The camel market the other morning at sun up was a treat, slowly filled with hobbled hopping camels, smoked a bit of hash with two dealers, they said they go for £200-350 a head. Just to keep the conversation going I passed myself off as an archeologist mounting an expedition to the Sahara ready to buy 20 camels and hire 10 men. I almost shook hands on the deal before realizing they thought I was serious and they meant and expected business.
-Letter Home, November 28, 1978
I always liked the Arabic word for Spy, Jāsūs, pl. Jawāsīs, which Egyptians pronounced with a hard G instead of a soft J. I liked to say it in the Singular, I liked its Broken Plural, and I liked to slip them both into my coffee house conversations. Not a good idea in Cairo that year, with many doubts about Camp David in the air, even when I smiled. Another word I often called myself in coffee houses was Tālib, Seeker of Knowledge, commonly understood to mean Student. Only later did I learn its rare variant meaning, Seeker of Women. That wasn’t good either.