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figuring this out.
    â€œWhat do we do?” asked Jo.
    â€œI don’t know,” I said. “Maybe we should act really uptight, so they get the idea.”
    â€œMaybe.” She tilted her head with a mischievous expression. “If it
is
a date, who’s going out with who? Nuri sat down across from you and Omar sat down across from me.”
    I felt a stab of anxiety. If I was going to be tricked into a date, I didn’t want it to be with the wrong person.
    â€œDo you really think Omar would sell us out like this?” Jo’s expression had turned serious.
    â€œNo, I don’t think so,” I said. “Let’s just see what happens.”
    We went back out with primly downcast eyes. I planned to stay as quiet as possible, but Nuri was a lively conversationalist, and I was soon sucked in.
    â€œI can’t believe you’re going to teach American history,” he said to me over the rim of his coffee cup. His English was excellent, and lethal. “These kids don’t even know their own history. This is exactly the kind of western cultural takeover Egypt is turning a blind eye on.”
    â€œI’d rather teach them their own history,” I said, “but I didn’t set my class schedule.”
    â€œWhen we try to teach our own interpretation of Middle East history, we get in trouble with the accreditation people,” said Omar in my defense. “They watch what goes on in schools that use the American curriculum.”
    Nuri looked disgusted. “Perhaps, perhaps. But it’s fashionable among Egyptian kids now to be illiterate in Arabic. Can you believe it?”
    â€œThat’s an exaggeration,” Omar scoffed.
    Nuri grinned. “You used to be very concerned about the decay of the Arabic language
ya
Omar.” He turned to us. “Did you know that he refused to speak English for almost seven years?”
    â€œI got more moderate after that,” Omar said sheepishly, then paused. “Now it’s difficult—I have liberal friends and conservative friends, Egyptian friends,
khawagga
friends, this religion and that one. I have no frame of reference.”
    â€œTo hell with your frame of reference!” said Nuri, tilting his coffee cup up to drain it. “We must make up our own. We must be good people before we are anything else.”
    â€œIt’s isolating,” said Omar quietly. “Without a viewpoint that is even a little mainstream, it’s isolating.”
    I looked up at him, surprised.
    â€œI know exactly what you mean,” I said.
    Later, when Omar dropped Jo and me off at our apartment, Jo found a delicate way to ask whether we had, in fact, just been on a date.
    â€œNo!” said Omar, and laughed. “I brought Nuri because he is one of the only men I know who can see women as friends. So I trusted him. No, that was not a date.”
    â€œOh good!” Jo laughed, too. “We didn’t think you’d do that to us, but we had to check.”
    As Omar’s cab disappeared into the dust, I felt less relief than regret. Jo and I kicked off our shoes at the door and went into the kitchen to eat mangoes. I lay my head on the chilly granite counter.
    â€œI have a crush,” I said.
    Jo’s eyes went wide. “Really?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œHow bad is it?”
    â€œPretty bad. Very bad.”
    She paused with a mango in her hands. “Is that a good idea?”
    â€œI’m almost sure it’s a terrible idea.”
    â€œWhat are you going to do?” Jo slid a knife under the mango’s skin, releasing a flowery scent into the air.
    â€œMaybe nothing.” I lifted my head and pouted at her. “It’s too complicated.” It was, I thought, the politest way to say what I was thinking. In my mind, the idea that Middle Eastern men were dangerous misogynists was an established fact. I had been told as much on television and in newspapers and on film. My