Cairo—I am so sick with bronchitis or a sinus infection or something that I can't get out of bed, much less go to the Khan el-Khalili bazaar, the camel market, the Egyptian Museum, or the great restaurants my Danish/Cairene friend Christopher recommended for this last pass through the city before I go home. If I weren't so ill I don't think I'd be so travel weary, but try conveying "decongestants" to a young pharmacist who thinks you want anabolic steroids. It's just too much work to pull out the phrase book or throw any energy behind miming, so I go back to bed.
All my new Egyptian friends want to see me one more time, and of course feed me, before I go. Not without guilt do I ignore the phone and the doorbell. But no one evades Iman. I will be fed and pampered whether I like it or not, and she will draft her husband Mohammed to drive me to the airport at 11 p.m. on a work night—the Cairo airport, an hour away through arguably the worst traffic in the world. I beg to be allowed to take a taxi; they don't even have a car. Iman won't hear of it. "We love Amed and we love you," she says. "Besides. Every day I go to work, come home, make dinner, go to bed. To me, this is a picnic!"
Egyptians have a sense of family that is as alien to me as their rituals. Family simply is the measure of happiness in life, and the more overwhelming the family, the fuller the measure. In weeks of meeting Egyptians all over the country, no one has asked me what I do for a living, as a Westerner would. Instead, they want to know about my family, which at first I thought meant my parents and siblings. But no, they mean my children: How many? How old? Boys or girls? Are they good children? Do they make me happy? Egyptians are honest about theirs. With her three grown sons sitting at the table, Iman tells me (after I've told her what good manners they have) that they're no help around the house. Mohammed's dimples deepen.
On my last night before a 1 a.m. flight out, I take my keys upstairs to their apartment—early so I won't interrupt their dinner. But dinner is already on the table and a place is set for me, as if they knew when I'd emerge from my cocoon of congestion. Iman heaps my plate, then the sons help themselves until the platters are all empty and the food is all gone. Iman hasn't eaten anything and Mohammed isn't even home from work yet. While she serves me a dessert I have come to love but that I can't stand the sight of now, she tells me not to worry about her hungry sons: There's another whole casserole and salad in the kitchen, and when Mohammed comes home they will pray and then eat together.
In the meantime I return to my bed and sleep until the doorbell rings at 10:30. Mohammed is ready to take me to the airport in a borrowed Fiat wagon half a century old. We head out into the streets of the city, maybe the meanest streets on the planet, and I wonder indifferently when he last drove a car.
At the airport I try to get them to just drop me off, but no. Mohammed leaves Iman and me by the door and goes to park the car while we make our way inside. I'm insanely grateful that Iman is with me now. Besides my being sick unto death, I can't read any of the signs, of course, and every counter is strung with lines of travelers and their suitcases. I doubt I could have found a single English-speaking departure clerk to get me boarded, but I don't need to. Iman has everything under control and goes person-to-person-to-person, asking questions and getting directions until we end up clear around the terminal to the right desk for international departures.
Iman is a wonder to watch. She is half my height and twice my width, and she motors through that airport like she's jet-propelled herself. An archaeologist, she once chaperoned an antiquities exhibit to the U.S. but promised everyone she'd never do it again. Not without Mohammed.
Iman continues to ask directions until we finally arrive at the security gate. We hug each other, and then I slip away. On the other side I see that Mohammed has joined her, and I watch them both follow along mirroring me from the other side of the glass, all the way to the passage where I turn out to the tarmac and my plane. I stop once and there they are, still waving.
There isn't much in Egypt that's like home—not the food or the weather or the culture or the customs—but this long goodbye seems really familiar, like going home after Thanksgiving with my family feeling like I've left part of my heart behind.
Bless Iman and bless Mohammed. Now they're my family, too.
