The inhabitants of Cairo are a people of a merrie, jocund, and cheerefull disposition, such as will promise much and performe little…And if any of them chance to fall out in the streetes, they presently goe to buffets, and then a great number of people come flocking about them to see the conflict, and will not depart thence until they have reconciled them.
-Description of Africa, Leo Africanus, 1550, translated into English in 1600 as A Geographical Historie of Africa, Written in Arabicke…
A cheer, a buffeting, and a reconciliation...that just about sums up life on the streets of Cairo when I was there forty years ago. On my daily walk to AUC, not more than five blocks along Qasr al-’Aini, I was as likely to see khinaa’, conflict, as I was to see tasalah, peace-making. More likely a darab, a drubbing, than a bousa, a buss. More often meet with lisaan taweel, a long [sharp] tongue, than damm khafeef, light [easy going] blood. Sometimes a falling out from a coffeehouse, sometimes from a donkeycart. Sometimes a farraash (literally, a brusher, a man who brushes himself against women, a frotteur), sometimes a nashshaal (pickpocket). But usually just a loudmouth or a know-it-all, a wiseguy or a rude boy. Cairo has them all, a city containing multitudes, most of whom, following the Arabicke Spring, are far less mabsout, merrie, now than they were then, when Leo and Lou lived there.