
- 270 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
Visitors have often remarked on the light of Egypt. There is something about the soft diffusion of sunlight in the country that makes it visually special. Beginning in the early nineteenth century a combination of that light and the new, more sensitive technology of lithography conspired together to allow artists to capture with unprecedented fidelity the country's monuments, Pharaonic as well as Islamic.But there is another way in which the word "light" captures the reality of Egypt. In Arabic it is said that the blood of a people is either "light" or "heavy." Where the blood of others in the region could be said to be heavy, that of the Egyptians is emphatically light and it always seems to have been that way. Here, the word serves as a proxy for "cheerful" or "optimistic." The book that follows captures some of that fundamental Egyptian buoyancy and optimism, and it was not very hard to do. The attitude is infectious and anyone who has lived for any length of time in the country is in danger of succumbing. The pieces reflect a sometimes wry, occasionally humorous, but always affectionate view of an essentially unchanging Egypt.
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Table of contents
- Preface
- Glossary of Arabic Terms
- Chapter 1: The Tour
- Chapter 2: The Nineteen Eighties
- Chapter 3: The Opera House
- Chapter 4: The Oases
- Chapter 5: The Flame Trees of Dokki
- Chapter 6: Serabit el-Khadem
- Chapter 7: Wadi Natroun
- Chapter 8: Cairo on Foot
- Chapter 9: David Roberts
- Chapter 10: Malaysia
- Chapter 11: The Meeting
- Chapter 12: The Movies
- Chapter 13: Al-Andalus
- Chapter 14: Democracy in Egypt
- Chapter 15: Budapest
- Chapter 16: The Seminar
- Chapter 17: Lake Nasser
- Chapter 18: Siwa
- Chapter 19: George Herbert Walker Bush
- Chapter 20: Telecom 99
- Chapter 21: The Zabbaleen
- Chapter 22: The City