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necklaces.”
    I looked at him in disbelief. “So did I. God . . . you were a goth.”
    â€œWhat’s a goth?”
    â€œWhat you were. Someone who wears black and ankhs and listens to heavy metal.”
    He frowned. “But an ankh is an Egyptian symbol.”
    â€œThat’s why we thought it was so cool. Eternal life, mummies, vampires, that kind of thing.”
    â€œAnd you were like this?” He raised his eyebrows.
    â€œYes. By then heavy metal was dying out—we were into Nine Inch Nails and Front Line Assembly and Delirium. I dyed my hair about ten different colors.”
    â€œI have never heard of those bands. I listened to Black Sabbath.”
    I laughed. “When?” I asked.
    He leaned back on his elbows. We were sitting on cushions at the edge of the theater, on steps that led up to the veranda. “In the early nineties. I was finishing high school. Maybe the first year or two of university.”
    â€œI started high school in ’95. So we were goths at almost the same time.” This delighted me.
    â€œAnd now you’re twenty-one? I’m seven years older than you are.”
    â€œThat’s not so much,” I said defensively.
    â€œNot so much for what?”
    I flushed. “Not so much, generally.”
    â€œAh.” He smiled. “Okay.”
    When the concert was over, we shared a cab back to south Cairo, snaking along the Nile-side boulevard calledthe Corniche. Beyond the boulevard, in the water, the white sails of pleasure and fishing boats were visible. Somehow we strayed to the topic of love; Omar told me there were four different words for it in Arabic.
    â€œ
Hob
is love-love,” he said quietly, so that the cab driver wouldn’t overhear. He made a shape in the air with his hands, a transient gesture, attempting to communicate something too abstract to speak about in English.
“Hob
can be from anyone, for anything—you feel
hob
for your parents, your sister, for a good friend. For your favorite book or a very tasty mango. Or for the person you are in love with.”
    â€œ
Habibi
comes from
hob,
” I said, recognizing the link between
hob
and one of the first words every newcomer to Egypt learns: my beloved.
Habibi
showed up in the refrain of every popular song, and was used passionately to refer to close friends and patronizingly to refer to subordinates.
    â€œYes,
habibi
comes from
hob,
” said Omar. “Exactly. Then there is
aishq.
” The word began with the letter
ayn,
the same letter that began his name. It hesitated somewhere between a vowel and a consonant, and began in the very back of the throat.
“Aishq
knits two people together. They don’t become one thing, but they make one thing.” Again he raised his hands and laced his fingers together.
“Aishq
is what you feel for your spouse, what you feel for God. Well, sometimes. I don’t know if what I’m saying makes sense in English.”
    â€œPerfect sense,” I said.
    The cab stopped at my apartment first. Omar stepped out to sit in front with the driver, as is the custom among men when there are no women to accompany. Before he gotinto the front seat he reached out to shake my hand, as he always did in parting. For a moment he pressed my hand between both of his. I found I couldn’t look him in the eye. Then he disappeared into the cab, waving off my offer to split the fare. I brought my hand to my face and breathed in. Beneath the tang of dust I caught the faint sharp smell of soap.
    Jo arrived back in Egypt just before our job training was due to begin. Language School had a large campus in Giza, within sight of the pyramids. From the outside it looked much like any suburban high school campus in the States—inside, however, it was a series of bare concrete classrooms without heat or air conditioning. Rows of desks faced dry-erase boards. The bathrooms were coated in grime and sported unsanitary bidets.