“The British plan was to convert Egypt to a single-export economy—cotton. To encourage this they started building dams on the Nile. It bothered the British that the country got so flippin’
“Without the yearly flood that had always brought new soil to replenish the land, the Egyptians were soon dependent on wonderful fertilizers. Also, now that they didn’t have to worry about those nasty floods, the British didn’t see any reason why they shouldn’t get two crops a year instead of one. Perhaps even
“What happened when there were three crops a year instead of one was that the farmers spent a lot more time standing around in the irrigation ditches. So there was a tremendous increase of bilharzia, a parasite that’s spread by a little water worm that starts at the foot, so to speak, of the ladder, and climbs to the eyes. It gave Egypt the highest rate of blindness in the world. Over seventy percent of the population had it at one point.
“Peculiarly enough, for all the modernization they were introducing to the Egyptians, the British never quite got around to building any hospitals. The mortality rate from birth to age five was about fifty percent. They have a proverb here, ‘Endurance is the best thing.’ The British helped emphasize this.”
We have reached the other side of the Nile, where Jacky’s history of recent Cairo is drowned out by the city’s stertorous present. Nowhere else have you heard or imagined anything like it! It has a flavor all its own. Mix in your mind the deep surging roar of a petroleum riptide with the strident squealing of a teenage basketball playoff; fold in air conditioners and sprinkle with vendors’ bells and police whistles; pour this into narrow streets greased liberally with people noisily eating sesame cakes fried in olive oil, bubbling huge hookahs, slurping Turkish coffees, playing backgammon as loud as the little markers can be slapped down without breaking them—thousands of people, coughing, spitting, muttering in the shadowy debris next to the buildings, singing, standing, sweeping along in dirty damask gellabias, arguing in the traffic—
After blocks with no sign of a letup we turn around. We’re tired. Ten thousand miles. On the bridge back, Jack is accosted by a pockmarked man with a tambourine and a purple-assed baboon on a rope.
“Money!” the man cries, holding the tambourine out and the baboon back with a cord ringed into the animal’s lower lip. “Money! For momkey pardon me sir, for mom-key!”
Jacky shakes his head. “No.
“Momkey not dance, pardon me sir.
The baboon acts like his torment is all our fault. He is backing toward us, stretching the pierced lip as he tries to reach us with a hind hand. His claws are painted crimson. His ass looks like a brain tumor on the wrong end.
“Money for
Walking away, 50 piastres poorer, Jack admits that Cairo has come up with some new gimmicks since he was here ten years ago.
As we round the end of the bridge we surprise a young sentry pissing off the abutment of his command. Fumbling with embarrassment, he folds a big black overcoat over his uniform still hanging open-flied.
“Wel-come,” he says, shouldering his carbine. “Wel-come to Cairo… Hokay?”
“Junk! I, Dr. Ragar, not lie to you. Most of it, junk! For the tourist who
I tell him I’m from Oregon. Near California.
“Yes, I know Oregon. So. From what part Oregon?”
I tell him I live in a town called Mt. Nebo.
