Cairo is different, and in the Cairo I know, more than in any other place, the stranger needs a guide, for, though the city’s principal monuments are obvious to the eye, its diversions are transitory and less easy to find…
-The Arabian Nightmare, Robert Irwin
I didn’t have a guide that first year except for the 1929 edition of Baedeker and its map of medieval Cairo, of all the nooks and crannies between Bab al-Futūh and Bab Zuweila, with its various- as Baedeker spells them- Palais, Mosquées, Midâns, Bains, Bêts, Hoshs, Haras, Khâns, Derbs, Tekkiyas, Sêbīls, Sikkets, and Sharias thrown together like ill-fitting puzzle pieces, blind corners and dead ends where you could buy a gram, if that were your purpose. But mine was only to learn my colloquial conjugations… Adakhkhan, Tadakhkhan, Yadakhkhan, Nadakhkhan, Tadakhkhanu, Yadakhkhanu…I Smoke, You Smoke, He Smokes, etc., etc.