A Map of Home

Nidali, Mama, and Gamal arrive in Texas. As Baba drives them to their new home, Nidali marvels at how clean the streets are and how the drivers stay in their lanes and obey traffic signals.

They reach their new home: a long, narrow house a few steps off the ground, with tiny bedrooms and—to Nidali’s shock and disappointment—no bidet. She will have to masturbate in the bath instead of on the bidet, which she believes can lead to developing “power issues” because “in a bidet, the girl is on top, but in America, where one has to do it in the bath, one is on the bottom, and so is always dominated” (217).

The family becomes accustomed to local ways. On public transport, Mama is often mistaken by locals as a fellow Latina, and they don’t believe her when she says she’s Egyptian.

Nidali starts school, and she finds the adjustment more jarring than her previous experience; Egypt was less of a culture shock for her than America. Her teachers scold her for not standing and reciting the pledge of allegiance, and she eventually learns to go through the motions. Rather than sitting with other students in the cafeteria, where students segregate themselves into cliques according to race, she eats lunch in the bathroom.