Brittle Stars

AFTER I LEAVE RAMI’S HOUSE, I MAKE MY WAY BACK TO Dahab. My intention is to rent a place for a little while, hunker down, let my broken spirit and tired body heal. Maybe I’ll do some writing.

I am in desperate need of a place to call home when I stumble across a temporary private room at a little yoga camp, which is where I become friends with Katie. I’m there when I receive an email from my dad that shocks me. My grandmother in Germany—my mom’s mom, and the only grandparent I’ve ever known—has passed away.

My dad’s messages are like him, rigid and no-nonsense, and he doesn’t offer any details about her death. Even so, it sends me reeling, so the people at the yoga camp envelop me with kindness and tenderly guide me through my loss. Within just a couple of days, I abandon my search for an apartment and decide to stay.

El Salam, the camp is called. Peace.

“Float with me,” Katie calls from half a football field away.

We are snorkeling in the Red Sea. Well, Katie is, anyway. She dunks her head below the surface of the water. Her dreadlocks balance on the surface like tangled yellow yarn. Just when I think Katie has drowned, she pops back up again.

“Float with me!” she insists.

I cross my arms over my chest, hands holding on to my own sides, a rented snorkel mask hanging from my icy fingers. I am up to my knees in salty water.

“This water is freezing. The coral is cutting my feet. And god knows who used this snorkel before me,” I say, gesturing with the chewed plastic mouthpiece.

Katie moves with the current, drifting forward and floating back again, a slender blonde scrap of seaweed on the tide. I understand why she has fish scales tattooed like a sleeve down her left arm.

“The water is clear and gorgeous. The coral is a marvel of nature. And someday you’ll be far away from the Red Sea, and you’ll regret not snorkeling with me,” she laughs. “Come on. Last chance.”

Before I can say anything, Katie submerges herself, legs kicking into the air. With toes pointed like a dancer, she snaps her ankles, and the rest of her body ripples like a cracked whip. She is gone.

I wait a few seconds before I call her name. I don’t see any sign of her white snorkel tip or her ridiculously bright neon bathing suit.

I would head for the shore, but I don’t want to be alone. I have no choice but to follow her.

I’ve always been terrible at judging distances, so I don’t know how far I swim until I locate my friend again. Once reconnected, we swim a few dozen meters. Or maybe a few hundred. I don’t know. The water is buoyant with salt, and even though I’m not a strong swimmer, I float easily.

We stop at a shallow reef, a popular dive site called Eel Garden. There the eels poke up through the sand, their curved shapes creating a field of underwater commas as they wait for the next meal to swim by.

“Let’s give the eels a show,” Katie says.

We giggle and take off our swimsuits, wrapping them around our wrists. Katie’s bottoms float away and she kicks like mad to get to them before the waves abduct them forever. We imagine the bikini would wash up on the beach in Saudi Arabia, just across from us, where hardly anyone would know what it was. They might study it, build a glass case for it in a museum, make it the subject of a doctoral thesis.

“Swimming naked is the best,” Katie says.

“It feels like I was just born,” I say.

“Like nobody else exists,” she says.

“Like nobody else ever existed,” I add.

“Like the beginning of the world.”

“Like the beginning of time.”

We tread water for a few minutes then wade to the rocky beach, where I give Katie my towel to wrap around her waist. It is a clear evening. We see the lights turn on in Saudi Arabia.

Katie picks up stones and shows me how to grab brittle stars, long-limbed starfish about the size of our hands, from the shallow waters. Sometimes I scare them, and the legs fall off their starry button bodies.

My camera is in my bag, and I take photos of the sky emptying into the water, scoops of orange sherbet topped with petals of purple hyacinth. The colors unravel as we watch. This is the moment. The sunset is thick and ripe. A red streak slashes through the sky with a vivid gash. Salt water runs down my face.

I sit on the shore, knees curled to my chest, my shirt pulled over my legs. I cry, and Katie puts her head on my shoulder. Her hair tickles my sunburned neck.

“She’s going right now,” I whisper. “I just know it.”

“You’re probably right,” Katie says. “And there’s nothing you can do about it except wave goodbye.”

She is correct. There is so much I want to do. There is nothing I can do.

I think about all those starfish I scared limbless. They’re so vulnerable now. They don’t even have the arms to flounder. It’s enough to make me start crying again.

Katie grabs my hand and tugs me toward the boardwalk, which is lined with teahouses and Bedouin cafés. We can smell roasted chickens, sautéed garlic, boiled chickpeas laced with sumac. There are people everywhere. None of them are my mom.

Katie says she is so hungry she feels empty inside. I tell her to get used to it.

EGYPTIAN INTERNET SUCKS. I HAVE LITTLE ONLINE ACCESS at the yoga camp, and the Wi-Fi hotspots throughout Dahab are lukewarm at best.

I also don’t have the cash to spend at a coffee shop if the free Wi-Fi isn’t working. Instead I lean against a brick wall in an alley and piggyback on nearby unsecured networks with my iPhone. This has become my ritual, and I do it a few times a day.

Tonight I am more desperate than ever.

One connection lasts long enough to check my email, and I light a cigarette while I wait. Ever since my dad’s message about my mom’s declining health, I’ve been smoking, one of the dumbest things I can do with my asthma, but there’s nobody to tell me to stop.

Connecting … loading …

I don’t have any messages. I try to call, but nobody answers. My dad, my sister, my brother. All my calls head straight to voicemail. I don’t want to leave a message.

That night I go to bed not knowing if my mom is alive or dead.

It is so cold; I pull my wool chullo hat from Peru over my ears. I stare at the white space of a yoga poster on the wall. I wait. The minutes are stretchy, hollow, and endless. The night is always longest for those who don’t find sleep.