Yesterday the streets were full again to celebrate Sadat…in front of the Arab League Building after he passed, a crowd gathered at its gates and shook their fists and threw trash. Tempers run high when inter-Arab tensions mount [the peace treaty with Israel was signed March 26]. Cairo is so lit up, fireworks at night, explosions of gaiety and smiles…But very weird at the Moulid last night, a man was eating the glass chimney of a kerosene lamp, blood pouring from his mouth, and grinning.
-Letter Home, April 1, 1979
I was lucky to live in Cairo then, the year of Camp David, the peace treaty, the Iranian Revolution, and the war between North and South Yemen which broke out when each one assassinated the other’s leader two days apart, learning new military and diplomatic vocabulary words, and having impromptu conversations about it all in the coffee houses…but then realizing that many Cairenes were Sufis who would rather eat glass and hyperventilate to the all-night dancing and chanting of the words Huwa, Huwa, He, He, meaning God [and so close to Hawā’, meaning Air], than talk politics with me.