Cairo, 1978. At last I was able to withdraw my own money from the bank. I had E£2,000 on me, and I knew I had to spend it all before I left the country. I decided I’d spend some of it on presents—things reminiscent of Egypt. I went into a store that looked promising. I picked something up and asked the price. Two men were chatting in Arabic, and they looked at each other.

“How much shall we charge this sucker?” one said to the other.

I was told the price.I asked the question again, but this time in Arabic. They looked shocked and their original quote dropped 80 percent.

I was shopping with one of my aunts (a Cairo resident) who was visiting England for the first time. We passed a fruit store with a grape display among other things. She popped one in her mouth. The owner of the shop blew a fit. In Middle Eastern countries, it’s absolutely normal to taste before you buy, anyway, for small and unpacked items.

This same aunt got on a London bus and didn’t have enough change. She dug around in her bag for some coins: she only needed a penny, a very small amount even though it was a long time ago when a penny could buy something. A passenger offered to pay for her, holding the coin up in his hand. She refused. It’s polite in Egypt to say “no, thank you” to almost all first offers of anything. This is particularly the case for offers of second helpings when dining at other peoples’ homes. The passenger put his penny back in his pocket and my aunt had to get off the bus!

Another aunt, somewhat on the heavy side, wanted to cross the Champs-Élysées in Paris. The avenue is probably one of the widest in the world, and the traffic is thick. How to get to the other side? Answer: she took a taxi.

Our cook had three wives, and my mother not only had to tell him what we wanted to eat each day but now and again gives him advise as how to handle his wives.

Rich ladies in Cairo, though they might take all morning to get dressed, do spend many of their afternoons shopping. They are sometimes two or three hours with the same vendor getting her to show one item after another (blouses, sweaters, materials, etc.) until the counter is more than a foot high with merchandise. At the end of it all, they are just as likely to buy nothing. It’s what they called a busy and exhausting day!

My grandmother, in her mid-seventies, said she was very ill, on the verge of death. She wanted to be alone and in the dark—“do not disturb.” After about five hours, somebody gingerly crept into her room to see how she was. Her bed was empty. She returned home around 2:00 a.m. the next morning. She’d been playing cards.

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