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together was some sort of barometer of love? Love didn’t demand endless hours; that only proved tolerance. It demanded respect for the self-fulfillment of the other.
    He left for London. I went to Seattle. His first weeks in England, where it was damp, cold, and expensive, left him daunted and depressed. A quick epiphany, at least partly weather-related, showed him the way: He bought a ticket to Thailand with a stop in Greece. In the late fall he mailed me a bag of pebbles collected on a beach on Crete, with instructions to put them in water so that they would shine like they had when he found them. I did so, placing the jar on my dresser near a photograph of him. I exalted him above all other boys. The bond between us seemed elastic, the distance between us a testament to its strength. He told me he would come to me, wherever I went.

    I spent much of my sophomore year plotting to get away from Seattle again. I had to go beyond Europe, because I needed more stimulus than that. I needed something that would sear me, something that might hurt. I discovered that my university sent one or two juniors to the American University in Cairo each year, and immediately I resolved to apply. My closest college friends were also trying to get away; both Kim and Katerina hoped to study in Germany.
    I marched determinedly around campus in the drizzle to solicit transcripts and recommendations. I wrote an essay. I petitioned the dean responsible for exchange programs, visiting a concrete-andglass block called Schmitz Hall to knock on his door. I argued my case, pointing to my thick application packet. I found it in myself to be pushy and had insomnia for the first time in my life. If I’d fallen in love with someone local, I might have seen things differently. But beyond the utilitarian getting of an education, I felt no attachment to Seattle. The idea of going away sustained me like nothing else. I waited by the telephone.
    Finally, he called, and after an agonizing moment of niceties, gave me the good news.
    I’d by now taken a year and a half of Arabic, as well as courses on the literature and history of the Middle East. I was a student of the faraway, the alien East, like Pyle in Graham Greene’s The Quiet American . Fowler, the old Saigon hand, foreshadowing the problems Pyle will cause, says of him, “Perhaps only ten days ago he had been walking back across the Common in Boston, his arms full of the books he had been reading in advance on the Far East and the problems of China. He didn’t even hear what I said; he was absorbed already in the dilemmas of Democracy and the responsibilities of the West.”
    I was as ready as Pyle, which is to say not ready at all but brimming with enthusiasm.

chapter five
    ON OBJECTIFICATION
    T ahrir Square: Liberation Square. Michelle and I didn’t know whom had been liberated from what, any more than we knew why the October 6th Bridge or the May 15th Bridge bore their names. Our hotel was on one side of the square, the American University in Cairo on the other. We wanted to go see our new campus. As we stepped out of our hotel door, three cries of “You want taxi?” went up; since we could see our destination, this seemed unnecessary. Ten paces on, a young mustachioed man fell into step beside us.
    â€œExcuse me, would you like to buy some perfume?” he asked. “Where are you from? Ohhhhhh, Amreekan girls. George Bush,” he went on. We kept moving. “You come to my shop.”
    We crossed through a minibus rendezvous point and were further queried. “You go pyramids?” Michelle was practicing saying no in Arabic— la —which made it sound like she was singing: “la-la-la la-la.” Then we came upon multiple lanes of traffic, a median, and many more lanes. I looked left and right; there was no traffic light in sight. The cars, many of them black and white taxis, were barreling, careening, disrespecting any notion of order.