PAULINE KALDAS

Cumin and Coriander

THE OIL SPLATTERED as she slipped another falafel patty into the frying pan. One drop stung her cheek and she brushed the pricking sensation by rubbing her shoulder against it. Faten was almost finished. The stuffed cabbage was done, the vegetable tagen needed just a few more minutes in the oven, and the spinach phyllo triangles were all set on the counter. Once she fried the rest of the falafel, she would be able to pack up and go to the next house.

Mr. David’s kitchen was large, with lots of counter space and a new oven that worked easily. The gas was hooked up so she didn’t have to worry about replacing the butagaz cylinder. The American University in Cairo had built this new building in luxury style. Mr. David’s apartment had a huge terrace, almost as large as the apartment itself, with a view of Zamalek’s landscape of old villas. Sometimes, Faten would take a minute to step out onto the terrace and let her eyes roam over the city. Despite the growing population and the many new buildings, most of the villas had been able to salvage at least a small garden with orange or guava trees and perhaps some flowers. There were also several new boutiques like Mobaco, Concrete, and New Man, where the upper-class and foreigners shopped. Faten preferred being in the kitchen, the feeling of space around her as she maneuvered, a circular dance from refrigerator to counter to oven.

She took out the last falafel, still crackling from the hot oil, and placed it on the paper towel along with the rest. It was almost two o’clock. She was running late and would have to hurry. She wondered if she should spend the two pounds on a taxi to go downtown or if she should wait for the minibus that cost forty piasters. She looked at the money Mr. David had left for her—forty pounds when he owed her only thirty-five, twenty for the food and fifteen for her salary. He was always generous. She would take a taxi. This morning she had been late because she got into an argument with the taxi driver who stopped for her. He had arrogantly insisted that she pay him four pounds when she knew that two was fair. Finally, he waved his hand, encircling the whole area of Imbaba, and stated with assurance that any foreigner he picked up would pay him no less than five pounds. She muttered under her breath, “God save us and protect us,” and told the man to go on and find his foreigner; she did not want to delay him.

Faten took the vegetable tagen out of the oven and placed it alongside the rest of the food. Then she covered everything with tin foil since she knew Mr. David would not be home for a while. She was grateful to be working for him. He was a young man and not married. He never complained about what she cooked or how she cooked it. Often, he would not give her a list for the next week and accepted whatever choices she made for him. How lucky, she thought, the woman who would marry him. Not like Mr. John, who insisted she use less and less oil. Now he only left her two drops to cook with. And when he was home, he would hover about her. How did he expect her to make the phyllo or the eggplant with no oil? The food came out dry and brittle, nothing to soften the palate, to make one desire it. She wanted to stop cooking for him, but she was reluctant to give up any of her jobs. She didn’t know what might happen tomorrow.

She still hoped that she might be able to take her daughter, Houria, out of the public school and put her in the private school with her brother, Mahmoud. Houria—it meant freedom. When her son was born, her husband filled out the birth certificate and afterwards told her the child’s name. Then, she became “Om Mahmoud,” the mother of Mahmoud. She had not expected anything different for the second child. Instead, her husband came in after she had given birth. The room was still spinning, and the walls seemed fluid, waving back and forth with the motion of a belly dancer. He held her hand and smiled. “Well,” he said, “do you have a name for our daughter?” She immediately said, “Houria,” without thinking it through. Her husband looked a little surprised, but he nodded and said, “It’s an old name but good.” The name, which meant freedom, had been popular during times of war: 1948, 1967, 1973. What brought it to her mind now, she wondered, when there was peace?

Her husband had insisted on sending Mahmoud to a private school, even though they didn’t have much money. After her husband died, she worked hard to continue paying the school fees. Maybe now with the new jobs she had gotten, there might be a chance of transferring Houria. She had been lucky. Maybe her husband was still watching over her. The only job she could find after his death was working as a maid for an Egyptian woman. Then an American professor moved in next door. Faten started cleaning for her. One day, Miss Carol came home with bags of groceries. Faten asked her if she would like her to cook anything. When Miss Carol asked if she knew how to cook, Faten paused at the peculiarity of the question, finally replying, “I can cook anything you want.” Miss Carol recommended her for other jobs, cooking for the foreign professors at the American University in Cairo. Soon she had enough to fill her days, often cooking for two people a day. She quit cleaning for the Egyptian woman and became a full-time cook. The pay was better, and she could be in the kitchen by herself. Most of the foreigners never disturbed her. A few of them gave her a small radio to listen to while she cooked, and sometimes she would sing. But summers were hard since most of them traveled, and she could only hope they would give her something extra for that time.

Faten slipped off her long galabiya, now spotted with grease and tomato sauce. She reminded herself that next time she would take it home to wash, but she knew she would probably forget. She pulled the long black skirt on over her head, then the sweater over her thin chemise.

She went to the small bathroom and started to tie the black scarf over her head. She caught her face in the square mirror above the sink: her nose took up a little too much space and her face seemed so round. But she was surprised by the blush on her cheeks—it must have come from the hot kitchen. Her lips were full, drawn with precision. Once, one of the women she worked for had told her she was beautiful. Faten stared at her, puzzled. The woman continued, complimenting her smooth brown skin, her clear complexion. “The beauty of your face,” she said.

Her husband had thought so too. He would touch his hand to her face and tell her she was as beautiful as the moon. She would smile hesitantly then slip his hand away, feeling embarrassed as if she had been caught in an illicit act. He was gentle, more than she had expected. She did not mind staying at home, taking care of the house, the children. The market nearby was good with clean, fresh produce, not the shriveled tomatoes and rotten fruit in other parts of the city. A breeze traveled through their small balcony, and sometimes, as she swept, a slip of wind would caress her arm. Then, so many times, at the beginning of the month when her husband got paid, he would come home with small gifts for the children and something for her, a scarf bright with a pattern of orange and purple, or a purse, or, once, even perfume. How she raved at his extravagance, buying such gifts when they could barely afford the school fees. He would wave her away and say, “Woman, don’t you deserve something in your life?”

Yet, there were days when he returned home quiet, his shoulders stooped, refused anything to eat, and just sat on the balcony smoking a cigarette. “This country,” he would say, “does not respect the man who works.” She didn’t understand and could only tell him that everything would be all right and bring him a cup of tea with mint.

Faten saw again the face in the mirror. She shook her head and reprimanded herself. “Look at you, in your late thirties, a widow with two children and you’re thinking of your beauty.” Why, she wondered, had her parents named her Faten, after the actress Faten Hamama? Surely they hadn’t wished her to become an actress—what a disgrace that would be. It was the word Hamama that always intrigued her: a strange name meaning a dove. She imagined a white dove flying into the clouds, losing its outline.

She finished wrapping the scarf over her hair, now streaked with a few lines of gray. She had to hurry and get to Mr. Nicholas’s and Madame Kristine’s. Since she was running late, she hoped they would have nothing unexpected for her. So strange they had been. That first time she went, Madame Kristine made her sit down and insisted on giving her a cup of tea, then she had gone on and on in her bit of broken Arabic about how they never had a maid or a cook and they wanted her to be happy and to tell them about whatever she needed. She smiled, trying to grasp what she could of the words. Then they started leaving dishes in the sink, which she had to wash before she could cook. And sometimes she was asked to do the laundry. Last week, she spent the whole day there cooking phyllo, grape leaves, tahini, macaroni, and more because they were having a party.

Faten went back to the kitchen, put the money in her purse, then checked the list of food she was making for them. Fava beans—she would have to pick those up on the way there at one of the kiosks then spice them at the house.

She folded the list and placed it in her pocket. Then she walked to the door and picked up the two shopping bags of food she had bought that morning. She stepped out of the apartment, put one of the bags down, and pulled the door shut, turning the knob to make sure it had locked behind her.

When she arrived, Madame Kristine opened the door with a large smile. She ushered Faten into the kitchen and chatted as she watched her set out the food. Then she walked over to the sink and opened the cabinet underneath it. She smiled, pointed at a plastic tub filled with an assortment of dirty plates and glasses, and said, “Thank you, party food was good.” Faten stared at the pile. No one had bothered to rinse the dishes, so there were particles of food and smudges from people scooping with their bread. She looked up at Madame Kristine whose smile had become engraved. Faten nodded, and the woman left the kitchen.

Faten closed the cabinet door and began cooking. She could hear music from the living room, something loud with lots of strings. It moved quickly, and she wondered how anyone could make out the words. She cooked silently, trying to get everything on the stove at once. Only the beans were left, but she didn’t feel like making them. So often, the cumin and coriander with the garlic would fill her nostrils, and she would have to stir or beat something hard to keep the images from taking shape.

As she mixed the spices in, she again remembered the day her husband died. The children had been particularly energetic, and it took a long time to get them to fall asleep. Finally, she had been able to make herself a cup of tea and sit on the balcony, looking over the rooftops—so many with makeshift apartments where families made a home. The smell of manure and slaughtered goats reached her from the camel market. Some people came with their camels from the Sudan hoping to sell them; others sold goats and sheep that they slaughtered right there. The place had become a tourist attraction, and officials were talking about charging an entry fee. Such things the foreigners wanted to see. When she told one of the couples she was working for that she lived in Imbaba, they had said, “Oh, the camel market.” “No camel,” she answered and went into the kitchen.

Her memory continued. She had finished drinking her tea on the balcony. It was getting late. Her husband was still not home, and she decided to go to sleep. When he returned, she was already in the midst of a dream. She never remembered what that dream had been, but it was something urgent and immediate that he woke her from. He shook her awake and said, “Woman, it’s not even midnight. What are you doing sleeping? Come on, get up and make me some food.” So she had heaved her body out of bed and gone to the kitchen. He insisted she heat up some fava beans and add the cheese and basterma meat he had bought. They sat at the table together because he wanted her to stay with him. He started eating and asking about the children. At the third or fourth bite, he brought his right hand to his left arm and started rubbing it. “My arm, Faten, my arm hurts,” he said. As she went to him, his head fell onto his shoulder, and that was all.

Faten shook herself a little to come out of the memory. She was looking for a bowl to put the beans in but couldn’t find one. Then she remembered the dishes. She opened the cabinet and saw several dirty bowls. She stared, and her shoulders rose with one heavy breath. Then she lifted the tub of dishes, placed it by the sink, and began to scrub.

The Top

LIGHT FILTERED THROUGH the thin slats of the closed window blind, creating a pattern of long, narrow stairs on the opposite wall. Shoukry stared at it as he sat at the round linoleum-topped kitchen table waiting for his wife to bring him a cup of coffee and some toast. The pattern shifted with the direction of the light until it started to fade and his eyes lost its movement.

Walking quickly toward him, his wife set down the demitasse of Arabic coffee and a plate with two pieces of toast sliding back and forth precariously. “Here,” she said, barely parting her lips. Before he could ask about butter, she had bustled away. He sipped the coffee and ate the toast as it was, occasionally glancing up at the wall to see if the pattern might return in a different form.

“I have to go in early today,” she said, grabbing her pocketbook and sweater. “If you come home before me, there is hamburger in the refrigerator. You can put it in the oven.”

“Amira, what about Amira?” he asked.

“She has a meeting after school.”

The desk in his office in Egypt had been very large. Even if he bent forward and stretched his arms to either side as far as he could, feeling the tendons on the inside of his elbows pull and strain, his fingertips would barely grip the edges. The desk chair was cushioned, and it twirled around. The men who came to see him sat on a straight-backed hard wooden chair. They would lean forward, their hands vigorously explaining their request. He would relax, fit his body into the chair’s contoured shape and let it rock a little with his movements. Never would he move his body closer to the man in front of him. Even when shaking hands, he would stand upright behind his desk, so the other man had to bend forward to reach his hand. It was this precision of his movements, he believed, that had earned him the respect of his colleagues and the men who came to see him. That was why he was called Ustaz and Pasha.

He was in charge of issuing permits for the construction of new apartment buildings or adding more floors to old ones. With the population growing so fast and so many enterprising young men eager to gain some of the profit, his office had a long list of appointments that stretched six months ahead. About once every month, he would refuse to give a permit because the new government building codes had not been followed. The rest of the time, he might overlook certain discrepancies if he were offered some compensation in return. He would debate with the man across from him that the codes were really too strict given the rising cost of building materials. In his mind, he justified his actions by convincing himself that he was adhering to a set of revised codes based on his own better judgment. He thoroughly enjoyed discussing the building projects with the builders and felt himself to be an expert, often giving advice on the drawings laid out for him.

“And why not? Are we less than anyone?”

“I said no. Our lives here are good and we will stay here.”

“Why don’t you look around you? Everyone wants to leave this country and its misery.”

“What misery? I’ve reached a high position in my work. And here we are living in an apartment that is beautiful and large. What more do you want?”

“I want what all people want. I want a house for myself with a garden and a fancy car. I want to go out to enjoy myself and to see the world. I want my freedom, not this society that suffocates our desires.”

“The world is in your home in front of you, your husband and your daughter. We are your world.”

“You’re just afraid. A coward.”

“That’s enough. You’ve given me a headache.”

“Look at my sister’s husband. He doesn’t even have a college degree like you. And they’ve only been in America for six months, and now they have a house and a car. Think. You, with your college degree and your experience, how far you can go in America! This is a country that gives opportunities that one can’t imagine.”

“Enough. Enough. Just what do you want from me?”

“At least think about it, Shoukry. Lots of people are emigrating now, especially after the ’67 war. And all of them, in a short while, achieve a high position, and they have things we can never reach here even if we work till we die. This country is closed. Abd el Nasser doesn’t want to let anything in. And he’s fighting everyone’s battles. Everything that is of worth in the country he lets go. There’s no future here.”

“Let’s thank God for what we have and not look too far. My work is good. There is no need.”

“If we were going to America, think how people would see you. They would look at you as if you were a king. This America is heaven.”

“All right. All right.”

“Will you think about it?”

“Yes. Yes.”

“Why don’t you get the application tomorrow from the embassy? We can just look at it. We won’t lose anything.”

Fifth floor, please.

Ninth floor, please.

Tenth floor.

Top floor, please.

Good morning, Sir.

Good afternoon, Miss.

How are you today, Shoukry, the fifteenth floor.

LIKE A CONTINUOUS CIRCLE but flat, never curving out, no interior space inside the lines. Confined in this elevator, pushing buttons, taking people up, down. The high metal stool to lean against, occasionally rest the weight of the body, back stiff, supported by a thin slip of air. Surrounded by tongues inside lips dancing out sounds that merged into a flat rhythm, repetition of th. Alone, pressing tongue between teeth into a wind-blown whistle.

And his wife, his wife. She didn’t even have a college degree. Now working in an office with her own desk. Thinking she’s somebody. Lying, lying to everyone. Making it all up. Filling out the application with her sister at her shoulder instructing. Say you graduated from Cairo University. Tell them you worked at the National Egyptian Insurance Company. They won’t know. They can’t check. Put an x next to filing. It’s easy, just putting things in order by letter. You’ll get the job.

Interviews. Straining to determine when the word ends and another begins. The sentence stopping. His turn to speak. Lips in jigsaw pieces to form the shape for the word to pull it out.

Then she says, “I got you a job. You’ll be in charge. Practically your own boss.”

“Where’s Amira?”

“A friend picked her up early this morning. She’s going on a weekend ski trip with her school.”

“And why wasn’t I told? Don’t you need my permission? I’m her father.”

“I signed the permission slip for her. You were asleep and she had to take it in that day.”

“And did you find out anything about this trip? Are there boys going too? Don’t you think about your daughter’s reputation? You want her to ruin herself?”

“Oh Shoukry, calm down. It’s a school trip. Don’t make a fuss over nothing.”

In the elevator, sometimes, the smell of flour, bread, the baking of crust, would whisper through his nose. He’d twirl his tongue around the crevices of his mouth searching for the taste of that holy bread, the orban he ate as a child. Going to church with his parents in Coptic Cairo, walking through the cobblestone alleyways to the Hanging Church where his father was a chanter. At the end of the liturgy, the smell of incense swung from the priest’s gold chalice as he walked down the aisles between the rows of pews. The smoke would flood Shoukry’s nostrils and mix with the floury smell of the orban just being brought out.

On the way home from church, women placed themselves throughout the alleyway with baskets of holy bread for sale. Dressed in sheer layers of black that became opaque, each one enticed him with her song. He would beg his mother for a piaster to buy his very own orban, round and whole with the pattern of crosses engraved in its center, instead of just that small bite the priest handed out. Only on holidays would she give him the piaster, and he would eat the bread slowly and possessively, trying to redesign the crosses with each bit that he tore off to put in his mouth.

But in the elevator this craving came over him like a shadow until he was sure that if he could only trail the smell he would find the orban. Sometimes when the elevator door opened, he would stick out his face and sniff, trying to catch the direction of it. But people would rush in too quickly and he would lose its trace. Once, he was concentrating so hard, the door almost closed on his nose, and he heard the echo of laughter around him. Still, he would creep his tongue over his lips in hopes of catching a hint of its taste.

“Shoukry, you look a little tired. Why don’t you go home early today?”

The house was quiet. For a while, he sat on the sofa and waited for his wife to return. When he got hungry, he went to the refrigerator. Leaning against the door, he looked inside. A little milk on the top shelf, an almost empty jar of mayonnaise in the door and, on the middle shelf, an eggplant. It had a long neck then it curved out, smooth and round. All of it was a deep layered shade of purple. “Too big to make stuffed eggplant,” he thought. Just then he heard the key in the lock and quickly closed the refrigerator door and returned to the sofa.

His wife and daughter entered with bags of groceries. He could see that his wife had a beaming smile on her face.

“When will you start?” he overheard his daughter asking.

“In two weeks. I’ll be the supervisor of my own department, and I’m going to have my own office. They’re giving me a very good raise.”

His wife turned to him as she put the last of the groceries away. “Well, Shoukry, aren’t you glad? I got promoted today.”

In the dream, he was a young boy just coming out of the church. The sun was hazy that day, relieving the usual heavy heat of the summer months. It must have been after his father died since his mother was wearing black. She was talking to one of his aunts, and they walked together ahead of him. While kicking a small stone and following its path, he spotted the round worn piaster. Just as he picked it up, he saw a woman selling the bread and went toward her, stretching out his hand with the coin. Smiling, the woman handed him the bread and spoke some words of blessing. He heard his mother calling and began to run. While running, he looked down to see the orban, but his hands clutched only air. He woke with a small scream stuck in his throat. Still expecting to see the bread, he looked but found nothing except his fingers in the same position as in the dream.

It was after having the dream that it became difficult for him to press the elevator buttons with his right hand. He would reach for them, but his fingers refused to separate, and his arm wanted to remain secured to his side. Now he had to turn his body slightly sideways so he could press with his left hand.

“How are you feeling, Shoukry? Maybe you should see a doctor. You don’t look too well.”

People’s stares began to bother him, and sometimes he would begin to explain about the craving, about how the orban had disappeared. But before he could seek out all the words, the person would get off the elevator, leaving his words half-formed.

One day, another craving came over him. Strong and overpowering like the smell of vinegar, the taste of koshari settled on his lips. His mother would make it during Lent when they could only eat what didn’t come from an animal. Rice, lentils, and pasta with a few chickpeas and the spiced, almost tart tomato sauce, but most of all the thin, crisp-fried onions he always demanded more of. The taste kept scratching at his mouth until he almost went frantic stretching his tongue for it.

It had to be here, somewhere close. If only he could get out of the elevator, he would find it.

The beeps calling the elevator down stung at his ears, but he kept going up, up to the very top where the tourists went, in one movement that felt like could be flying, until finally the elevator stopping flat with a drop. He put the key in to keep the door open and stepped out.

The sun’s brightness flooded his eyes and he squinted sharply to be able to see. A gust of wind came around him, and he smelled dust and heat, but no koshari. He sniffed harder, but the smell was gone. He walked to the railing and looked over the Boston skyline, buildings sprouting out of the ground as if they were ancient trees. He wondered at the elevators in these buildings, if all of them had someone like him who pressed their buttons and ran them through the length of the day. His eyes focused again on the breadth of the landscape, and he began to walk around, keeping his head turned to see the city revolving.

When he had made a full circle and returned to his original spot by the railing, he could hear buzzing and hard pounding coming up from the elevator. The banging increased in his ears. There was the elevator standing with its door open. He stared at it then looked around and saw the neon EXIT sign next to it. He opened the door and began to descend the stairs. His feet were sluggish, but as the spiral continued, he gained speed and a rhythm guided his feet down till it became a repetitive tapping. He held the railing with his left hand and felt the smoothness of it slide against his palm. Soon there was only a swirl of white from the walls and the tapping as he wound around, unhinged, from the ground all the way down.

A large crowd of people had gathered, including at least two groups of tourists. His head was still going around, and it was difficult to keep his feet still once he was standing in one spot. He saw a man hurrying toward him, his face red and his arms gesticulating wildly. He must calm him down, he thought.

“It’s all right, Mahmoud. Don’t worry. I’ll put the paperwork through, and you’ll be able to build those apartments in no time. Just be a little patient. There’s no need . . .”

But the man was now shaking him and screaming, “You bastard, you foreign idiot! What do you think you’re doing? Going up there for a breath of fresh air! Where the hell is the elevator? What do you think this is, an amusement park?”

Shoukry tried to understand, to answer him, until a woman came up and began to pull the man back.

“Stop shaking him,” she said, “Can’t you see he’s crazy? He’s not even speaking English.”

Shifting Spaces: 1990–1993

WHEN WE WERE LIVING IN EGYPT the last time, in the early 1990s, we used to walk almost everywhere. We often went to Alfa Market to do our grocery shopping. Alfa Market was a twenty-minute walk away from our Garden City flat, going by Kasr el Aini Hospital, a complex of orange bricks and white cement, where my cousin Mona did her residency. We had gone to visit her one day, our shocked expressions hidden as we watched the patients walking up and down the hallways with no supervision. One man, his head round and balding, wearing a green dressing gown, browsed through a tray of medication. We peeked into the rooms to see patients sitting on the floor sharing the evening meal brought by relatives.

A trespasser coming to ogle the natives. No clear distinctions: Egyptian—Not Egyptian. Fear chiming through my body. Safety? By conjuring up those aseptically clean hospitals in the United States, strict regulations. Embracing home. Distancing home.

After the hospital, we pass the Manial Palace, an assortment of villas including King Farouk’s hunting lodge. Now a modern five-star hotel where I can run from the pollution and the clothing restrictions—no shorts, nothing sleeveless, and the sun’s heat pouring sweat down your back. Could I wear a galabeya, loose to my ankles, designed in flowers, the traditional dress now associated with being lower-class? I wasn’t raised into the ease of wearing one. I’d feel disjointed maneuvering through the streets in it.

The Manial Palace Hotel with palm trees caressing a round pool. For forty pounds: spend the day with buffet lunch stretching across four long tables, wearing your bathing suit. No veiled women swimming, long skirts twining their bodies. My body exposed in their stare—the family at the Marsa Matruh beach whispered as I quickly slipped on a loose dress after swimming. Is this my Americanness: the heavy breath of balancing rocks?

An oasis with an arranged jungle of plants cleaning the air so you could forget about coughing up black phlegm, relax on lounge chairs, breathe easily. A space to be with other expatriates, as if I were American.

But in other places, so oddly disjointed. Social gatherings discussing the peculiarities of Egypt and Egyptians, techniques for survival. An American woman living alone complains how fruit and vegetable merchants give her the worst produce when she requests only a quarter of a kilo.

I explain: they don’t like to sell less than a kilo. Egyptians live in large households, few people buy so little. Perhaps establish a relationship with a particular merchant.

Her response: a defiant toss of the head. An assertion she has a right to buy as little as she likes.

Then put up with the spoiled produce! But I keep quiet.

Feel the edges of space pressing me.

Not a spokesperson for Egyptian culture. So much I don’t know but learning from a different location—an Egyptian, not a foreigner memorizing her lessons. Yet, conversations place me on the dissecting table except, twenty-five years in America, allow my Egyptianness to be overlooked.

MAUREEN’S PARTIES on the roof of her AUC apartment downtown. Overlooking the entire city, pattern of rooftops, rising and falling. The citadel in the distance lit up. The tallest building with the neon Sport Cola sign. Closer, a makeshift home on top of a roof, two men talking, a duck, a cat. The city revolving, my arms wide to embrace it.

Looking out over the roofs, Barbara says, “Cairo is just like a big village.”

Jolted back.

To travel this distance, be here, live, and still see only what you imagined before you came?

                           rooftops clamoring for space

                           night air seeps through a maze

                           I’m tucked into a refrain of images

After the Manial Palace, we walk over the Giza bridge. Sometimes in the evening, a bride and groom stop to have their picture taken under a halo of moonlight. The Nile laid out behind them, red and yellow feluccas drifting open sails toward the wind, and the Meridian and Gezira Sheraton hotels creating a landscape of lights over the water.

So many weddings—Adham, Mira, Ashraf. After her wedding, my cousin Mira, who was moving to Asyut with her husband, stood in the bedroom trying to squeeze her twenty pairs of pants, ten belts, thirty scarves, fifteen fancy dresses, along with shoes, skirts and shirts, into two suitcases. I was called upon for American ingenuity, made decisions, assured her Asyut was only an hour flight; she could get the rest later.

My Aunt Amal’s apartment in Maadi, up a half-circle of gray cement stairs, was small for her husband, herself, and three daughters: two bedrooms, a dining room, small kitchen, bathroom, and a tiny living room like an entranceway where we usually sat. But the space left behind when I immigrated in 1969 was still there. I neither had to be invited nor ask to step back into it. Even in the middle of summer, heat penetrating the walls, one tiny window in the room, I stayed for hours, forgetting the time.

WHEN MIRA CALLED to tell us that her father, only in his fifties, had died suddenly of a heart attack, my breath stalled. I looked at my husband, knew he was remembering Christmas at St. Mary’s Church, walking through a maze of cobblestone streets in Old Cairo, where my uncle was a chanter. He was a lawyer by profession but the music of the church was his true passion. I was sitting with my Aunt Amal and her daughters. My husband had to sit on the other side with the men. In the middle of the liturgy, my uncle walked back, took my husband’s arm and led him to the front, making a place for him with the other chanters, wearing their white robes with red sashes and gold crosses. He was the tallest among them, but he hummed in the language still new to him as my uncle smiled proudly.

At my aunt’s house after the funeral, we felt awkward, not knowing what to say, how to react.

He always greeted us wearing light blue pajamas or undershirt, at home sitting in his chair. With family, there was no embarrassment. How formal: his picture framed in the dining room, wearing his lawyer’s suit.

We didn’t know what to bring so we brought oranges and peanuts. Emad and Mira and her sister, Manal, laughed at the strange offering and we all stood in the kitchen eating, still able to smile a little.

                           They pressed clay

                           Shaped space.

Once over the bridge there is the tall building, plants draping its entrance. The Omam restaurants on the top floor—Japanese, Indian, Italian, Moroccan. Luxuriously decorated and expensive by typical Egyptian standards, a hundred pounds for a meal for two. But we had gone there several times. Our AUC salaries made that possible. Left behind our part-time jobs in Rhode Island, living paycheck to paycheck, gathering our change at the end of the month to buy Chinese food. Arriving in Egypt, we became wealthy.

OUR FIRST WEEK IN EGYPT, a friend took us out. As we walked in the upper-class suburb of Mohandessein, a young beggar girl began to follow, trailing my dress (bought in America, orange and green, circles and triangles). Ignore her. Persisted at the edge of my dress, not even asking for money, looking up: as if I were some kind of princess.

Our friend managed to make the girl go away. The sidewalk moving. I looked ahead wishing to twirl around, catch the girl in my arms, pirouette the air. Only to descend, and the longing of her vision persists, my creation, indelible.

IN OUR AUC GARDEN CITY FLAT, a plumber came to fix something and brought his son. The young boy, six or seven, stood, transfixed in the living room staring at us. Our friends Maggie and Ayman and their daughter, Tia, were there. We told the boy to follow his father, but he wouldn’t budge. Through his eyes, the apartment, magic carpets to ride, bouncing on clouds. We had created the moment of his poverty.

               Space crowded

               tapestries, rugs, vases piling my mummified corpse

        A woman asks where I work.

        “I teach at the American University in Cairo.”

        Replies, “You’re not really living in Egypt.”

WHERE was I? Egyptian colleagues. Egyptian students.

AUC in the middle of Tahrir Square, originally one of Khedive Ismail’s palaces with delicately carved mashrabiyya windows. The center of the city. The most prestigious university in the country. Job ads specify a preference for AUC graduates. But the first time I step on campus with its manicured lawns, tennis courts, and courtyards with fountains, I wonder if I’m still in America. The students in European clothes, young women wearing miniskirts, young men on a fashion runway in their jeans. I puzzled at how they got through the city streets dressed like that.

Drivers bring them to school, pick them up at the end of the day. Surveying the city from the back window of a car, they don’t feel the air tightening around their bodies as they maneuver through the overcrowded city. Where was I, participating in this space of Western images, gaining respect because I had lived in America?

Alfa Market was one flight up in the tall building. A new supermarket like Sunny’s and Tamco’s. Not a Super Stop & Shop but nevertheless with shopping carts and aisles.

On one side, toys and housewares. Barbie dolls dominating, prices starting at a hundred pounds. Contained in sparkling spaces, an array of paraphernalia.

Young men from Upper Egypt, military duty, holding guns and standing guard in front of embassies, cultural centers. Ten-pound monthly salary. Sometimes clicking the safety at a passing foreigner.

In the food section, products multiplied: Oreo cookies, pancake mix, corn flakes, saltine crackers. I had vowed never to buy any of them but when I got pregnant I was grateful for the saltine crackers.

Alfa Market still sold the olives, feta cheese, and pickles, but instead of being piled in cylinder containers or tucked behind the counter, they were displayed behind the glass case, neatly arranged into patterns of colors delicately sparkling. It was still wise to give the man who sliced your cheese a tip, but he had learned to subdue the sense of urgency.

One day I saw a woman, heels and tailored skirt, with her servant trailing in a dark galabeya, carrying a child, pushing the cart. Where was I? The space between them. The young girl who took care of me when I was a child—I cried, not understanding why she couldn’t come to Alexandria on vacation with us.

Who would I have been if I had stayed?

So oddly matched these products. Could I take a box of pancake mix for my partner, dance a waltz to drum beats, an olive at the tip of my tongue?

Back into the street with our shopping bags, over the bridge trembling with our footsteps. My husband’s brown complexion and features identified as Egyptian—“a weight lifted off my back”—not a black male in the suburbs followed by police cars. Nothing to distinguish him. I look like so many other Egyptians. Horns improvise a discordant melody as we walk, mirage images in a neon lit landscape.