Cairo from a café

The Hindu (Savtej Sarna)

A brief experience of Mahfouz country, though the café he used to frequent is no more, having given way to change…

The night throws its canopy gently over the Great Pyramids at Giza, as if it were reluctant to smudge their sharp silhouettes. And as the first stars force their presence into a dusky sky, timelessness takes over the vision: there is an assurance that the pyramids are safe for another night as they have been for centuries. There is nothing more to be done there except to drive back into the heart of bustling Cairo and begin the search for the café where Naguib Mahfouz, the man who has alternatively been called Egypt’s Balzac or Zola or Galsworthy, breakfasted and wrote for four decades.

It is not an easy journey. Even as the hour turns late, the streets are choked with cars, taxis and donkey carts piled high with large melons. We crawl past palaces and minarets, restaurants and shopping malls; clearly, there are no closing hours. And the night seems to be throwing a picnic for the entire city under the gently swaying date palms.