54
PARTISAN REVIEW
began a few hours before: the airplane has flown over the island of Crete
and is heading south, towards the Egyptian coast. From my window in
the no-smoking area I have spotted God the Father indolently stretching
out on the cottony eiderdown of a cloud: He seems in a good mood, is
having fun with his cherubims and graciously points the pilot in the right
direction like some mischievous, bantering car-park attendant who has
just pocketed his tip, straight on, keep straight on. By nightfall I am in
Midan al Tahrir: the taxi drove across the huge residential areas of
Heliopolis and Masar al Guedid, headed up the avenue separating the
university mosque of Al Azhar and the famous Khan al Khalili and, from
the loathsome motorway raised up on two levels in a futile attempt to
ease the traffic flow, I fleetingly contemplate, as in a slide-show, the un–
measurable sprawl of the catastrophe below hidden by the advertising
hoardings for Coca-Cola, Seven-Up and Marlboro: decrepit housing,
buildings walking a tightrope, balconies on the point of collapse, domes
held up by a miracle, dust, dirt, poverty, clothes spread out to dry, chil–
dren hanging out of windows, faded publicity posters, terraces covered in
shacks, chicken-runs, rubbish, pigeon lofts, aerials, herds of goats.
Violent images of a city's distorted face with its wrinkles, cracks,
scars, glazed eyes, bruises, sores, black eyes, sticking-plasters, patches, bro–
ken teeth, dislocated jaws, whilst my taxi drives towards the Ezbekiya
gardens, above Midan al Ataba, between buildings whose splendor has
faded and worn. The turrets and balustrades of a rococo edifice seem to
have softened and melted like icing! On the dome of the old Tiring de–
partment stores four titans effortlessly hold aloft a glass terrestrial globe
which has shed panes of glass like withered petals!
The airborne motorway has finally turned into the hurly-burly
where bumper-to-bumper, hundreds of vehicles give vent to their owners'
impatience with piercing blasts on the hooter. Pedestrians apparently
accept the situation, too exhausted and weak to rebel against the peren–
nial acoustic assault, the violence of traffic in a state of shock. If Sir
Richard Burton observed a century and a half ago that the lively gestures
and exchanges of the people of Cairo might lead a foreigner to the
mistaken belief that they were always within an ace of coming to blows,
nowadays gesticulating is a necessity imposed by the unbridled ferocity of
the traffic. The traveler who assails a taxi-driver, clings to his window,
demands the presence of a policeman, challenges the edgy bustle of the
crowd, insists on an on-the-spot fine for the man who, he maintains, has
insulted him, mimes a silent scene, shut out by the din and uproar. We
must get on!
The journey to the hotel takes on oneiric hues, is swathed in a
cloud of fantasy . The multitude hanging on the doors of trams and buses
