Walk like an Egyptian.

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After years of post-9/11 travel advisories, after dutifully reading the dire updates on the State Department’s website, you’ll have to forgive me if I’m a bit jittery on my way from Tunis to Cairo. At the curb-side check-in, in the departure terminal, in the waiting room as they apologize for the inevitable delays, these suspicious packs of Arab men seem to be everywhere. They’re nonchalantly smoking cigarettes and reading the newspaper; some stand before the massive bay windows, watching the planes come and go. Just what are they up to? I can’t help but wonder. And how many of them might be in on it? As we file into the plane and struggle to find our seats - the flight crew all smiles - four Arab men make straight for the cockpit door. Improbably, no one seems to bat an eye. There’s the light, musical chatter of pleasantries in the aisles. A sweet old woman is hunched over the in-flight magazine, absently nodding her head.

Of course, anyone who’s been to Cairo can tell you that the danger only begins once you’re safe on solid ground. I’m met at the airport by Sami - a grinning, avuncular guy whose bushy moustache somehow inspires more confidence than it should. It only takes a few minutes inside his clunker - its interior all exposed wiring and rusty screws - to suspect that the Curse of the Pharaoh will be coming down on a certain American head before long. We barrel into a wet night with the rain lashing the windshield, Sami jerking the wheel and hammering on the horn and now and then turning to me - rapt with attention - as if we’re sharing stories over a Turkish coffee, not trying to squeeze into a gap in the traffic about the size of a falafel.

Depending on who you ask, this massive, manic, congested, honking metropolis is home to ten or eighteen or twenty-five millions souls. But there are thirty million cars at least, honking and side-swiping and swerving into pedestrians. The battered old Peugeots, the ancient Fiats, the buses that haven’t seen a tune-up since Ramses II: you watch the peristaltic push that forces them through each intersection - ten or twelve crammed into six lanes of traffic - and wonder if this is what it looks like when the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse lead their fiery steeds into town.

I’m staying in a hostel on Talaat Harb Street, a name that apparently translates into “Avenue of the Pharaohs and the Cheap Plastic Shoes.” The sidewalks are bathed in fluorescent light spilling from the storefronts, the windows piled high with the most improbable pieces of footwear: gold and glittering with pencil-thin heels, or buttressed by thick rubber soles, or with famous designer logos stitched onto the tongue, though the shoddy craftsmanship makes you suspect that Mssrs. Dolce & Gabbana didn’t exactly stamp these models with their personal seal of approval. In some shops the shoes are strung up like links of sausage, and from the ravenous crowds that gather on the street, it’s not hard to imagine some shoe-hungry shopper - appraising the wares with bright, appreciative eyes - swooping up a whole string and sorting them out when she gets home.

On my first night it quickly becomes clear that this town is the world’s largest bazaar. On every street, on every corner, under every noisy overpass, people are buying and selling with the sort of intensity most of us reserve for Super Bowl Sunday. There are racks and racks of clothing on the sidewalk, sweatsuits and hoodies and thick woolen pants, the sober earth tones beside the cheery pastels. There are piles of spare tires and sacks of nuts and silver serving trays and packs of navy blue socks that people can’t seem to get enough of. There are carts of fruit pulled by donkeys, or by stout old men whose faces contort into a rictus of pain and inexhaustible will. They park their carts for a rest, hunched over, their shoulders heaving. No one seems to mind when a minibus backfires nearby, sending a plume of exhaust to settle over the apples and oranges and pomegranates.

There’s no end to what they sell or how they sell it: crouched on the sidewalk, squatting on the curb, sitting Indian-style on an old blanket, hawking the saddest inventory of goods you could ever imagine. Cheap plastic clocks, greasy car parts, cell phone chargers, long rows of lighters, fake leather watchbands, pairs of practical underwear that wouldn’t look flattering on Adonis himself. One man sits on an overturned bucket outside a mosque. He has a package of tissues in one hand, and a stack of insoles held together by a rubber band in the other, and a look on his face that says, “My mother suffered the pangs of birth for this?”

There are hustlers, too - the city’s famous sons. The only way to navigate Cairo’s streets is to suspect that any man who greets you with a smile and a friendly “Assalamu lekum” has spent every minute of his waking life working on the perfect pitch. At the airport they mill around the baggage claim, shiny “Ministry of Tourism” badges flashing on their lapels. In Giza they want to inspect your ticket or show you a special tomb, old Cheops reminding you that 4,000 years of human ingenuity are on their side. You spend a few days being battered by their offers and flatteries and you’re hardly fit for human company. You dig in and wait for their assaults like you’re in the trenches of the Somme, or fortified behind a wall of cynicism as thick as a medieval rampart.

One afternoon a short, well-dressed man sees me standing on the corner with my face scrunched up. He lifts an expensive pair of shades and gives me a smile as broad as the Nile. “Talaat Harb Street,” he says, gesturing one way with manicured fingers. “That way, the museum.” He points way over my shoulder. “That way, America.” His face erupts into laughter. He grabs my hand and pumps it vigorously. “My name is Ali,” he says. “Please to meet you. You are welcome.” He’s wearing a pink dress shirt that’s unbuttoned at the top, a few sprigs of chest hair poking into the daylight. His pants are smartly pressed, his hair immaculate. If he handed me his card, I’m sure the words “Respectable Businessman” would be emblazoned across the front in an elegant script.

We start off down the street, Ali rattling off pointers on surviving the Cairo hustle. He wants to take me under his wing, warning me about the notorious hucksters around town. “In Cairo, too much monkey business,” he says. “The motherfuckers.” We stop for him to get his shoes shined, a dusty old man stooping over them, his busy hands black with polish. There’s a comic exchange as he tries to spray water onto Ali’s feet - “These are $200 shoes! Italian leather!” - and from the way the two go back and forth, like in an old vaudeville skit, I suspect that the highest human comedy imaginable is playing out over this guy’s shine box.

Ali grabs me by the arm and we’re off again. He plows down the sidewalk, his broad shoulders cleaving the crowd like the prow of a cruise ship. He says he trains horses in Dubai - an easy fact to swallow, if you’re following his strut down the street. You can picture him greeting Saudi royals with that wide smile and indomitable swagger. “She’s the fastest horse in the Emirates,” he’d say, brushing a muscular flank with mighty strokes and adding, “The motherfucker.” But he’s also curiously intent on inviting me to his home, a gesture that might seem like simple hospitality if we’d met more than five minutes ago. I’m reminded of the old scam in Morocco, the claims of a “traditional Berber village” just a few miles down the road. More often than not, after a traditional meal with a traditional family in a traditional Berber home, they’d bring out the piles of traditional Berber goods. At that point, after you’ve been bombarded with hospitality, it would take a cruel heart indeed to not shell out for a few sweaters and rugs - the lesson being that you’d do well to steer clear of the Berber homes with an AMEX sticker in the window.

My guard’s up as Ali continues to plead his case. He’s on vacation and spending the month at his house in Giza: “From my roof, you see the Pyramids, the desert - wow!” We meet his friend, Gideon, a lawyer from Cameroon, who seems to have left the house in the morning wearing almost the same ensemble as his friend. Suddenly, they look less like a pair of young go-getters sharing an afternoon coffee than a couple of guys selling me a new and improved juicer. Gideon keeps insisting on Ali’s virtues - “He’s a good man, a very good man” - to an extent that almost makes me blush. Then he starts talking up the view from Ali’s roof.

“The view is incredible,” says Gideon.

“And you can see the Pyramids, right?” says Ali.

“And you can see the Pyramids. Incredible,” says Gideon.

As if I’ve walked off the streets of Cairo and smack into the middle of an infomercial.

With admirable tact and persistence I continue to evade his invitations. I’m waiting for a friend. I’m meeting a friend a bit later. I’m meeting him at the hotel. I’m not sure where I’m meeting him. We’re leaving in a few days. We’re not sure just when we’re leaving. In fact, he hasn’t even flown in from the States yet. Ali, grinning, nodding his head, in complete agreement with everything I’ve said, scribbles his number in my notebook. “When your friend gets here, you call me,” he says. “I invite both of you to my home to see the view.” He snaps a picture of me and Gideon - my eyes slightly startled, the color high in my cheeks, looking for all the world like the guy to talk to if you’ve got a pyramid to sell. They shake my hand warmly and exchange a few glances before heading outside, and I get the feeling that pic will be making the rounds among the city’s hustlers: a new dupe in town, looking for panoramic views.

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