It is generally observed that many of the most remarkable peculiarities in the manners, customs, and character of a nation are attributable to the physical peculiarities of the country.  Such causes in an especial manner affect the moral and social state of the modern Egyptians, and therefore here require some preliminary notice; but it will not as yet be necessary to explain their particular influences: these will be evinced in many subsequent parts of the present work.  

The Nile, in its course through the narrow and winding valley of Upper Egypt, which is confined on each side by mountainous and sandy deserts, as well as through the plain of Lower Egypt, is everywhere bordered, excepting in a very few places, by cultivated fields of its own formation.  These are interspersed with palm groves and villages, and intersected by numerous canals.  They copious summer rains which prevail in Abyssinia and the neighbouring countries begin to show their effects in Egypt, by the rising of the Nile, about the period of the summer solstice.  By the autumnal equinox, the river attains its greatest height, which is always sufficient to fill the canals by which the fields are irrigated, and, generally, to inundate large portions of the cultivable land : it then gradually falls until the period when it again begins to rise.   

…

Dawn was joining the guests as they queued up in front of the motor coach outside the prodigal San Stefano hotel, a building that awkwardly dominates the seaside composition of Alexandria.  Its quintuple towers sit atop two semi-circular wings that open to the land and sea, a cheap attempt at usurping the empty memory of the great Pharos, the lighthouse that was regarded as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.  The morning air was moist and saline, and the sea was still fresh on the faces of the travelers as they emerged from the lower tier of nested pergolas onto the driveway.  They walked with the pace of an untamed river, an exiting stream of passengers flowing from the ancient names above the seven revolving doors: Canpoic, Bolbitine, Sebermitic, Phatmetic, Mandesian, Tanitic and Pelusiac.  The travelers fluidly and gracefully, wound around the trellised columns, the cataracts of parked cars, islands of luggage ultimately converging upon the glossy ochre-colored vehicle.  

Rashid stepped down from the bus and made his way up the stream of travelers, offering them warm greetings and a welcoming smile.  Discretely, he inspected them like a fisherman, observing their faces for freshness and no sign of trouble.  The group was an English speaking one, the perfect mixture of restraint and whimsy that he needed after three weeks on the road with the nocturnally bound Spanish and Italians.  They celebrated incessantly each night for reasons he could not know.  Naturally, he joined them when invited, in hopes of getting a good tip at the end of the trip.  As he passed by the new group unsuspecting tourists, he detected accents that were distinctly American, British and Australian.  He listened to these sufficiently incessant fish that keep coming into his harbor at all times of the year in hopes of learning why they willingly inundated his country.  He thought of their countries and how they also had their fair share of visitors, but one could escape the industry and all signs of it if one truly wanted to get away and just live at home.  Where would he go?  Where can one abandon all traces of tourism and foreigners in Egypt?  What was it about his country that led them away from the comfortable waters of their own harbors, hitching them to his net with complete trust that he would be a true sport fisherman.  And throw them safely back.

They boarded in a brisk yet unhurried manner and within fifteen minutes, the last passenger was seated.  With a nod from Ahmed, the younger well-spoken and wildly flirtatious tour guide, he started the engine and pulled out of the grand driveway and turned toward the left, away from the water.   

“You and your horrid superstitions!”  Exclaimed Ahmed as he swatted the air away from his face.  In a huff, he turned down the aisle and began chit-chatting with the guests.

Rashid offered up a short deferential laugh with his colleague as he turned left on Casino Drive.  The corniche was immediately to his right.  It was the more direct route, the obvious one, but Rashid was making this wrong turn out of an obsessive compulsion to revolve around the starting point before beginning a trip.  

“Did I ever tell you the story of how I got started on this?”  He was looking up at Ahmed through his overhead mirror.  He spoke in Arabic with Ahmed, for the obvious reasons.

Ahmed excused himself from one of the guests in the third row.  “Your nervous tick has a story?”  Ahmed smiled, half amused by his remark.

“Of course it does.  It began when I was a taxi driver in Cairo.”  

“You were a taxi driver?”  He turned around and headed back to the girl in third row.  “It all makes sense now.  No wonder they pay me less when I’m working with you.”

Rashid slammed on the brakes as he approached Abdel Salaam Aref Boulevard and watched Ahmed’s torso jerk backward and spin around with full attention.  “Just listen for once and you might have something interesting to tell these wide-eyed foreign girls as you make your way down the aisle.”  

“I was only in Cairo for a few months, when my father used his connections to get me a taxi at eighteen.”

Ahmed gave him a blank stare.  “I’m listening, what do you want from me?”

Rashid continued, “I worked at nights and was desperate to get the high paying tourists at the airport.  Do you follow me?”  

“Yes.  Go on,” said Ahmed as he watched the cars move freely across the boulevard while he sat with his driver waiting for the right opportunity to turn left.

“I’m talking about the old airport,” said Rashid.

“Yes, I know.  My uncle called it a zoo.  He said it was just like watching the monkeys feeding.  The tourists go in, scared, hungry and tired.  There is so much commotion among the drivers that sometimes fights break out.  Eventually the tourist settles on the first one to grab them and you the triumphant driver walks away with their lifeless luggage in his hands.  The tourist is naturally running after him completely disoriented.”

“You’re father is a smart man,” laughed Rashid.  “So you see what I mean.  I’m no monkey and I didn’t plan on fighting any of the other drivers for the approving nod of a willing customer.”

“Yes, but you’re still a driver so what’s the point?”  Ahmed was looking back at the girl in the third row.  His patience was wearing thin.

“Just follow me,” said Rashid reassuringly as he turned onto the boulevard that spanned the back side of the hotel.  “There were nights when the savagery was at its peak.  I spent many wasted hours, pacing up and down the parking lot trying to build up the courage and dive headfirst into that melee.  I often left empty handed, ashamed because I didn’t feel like a man.”  

“So what did you do?”  asked Ahmed.  

“It was hard you see.  Heading home from these failed attempts to fight for my place in the group was tearing my eyes out.  During the day, I was blind.  I merely drifted, letting the car lead me around the haphazard streets of the city.  I was half asleep and half willing to drive my cab off a bridge and into the Nile.  Do you understand?”

“Yes.  Yes.  Go on,”  exclaimed Ahmed.  

“Well, it happened as I was leaving the airport with my head in my hands once again.  But the thought of enduring the shame the next day weighed more heavily on me than actually making my way into the den of thieves.”  Rashid paused and looked at Ahmed.

“Ok.  Continue.”

“I double-backed.  I took the loop around the airport and headed back.  I parked the cab and began walking towards the mass of hysteria just outside the baggage claim when I felt the tap on my shoulder from behind.”  

“Who was it?  The police?”  

“No. No. No.  It was a woman.  A foreigner and she was asking me if I was free.”  Rashid took his foot off the break and began motioning the vehicle left into the oncoming traffic.

“Watch out!”  Said Ahmed as a family of four on a scooter pulled up in his blind spot, forcing him to stop as they made a U-turn around the motor coach.

“Don’t be scared.  I saw them.” 

“Ok.  Continue.  Was she French or Italian?  What did she look like?”  

“She was young, thin with brown hair.  She was wearing a red dress.  That’s all I remember.”  

“What’re you talking about?  Did anything happen at all?”

“Yes.  She was in the middle of telling me her story, that she had arrived a day early and was worried that her party did not receive her telegram.”

“Ok now you can go.  Go.  Go.”

Rashid made his third left onto Mohammed Ahmed Afify street.  The harbor and the corniche were in the distance at the end of the block.   

“Oh.  Her party arrived as I was speaking to her.  There was about eight of them and they surrounded the two of us, but she was getting all the love and kisses.  From what I could tell, it was some sort of reunion.”

“So she was some rich daughter of an expat.  Did you follow-up with her?  Does she visit you?”

“No.  I never even got her name.  They said it, but I forgot it in all the commotion.  She got into another cab with another man and woman who were in the group.”

“Then what’s the point of this story.  Why are you even telling it to me?  You’re wasting my time.”

“You don’t understand,” pleaded Rashid.  “She came with a lot of luggage.  They told me to stay and help them get home.  So I did.  The next day was like a weight lifted from my shoulders.  The following night I didn’t get any customers until I made a complete circle around the airport.  And again, and again.  And with each new customer, I found a new beginning, a new ending, nothing lost and nothing had bee gained.  My passengers were like blank slates.”

They reached the end of the block and could see the cars heading northeast and southwest along the harbor road.  Rashid turned left onto the corniche and, with the patience of an engraver chiseling the outline of the harbor, maneuvered the motor coach into the narrow lane, heading southwest, inking the sea-side with dusty exhaust.     

…

The climate of Egypt, during the greater part of the year, is remarkably salubrious. The exhalations from the soil after the period of the inundation render the latter part of the autumn less healthy than the summer and winter; and cause ophthalmia and dysentery, and some other diseases, to be more prevalent then than at other seasons; and during a period of somewhat more or less than fifty days (called “el-khamáseen”), commencing in April, and lasting throughout May, hot southerly winds occasionally prevail for about three days together.  These winds, though they seldom cause the thermometer of Fahrenheit to rise above 95° in Lower Egypt, or, in Upper Egypt, 105°,2 are dreadfully oppressive, even to the natives. When the plague visits Egypt, it is generally in the spring; and this disease is most severe in the period of the khamáseen. 

…

The coach continued down the corniche.  The colossal waterfront hotel was still hovering in the background drifting from side to side, closer than it appeared in his rear-view mirror.  Several small cars swarmed in around the coach, many of which were the iconic black and yellow taxis, the worker bees of the city.  The buzz of their horns bordered on the cacophonous as they dug their tires into the asphalt around the coach.  

“For God’s sake why aren’t we moving?”  Ahmed yelled to Rashid in Arabic, for the obvious reasons.  

“Can’t you see the accident?  It’s right there just beyond the palace.  On Mostafa Fahmy street.”

Ahmed approached the driver and sat in hist customarily reserved seat in the first row behind the main doors of the coach.

“Where?  I can’t see it.”

Rashid pointed to a spot in the road about five hundred meters  ahead of them.  “Can’t you see where the road is completely empty of cars?  It’s right before that.  It’s too far to know exactly what happened, but what other reason could there be?”  

Ahmed pulled the handset from the pocket of his pants.  He swiped the device awake and began scrolling through his list of contacts, muttering to himself, “I have to call Madame Manar and let her know we’ll be late.”  

“It’s just a small accident.  We should be clear after ten or fifteen minutes.”  

“That’s not good enough.  She’s one of those educated in the West and expects us to be on time.  You saw how she tore my eyes out last week.  And that wasn’t even my fault.”  Ahmed spoke with his arms open in a mock gesture of appeal as if Rashid was the tour coordinator at the library. 

Rashid laughed.  It was all he could do to keep from letting the little digestive mishap get the better of him. 

“That was disgusting.  It took me forever to clean the steps of the bus.  God save us from the Germans.  I don’t understand why they don’t listen to us.  Do they think they’re made of steel?”

Rashid’s little comment put a smile on Ahmed’s face as he waited for the other end of the line to pick up.  

“You know I saw that guy the day before at the juice bar with his wife.  She looked so embarrassed.  It must’ve been his third juice of the day.”

The coach continued down the corniche.  The afterlife of Alexandria’s rich past passed before their eyes as buildings wind-worn and swollen from natron.  The stone ancestors, the sphinxes of the Mediterranean sat there motionless, staring at the sea waiting for an eager new arrival willing to lend her eyes and ears for a story.  It crossed the bridge at Stanley Bay, rolling over its low terraced beach cabins waiting for service like the residents of a nursing home.  Only the dew of neglect could save this remnant of the Egyptian riviera now barricaded from the water and slowly sinking into the sand.  Mosaic murals and pharaonic fountains blinked through the windows of the bus.  It finally stopped at the Alexandria Library.  

…

There is, however, one great source of discomfort arising from this dryness—namely, an excessive quantity of dust; and there are other plagues which very much detract from the comfort which the natives of Egypt, and visitors to their country, otherwise derive from its genial climate. In spring, summer, and autumn, flies are so abundant as to be extremely annoying during the daytime, and musquitoes are troublesome at night (unless a curtain be made use of to keep them away), and sometimes even in the day; and every house that contains much wood-work (as most of the better houses do) swarms with bugs during the warm weather. Lice are not always to be avoided in any season, but they are easily got rid of; and in the cooler weather fleas are excessively numerous.

…

   On the North Coast road his mind was pleasantly occupied.  The blue heavenly waters of the Mediterranean just beyond the coach blended with the ardent sound of Fatima’s contralto voice streaming though the speakers helping pass the time on the road.  “The demoniacal taxi horns screaming to his left were just a reminder of the life all around him.  His ears had adapted to the car horns, but those of the passengers were still wet, still throbbing from the overstimulation, completely foreign to the Western womb.  He could smell the amniotic fluid as it slowly evaporated off of their skin, an aroma of a world beyond Egypt, a cheap perfume.  Nevertheless, he knew the routine.  Entertain them with song and they’ll soon relax.  His “North Coast” playlist, was packed with the songs from the greats, Mohamed Abdel Wahab’s “Traveling Alone”, Farid El-Atrache’s “Imaginary Flower”, Abdel Halim Hafez’s “Wherever My Heart Takes Me” and Umm Kulthoum’s “You Are the Love of My Life”.

He stopped briefly at the World War II memorials of El Alamein and the rock of Cleopatra in Marsa Matrouh where they ate lunch.  He offered them a meager meal of small pita sandwiches stuffed with cumin dusted fava beans, fresh tomatoes, black olives and domestic feta.  For beverages, he offered a blend of rose water and mango juice, Ceylon tea and cardamom infused coffee.  

…

Ophthalmia is also more common in Lower Egypt than in the southern parts. It generally arises from checked perspiration, but is aggravated by the dust and many other causes. When remedies are promptly employed, this disease is seldom alarming in its progress; but vast numbers of the natives of Egypt, not knowing how to treat it, or obstinately resigning themselves to fate, are deprived of the sight of one or both of their eyes.

…

With a clean window and a load of falafel stuffed tourists, he began the four hour journey south toward therapeutic gates of the Siwa Oasis.  This leg of the trip was the most mentally challenging.  

Once the road turned south, however, everything changed.  He was no longer in the mood for the current sound of Umm Kulthoum’s “A Thousand and One Nights” and her romantic winds in the eyes of the night.  The road ahead required discipline and patience.  Its bleak nothingness and wave-less sand dunes were no indication of life and consequently the jinn thrived and thrashed in the sea that was buried within the grains.  The true road across the desert stretched in a straight line, but this often went unseen, for the unwieldy sand encroached on either side giving it curves, bends the appearance of a snake.  And in some cases the sand swallowed the asphalt completely, fooling the naive driver, teasing him to find it for himself.  Rashid knew those drivers.  They were untrustworthy sorts, horrible guides, men who cheated on their wives with a different woman in each town leaving passengers waiting in the heat and dust.  He kept his distance from those men.  He skipped the rest of the album on the playlist.  The tiny digital lights on the van’s stereo began spinning, searching for a track to play.  After a few seconds of silence, the soothing high and clear voice of the Sheikh permeated throughout the cabin reciting verses from The Holy Quran.  Rashid uttered the tasmiyya with sigh of relief, “In the name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful.”  The Sheikh’s voice was calm and reassuring as if it were closer than the grill of the speaker, his makeshift confessional.  It was the Passage of The Cave, a retelling of the story of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, saints in Byzantine Chritianity, imprisoned in a cave for over three hundred years because they chose the altered state of darkness over renouncing their faith.  The voice of the Sheikh continued to emerge out of the silent underground pauses between verses, with articulate breath control accenting the intonations of the holy words.       

…

The metropolis occupies a space equal to about three square miles; and its population is about two hundred and forty thousand. It is surrounded by a wall, the gates of which are shut at night, and is commanded by a large citadel, situated at an angle of the town, near a point of the mountain. The streets are unpaved, and most of them are narrow and irregular: they might more properly be called lanes.

By a stranger who merely passed through the streets, Cairo would be regarded as a very close and crowded city; but that this is not the case is evident to a person who overlooks the town from the top of a lofty house, or from the menaret of a mosque.

…

After what felt like an eternity, the desert road finally started to show signs of life.  It began with the camels.  A camel here, a camel there.  Pretty soon the littered the sides of the road until he had to stop the van as one of the more brazen ones decided it was his time to pass.  Rashid patiently avoided these hazards and navigated the van into the lush fertile palm grove on the outskirts of Siwa, the green-eyed alley children emerged out of dark rows of mud brick buildings, some on the backs of donkeys, while others, too small to run were carried by older siblings ready to besiege the wide-eyed foreigners inside the van for a moment of their financially endless time.  Just as quickly as they emerged, the unforgiving dust rushed out from the rear of the vehicle and blew them back into their holes.  But it could not prevent their curious eyes from tracking the vehicle as it continued down the road heading toward the lake, the heart and soul of the oasis.  Rashid steered the van around the lake and when it looked as if the fertile palm groves were behind them, he took a sharp turn on a deserted side road that led to a mountainous outcrop of rock.  The side road followed the perimeter of the mountain and slowly descended into the sand and settled onto a clearing of the desert lined with young palm trees.  A lane outlined with oil lamps guided the eyes of the onlooker to the subdued entrance of the mud-brick building situated at the foot of the rock facing the lake.  From this vantage point, the rock seemed to transform, its irregular angles and rough surfaces gained geometry giving the illusion that it was somehow a monument of an ancient era.  The lane of lamps not only provided light in the evening, but were also a necessary indicator of the building’s entrance, literally lost upon the monochromatic walls    

…

The door is often ornamented in the manner here represented: the compartment in which is the inscription, and the other similarly-shaped compartments, are painted red, bordered with white; the rest of the surface of the door is painted green. The inscription, “He (i.e., God) is the excellent Creator, the Everlasting” (the object of which will be explained when I treat of the superstitions of the Egyptians), is seen on many doors; but is far from being general. It is usually painted in black or white characters. Few doors but those of large houses are painted. They generally have an iron knocker and a wooden lock; and there is usually a mounting-stone by the side.

The ground-floor apartments next the street have small wooden grated windows, placed sufficiently high to render it impossible for a person passing by in the street, even on horseback, to see through them. The windows of the upper apartments generally project a foot and a half, or more, and are mostly formed of turned wooden lattice-work, which is so close that it shuts out much of the light and sun, and screens the inmates of the house from the view of persons without, while at the same time it admits the air. 

…

In this, in order to be exposed to a current of air, are placed porous earthen bottles, which are used for cooling water by evaporation. Hence the name of “meshrebeeyeh,” which signifies “a place for drink,” or “—for drinking.”

…

There are several doors, which are entered from the court. One of these is called “báb el-hareem” (the door of the hareem): it is the entrance of the stairs which lead to the apartments appropriated exclusively to the women and their master and his children.

…

Good taste is evinced by only decorating in this manner parts which are not always before the eyes; for to look long at so many lines intersecting each other in various directions would be painful.