Why hadn’t the curse come to collect yet?
In my fugue state, the consequence of their departure doesn’t settle over me until Baba leans over to fuss with the pillows behind me.
For the first time since I visited the Haikal villa, Baba and I are alone.
Anxiety tightens cords in my stomach. My nostrils flare, anticipating the odors of sewage and rot.
One tense moment slips into the next. Baba is speaking, but I’m fixed on his brown eyes.
His wonderfullynormalbrown eyes.
I grin, a wild laugh bubbling in my chest. Maybe it’s over. Really, truly over.
I survived. The curse didn’t win.
“Oh, by the way, I booked our tickets,” Baba continues, sniffing the cap of my water bottle suspiciously before passing it to me. “We leave for Masr a week after you graduate.”
I accept the bottle without thought, waiting for the punchline. Baba continues to fiddle with the items on my dresser, organizing them without a single iota of precision.
“Really?” I don’t dare breathe. This kind of hope is life-threatening. Too much weight attached to such a fragile hook, waiting to crush me at Baba’s command. “You’ll take me to meet your family?”
I scoot over as Baba perches on the bed. When his arm goes around my shoulders, I curl into him without a second thought. Despite the tears I’ve already shed, more of them gather against my eyelashes, dripping onto my cheek.
“You’ll meet everyone, and they’ll get to meet you,” Baba murmurs into my hair. “They live in Ain Shams, near where I went to university. We’ll visit el balad, whereIused to spend my summers. Your gedo built an istiraha there when I was a kid for people to gather and spend time together outdoors, and I used to love roasting corn after dinner while your aunts embarrassed me at card game after card game.”
Istiraha sounds like raha, which means rest, so istiraha probably means rest place. I’m about seventy percent sure, but I’m not about to distract Baba into giving me an etymology lesson.
“I also got us tickets to the new museum in Cairo.” Baba grimaces slightly, a world of opinions in that single action, and joy fills me at the realization that I’ll get to spend a summer seeing Masr through Baba’s eyes. Learning how to love it the way he does and maybe helping him love it in ways he didn’t before.
We don’t mention Mama, and for once, I’m grateful for it.
“What if they don’t like me?”
“They’ll love you, Mina. It would be too hard not to.” Baba laughs suddenly, and says, “Yalahwi. I’m going to have to buyso many gifts.”
I pat Baba’s arm and smile up at him. “Leave that—and your credit card—to me.”
Three days go by without a word from Jesse.
Baba happened to see the bandages from my encounter with the corpse in Mr. Talbot’s mortuary, and it triggered a parental meltdown the likes of which I’d never seen from my father. He called the school to arrange for someone to bring me my homework, flipped out again when he learned I’d accrued several truancies over the last two weeks, and decided I would be staying home until a) I healed and b) he could “trust a single word coming out of your mouth.”
For the first time in his professional life, Baba takes time off work to camp on the living room couch and ensure I don’t sneak out. Part of me wants to rage at him. He practically authored the book on absent fatherhood, and now, when I need him to tune out of my life more than ever, he decides to dial back in?
The larger part of me, however, wakes up with a ridiculous smile on her face when she smells burning bread. Despite knowing he has the attention span of a fruit fly, Baba refuses to microwave pita bread. He insists on sticking it straight onto the stove, where it inevitably catches on fire when he gets distracted. Dinners watchingErtugrulwhile Baba grumbles about historical inaccuracies, yet yelping when I close the screen after a four-episode binge. Evenings doing our work quietly in the same room, the tap of our keyboards the only sound for hours.
It’s everything I wanted.
Two days after the confrontation with Khalto Safa, Baba hands me a steaming glass of red-tinted tea. When I wrap my hand around themiddle instead of taking it by the handle, he hisses between his teeth. “Your fingers, ya mama!”
“Oh, sorry.” I quickly switch it to the other hand and let Baba examine my fingers. “I feel fine, I promise.” Too fine, actually. I flex my fingers in bewilderment. Grabbing onto a glass cup of boiling liquid should’ve hurt, even if just a little. I haven’t felt much sensation in my hands and feet since yesterday, but I don’t want to worry Baba. My tangle with Khalto Safa might have caused some nerve damage.
He grabs his laptop off the coffee table and drops onto the couch. “We don’t get to watchErtugruluntil we’ve gotten some work done. Go grab your backpack. I forwarded you your assignments. Spanish seems especially time sensitive, so I’d prioritize finishing that one first.”
I groan. “Baba, it doesn’t even matter. I’m graduating in two weeks.”
“Not if you fail Spanish.”
“I’m not going to fail!”
