Classes have me down, my new game is bluffing teachers into thinking that I’ve done my homework, but I haven’t even started, instead I’ve finished Les Femmes du Caire, but really didn’t like it, because of what wasn’t written about that first night with the slave girl…then I walked down 26th of July Street looking for the sleazy nightclubs I’d heard about- found the Pussy Cat but didn’t go in.
-Letter Home, November 3, 1978
I wish for homework we’d been assigned to discuss Qutta ‘Alaa Naar, Cat On Fire, an Egyptian remake of Elizabeth Taylor’s and Paul Newman’s tour de force. I remember sitting through to the end and only then realizing it had something to do with Tennessee Williams. I wonder what more would have dawned on me when the lights came up after the last show at the Pussy Cat. Something to do with Nerval?
