Из дневника американского востоковеда
What do young Americans do abroad? Junior year abroad provides a welcome hiatus for most and usually jump-starts most linguistic skills. But most - and I stress most, NOT all - end up losing themselves in the mess that are the Cairo bars, and the leafy, insular jungle of Maadi and Zamalek: in the very, very closed foreign communities of Egypt, the put up signs that say “No Egyptians” and munch on imported bacon and drink their alcopops with particular smugness. Thursday nights pass in a drunken, hashish-induced haze identical to other abroad experiences in Italy, Spain, France - the only unique circumstance being that you have to (or should) hide your drunkenness from anxiety over local reprisals. These students usually use a checklist for Egypt: Pyramids, Nile cruise, visit to Siwa, temples of Hapshetsut, Dahab, St. Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai. And why not? This is how many people, who wait a lifetime to see Egypt for two weeks, see the Mother of the World.
The problem is when those bloggers say, unreservedly, that they “know” Egypt.
(с)
На фото - Луи Армстронг (тоже американец) в Каире, 1961 г.