Top Highlights

• There were different languages spoken at every table—French and English of course, but also Greek, Italian, Dutch, Armenian, interspersed with the occasional Arabic. It wasn’t unusual for people to use two or three languages in the same conversation—even in the same sentence—because this was Cairo, and it was the most cosmopolitan city in the world...
• No one had laughed at Alexandra in Egypt. On the contrary, strangers, moved by her air of distress and helplessness, would often stop and ask her if she needed help. That was the difference between a society that was primarily Middle Eastern, despite its long colonial history, and one that was primarily Western, despite its geography, and longed to...
• In old Cairo, no one kept walking if you were hurt.
• Dar-eh-Shefah, a sparkling private medical center that was said to house some of the finest doctors in all of Egypt.