Among the odder places I’ve been in Cairo of late: the bar at the Waldorf Astoria, one of those bland, could-be-anywhere “international” places that somehow induce a kind of spiritual vertigo. Good martini, though, so there’s that…

It’s the birthday of the great Betty Comden—lyricist, actress, and general American treasure. It was one of life’s great privileges to have known her, even a little, back in my days as a Useful Young Man. I once caught her backstage, ruthlessly overpainting the work of a well-meaning…

I first came across Nicole.Hollander—and Sylvia—as a suburban teen, and it's not overstatement to say she and her raucous, unapologetic feminism helped make me who I am today. Blessings and thanks to her. RIP.

On today’s weekly walk in old Cairo, we passed a pair of wonderful curved apartment buildings…

Today we observe Foreign Service Day, saluting the dedication, valor, and service of all America’s diplomats, past and present. Importantly, we remember and honor the many who paid the ultimate price of that service. Is the administration marking the day? No. Secretary Rubio? No. Of course.

Wordle 1,777 2/6 🟨⬜🟩⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 As always, that odd feeling: what do I do for the next 90 seconds? And comes the answer: brag.

It’s both the birthday and the date of death of the great Constantine Cavafy, the poet whose spirit illuminates the beguiling contradictions of his native Alexandria and whose memory helps preserve the lingering shreds of the city’s vanished cosmopolitan past.

Another highlight of last week’s visit to Alexandria was a return trip to the Royal Jewellery Museum, a stately pile that houses what was left behind when the royal family and its 256 trunks departed from Alex in 1952. The palace vies with the collection for one’s attention…

@cafemuscato.bsky.social - Cavafy - BTD allenginsberg.org/2026/04/w-a-...

I’m suddenly deeply grateful that my passport has a good few years on it still.

Sometimes it’s very clear that Egyptian companies haven’t yet learned how useful it can be to run any new campaign, logo, or slogan past a typical 13-year-old boy.

Farewell to the last Ronette, gone to Fabulon at 80. “Till eternity…”

Do not use a.i and if you do. Find a away to quit them. youtu.be/Ykvf3MunGf8?...

One highlight of my trip to Alexandria last week was a stop at the recently reopened, beautifully renovated and expanded Graeco-Roman Museum. I was last there more than 20 years ago, when it was still more or less as it was when it opened in 1895. It’s full of familiar faces…

I had dinner last night with friends-of-friends visiting from California. They are a May-December couple. As is common thus, one is rich and the other beautiful—truly Leydendecker-shirt-ad beautiful. And, as is also common enough in such situations (and not to be unkind) dumb as a box of rocks.

Post a picture of yourself as a doctor.

Alexandria, early morning.

Alexandria, by night.

Alexandria, early morning.

Q: What is the Baroness von Trapp's biggest fear? A:

I spent my first afternoon in Alexandria visiting the Roman ruins, a compact sort of mini-forum a stone’s throw from the train station. The site includes an odeon (concert hall), a number of what we’re told were lecture halls, a bath, and one still-decorated bit of a villa.

Christa Ludwig singing Um Mitternacht Frederica von Stade singing Some Other Time Peggy Lee singing… well, I’m sure you can guess.

I’m having a little getaway—a few days in Alexandria. I plan to visit museums, stare at the sea, and indulge in dreams of Cavafy, Forster, Durrell, and their like. This is the view from my room, which the very nice hotel manager tells me was, for a while, Cavafy’s own. I’m suitably awed.

File under “Things one does not expect to encounter on a Cairo back street.” One can only wonder from what mall it has somehow escaped; I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in the wild, as it were. If memory serves, when I used to live in this neighborhood, that space was a blacksmith’s…

If you see this, quote with a picture of you in glasses. [My pal the Architectural Historian calls this “The Mystery of the Lost Third Eurthymic.”]

Early-ish trip this morning on the Cairo Metro, just before the peak of rush hour. I changed trains at Attaba, a busy station. Excellent bilingual signage; Arabic classical music plays softly. All the way across the city, to Dokki on the far bank of the Nile, in 30 minutes. The fare is $.23.

My family has had the Haviland china my great-great grandfather bought with the bonus he got for whooping Confederate ass at Antietem for 161 years, just a tad more than 40 Confederacies.

Me, when someone asks something like “Isn’t life in Cairo awfully… basic for you?” This is my neighborhood coffee shop, bitch. And every pharmacy (and every other store and most businesses) delivers.

Two weeks ago, I was walking one morning through a market on the edge of downtown Cairo and one of the stall holders, visibly incensed, was shouting “Mahmoud Talal is a faggot and a whore!“ If nothing else, the people I was walking with were impressed by my vocabulary when I translated for them.

I had breakfast this morning with a charming friend at a café in the tony Heliopolis neighborhood. It’s a hybrid café/gallery/workspace on an upper floor of an old apartment block. You enter through a stately lobby and take a creaking open-cage elevator up. The views are splendid.

Happy birthday, Star Lady…

This started early with me. Party at my place, circa 1984: Random twink pulls LP off the shelf: “Ooh—[Disney comedy star] Bette Midler sings?” Then minutes later: “Ooh—Diana Ross was in a group?” I swear it was the night I got my first gray hair.

I saw this photo and thought two things: - She’s going to have play Diana Vreeland at some point. - These two would be perfect casting for a sort of “Out of Africa II: Way Out of Africa,” in which the elderly Baroness Blixen comes to the US in the company of her secretary/minder Clara Svendsen.

I feel as if the original production of On The Town doesn’t get enough credit for its integrated cast: six black chorus members, a Japanese-American lead (in 1944! As the all-American girl!), and, later in its run, a black conductor.

I feel like a subplot-character in one of those end-of-the-world movies: I’m on my own in a city far from home, my significant other is on a plane over the Atlantic, and, well, apparently we‘re heading, over the next few hours, into something that very much might resemble the end of the world.

It’s Cairo’s first warmish morning of the year; the sun is out, the windows are open, and I’ve moved the old standing fan into the living room. The Mister has returned to California (work beckoned, and made it worth his while). I’m staying on, at least for a while, hoping, if the cataclysm…

Remember this as Trump and Hegseth continue to LARP as Christians: "For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light." -- 2 Corinthians 11:13-14

Ah, Egypt—land of “Bebsi,” “No Barking,” and…

I’ve decided I feel badly for long-time bimbofication fetishists; Bryon Noem sure has fouled up their ability to quickly google what they’re looking for.

At now she has the consolation that, at least for a little, being a dog murderer is only the second thing people will think about her. Imagine walking down the street knowing that passers-by are thinking “titty-suit-husband dog killer…”—and that’s the most you can hope for.

I’m late with this one, but I’m home this evening and remembered the day and season and, listening to so some music, also suddenly missed the days of blogging. In any case, I wrote this once about Palm Sunday and Holy Week (and, as so often, times gone by), and here it is:

I went walking, as so often on a Friday morning, in Cairo this morning. Today, we happened by pure chance on a classic car rally outside the former Royal Automobile Club, and it was a vast joy.

So here I am, sitting in my little flat in Cairo, a city of 20+ million souls, listening to Landowska play Bach on a fine Friday evening, right there at the top right of that brown mass, the Sahara. And hello to all the rest of you on this precious blue-brown-green marble, dotted with clouds.

As with the old Ben Franklin misquote about beer (sometimes wine), deviled eggs are proof that God loves us.

After a cloudy, showery day yesterday, here in Cairo we had a ferocious storm last night—two hours of howling wind and battering rain. The tall windows in the living room bowed inward alarmingly (and leaked, although not much). This morning’s quieter, although we’re enveloped in a dusty fog.

I can’t decide if it would be more gratifying or more annoying if it were to happen today. Thinking it’s just a joke for the day, then finding it’s real… But, as always, remember: it will happen, and it could happen any minute now.

I looked. Don’t look.

We are governed by monsters.

So… having reduced public-diplomacy budgets to near zero, slashed exchange and other useful outreach programs, and decimated the ranks of skilled public-diplomacy pros, embassies are now… supposed to do public diplomacy? And while working with covert, military intel. What could possibly go wrong?