Always something in Cairo: we just had an appointment and went to an address in St. Fatima Square; en route, I realized I’d never heard of it, and it turns out to be a whole part of town that, 25 years on, I’d never seen. Broad avenues, church-dotted, lovely. This city!

The one time I met a poet whose birthday it happens to be today he was a grade-A Mean Bitchy Queen (tempted to use that word that our Brit friends are so much freer with than we) and so I shall say no more.

I said yesterday I can’t photograph moons, and that remains the case, but tonight’s is too remarkable not to share—full, and a deep, angry red in the eastern sky over Cairo. If one believed in omens…

It’s now after noon in Cairo, and there is nothing at all on the State Department’s website, on its travel-advisory site, from its travel notification messaging service, or on the local embassy website or FB page about the supposedly urgent alert for American citizens issued last night.

Cairo: woke up to a scattering of queries—with the State Department’s latest, are you leaving? As of 6:30 a.m. local time, I can confirm there’s been no update posted on State’s travel or the Embassy sites, nor has there been any announcement from the program that updates travelers directly.

”The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.” The 1914 quote needs too little updating to be spot-on for this parlous moment.

Photographs of the moon, for me, never justify the effort, so you’ll have take my word that when, just now, I looked up through the tall windows of our living room, the spectacle of wispy clouds scudding across the full Ramadan moon genuinely made me catch my breath.

Ten years ago today, the FB tells me, I had lunch at a place in downtown Cairo and snapped this vaguely Vermeerische scene.

Waking up and musing how a not-insignificant proportion of American decision-makers, media, and God knows the public at large think that the man killed last night is that same Ayatollah they used to hear so much about back in the good ol’ hostage days.

Sign of the times? Iran’s Press TV (their go at an international 24-hour news channel) was available on our satellite in Cairo yesterday; today it’s blocked. Either that or it’s been knocked off the air…

Given regional circumstances, let this be your reminder that Cairo is as far from Tehran as New York is from Dallas, and that all is peaceful and safe by the Nile. We’re keeping a weather eye out, of course, but for the moment, here we are and here we stay.

Our TV in Cairo comes from Nilesat/Arabsat—something like 1500 varied channels from across the region, although many are blank or placeholders of various kinds. I sometimes troll through to see if there are any new English-language options (to complement the Beeb, Al Jazeera, etc.), and recently…

Well, I figured, if I'm going to go out for lunch (while The Mister sleeps) in Ramadan, i might as well go all out—first-rate pork katsu curry and a nice cold beer. I'm hellbound but happy...

This story has everything but a tremulous, deeply moving performance from Stockard Channing. It’s a shame they already made the movie of ”Cats.”

In the early '70s, my parents went (a business convention?) To Puerto Rico. My mother returned with an abiding fondness for piñata coladas and the memory of her first mango. She learned from someone in her bridge club you could find then, sometimes, in Cleveland. So she drove over...

Cairo: rain, a spring storm—wholly unexpected. Street dogs go running; young men dart along the sides of buildings, affronted by this sudden downpour. A clap of thunder, then another—can’t think when last that happened. Tomorrow’s sunrise should be glorious.

How you tell it’s winter in Cairo: in the supermarket just now I saw a lovely older lady in full abaya and veil. In a nod to the season, she had topped off her ensemble with a jaunty (if moderately incongruous) plaid tam, complete with pompom. Royal Stewart, if I’m not mistaken…

Fortuitous juxtaposition; I think Endless Screaming, at least at the moment, pretty much is the song of my people.

Five authors by whom… Anthony Trollope Virginia Woolf John Galsworthy* Barbara Pym Ethan Mordden ____________________ * If one counts the Forsytes as separate books rather than a single Saga.

Amazing how differently people present themselves today. In ‘60, they were ”troubled youths.” Today, one look and you’d assume they’ve got a place on the Upper West Side, a cabin upstate, and a fifth-grader at Spence.

I‘m going to spend a moment in the glow of having set a new personal best (shaving off two minutes!) for the Sunday crossword, knowing full well there’s going to be an avalanche of commentary that it was one of the easiest in living memory. One advantage of being up before the East Coast, I guess…

Apparently, AI hasn’t caught up; it’s still using Kristi Noem’s last face.

Happy birthday, Miss Simone. She was the most variable of artists—elegant, feral, cosmopolitan, irate, political, hedonistic—on any night an audience might get three or four Ninas, a dozen…or, as was my luck, barely one. I think it was ‘88; I remember it was summertime.

Ramadan means a flood of elaborate commercials to fill time between the obligatory month-long special series. I’ve just seen one, for one of the ritzy new compounds that encircle Cairo, featuring an AI Albert Einstein, who’s apparently thrilled with his three-bedroom in Phase Three.

The soup, you will not be surprised to learn, was an unalloyed triumph.

On this, the third day of Ramadan, and despite it being a time of day more usually deemed appropriate for naps, The Mister is making soup for our Iftar. As a result, I have to be the local equivalent, whatever that might be, of a Sabbath Goy, and taste. So far, so good.

Working within the regulations, I disqualified candidates for having had too many parking tickets, or for a single use of marijuana…

Even here in Cairo, we have That Bottle in the refrigerator, waiting, waiting, waiting. With luck, it’ll happen after sunset here, so I won’t feel guilty about Ramadan.

First morning of Ramadan; while The Mister sleeps, I ran over to the supermarket for a few things. The sheer, random inventiveness of Egypt’s snack industry rarely disappoints. In this case, while I might be talked into Lime Coriander, I’m afraid Tomato Pickle Creamy Cheese is a bridge too far.

Reminds me of Leontyne’s famous “I have a voice that is…breathtakingly beautiful” quote, and equally justified.

The Turkish joint in the mall across the street from us does the most divine fulii breakfast. When you don’t live somewhere full time, you always fear change; happy to report this place is as good as ever.

Cairo: It rained in the night—not heavily, but steadily, for the better part of an hour or more. Such is the thirst of the desert that at sunrise there’s hardly a trace of it left; just a certain tang in the air and a richer greenness in the little gardens outside our building.

I went walking in old Cairo this morning… it was a fine morning, although by noon a hamseen (a dust storm rather like a blizzard with sand instead of snow) blew in, and I grabbed a cab back home.

How the hell does the DHS secretary not have an aide who deals with her personal nonsense? Why was the pilot on the spot? I’m guessing it all goes back to the meanest thing my grandmother could ever say about someone: “Poor dear—she can’t keep help.”

Sometimes I chafe a little at some minor restriction or annoyance in my life, but now I have a new consolation: at least I’m not a member of the Norwegian royal family. Oof—on display, right there, is the danger of a “slimmed down” monarchy. If the Crown Prince had a non-insane sibling…

I have a friend who, in large part because she's being screwed in a messy breakup,* hits the plasma bank as often as is allowed, mostly to cover supplies and participation fees at her kids’ high school. ____________ * If you don’t live in a common-law/community-property state, get married, kids.

Cairo. Dust; noise; people (20-odd million and counting). A constant olfactory barrage, from aromatic to putrid. Cars, cycles (bi- and motor-), tuktuks, donkey carts, all pushing for space. And presiding over it all the desert sun, the original god, Re triumphant. Lord but it’s good to be back.

Here we go; presuming all goes well, in 25 hours we’ll be home.

The public space of our hotel is called The Placery, which is confounding because it comes as close to not being a place at all as I can imagine. On the other hand, the bartender’s a sweetheart with a generous pour, so I rather like it.

Having coffee in the lobby of our hotel at LAX, and let me tell you, the desk staff is glued to this halftime show. And for good reason!

In other news, The Mister and I are leaving. In a little bit we’ll head for LA, and then tomorrow we fly to Cairo. I’ll probably come back in a few months to start closing out the house, but we shall see…

One of those nights where I find myself really missing Darth.

A screenshot from the very first video game you remember playing. I’m _very_ old.

My pal MIss Rheba revealed earlier this week that she has found for me a vintage European one-sheet for Palm Springs Weekend. Its French title, it seems, was “Les Dingues sont Lâchés.”

So is the other house in the tale required to be referred to through as “Thrushcross Grange”?

Mitch McConnell is only 83? What secret vices has he been indulging in all these years? The Queen Mother went through a bottle of gin a day, and she looked better at 99.

I was at the supermarket earlier; the gentleman in front of me had, on the conveyor belt, a huge bottle of vodka, four large squeeze bottles of chocolate syrup, a dozen cans of whipped cream, and two tarps. Well, thought I, _somebody’s_ having a party…

The English, horsethievery; the Germans, 48ers. And the French just seem to have been really unpopular in their little village. When my genealogy-mad great aunt went to visit in the ‘30s, their response was basically “Oh merde, you’re back?”

What the Duck (who knows their stuff) says about the difficulty of putting together and promoting a season is absolutely true. It requires vision (something beyond “‘Murica Good!”), experienced staff, and some confidence of predictable audiences. Right now, it looks like the KC has none of that.

The only “march for billionaires” I want to see will feature tumbrils. Lots and lots of tumbrils.