For most of the past five weeks, in spite of the bedlam that seems to lurk around every corner, Egypt’s managed to behave itself quite nicely. Trains have arrived on time, buses have dropped me off in certifiable bus stations, and not a single run-in with a donkey on the streets of Cairo has brought me to the operating table. It’s been, all things considered, a pretty smooth month. It’s also given me just the briefest glimpses of how close this country comes to the edge of absolute, inane chaos. Now and then there’ve been inauspicious signals: at a bakery in Luxor, while I patiently queued for a fresh loaf of bread, swarms of men came bumrushing from the rear, waving their wrinkled one-pound notes over my shoulder. In Cairo, swallowed by a vicious, sharp-elbowed
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