were cockroaches walking on their land.”
I have learned their language, their slang, their clothing, how to eat their food, how to laugh at their jokes, how to make their money. Still they grimace when they meet me, they scratch their heads instead of shaking my hand, they scowl when they learn I live in the best neighborhood. I changed my name, so I could erase the sour look on their faces when I introduce myself. America welcomes you into its land so you can mop its floors. I want to hold my head up high again, to breathe my name and have it heard.
“What are you saying? We found good work, and we bought a house. Our children got educated here. You want me to go back and not see them?”
Look, look at what we have. This house that is large and grand. In Egypt, we would have stayed in that two-bedroom apartment. I found a job here and went in each day to earn our living. No one harassed me, and no one told me I wasn’t smart enough. We raised our sons in this house instead of cramming them between the walls and the alleys. We paid for their education with our blood, and one is a doctor and one is an engineer. In that country, they would have stepped on them like vermin because they’re Christian; every door shut in their faces till we would have been lucky to see them sweep the streets for a living.
“They’ll come visit us.”
We’ll bring them to see us. They will know where they are from, and they will be part of their family. They will bring their children to play on the sand and bounce in the waves of the sea like you and I did when we were young. We will pull our family together again and loosen the tight grip of isolation. We will all return to settle our feet into the sand and water of our homeland.
“You’re dreaming. Our children will never leave this country.”
Your thoughts are like a fairy tale; you weave light and air to make a tapestry of magic colors. Our sons have settled their lives in this country. They have found a place for themselves, and already they are piling the stones to build a home for their children. From their birth, they claimed this land as their own, and the thread that ties them to Egypt has become a thin sliver too invisible to follow back.
“I want to live the rest of my life in peace without struggling.”
To look out on the sea and own the world.
“I came here, and I’m going to die here.”
This life I have built, I will not let it go.