“Gardens like these are among the many European amenities in this neighborhood. This part of Cairo reminds me of Paris. Have you been to Paris? No? Ach! You must see Paris someday! Notre-Dame is on an island in the Seine just as Gazirah sits between two parts of the Nile. That is the Cairo Opera House, just there. It was built to celebrate the completion of the Suez Canal. Do you enjoy opera, Miss Shanklin?” When I allowed as how I’d never had the opportunity to hear one, he cried, “Then we must make an opportunity. I’ll try to get tickets for a performance. Perhaps Aïda! What could be better than Aïda in Cairo?”

Halfway across the Gazirah Bridge, noise began to lap at us like waves against a shore. Arriving on the beledi side of the city, we were suddenly in the midst of it all: camels, carts, crowds, and an astonishing number of trucks and motorcars. Many were Fords, in considerably reduced condition. Stripped to their essentials, they made the kind of deafening racket that might have been produced by a thresher attempting to harvest a stone wall. Behind each ramshackle vehicle, a crowd of boys followed, “hoping for a breakdown or an entertaining collision,” as Herr Weilbacher put it. “Amazing how few parts a Ford needs,” he shouted when a particularly skeletal flatbed truck clattered past. “If something falls off, a Ford rolls right on—although it complains rather loudly.”

“No wonder people here yell all the time,” I remarked at the top of my voice. “Everyone in Cairo must be hard of hearing!” And I was thrilled when Herr Weilbacher produced a booming laugh, amused at my remark.

Engulfed by Cairo’s kaleidoscope of odors, Rosie dashed to the end of her leash in every direction, as eager to sample Cairo’s scents as I was to see its sights. Before long, however, her jaunty rolling trot slowed, and Herr Weilbacher scooped her up. “The world is very large for a sausage dog,” he observed. “It’s a short life but a hairy one, ja, Rosie?”