egypt, when the walls fell
You've spent so much time away from him that when he calls you suddenly and says, "Come to Egypt with me," your first instinct is to lie. To tell him there's no way you can get out of your obligations— research hours and all that, your grad appointment. But you know what happened— you know what he's running from— and he's your baby brother, so you quietly relent.
He shows up three days later, a duffel over his arm, as he takes you into the other and pulls you close. His skin's the same farmer's tan it's always been, eyes green-brown, and his smile still relays exactly how he feels. "I've missed you," he says and there's no doubt he means it.
The ticket he puts on your coffee table is first class, both ways, too expensive, and you flip it like an insult in its marigold wrapper. "Jason, come on!"
"You're not the only one with a research grant, you know?" he smirks, lifting a shoulder, which you immediately punch. "Ouch!" he laughs, before he's flinging you around the center of your living room and you're wondering, your head spinning, just how bad an idea this whole thing was.
He stays on your couch that night, your apartment as silent as a country morgue, and you blame every escaped second of sleep on the fact that you're excited about the trip. There's nothing else it could be.
+ || + || +
As a Women's Studies major, you thought you'd be prepared for the culture shock. It's not the sand and the heat and a cab ride through Gaza that nearly leaves you both dead that's the problem. It's the narrow strips of men eying you— your hair knotted down your back, your too pale skin, and the boy standing at your side, maybe even closer than he realizes— that's captured their attention. Petty conditioning leaving you with this falling feeling.
Jason takes the bags and you get checked in and once his hands aren't busy, he's frowning at you. He knows your overspreading identity, your inexorable self, but it's a lose-lose situation either way and you can see what he wants before he says it. "We need to go shopping."
It's your turn to smile, drawing the silk wrap from your carry on, carefully draping it around your head. "We do, but not tonight. Tonight you show me Cairo."
+ || + || +
Cairo was never the danger.
It's in the smaller villages, outlying, where Jason's crouched over the arid land, testing the soil, that his gaze shifts unexpectedly to you. Three men are watching you just as closely, even with the heavy niqab cloaking your figure.
"It's your blue eyes," Jason whispers, situating himself at your hip. You know what it is, and it's really
nothing
, you're stronger than this need he has to protect, but he's hiding you away despite your own certainty.
"It's okay," you assure him, squeezing his arm a few times to show him you're fine. The recognizable difference, how he's gotten a little taller, more muscular, still just as thin, it hits hard enough to make you step away.
There's a family near Memphis, a doctor and his wife, who have invited you to dinner. He's a world class climatologist and part of the reason Jason's here, so you spend the rest of the day trying to help, gathering samples and labeling them to make it easier. To make yourself more useful. To have a little something practical to contribute later— when your biggest fear is all the dead air and empty space— time to watch him, effortless and casual, without nothing else to distract.
+ || + || +
It figures. Jason in the front of the house, children hanging from every limb, an extra one with her arms slung around his neck, and her legs nestled around his hips. He laughs like he's a part of
them
, speaking their Sa'idi Arabic, and playing their games. It's something more than pride that touches your heart, standing under the shade of a twisted sycamore tree.
The doctor's wife, Nubiti, shoos the children away, and pulls out a chair for you. She speaks English better than you speak Arabic, weaving some loom-born thing while she talks, and you tell her how secretly envious you are of her ability to conjugate and still manage anything that requires motor skills. Somewhere along the line, you screw up the translation— of course you do— and end up telling her you're secretly envious of her yak, or something, and she throws her head back and laughs until there are tears.
Jason— Jason watches you with so much amusement, so much
affection
, that you find it hard to remember how to breathe.
+ || + || +
It's not until later— when you're back in the room and you're both too quiet, when he's slipping his watch off, the sun-beat brown of today's tan even more distinct, when he's unbuttoning the linen shirt that fits so perfectly, it was
made
for him—that you see him studying you. Curtain of bleached-brown lashes fanned against his cheeks, his longer hair swiped back and dusting his face, and a look that's hot enough to stop your heart.
Your brother who shouldn't be doing this. You— who should be saying so.
