The garment market near Bab’Zuweila.

I told the cab driver "Al Gazira al Wusta" but once we crossed the 6th of October Bridge into Zamalek, I didn’t give any directions. Mostly because I still forget left and right in Arabic, but also because I wanted to see how he’d go. The usual is to go up the right side of the island, up the narrow road along the Nile with fancy apartment buildings with names like "Nile View" and "Soloman House" in Art Deco type. This cab driver went up the left side of Zamalek, first past the Gezira Club - the country club of Zamalek (the former gardens of a queen whose palace is now the Marriott). We turned through narrow streets left and right. I knew we were going north, and I recognized the main road on the left side of Zamalek, along the Nile by Ismail Mohammed, where an ATM stole some of my money last week.

Once we drove past the Vodafone shop and Radioshack, I knew we were close, and finally we passed the little corner floweshop that overcharged me for a big plant I put in my room the other day. I suppose I ignored the price while trying to talk to the flowerman in broken colloquial, with the greetings and biographical questions. "Mr. Frederick" he said, and he gave me a rose. Of course, then again that is standard procedure to a customer who won’t haggle and is about to overpay for a potted plant.

Earlier yesterday I knew it was an especially hot day by the haze/smog out the apartment windows and the totally still Nile. No breeze today. In taxi cabs with only one back window that opens, often, that breeze is help.

I signed up for a class in Middle Eastern Studies with no stated topic or time, professor, location, because I just wanted to get out the International Student Services Office with a schedule intact. Surprise, I was the only one to register for mystery class, which was cancelled to begin with. Quickly jotting down possible courses from a library computer, I found a History seminar on Jordan and the Palestinians. Conversations, signatures, and another pushy meeting in the ISSO, and I was in the class. There is a class trip to Jordan planned for October.