I learned basic Arabic with a creepy Egyptian teacher I snagged on craigslist for 15 US$ an hour. He was living the life of a demi-pasha, or, maybe, his own version of the Muslim afterlife, in Brooklyn, giving free rent in exchange for unspecified sexual favors to numerous young immigrant girls he found on CL. He also worked for the homeland security agency and tutored military and gov’t officials, ivy league students and scholars, charging three or four times what I was paying, as his star pupil and confidante. He introduced me to the perverse and counterintuitive idiosyncrasies of Egyptian society and a variety of colloquial Egyptian phrases, which are direct, easily memorized, and handy in almost any situation. The language, however, is by no means easy to pronounce with the typical cadence or understand when the Egyptians start conjugating verbs and tagging pronouns on with suffixes and prefixes you can barely hear and damn near never imitate.
The facades of Muslim society are manifold and misleading, few things are in reality as they seem to be from the outside. Of course, I only dimly perceived these complexities of when I road in on the ferry… sprawled out conspicuously on the floor of one of the crowded passenger salons, fully dressed, flat on my back with no sheet or cover on a badly decayed sleeping mat, earplugs inserted, without cash and worn out by one of those days which span multiple international borders and in which the events of many days seem to be compressed.
That day started at midnight in Tel Aviv, when Nirman and his two female friends picked me on the corner in the quiet northern neighborhood where I had been staying with the family of an Israeli soldier I met in Brazil on the boat to Ilha Grande. Nirman and I had met in Switzerland in a hippie community, and I was happy to see him again. We kept remarking how strange it was to be reunited. Nirman writes well, plays the guitar, can sing in Portuguese, speaks Italian, and lives pretty leisurely. I had my old faithful red Jansport backpack, a guitar in case, and a cheesy straw cowboy hat given to me by my close friend days earlier. We rolled in their hatchback through the windswept desert night and stopped at four in the morning at an ashram to drop off one of the girls, who was on a little sabbatical for the remainder of her pregnancy. There was a sign on the side of the road, ‘Ashram’, with a little drawing of palm trees. There was not a soul stirring in the ashram; the only sound was a slight rustling of the palm leaves grinding against each other in the wind. We helped ourselves to some figs and fruit, stretched, and skedaddled. Then, we drove on, down into a dry valley with jagged rocks all around. Around six, we arrived in Eilat, the Israeli town close to the Egyptian and Jordanian border. It was just before dawn, and they had to find an ATM for me, because, as usual, I didn’t think about the exit-tax and had no money. Afterwards, we parked the car in the parking lot of a big resort hotel, of which there are several, and walked, with the Red Sea and the dry mountains of Jordan to our left, towards the official bullshit buildings, at the southernmost point of Israel.
We were among the first people through the Israeli side of the border that day and passed through quickly. On the other side, in the empty, apparently neutral, and heavily guarded space between the national boundaries of Israel and the Egypt, there stood a few hundred mostly Russian tourists, the pupils of their blue eyes retreating from the morning light, and those eyes, all frozen stolid and grouchy as they looked at nothing in particular, bored, waiting in line. The walls conducted us towards a duty-free space with resplendent color, hypnotizing arrays of bottles, techtoys, cigarettes, and ties all in a row. Nirman and his girlfriend didn’t bat an eyelash at the arrays, all business. I followed their brisk pace up to the Egyptian building, with the black eagle emblem over the red white and black striped flag. Inside, already it was the atmosphere of Egypt. The guards were all slouching in their chairs, looking gruff in their white uniforms tucked into black boots. One stood up and saluted us with noticeable grace, he was tall with dark heavy eyebrows and a mustache under which he smiled ironically.
We passed through one by one, the x-ray machine, scanning our bags, my guitar, my body. More guards awaited us on the other side, to revise our baggage. Nirman and his girlfriend disallowed the search of their bags. They weren’t having it. Nirman let the mustachioed guy rifle through his stuff until he came to the little ornate painted boxes and decorative coin purses, which looked, by their elegance, to be his most prized souvenirs, always on his person. I marveled at how protective he became when mustachioed man came to them. None of my shit was dear or beautiful like this. I let them rifle through it to their heart’s content, unconcerned. Behind me, Nirman and his lady snarled at me, Don’t let them go through your stuff! I turned back to the guards, two or three of them were digging through my bags with great interest, but I remained apprehensive and quiet. Then, one of the guards pulled out a pornographic magazine, oh crap, I had half forgotten about those. Still, no big deal, I thought, as each guard sat down with his own magazine. I had Penthouse, Kiss Comixx, and some generic hardcore magazine I picked up in Spain at some point. I began to get antsy as they turned page after page, with concentration not overpowered by their eagerness. They were digging it, heavily.
I was putting all my stuff back together, ready to go, when the mustachioed guy gestured for me to come with him, with the porn mags in hand. It dawned on me in that moment, that I had underestimated the situation. I didn’t realize that porn is illegal in Egypt. Businesses get shut down for it, people go to jail. Mustachio escorted me to the other side of the building and into a room full of jovial Egyptians, who, upon my arrival, became more jovial, to the point where the head official had to herd some of them out of the room. The balding head honcho was very stern indeed. He looked at every single page of each magazine, as well, taking the images in, slowly, almost sanctimoniously, appearing not to hear my earnest, if mispronounced, entreaties in Egyptian. I said, please, I came to Egypt to learn Arabic and to study Islam, I didn’t know, etc. etc. He kept his head bowed, and the room was filled with silence, except for occasional outburst of shouting and laughter from those jocose guys who just couldn’t contain themselves. I could understand the senior guy’s diligence, however, because, without access to such materials, those pages of hardcore Spanish sex must have been a real delicacy. When he completed his meditation on the German Penthouse, he made a neat pile of porn, put both hands upon it, and pushed it across the table to me, saying, with obnoxious disdain, “Take this back to Israel.”
My mouth dried out and my forehead perspired. My stomach tightened and I swallowed hard. Then, he said, “Don’t come back to Egypt for six years.” He was serious. My whole intended Egyptian adventure came crashing down around me. I tried to bargain, beg, and he didn’t budge. They wrote some stuff on a little form, put it in my passport, and handed it back to me. Then, they brought in my bags, handed me the magazines and moved to escort me out of the country. My faced burned with shame as I walked out of the office. I was disgusted and didn’t want to carry the magazines another step, but they intercepted me when I moved to dump the magazines in a trash can. Next thing I knew, I was in a line that didn’t move and miserable with hundreds of sweating, grumpy Russian tourists. It took two and a half hours, and the less than twenty year old Israeli girls who interrogated me with unnecessary severity and antagonism made me show them the magazines. I was in no mood to cooperate and remained tight-lipped and openly rude, against my better judgment, angrily.
I sat down at a bench outside of the compound, finally, to take account of the situation in relative solitude, as the sun shone on the Red Sea and the breeze practically massaged my skin. It was a gorgeous day, but I was in hell, for the moment. I was in shock, in desolation, disconsolate, then came the taxi drivers. With difficulty, I began to recount my story to a hack who spoke seven languages. He asked me, did they put anything on your passport? No, they just gave me this paper. Throw it away, he said, you can go to Jordan and then to Egypt on a boat and no one will know. I perked up. He was talking sense, leaning back on an elbow, exhaling a great, nooo proooobleeeem. We rolled by the shining sea in his Mercedes with the windows down, carefree, with his assurances bringing me untold comfort and relief. It was nearly eleven o’clock in the morning.
At the border station with Jordan, located in a desert no man’s land between the two mountain ranges straddling the Red Sea, I poured over the magazines one last time in the bathroom and tossed them in the trash, as I have done with dozens of porn stashes since my preadolescence, none of which caused me any consequences nearing the magnitude of expulsion from a foreign country. How humiliating. Another interview with an Israeli girl in uniform behind glass. Then, at gates of Israel, a barricade with sliding doors, a young soldier my age holding an automatic machine gun motioned for me to halt. This station is closed right now, mines are exploding! I said, in evident disbelief, really? He made a face and yelled, I wouldn’t joke about that! And just then, a blast came from within some kind of bustling tank. The logo said Mine Wolf. The machine churns up the dirt and gravel into a chamber in which explosions are contained. Boom, there was another eruption within the Mine Wolf. He looked at me, you see now? Then, the Israeli girl who had processed my passport came up, wanting to ask more questions about why I had just exited and re-entered Israel. Great. I gave her an excuse that sly taxi driver had concocted and it sent her scurrying away to her computer. A few minutes later, the Mine Wolf rested from its labors, and theb blond soldier waved me through.
Another official behind a window, this one took no more than a cursory glance at me, and stamped my passport. I turned towards the wall and was assailed by a fifteen foot tall painting of Jordan’s head of state. Fresh stamps on my passport put a spring in my step. Beyond the gov’t outpost, again I walked into insurmountable desert. The closest town is several miles away and the only other road leads up over the mountain range bound for Petra. Thus marooned, the tourist has no recourse against the predatory taxi drivers waiting by their cars with the evil grin of the price-gouger, no recourse except obstinacy! Guard towers stood on either side of the border, and some Jordanian taxi drivers had set up a tent where they contentedly drank tea in the absurd midday heat. I had already told them I wouldn’t pay their price, with a glint of stubborn will bordering on hatred in my eyes. As such, I stood alone, without water, heavily armed with bags, embittered against the arrangement which would charge me 8 USD to get to the port town of Aqaba, several miles hence. I started walking, fuck these people, I will walk until a car stops. Five minutes later, a taxi pulled up, in addition to wild gesticulating and shouting from the guards on the tower. The driver said, I am sorry, but you cannot walk here, this is the land of no man! After a gaze into the miasmal mirages greeting me in such a dehydrated state as I was there in the desert, I got into the cab, resignedly, and it conveyed me to my starting point. I sat, again, under the sun, faint, tired, deserted, but hardened with anger, as the king of Jordan displayed his profile, indifferent to my fate. Buses came and went. The taxi drivers cavorted under their tent. Then, a young man with slicked back hair and sunglasses drove up in a Subaru Outback and dropped off a young Israeli female avec backpack who he had invited into his house and to whom he had shown the sights of his country. I stopped him, putting my hands together in supplication, Will you take me to Aqaba? He nodded, yes of course. In addition to waxing philosophical about good will and equality, helped me change money, get a ticket for the evening ferry, and gave me his phone number, should anything go awry. His name was Fers.
This was the famed Arab hospitality that I had come in search of, no questions, no suspicions, no hesitation- just kindness and generosity. I found the Arabs to be a people like no other, possessed of a deep sense of integrity and honor not well passed down (or absent) in these generations of Western society with which I am most familiar. However, between us, me, as a Westerner, and the Arabs, there is a chasm. I am accustomed to a lifestyle that is outrageous to most Arabs. If we take the example of Hamad, the patriarch of the famed Cairo Trilogy of Naguib Mahfouz, I live the libertine lifestyle of Hamad’s nights, with wine, women, and music, without the stern and inscrutable respectability of his days during which the eyes of his family and of the community are ever upon him. Many of the Arabs I met didn’t have the possibility to travel outside of their region and indulge in the infamous half imagined orgies of the West fully clear of the idle curiosity, spying, and denunciations of their little gossipy neighborhoods.
In such a community, my friends in Old Cairo conduct all their illicit business with extreme secrecy, and, when it comes to having sex, with foreign girls or virginal Egyptian girls (in which case sodomy is the only option, unless she’s divorced), they do the nasty in their apartments usually only after bribing the doorman, in their cars on top of the mountain overlooking Cairo, in rented rooms in other cities, and in historic houses and sepulchers where they know people rarely go. I heard about scenes in which a police officer would discover an Egyptian kissing a foreigner in some secluded place and after two hours of shouting and threats, the couple would retire or else, the Egyptian would be hauled off to the police station. For making out. This strict definition of decency reigns in appearance only, for the children, for the sake of respectability.
I collaborated in writing text message poetry in English with my Egyptian friends who were romancing foreign girls. And romance we did, one poem we devised made a Finnish girl cry. They express themselves with rhapsodic poetry, yet it doesn’t sound cheesy coming from them. They pull off poetic flights seldom attempted any more in English. It was my impression that Egyptians are among the most virile and seductive men I’ve encountered in twenty voyages overseas. Whether they are indeed formidable lovers, I haven’t more than a few accounts, which were related to me by the men themselves, which is seldom reliable, and two or three women who expressed passionately opposing views. I wasn’t able to learn much beyond hearsay about the women personally although I did meet one or two at a Spanish Embassy party in Doqqi (off-the-hook, several phone numbers, no score). I have read articles written by Egyptian men about the other side of the Islamic veil, where sex is rampant and wildly experimental, women pick up men at special clubs and underground parties, and that prostitutes and willing university girls alike are prominent in the streets, making come-ons with the greatest care and subtlety, from beneath the veil. Besides some recent, controversial literature, it was this to which I was limited; to seeing, in the streets, their eyes and only their eyes, lustfully flashing at me or carefully riveted on the ground.
My first conversation in Arabic took place with an old man wearing a white embroidered skull cap and a flowing blue galabiya who approached me in one of the ferry’s salons. He was a grandfather and his progeny soon followed. They gave me some vegetables and pita bread, then grandpa tried to pressure me into showing him porn on my computer and asked me a lot of creepy questions, like does your girlfriend give you head? His daughter-in-law’s wide, smiling eyes were focused on me almost without interruption, but I couldn’t read if there was something beyond unadulterated curiosity and wonder in them. She was very beautiful, all in black, with a head scarf but no veil over her features. We talked, and they very openly made fun of me with a good-humor that seems to be ubiquitous across the Orient. Then, I passed out in my clothes on my crumbling shiny sleeping mat with earplugs inserted. I have a feeling that they continued to laugh and ponder over my strange prostrate figure at length while I slept. They asked me repeatedly when I awoke, “What will you do? Where will you stay?” In the end, I concluded, “Alatool! Daemon Alatool!” “Straight ahead! Always straight ahead!”
At dawn we arrived in some little port town of which the name eludes me. Literally hundreds of people were milling about, some travelers, traders, stevedores, drivers, movers, no doubt, some unemployed, loitering about, waiting for the ship to arrive. I stalked off away from the port with its shifting multitudes to the edges of the encampment. Half a mile away the buildings visibly decayed in abandon, unfinished, with their iron girders reaching naked towards the sky. A dozen shiny white pickup trucks without license plates were parked in a line and all was dormant, not a soul about. I walked into a disheveled one and a half story building and pitched my hammock on the second floor with one loop around the girders and the other through the window frame and around the edge of the incomplete wall. Then I slept like a king under a blue cloudless sky.
That night, I arrived by bus into the bustling metropolis of Cairo with its 17 million inhabitants and its 85 decibels of ambient noise. However, Cairo becomes a real small town faster than any other I know of comparable size. I still have an apartment rented there, which I will never live in, on account of how small a town Cairo can be. Everyday, the same insistent fast-talking guys are working the tourists around the roundabout of Talaat Harb, ‘Come and see my _____ shop!’ The same turban-wearing pock-marked men in long shirts, drinking sheesha and tea- the words is the same for both in Egyptian, “تيشرب“. East of the Nile, in the old neighborhoods of Khan el-Khelili and Darb al Ahmar, down the hill North and Northeast of the Citadel, the same discerning natives accost people from all over the world, to sell their carpets, jewelry, tapestries, sheesha pipes, chess and bat gammon sets, papyrus, perfume, spices, and the ambiance of old Egypt. I know that they are the same men, because I got had by a few of them, and when I learned to be wary, I started noticing who worked where and in partnership with whom.
I meet Egyptians on the streets of New York. One sold me a rose for 5$ while I was dining with a surpassingly beautiful girl outdoors on Union Square. I only surmised later that he probably picked it up along with untold hundreds on 28th Street between 6th and 7th Ave, where every day a menagerie is born and dies, leaving, of an evening, discarded carrion flower carcasses on the sidewalk. We left it as a tip for the waitress, because the service was bad. Another Egyptian took me in a dark gypsy cab to a loft party down underneath the Brooklyn Bridge. At the end, he pocketed an eight dollar tip with the claim that he hadn’t any change. Even outside Egypt I keep getting had by Egyptians.
When I first arrived, I had no orientation whatever and no map or address or friend. The conductor of the bus was an enormous man and I watched as he and two little guys nearly came to blows over the price as traffic blared all around them. I didn’t know at that time that traffic is the home away from home of Egyptians; they weave through it, permissively, perilously, and nobody bats an eyelash. I didn’t haggle over the price, and the conductor appointed a guy to guide me to the subway. I ended up at the crest of midnight in the hotel Al Hussein (60 Egyptian pounds, 12 US$ for the double room) in the Old City, Khan Al Khalily, after two hours of frantic search and traipsing around the area of Ataba Square, being told repeatedly that the cheapest flophouses don’t allow foreigners. Finally, I got a good tip from a hotel proprietor and the taxi whispered through the somber streets and I pressed to the window as we passed two daunting striped buildings separated by a gap with a wooden eve hanging over it at an angle, incomplete, cutting a shadow against the light of the moon. I saw calligraphy was engraved in black squiggly script on the stone wall. I remember thinking, that’s the most beautiful building I’ve ever seen.
That was to be a reoccurring thought during my stay in Egypt, inside and outside Cairo, especially in the oldest, poorest, and most forlorn places. The scenes of the Old City had a unique symmetry and correspondence, in the way things were constructed and arranged, by time and evolution, in the market stalls, in the dirt and the grime, pristine, from another time, in which marble, glass, and metal would be anachronistic; instead, there is dirt, concrete, brick, wood, rugs, and textiles. Many of the buildings are shoddy with age, others have become, as they live through the ages, only more dazzling and suggestive of a singular, sophisticated idea of space and design. It is the same with Egyptians textiles, those not made in China, the authentic papyrus, wall-hangings, rugs, chess sets, statues, and jewelry. And the Egyptians, earnest, conniving, persuasive, tenacious, indomitable, the shrewdest salesmen in all the world.
Cairo is a small town. My first morning in the Old City, I walked down the road which separated the two striped buildings with the hanging eve, and in the process, I met the two men with who I would hang out daily for the following three months. I met their friends, parents, girlfriends, and enemies, and accompanied them in everything they did, from the ultra cheap gym, to the meetings in their respective shops, to the whirling dervishes, and weddings.
Nothing amazed me like the weddings. Walking in is a ceremony in itself. I observed how my Egyptian friends became suddenly solemn, fussing individually over their appearance and adopting an aspect of great humility. Then, they would slowly walk from the darkness, to the wild lights and commotion of the wedding reception. A dozen men await at the entrance to greet newcomers and announce their arrival to the MC who yells the names into a microphone, which then assaults the air, with echoes and feedback, by means of a sound system performing well beyond its capacity. Tables are immediately carried over head and chairs slammed down in the dirt, a plastic cover with floral designs is placed on the table, two baskets of fruit quickly appear, a pack of cigarettes, big bottles of Stella, and then a chunk of hash the size from your thumb bounces into your midst, its origin unseen.
The sound… over-powering, drowning out words shouted in Arabic, the speakers pushed free and clear of sensible levels of volume, drums thumbing, synthesizers, flutes, and the shrill, trilling texture of Egyptian singing, and the constant babble of the MC, always interrupting the singer. The sound waves hit your ears like successive pancakes slapping you in the face. The sound like soup, swimming from the stage in waves, everything radiating electricity and vibrations that cause… discomfort? Not after you’ve drank and smoked for four hours, it is an intoxicating cacophony.
The lights… blinking, red, blue, yellow, naked 60 watt bulbs hanging in lines spanning the entire roof of the tent, which is composed of identical sheets, manifold, hanging, holographic, symmetrical designs in brilliant colors, developed over the centuries, like everything, a design that overwhelms the eye momentarily, dizzying it with geometry. Everywhere your eyes seek shelter, your ears silence, but none is to be had. Sensations like liquid clog each of your senses. Everywhere you look, light, people, laughing, gaping, dancing, clouds of smoke, synesthesia, with the sound besieging your eardrums. The reception is a menagerie, a feast of sensations, colors, light, and curves as manifest on stage as it they are concealed among the guests all in monochromatic robes and ninja suits.
The money… heaps of it in a pile on a chair by the synthesizer. Wads of it thrown up in the air, with mock abandon, over the stage, some men methodically peel the bills off one by one and let them fall to the floor, other men throw the whole wad over their heads and walk away, looking serious. Little kids scour the stage and the ground to collect stray bills, dutifully handing them to the guys who manage that heap of cash on the chair by the synthesizer. The MC is always carrying a grip of bills in one hand and the mic in the other, and he periodically throws a dozen bills in the air for effect. Everyone feels wealthy, I suppose, or that the value of money, and it’s primacy, has been somewhat and only momentarily diminished.
And the belly dancers… swaying, sultry, speaking to you with movement, approved lust, 300 men watching, their ears full of sounds, their eyes of light and movement, as they drink alcohol and breath smoke. The belly dancers were typically not very beautiful, their hair seldom its natural color, their eyeshadow like war paint thickly applied, their form rotund, often seeming irritable and bored, but even so, their grace and gyration left most of the audience speechless, with the combined effect of the intoxicants, the sound thick like honey, the lights blinding. Speechless. Not that it would matter what, if anything, is said, it goes unheard. And not just the belly dancer dances. Egyptian men dance flamboyantly, as precious few Western men dare, for fear of being called gay. The Egyptians have no such prohibitions. They dance in groups of only men, holding hands, I’ve even seen them sit on each other’s shoulders, the two men on top holding hands, like ye old swimming pool chicken fight, but on a stage instead. I saw this guy once, in an alley during a religious festival in Tanta, on the stage, just getting down, with his heels in the air, his hips all over, his hands he wiggled intricately at the wrist, it was courageous dancing, which left me astounded. He even split his britches. I’ve never seen the like. I couldn’t tell if he knew that the seat of his pants was busted, as he smiled at me, a genuine one-tooth-shy grin.
The hookah man approaches. They come, working the room. First, over a small crate full of two dozen ceramic pipes, a man leans, running a flame over the thumb-sized piece of hash to soften it and apportion part of it into the pipes. He loads each pipe generously. The Egyptian science of sheesha smoking. The hookah has a long bamboo tube which reaches across the table- all service comes from across the table to you sitting there, swaying heavily after the first hit and the second. More smoke than you ever thought possible comes from your exhalations. If you know what you are doing, a flame jumps out from the coals, which are heaped onto the ceramic pipe, and just as swiftly replaced. The coals are held in a metal sieve, which the hookah man waves to and fro, fanning the coals to an orange glow, then, he pitches them onto the sheesha, aflame, melting the hash into narcotic smoke.
My eyes are red after three hits. Three empty green 32 ounce Stella bottles sit on the table in front of me and a full one is in my hand. I have a stupid grin on my face and my eyes are half shut. I can’t even hear, much less understand, any of the shouting of my middle-aged companions, or of the MC, as he throws grips of Egyptian bills in the air. The hookah man goes to another table, and in a few moments, the camera crew comes. They have, mounted on one brave man’s shoulder, the biggest video camera I’ve ever seen, and a collection of wires run down the brave man’s back, trailing behind him on the floor like a serpent striated by duct-tape. Everywhere the camera man turns is suddenly alight, because of the massive light mounted above the camera. As he gapes into the black apparatus with one eye, the other remains tightly closed, and on his face as he turns the camera on me, a huge grin. The same with every man young or old whom your eye should happen to set upon, they smile. At a smaller wedding I went to in Darb Al Akmar, I met almost every member of a nine piece band, while they were playing, without words, just by smiling. A foreigner is a rather illustrious guest at these local weddings, it seemed to me. People were generous, too. Joints came to us, rolled to perfection the Egyptian way, as a gift from smiling guys at the next table. Amid the clouds of smoke, of Egyptian currency, and the din thick like the liquid in my bottle, I got so fucked up that my friends had to drop me off, not at the end of my block, but at the door to my hotel. Another night, I walked home escorted arm in arm by a smiling drunk 50-year-old Egyptian man. That’s how attentive they are.
Egypt was refreshing. Sure, Egypt is terrifically loud, dirty, dessicated, bureaucratic, corrupt, conservative, and really tough on dainty Western digestive systems, but the human element is refreshing. The Egyptians may be too macho, or too demure, too high-maintenance, shout at each other as a custom, pursue, grope, and badger tourists, gossip constantly about their neighbors, gather often into angry mobs, choose really annoying local pop songs for their cellphone rings, honk too frequently, always charge the foreigner three times more, and damn near always work a situation for personal profit. However, if you can look past these things, or just love them, you will also see that the Egyptians are articulate, diligent, generous, infinitely loyal to their friends and equally as curious about their enemies (and their friends), and astonishingly at ease in the 85 decibels of noise that is Cairo.
The Egyptians have a saying, Take from every country one friend and you live like a king. I think that Egypt may be one of the only places where a person could make a friend from literally every single country. The thing that weighs on me, and much more so on my Egyptian friends, is that they can’t as easily visit those friends all over the world to whom they opened up their home and heart so quickly. They’re pretty cramped there, flanked as they are by Libya, Sudan, Israel and the Seas, and they get really bored, lonely, restless. And with the hardships which assail them, unemployment, rising prices, overpopulation, political and social repression, noise and other annoyances, we might see many more emigrating to the West (there are already around 4 million), with more determination and ingenuity than most any American or European. I say, come on over, with a little nod to my friends, look alive, these Egyptians are world class wise guys.
