Rebels by Accident

by Patricia Dunn

  “It’s okay.” I squeeze his hand. “You don’t have to say anything more. I know how much you loved her.”

  “Love, present, not past tense, habibti.”

  “Thank you,” I say. I don’t know if Sittu was in love with Ahmed too, but I bet she would have been, in time.

  “Habibti.” He steps back and looks at me. “It is I who must thank you.” He turns to Deanna. “And you. If it weren’t for you two kooky girls adopting me at the airport, I would never have believed an old man like me could find love.”

  “But it was for such a short time. It’s not fair,” Deanna says.

  “Maybe, maybe not…but it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

  I smile. “Hannah Montana said that, right?”

  “You are a very funny girl—woman, Mariam. You are so very much her granddaughter.” Ahmed kisses my forehead, drops both of our hands, turns to Hassan and Muhammad, and takes them both into his arms like they’re his family too. “Yalla,” he says.

  Deanna quickly kisses Ahmed, Muhammad, and Hassan on one cheek (well, she lingers a little on Hassan’s cheek) and gets into the car. I’ve just barely gotten in when the driver shuts the door behind me.

  As the driver starts the car, there’s a knock on the window, but the window won’t roll down. After all I’ve been through, the driver has the childproof locks on!

  “Please, the window.” Deanna taps the driver on his shoulder, and the window rolls down.

  “I almost forgot,” Ahmed says, pulling a packet from the inside of his suit pocket. “She asked me to give this to you.” He puts several folded sheets of blue stationery into my hand, then raps on the car door. The window goes up, and the driver pulls away from the curb.

  “What is it?” Deanna asks.

  “I think it’s a letter,” I say.

  Deanna doesn’t push. She nods and looks out the window, and now there are a few more cars on the road. After a few minutes, I unfold the letter. I can smell Sittu’s perfume—or maybe I just imagine I do. In any case, it feels like she’s still here with us.

  My dearest Mariam,

  The doctor says the heart is a very fixable organ. But you can’t fix what isn’t broken. It will soon be my time to leave this earth. Allah knows best, and I’m blessed to be with Allah now.

  I asked Ahmed to give you this letter after all was said and done. He’s a good man, and I thank you and Deanna for bringing him into my life. Sometimes our greatest experiences are only moments long. I’m sure he told you not to cry for me, but if he didn’t, he should have. I am in a glorious place. If you need to cry for yourselves, you should, but not for too long. There’s too much you need to do and enjoy. There will be other things for you to cry over in your life, so don’t waste all of those tears on me.

  Mariam, you are the light of my heart. To see what a strong and courageous woman you have become is the greatest blessing I could have hoped to receive. Please tell Deanna it is more than I could have prayed for to have been blessed with another granddaughter—particularly one as bold and beautiful as she is.

  I nudge Deanna and share the letter so she can read it too. When she gets to the part that Sittu wrote about her, Deanna says, “‘Bold and beautiful.’ Wasn’t that some soap opera?”

  I point to the next line.

  Oh, and no reference to that TV show intended here.

  “Wow, she’s reading our minds from the beyond,” Deanna says.

  “Just read,” I say.

  I don’t have to tell Deanna to speak up for herself or to believe in herself, because she already does. But, Mariam, you tell her Sittu says she should never let anyone tell her she can’t smile. Her eyes smile and laugh as loud as a thousand children. She doesn’t believe this yet, but you can help her to see it is true. My advices to her are simple: Deanna, keep your heart as open to the world as it is today, and when it breaks—and I’m so sorry, habibti, it will, because that’s just the way life works—believe me when I tell you the pain will end. Nothing on this earth lasts forever. Except maybe plastic.

  Please tell Hassan he’s a good man and he should stay that way, especially if he doesn’t want me haunting him from the grave.

  And, Mariam, my habibti, I have only one advice for you. Okay, actually, I have a few. Our flaws shine when we become parents. It’s only when we become grandparents that we get it right most of the time. You will see this one day if you decide to have your own children, insh’allah. For now, give your parents a break.

  Remember to be true to yourself. You are who you are, and that is all you have to be. Don’t be afraid to speak up. Trust in yourself, and life will be yours to experience. I want you to have anything I’ve left behind, but please, if you decide to take the true mirror, just remember, it’s not the real you and—well, I think you know why.

  “Why?” Deanna says, but I ignore her and try to keep reading. “Tell me why,” she repeats, poking me in my side.

  “Quit it.”

  “Then tell me.”

  “She means because it shouldn’t matter how others see me. It should only matter what I see,” I say.

  “Sittu was very wise,” Deanna says with admiration, and I continue reading.

  One day you will look into any mirror and see the real you—the Mariam that is the beautiful and brilliant ghareeba wa gameela.

  “Deanna, what does that mean?” I ask.

  Now Deanna taps on the blue paper. “True weirdo.”

  So wave your freak flag high, and know that even if you try, you will never be able to forget Misr. She’s forever a part of you.

  Oh, and I’m sorry I didn’t have more time to get to know Muhammad, but I can tell you one thing for sure—he’s a real cutie.

  Love,

  Sittu

  P.S. And one last advices, Mariam. You are sixteen now, so go and get yourself on Facebook already!

  “True weirdo,” Deanna says. “We should start a fan page for True Weirdos everywhere.”

  I fold the letter, and through the tinted glass window, I see two cars have just had a fender bender. I wonder whether our driver will stop and give advices, but he just keeps driving and doesn’t stop until we reach the airport.

  I miss Sittu already.

  chapter

  THIRTY-THREE

  On the flight home, I read in one of Deanna’s travel guides that more than five hundred thousand living people actually live in the City of the Dead—a cemetery in Cairo. There are mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, sittus, and giddus—all alive—but there’s no statistic for the number of people buried there.

  Now Sittu is one of them. She’s in a family mausoleum next to Giddu and his parents, his brother, his brother’s wife, and their two children. There’s space left for three more people. It will be up to Baba to decide what to do with those places now. He says it’s the custom to visit a grave a year after a person is buried, so next year, our whole family—and that of course includes Deanna—will go to pay a visit to Sittu’s place of rest.

  It’s been two weeks since we left Cairo. In some ways, it feels like two years, and in other ways, it feels like we never left.

  The curtains are drawn, and my room is so dark I have to feel around for my cell phone on the nightstand to see what time it is. Almost eleven in the morning. It’s Friday, a school day. But when I got up earlier this morning to pray with my mom, she said the bags under my eyes were large enough to pack for a family of six. She insisted Deanna and I needed to rest, so we were to sleep in. Mom’s never kept me home from school unless I have a fever, but since Deanna and I have been back, Mom has kept me home now and then. I’ve said very little about our time in Egypt, yet somehow my mom seems to know how falling in love and fleeing from a country in revolt take a lot out of a person.

  But instead of going back to sleep, I’ve been lying here, wide
-awake, listening to Deanna roar. She’s snoring in the twin bed next to me. She’s even louder than she was in Egypt. Her mom’s had to work late the last few nights, so Deanna’s slept over. She doesn’t like to be alone all that much anymore. The therapist her mom took her to said she’s suffering from PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. She’s seen this shrink a few times now. She saw some bad things on the streets in Cairo, and while she’s acting normal, I’m glad she has another adult to talk to, too.

  And I like having her around, so I don’t even mind the snoring. At least she stopped screaming in her sleep, which she did the whole first week after we got home.

  The truth is, it’s not really the snoring that keeps me from sleeping. There’s just a lot of stuff swimming around in my head. The school psychologist called me into her office yesterday and asked if I wanted to talk.

  I told the counselor I didn’t feel the need just yet but maybe some other time. I mean, it’s only been two weeks since everything happened. If I were totally feeling normal, it’d actually mean I was Deanna’s kind of FINE: freaked out, insecure, neurotic, and emotional.

  It’s all over school that Deanna and I were just in Egypt, and rumors have been going around about the two of us punching out cops and saving babies from the hands of progovernment forces. I guess it’s easier to imagine Deanna and me as action heroes than it is to see us as real people. Ironically, my being Egyptian and Deanna being my best friend have suddenly made us popular. Karen and Beth have each asked me to hang out. I told them thanks but no thanks. Funny how having Karen and Beth not hate me was all I’ve wanted since elementary school, and now that they want to be my BFFs, I couldn’t care less what they think of me.

  The day Deanna and I traveled back to New York was the most violent in Egypt. When we got home, Baba showed us YouTube videos of the police firing water cannons at crowds. Those people were peacefully saying their Friday prayers on a bridge that crosses the Nile. Some kept praying, but others pushed back until the whole line of police retreated with their water cannons.

  Baba and I must have watched the video a dozen times, and with each viewing, a part of me wished I were still there. But to be honest, a bigger part of me was glad to be home and safe with Baba and Mom.

  Deanna and I didn’t believe Baba when he told us CNN had shown men riding camels through Tahrir Square, swinging swords and terrorizing protestors. Camels and swords? I mean, how much more cliché can you get? All I could picture was the stupid cover of Deanna’s romance novel, minus the couple. But when we watched the videos on YouTube, there they were—men on camels and horseback, riding through the square with swords. It was crazy. Deanna and I spent hours watching every video we could find to see whether any of the camel guys were Hakim or George from our day of touring in Giza. But we couldn’t make out any of the riders’ faces, and we both wanted to believe Hakim and George would never be a part of something like this. Baba said they were probably disgruntled men who were losing a lot of money because there are no tourists. Mubarak’s people paid them to attack the protestors. Baba says people do desperate things when they’re feeling desperate.

  Mubarak’s government shut down the Internet and most cell service, so it was days after we arrived home before we heard from Hassan, Muhammad, and Ahmed. For some reason, this time I wasn’t worried. Something told me they were okay, and they were. Now Hassan and Muhammad text or Facebook message us almost every day.

  And believe it or not, my parents got me my own cell phone for my birthday—and not one of those cheap who-cares-if-you-lose-it phones. It’s not an iPhone, but I have unlimited texting and the phone has a camera, so Muhammad and I can exchange pictures and video clips whenever we want. Mine usually show me making funny faces or trying to look sexy. He always texts back “LOL” or “hot.”

  I’ve only sent Muhammad one video. For some reason he wanted to see the inside of my school cafeteria. He said the video clip made him hungry, but I told him the smell there would take care of that.

  Muhammad’s photos are usually of other people. He sent me all these pictures of people giving flowers to the Egyptian military or kissing them when they came into Tahrir Square to help them stand up to Mubarak’s police. He sent some great shots of people camped out in Tahrir Square too.

  The police eventually left the city and released all the jailed protesters. Baba was afraid there’d be looting and all this other horrible stuff, but video clips popped up everywhere of ordinary people working in neighborhood safety committees. They not only protected each other and their homes, but they also distributed food and medicine, and were “taking care of business.” That’s how Muhammad described it. He uses that as the title for all of his pictures.

  Right after he sent me a clip of kids and older people sweeping the streets and picking up garbage, he used the last minutes on his SIM card to call me. He said never in his life did he imagine he’d see Egyptians voluntarily cleaning the streets of Cairo. He sounded so happy and excited. I could totally imagine how adorable he must have looked as he told me about it. He doesn’t send me images of the bad stuff we see on the news. I think he’s trying to protect me. Or maybe he’s just trying to focus on all the good stuff.

  We also hear a lot from Ahmed, but he prefers to call. He says, in that way, he’s old school. He tells us about what’s happening in Giza, but mostly he asks questions about what we’re doing—and the weather. I think he misses the States.

  Still, everyone in Egypt is waiting for Mubarak to step down. Here too. Eighteen days of turmoil and protests, and the guy still won’t give it up. It’s hard to believe it’s only been eighteen days since the revolution started, and it’s almost impossible that Deanna and I were in Egypt for fewer than five days. It felt like a lifetime.

  I want to get out of bed now, but the longer Mom thinks I’m asleep, the better she’ll feel. She’s been trying to treat me more like an adult, but she’s still got that crazy overprotective-parent gene working.

  Yesterday at breakfast, while Baba made coffee, Mom held the Benadryl, waiting for me to break out in hives because I ate the ful Deanna made for us. Mom just couldn’t believe I could outgrow my allergy.

  Without thinking, I said, “Can your whole life change in less than five days?”

  I didn’t expect an answer, but Baba looked at Mom and said, “Well, if a person can fall in love in five seconds, why couldn’t a life or a country change in five days? Or even five hours?”

  Mom put the Benadryl down to kiss him. The coffee spilled over, and Baba didn’t even care.

  I’m thinking again about getting up when the door opens and Baba announces, “Time to get up!”

  “Deanna, wake up,” I echo.

  Baba gives me a big smile, and goes over to Deanna, nudging her arm. “She snores like my father did,” he says.

  “What time is it?” Deanna asks, sitting straight up.

  “Time to celebrate!” Baba shouts. “Mubarak stepped down! Thirty years of tyranny—over. Egypt is free.”

  I get out of bed and hug my father, and then I hug Deanna, who is still half-asleep.

  “I hope Sittu’s looking down on us and seeing this day she thought would never come,” I say.

  “I’m sure she is,” Baba says.

  “You know, Baba, Sittu had great advices. But she was wrong about one thing.”

  “What’s that?” Deanna asks.

  “In the hospital, when I told her that I love her, she said that it was the American in me talking, because in America, ‘Everything is about love, all the problems and all the solutions.’ But I know now it was the Egyptian in me talking.”

  Deanna yawns and says, “Or maybe it’s a little bit of both.”

  “Maybe,” I say.

  Baba laughs. “Habibti, you get to choose what we do today,” he says. “After all, we never did celebrate your birthday.”

  “Dinner at Applebee’s?”
Deanna suggests.

  “No—I want to go to Queens today,” I say.

  “Queens?” Deanna asks.

  I say, “Yes, to Little Cairo,” and Baba nods.

  “Where better to celebrate than with our New York community of Egyptian Americans?” Baba says.

  “I know exactly what I’m going to wear too,” I tell them.

  “Sittu’s dress!” Deanna shouts.

  Hassan or Ahmed had packed it into my suitcase. I decided to leave the trim unfinished, just like Sittu left it—a little bit imperfect.

  “Of course, habibti,” Baba says, kissing me on the forehead. Then he kisses Deanna too, and I know from her eyes that, just like me, she’s smiling right down to her toes.

  Thank you for reading!

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  Acknowledgments

  To Asmaa Mahfouz, a young woman who showed the world that one person can make all the difference, and to the people of Egypt, who proved that the people united will never be defeated.

  If it takes a village to raise a child, then it takes a village and a half to write a novel. There are so many people who have helped me make this book possible. I’m grateful to them all. There are some whom I must thank personally because they have also enriched my life in ways that have made it possible for me to write. To my agent, Cynthia Manson, for her talent, expertise, and for believing in this book. She’s proven to me that miracles can and do happen. To my editor, Annette Pollert-Morgan, whose hard work and exceptional eye for detail helped me to make every word count.

  To Alexandra Soiseth: there aren’t enough superlatives to thank you for all you have done for this book and me. I am prepared to spend a lifetime showing you how grateful I am.

  To Allan Tepper, for bringing music back into my life, for always supporting my writing, no matter how late into the night, and for being the best grammarian a person can marry.