Suspicions were understandably aroused, and local officials arrived to search the ship, but the Venetians had covered their prize with quantities of pork, at the first sight of which the officials, pious Muslims to a man, cried, “Khanzir, khanzir!”- Pig, pig!- and fled in horror.
-A History of Venice, John Julius Norwich, describing the theft and smuggling of St. Mark’s body from Egypt by Venetian merchants in the year 828
Word spread through our group that the Meridien Hotel had a great Sunday brunch buffet. With bacon. It was not easy to find pork in Cairo, I knew that Copts kept pigs out by the garbage dump, and we read about the culling of their herds years later during the swine flu outbreak, which some said was another sign of Egypt’s anti-Coptic neo-Islamomania. And maybe, like the forced closings of tourist hotel beer terraces visible from the sidewalks, another way to crack down on khawajas flaunting their Christian ways in public.
So my roommates and I walked over from our apartment and crossed the bridge to Roda Island’s northern tip where the Meridien sticks its nose into the Nile. The breakfast room was full of tourists, and us. I never did learn how to say bacon in Arabic. And none of the waiters fled in horror when I went back for seconds.