Tonight to walk and take the breeze and lose myself I went to the medieval commercial district Khan al-Khalili, burlap sacks spilling raw safron and incense sellers burning mounds of the stuff, old alleyways not built for modern traffic, two large trucks came face to face in a lane not wide enough for a cart. I stood to one side to watch pedestrians, bicycles, donkeys and autos back up, then someone yelled at me! for being in the way, the foreigner a convenient target but the real culprit is progress.
-Letter Home, June 28, 1978
I was very green in Cairo that June, the month I’d arrived, much greener than I’d be the following June. The Klax- klaxon, the Zahma- crowd, the Dowsha- noise, the Sudā’- headache…bothered me later, when in the streets being called Khawaja, in a whisper behind my back or a shout to my face, made me angry, not like that first June, when if I heard that word- really an epithet for Alien- addressed to me, I felt they thought I belonged in those streets just like them.