I see the bus coming up the road and I call out like the happiest kid in the world, “The bus is here.” My parents, who are all ready, rush outside, as though if they’re a second late, the bus will leave without them. My father carries the large suitcase, my mother takes the lunch bag and I follow with a container of water covered in Styrofoam, which I carry with both hands. They put everything into the luggage compartment of the bus, except for the water, the coffee and the little bag that Mother carries on her shoulder. Most of the passengers are adults but a few have brought along a child or two. My parents get into the bus, sit by the window nearest me, look at me and don’t say a word. They don’t even wave good-bye and I don’t wave to them either. The bus begins to pull out. I wait for it to disappear in the direction it came from and only then can I relax my muscles and let my body tremble.

I have ten days of waiting ahead of me now. I always remind myself that it’s only nine nights. The nights are the main problem. I pull out the chart I’ve prepared, of the days and the nights, and allow myself to tick off the first day even though it hasn’t begun yet. Grandmother will be arriving soon, as she does every year, bringing Grandfather with her. They’ll stay for ten days and nine nights.

She arrives before my brothers wake up, just as she does every year. They live not far from us, a five-minute walk away. If their house were larger, my mother would send us to stay with them, but they live in a single room. The rest of the house is used by my only uncle, my mother’s brother. My grandmother arrives early because she doesn’t want people to see her carrying Grandfather on her shoulder. She is old, she looks about a hundred years old, but she’s still strong and my grandfather is light as a small child. My grandmother is perspiring. She puts Grandfather down on the bed in my parents’ bedroom in his regular position, lying on his back, staring at the ceiling. My grandfather never gets out of bed by himself. He doesn’t move at all. For as long as I’ve known him, he’s been in this position, just lying on his back. My parents keep saying what a strong man he was before his illness. They say he was the richest man in the village, the best salesman, the first man to buy a car and to build a fancy stone house. But we never knew him like that. Sometimes my parents tell us how he lay in bed after he returned from the pilgrimage to Mecca. They say that right there, in the middle of town, in front of everyone, a thief was beheaded, because that’s how it is in Islam and it scared us out of our wits and we never stole anything ever. They say the sight of it destroyed him completely, and that he was a different person after that.

I like looking at my grandfather. I like how thin he is and how his face is so small, his cheeks so shriveled, his mouth so wide open and his eyes protruding and staring at the ceiling. People kept saying he was going to die, but that was many years ago, and he hasn’t died. My mother used to say that sometimes if God loves him and us both, He ought to take him. She was waiting for him to die, and I couldn’t understand how anyone could want a father to die. So what if he lay in bed all the time? My grandmother bends over, holds her waist with one hand, mumbles something about how heavy he is and that she’s turning into an old lady. She sits down for a minute on the living room sofa, but then gets up and goes into the kitchen, looking for the pots and pans, checking the fridge, taking out tomatoes and eggs and getting breakfast started.

My grandmother doesn’t hear a word. It’s not because of her age. She never did hear anything. She can speak and when you get used to it, you can understand what she wants. My parents say her problem can be treated and that there are all kinds of gadgets in the Jewish hospitals, but my grandmother doesn’t want that. She says she doesn’t need it and that what she hears is too much as it is.

I’m so jealous of my brothers. They don’t care that our parents are gone. On the contrary, sometimes it seems as if our parents’ absence makes them happier. They can play the whole time, they can go to bed whenever they want and they say Grandmother makes wonderful food, that her enormous breakfast gives us lots of choices, not like what Mother fixes, only one thing. They always laugh at Grandfather and when Grandmother is not around my older brother gets a stick and pokes at him. Sometimes he pokes it into Grandfather’s mouth and nose and he cracks up when Grandfather doesn’t react.

My grandmother works all the time, even though there isn’t that much to do. Either she’s preparing something in the kitchen or else she’s cleaning or she’s taking care of Grandfather. She brings him yogurt, mixes it and forces it into him, a spoonful at a time. Sometimes it drips out and she wipes his mouth and mutters things. I can’t tell if she’s muttering to herself or to him. Sometimes she carries him on her shoulder, takes him to the bathroom, puts him back in my parents’ bed or else on the sofa and goes outside to hang wet pieces of white cloth on the laundry line. In the mornings she takes him outside and puts him on a mattress in the sun. Then at noon she takes him back to bed and in the afternoon, back to the mattress outside.

I get through the days somehow, playing with my brothers and with the kids from the neighborhood. Nights are a problem, though. But my grandfather helps me a lot. My grandmother never sleeps next to him, and my two brothers won’t do it either because they say he smells awful. I’m glad Grandmother sleeps in my bed so I can sleep next to Grandfather, and take comfort from the fact that an adult is lying next to me, awake. My grandfather never shuts his eyes, and that’s very good. And despite his strong smell, I can feel the ever-so-familiar scent of my parents in that bed. Before I climb into it, I make sure to tick off another night that’s passed. It’s dark and I’ll be asleep anyway and then it will be tomorrow, even though I can hardly close my eyes and I cry almost every night.

I wonder if anything bad will happen to them. If it does, how long will it be before we know about it? How long does it take for news to travel from Cairo to our home? The thought that they could be dead and we won’t know it drives me crazy. I keep picturing an overturned bus and two bodies. I always run toward Father’s body, only Father’s. My fears are always about Father. I never dwell on the possibility of something bad happening to my mother. As far as I’m concerned, it’s okay if she dies.

On nights when I can’t fall asleep, I tell Grandfather everything. Not out loud but in a whisper, right into his ear. All the bad things I see I tell him, and then I feel better. I tell him how when anyone in the family dies someone always bangs hard on the door, and how scared I am when my parents go out. I tell him how I saw the bodies of my two uncles in coffins and that I couldn’t fall asleep afterward, how I’m convinced my father will go to hell because he doesn’t do any of the things that the religion teacher says you have to do, that I know I’ll go to heaven and my father won’t. My grandfather continues to stare up at the ceiling and sometimes I cover him and ask, “Are you warm enough?” or “Are you cold?” and he doesn’t answer.

Before going to sleep on the last night, I don’t tick off the final day. I’ll wait for the following morning to do that. If they set out from Cairo at the same time as they set out from here, five A.M., they ought to be here by five P.M. I do whatever I can to fall asleep, to get the time to pass quickly. I tell Grandfather all my stories from the beginning, shut my eyes tight and think about nice things, but nothing works. I don’t fall asleep for a minute, because bad things always happen in the end, just when you’re expecting something nice, and what could be better than to have my parents back? What could possibly be better than to see my father again, safe and sound? I tell Grandfather this too, and he doesn’t answer. I tell him that Mother never hugs us, and that in books it says that mothers look after their children when they’re sick and there are songs that I know by heart about good mothers who stay up all night when their child has a fever. I sing him the songs twice, from start to finish.