I used Radwa’s phone to call my father. It was a bad line.
“How are you? I really miss you. Are you well?”
“I’ve missed you so much, Nadia. When will you be back?”
“Not long now. Only a few more days. Are you OK? How’s your heart? It hasn’t been acting up, has it?”
He laughed. “What do you care? Didn’t you choose Radwa’s company over mine?”
“Baba, stop fooling around. I need to know how you’re doing.”
“Yes, my love, I’m fine,” he said with tenderness. “My health is perfectly fine. How’s Radwa?”
“She’s good. Dissecting people at the hospital all day and roaming around with me all night.” I finished the phone call with my father and found Radwa smoking by the window, with a pensive look on her face.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I’ve really missed your father. I’d give anything to have one of my old chats with him.”
“Well, I miss him too,” I said with a tight smile. “Come back to Egypt, then at least we’ll be together.”
“Maybe. Maybe we’ll all meet again one day.”
She blew out the smoke of her cigarette.
That winter I spent New Year’s Eve with Radwa. We took the bus from her small town, and three hours later we were in New York City. We had all our winter clothes on: scarves and hats, two heavy sweaters each, and woolen socks to keep our feet from freezing. I shivered in the cold and she told me she’d seen worse. “This is nothing. You need to toughen up.” When we stepped off the bus, she started to run and jump in the street. I told her I’d slip and break my neck if I did the same. My fingers trembled when I lit my first cigarette. When I pulled a hand out of its woolen glove, I felt all the blood leave it. I smoked less than half the cigarette and put it out quickly to return my hand to its glove.
We went to a pizza place and found that it was run by an Egyptian guy. He shouted over to us: “Dessert is on the house, girls! Happy New Year!” We laughed, and she said I was a magnet for Egyptians wherever I went. We walked together down New York’s busy streets. There was an air of festivity everywhere.
“So what’s our plan?” I asked when we stopped for a little rest. I was rubbing my hands together in the hope of generating some heat.
“I don’t know. We’ll just stay out until the sun comes up.”
“What sun? There’s never any sun in this place.”
“Oh, don’t be so miserable!” she exclaimed as she got up, forcing me to move fast to keep up with her. “Come, let’s go get coffee.”
We drank our coffee and laughed, posed for photos with random people in the street, then decided to head to Times Square, which I only knew from the movies. “I want to watch the New Year’s celebration in Times Square,” I declared. “Isn’t there a big ball they drop at midnight?”
“Oh, it’s a stupid ball and stupid Americans cheering,” was Radwa’s initial response.
But I insisted: “I want to go. I haven’t put all my savings into a plane ticket to come all the way here and leave without seeing the ball—or Times Square, that is.”
She laughed and relented. “OK, then let’s go now. It gets busy.”
We stood around watching the celebrations and enjoying the loud music. I counted my money and found I only had a few dollars left. I sighed and told Radwa, “If only we weren’t so poor, we would have been at some glamorous party.”
She replied cheerfully, “There’s nothing more glamorous than this. We’re sitting on the sidewalk waiting for your ball. Aren’t you having fun?”
I punched her shoulder jokingly and hugged her. “Well, at least we’re together.”
My phone rang. It was a call from Egypt.
“Hello . . . What’s wrong with your voice? . . . What happened? . . . OK, OK, calm down . . . Are you crying? . . . Shit . . . When was that? . . . Just calm down.” I got cut off.
Radwa asked anxiously, “What’s wrong?”
So I told her about the bomb that had gone off in a church in Alexandria a few hours earlier. There were no details yet, but it sounded terrible. We were silent for some moments.
“Did you say many people died?”
“It seems so. ”
She sighed. “That country will never get rid of its filth.”
“Don’t say that,” I scolded. “There are people who are willfully keeping it filthy. Damn them all to hell. It has to end one day.”
We tried to forget the news and enjoy the rest of the night, but our happiness was tainted. The clock struck midnight. We hugged each other but made sure not to get too emotional.
18
My father wanted to go to the countryside. I had only been there a handful of times—usually only for weddings or funerals—and didn’t know it well at all. I just knew that we had a large family there, with branches of grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins, and their children and grandchildren. My father’s family was not the richest in town, but it was big and well-connected. I knew that having roots in the province of Sharqiya meant I was a “Sharqawi.” It’s a place known for its generosity, a town
