(---) accepting that the white lines are only there because - well, because modern traffic systems have zebra crossings. But they have no function other than as a formal constituent of a modern traffic system. The Fiats zooming past the stranded tourists are not conscious of having wronged them. And no traffic policeman would dream of booking a driver for not stopping at the white lines.

No. The real system, the one which functions, is one in which cars and pedestrians coexist simultaneously on the road. If you have to cross and there are no traffic lights, you set out on a slanting, zigzag path across the road. You slot in with the cars and don't hesitate or vary your pace. They'll see what you are doing. They'll make room for you. You'll almost certainly - whoever you are - get to the other side safely.

Akkurat sånn var det, ja. Og så går man (bortsett fra på de aller mest trafikkerte gatene) på veien, ikke på fortauet - for fortauene er som regel i altfor dårlig stand, eller blokkert av biler eller gjenstander...

Nanny Suad sat on the floor of the kitchen stuffing vineleaves. As she worked, she chatted to her young charge, my five-year-old niece. But she was not just chatting - she was teasing, winding the child up. As the little girl got angrier and more violent in her replies, the nanny smiled up at me easily. "I'm sharpening her," she said, "so that she'll never be afraid of anyone." An Egyptian peasant-woman, who could neither read nor write, was administering a course in self-assertion to a girl-child.

This memory sprang to my mind in response to the following lines from Jan Goodwin's Price of Honour: "From the time a girl is five or six [in the Muslim world], preparation for the only acceptable role for her - wife and mother - begins. She is groomed to be a good wife: docile, obedient and self-sacrificing. [...] The birth of a girl...is invariably a time for mourning" - "invariably" no less.

A huge appetite for comedy is an ingredient of the [Egyptian] national character. Whatever happens to be going on - be it war, law reform, or riots - is voraciously seized upon and transmuted overnight into a hundred underground jokes sweeping through the valley and adding to a complex structure in which jokes cross-refer to other jokes, to proverbs and to catch-phrases from famous televised plays.

Og egypternes utpregede humoristiske sans gjør det trivelig å være turist i Egypt også.