Zamalek

Finally back in Zamalek.

The bad part: that was the worst “trip” to Paris I ever took. There were so many strange delays that all I had was about 45 minutes in and near the Gare du Nord. What a waste. Especially since Knox Peden, having seen my post yesterday announcing a brief Montmartre visit, had come up with something better– a visit to the Simondon conference at the American University of Paris. Worse yet, I had about three random human interactions in and near the Gare du Nord, all of them horrible. I’m not sure what Paris had against me this time, but I won’t hold it against that wonderful city.

The good part was a great Cairo taxi driver from the airport to Zamalek. I loved this guy. He started speaking English right away, and it was the right kind of good English. By that I mean: it sounded like he had taught himself the language, had a few struggles along the way, but came out the other end with a hard-won expressive power. I hate the other sort of “good English” one finds in the tourist-related fields, which is of course ultra-polished and dripping with an odious charm that often makes you want the person to fall into quicksand. But this guy was genuine. He spoke only when he had interesting thoughts to share. Some of those thoughts were delightful reflections on the Iceland volcano’s beneficial effect on the Egyptian climate. He probably read those ideas somewhere, but clearly he had digested them in his own way.