Each item was the occasion for the sort of shouting matches I’d observed the day before, and when I inquired, Herr Weilbacher explained, “The negotiation is designed to make every transaction take as long as possible. It is a form of sport and justifies the time men spend on it. When they are tired from their bargaining, they must sit and smoke, or play dominoes for a while—to recover their strength, naturally.”

Rosie wiggled in his arms, and he paused to set her on the pavement just as a gang of small boys gathered around us calling, “Baksheesh! Baksheesh!” Herr Weilbacher shook his head and waved the children off, but one of them noticed Rosie, who was backing up, circling. When she curled like a comma to deposit her own malodorous contribution to the bazaar’s collection of garbage, donkey droppings, and camel urine, the little boy alerted his friends. In an instant, the whole group doubled up with glee. Herr Weilbacher tossed a coin into the souk. The boys ran off to retrieve it and were quickly lost amid the hawkers’ wares.

“Baksheesh,” I said. I remembered the word from Lillie’s letters but couldn’t recall the meaning. “Is that a sort of fruit?”

“Yes, in a manner of speaking. Foreigners are the tree and all Egypt harvests us.” When I smiled uncertainly, he explained, “From the Persian bakhshidan, to give. It means a tip or a small gift.”

“And how have you come to be in the Middle East, Herr Weilbacher?” I asked as we strolled onward.

He stopped walking and waited with a hurt expression for me to look back. “Please, must I beg?” he asked, sounding comically aggrieved. “Call me Karl.”

“Karl.” The word was soft in my mouth. “And you must call me Agnes, of course.”

“That’s better.” He had a smile like sunrise. “Before the war, I supervised the construction of a railway my government built for the Turks.”