After moving to Philadelphia in 1982, I quickly discovered McGlinchey’s, home of the 50-cent draft of Rolling Rock, and Bacchanal, where there were poetry readings on Mondays. When I had a few extra bucks, I also treated myself to a chopped liver sandwich at the original Latimer Deli, or a meatloaf and mashed potato dinner at a now-disappeared diner on 11th and Locust.

When I took a girl to Latimer, she smilingly said, “I’ll try that too,” but after the messy, putative crime was shamelessly produced, the cornered victim simply twisted her pretty face, “What is this?! It looks like chicken shit!” She did eat it.

Later, I’d have many fond memories of diners across America, in Cheyenne, Denver, Saint Paul, Saint Louis, Des Moines, Detroit, Joliet, Bellows Falls, Scranton, Richmond, Raleigh, Savannah, El Paso, San Antonio, Reno and Wolf Point, etc., though I’m still traumatized by the fraudulent chicken fried steak I somehow managed to ingest, waste not, want not, at an otherwise charming diner in McCook, Nebraska.

With its futuristic signs, chrome plated walls, colored neons, cozy booths, democratic counters, no-nonsense waitresses and ample portions of comfort food, the American diner is both wholesome yet sexy, down-to-earth yet cool, especially to foreigners, for most have only seen such eateries in glammed-up Hollywood films like Swingers, Grease, True Romance and Pulp Fiction, etc.

For the educated, the Swiss-born Robert Frank’s diners will always mesmerize, and Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks is as iconic an image of America as any. Stark alienation has never looked so good.

In any foreign city, sooner or later I’d look for an American diner, because, it’s only natural, man, I couldn’t help but crave some breakfast sausage, home fries or a legitimate cheeseburger. Plus, I wanted to see how American culture had been translated, distilled or refracted, an ongoing investigation.

Living for four months in Busan, I’d take a two-hour train ride to Waegwan, just to enjoy Country Restaurant’s all-American menu, as expertly prepared by a Filipina cook. Facing Camp Carrol’s main gate, its clientele was almost exclusively young American soldiers, with most of them black or Hispanic.

Its South Korean owner had just enough English to banter. Overhearing a female soldier say, “I think I’m an alcoholic,” he jumped in, “Alcohol, kill virus!” Later, as she and her friends were leaving, he shouted, “Merry Christmas!” It was mid-May. “Happy New Year!” she hollered back.

Country Restaurant wasn’t quite a diner, however.

In Pyeongtaek, though, I thought I had found the real MacKay. From the outside, I could see a jukebox and a black waitress, and even its name resonated personally.

Barging into Rocky’s, I blubbered, “This looks like a real diner!” I was more than ready to kiss her feet, or at least hug her thick thighs.

“Huh?”

“I said this looks like a real diner!”

She showed no comprehension.

“Uh, are you American?”

“No.”

What’s another disappointment in a life filled with them? Rocky’s Crosley jukebox was merely decorative. Its burger was pretty damn good, though.

Five hundred words into this article, you’re probably wondering, “What the hell does all this have to do with the bait-and-switch title?! Have I been jewed again?” Watch your anti-Semitic language! Be patient. I know you’re running out of time.

Here in Tirana, the closest I’ve found to a diner is Stephen Center. With its pancakes, huevos rancheros, BLT, chef salad, bacon cheeseburger, tuna melt, beef burrito and fried chicken, etc., it’s as down home as you’re going to get in the Balkans, and this is Albania, remember, a country so isolated 30 years ago, it was tagged the North Korea of Europe.

All its cutesy signs are so knowing, they couldn’t have put up by non-Americans, and sure enough, Stephen Center is owned by an American couple. Here as soon as Albania reopened in the early 90’s, they’re missionaries.

Their evangelism is evident through Stephen Center’s Christian messages, placed here and there, and even on the sugar packets, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life—John 3, 16.”

In Washington DC many moons ago, I used to frequent Scholl’s, a cafeteria with a Christian message at each table. Whatever, man, the food was good enough, and super cheap, though often overcooked, to accommodate its mostly elderly, thus dentally challenged, patrons.

Stephen Center’s Christianity, though, is ultra specific.

Done with a satisfying Santa Fe omelet, I decided to order a pot of tea and read a free magazine or two, from a rack by the door. Through large windows, blessed sunlight warmed us all, down to each smirking microbe. It was a beautiful day.

You won’t believe this, but so many elegant and dignified individuals kept walking by. Seeing a baby stroller being pushed across the street, I felt an unreasonable fear for the infant’s safety. Trusting her guardian completely, she innocently raised both hands, as if in triumph. Another astonishing day awaited her.

Opening Word—from Jerusalem, I was greeted by its editor, Jurgen Buhler, who informed me that, despite Covid-19, “Our staff decided to stay [in Israel] and we ended up packing thousands of Passover boxes, delivering groceries for the elderly and, at the Haifa Home, our Christian staff and volunteers were the only ones allowed to care for the 70 Holocaust survivors living there […] Meantime, we brought over 550 Russian and Ethiopian Jews to Israel and helped cover the extra cost of their two-week quarantine upon arrival, all in cooperation with the Jewish Agency.”

Though long-inhabited, Tirana never became a city until after World War II. In 1938, it had but 38,000 people. Further, its architectural heritage has been much destroyed during the Communist decades, so there are almost no historical churches or mosques left.

A striking exception is the Et’hem Bey Mosque, completed in 1821. Only shuttered by Enver Hoxha, it was not razed. When it was reopened without permission in 1991, thousands of people converged there to pray. Its walls and dome are lushly covered with mosaics depicting landscapes and plant motifs. Elegantly proportioned, it’s a gorgeous mosque. Turkey is financing its restoration. Nearby, a much bigger mosque, also funded by Turkey, is being built.

Since the Et’hem Bey occupies one corner of Skanderbeg Square, I see it almost every day. A vast, unobstructed space like a parade ground, Skanderbeg was where thousands of solemnly dressed Albanians knelt, with their heads bowed, to mourn Stalin’s death in 1953. There in 1991, a 32-feet-high statue of Enver Hoxha was toppled, while the dictator’s portraits and books curled, blackened and ashened in bonfires, to much bitter jubilation.

Just off Skanderbeg is Café Flora. Opened in the 1930’s, it’s one of Tirana’s oldest, though you wouldn’t know it by its slick and sterile appearance. Surely, it’s no longer the establishment described by Ismail Kadar in his 2009 novel, The Girl in Exile.

Under vague yet worrying government scrutiny, a playwright arranged to meet one of his investigators at Café Flora, for an exploratory, informal chat. Maybe it wasn’t the brightest idea, “What am I letting myself in for? he asked himself as he passed the marble colonnade of the Palace of Culture, his mind dogged by the thought that he was going like a lamb to the slaughter.”

Entering, the playwright was momentarily surprised to find the investigator at his favorite table. What a coincidence, he thought, but of course, “The investigator would know as well as he did where he liked to sit. As all Tirana knew, the Flora came second after the Dajti for microphones under the tables.”

As the watched watched the watcher for clues to why he was being watched, they talked like ordinary acquaintances, but of course, there was nothing normal about their conversation, or Café Flora, Tirana and Albania of that era. One man was totally at the mercy of the other, and it didn’t matter that, up to that point, he had been a playwright much esteemed by the Party.

With total power, the Party, or more specifically, Enver Hoxha, could just change his mind, and decide that a thoroughly loyal servant or longstanding comrade is an enemy. This apparently happened to Mehmet Shehu, Hoxha’s right hand man. Expected by all to succeed the ailing dictator by 1981, Shehu suddenly died, supposedly by suicide, then came the preposterous announcement that Shehu had long been an agent of the CIA, KGB, British and Yugoslavs. Hoxha also sent Shehu’s widow and two sons to prison, where one committed suicide.

Of course, Shehu didn’t rise to the top of the Communist hierarchy by being such a nice guy. Shehu in 1961, “Whoever disagrees with our leadership in any respect, will get spat in the face, punched on the chin, and, if necessary, a bullet in his head.” Shehu certainly got one.

Six years after Hoxha’s death, his wife, Nexhmije, was arrested for embezzlement. Jailed for just five years, she had it easy. Albanians knew all about her pompous, extravagant lifestyle, which was standard for the elite of every Communist country, but why should anyone be surprised? What’s the use of power if one can’t gorge, or exact terrible revenge against each offense, no matter how slight or imaginary?

Though the US is well on its way towards totalitarianism, it’s only half-erected, as proven by the half-assed skirmishes among its politicos. When Trump threatened to arrest Hillary, for example, he was only kidding, and they both knew it, for they’re in the same bed. As for rigged elections, Kerry, too, only jokingly dawdled with the hanging chad diddle. After being screwed by Hillary, Sanders beamingly endorsed her top shelf, naked strap-on.

At this stage, it’s only flag football, or, more accurately, fag football. Despite all the hollering, prancing and pansy pantsing, no hitting is allowed. See any blood?

The US is also missing its Great Dear Leader, with Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump afforded only brief cameos as cabana boys in chief. Here in Albania, Hoxha ruled for 40 years! Next door in Yugoslavia, Tito reigned for 37! Think about that.

Narcissistic ogres, they loved themselves to death. Such type will always be adored and worshipped by the infantile, hankering for their uber daddy, but luckily for the US, the country should disintegrate before such a savior appears.

In The Albanians, Miranda Vickers describes Hoxha’s 1946 visit to Belgrade, where he was “shocked by Tito’s arrogance and elitism.” Intending to swallow up Albania, Tito had to show who was boss, “Tito wore a white marshal’s uniform with a gold-embroidered collar and matching cuffs, and abundant medal ribbons on his chest to complement the stars on his epaulettes—this ensemble being completed by a huge sparkling diamond ring on his finger. Hoxha felt offended, humiliated and probably exceedingly jealous of all this excessive and ostentatious display, following so soon after the austere misery of the wartime struggle from which both he and Tito had just emerged.”

Conflict or even open war among Communist nations should prove, even to dumbshits, that nationalism is always a factor, no matter what your brainwashed or lying professor told you.

With such a recent past of abject poverty, physical isolation, mental suffocation and widespread state terror, it’s no wonder Albanians have worked hard to remake their society, to give it a new, cosmopolitan sheen that’s almost entirely free of nostalgia, for there isn’t much to fondly remember.

Of course, Tirana also looks new because nearly all its businesses could only appear after the collapse of Communism. Street after street, all the cafés, restaurants, bars and shops seem uniformly new, with each piece of furniture just installed, and the walls freshly painted and without memories. There are no black-and-white photos of long-dead patrons in any bar, no quirky painting forgotten in a corner. By October of 1994, there were just five restaurants in the entire city!

When the past is evoked, it’s nearly always imported, and why not? Since movies, TV shows and songs also become memories, you can modify your past, sort of, by lifting someone else’s media.

Near me, there’s the Vital Café. Among its framed images is Lewis Hine’s 1910 photo of boys smoking, Uncle Sam with “I WANT YOU FOR U.S. ARMY,” Manhattan Bridge as seen from Brooklyn, a pencil drawing of the Statue of Liberty, and a generic photo of a Lisbon streetcar. There’s no image of Albania.

The older you get, the more likely you are to ramble, or, to put it more delicately, to improvise quite freely, incoherently or repetitively, the more you’ll sound like Sun Ra on acid, in short.

Warning label out of the way, I must talk about dogs, to start with.

In Egypt, they’re everywhere, but nearly all are strays. Never petted nor allowed indoors, they find warmth on the heated metal of parked or abandoned cars. Like Egyptian sheep, goats, horses, donkeys, cats and even herons, they eat garbage, which in Egypt is quite plentiful, everywhere. From birth to death, they live a most unnatural existence, not unlike humans.

Eternally hounded, they look at you with pitiful eyes and don’t even dare to whimper. Only once did Egyptian dogs bark at me, and that was in Cairo’s City of the Dead. Among the lowest of that society, these creatures seemed less wretched.

With its quiet, uncluttered streets and often grand, dignified structures, The City of the Dead is perhaps Cairo’s most pleasant neighborhood. Incredibly, it’s also very affordable. Paying no rent, the living coexist, quite peacefully, with the long-dead, inside abandoned tombs.

Since the dead don’t drive, parking isn’t a problem, but they definitely do enjoy coffee, at least in moderation. Relaxing at a City of the Dead café, I was vaguely hoping some long departed broad would show up. Well decomposed, she had had enough time to deconstruct herself, thus come to some self-understanding, if not wisdom, after a conversation or two with God, perhaps. If in hell, she could finally see the Devil without disguise. Her conquered, done with, he could laughingly confide to her all his tricks.

Plus, to her eyes, I would be considered young, fresh meat.

Even with minimal foot traffic, the City of the Dead still has its beggars, so I gave some cheerful, white bearded guy, sitting on the ground, enough for lunch.

Speaking of which, I just had my first cheeseburger in Tirana. Most promisingly, it came with what looked like dill pickles, but, oy vey iz mir, these were merely thinly sliced cucumber!

As a bonafide Jew, as proven by this T-shirt, dearly purchased in Vientiane, Laos, there’s no way I’m going to put up with this gasly insult! It’s like being slapped six million times! And where, pray tell, is their Holocaust Memorial Museum? There’s not even a synagogue here. I don’t care that Albanians fought against both Mussolini and Hitler, these people are obviously brazen Nazis!

Italian culture is common here. Everywhere, pizza, pasta and calzoni are sold. Albanian prosciutto is not quite Italian quality, but good enough. Standing in a bakery, I’m staring at rolls called tartarughe [turtles] and rosette, just like in il bel paese, and a croissant here is also a brioche.

Every language is a collective poem, with each grunt or exhalation an inspired moment, once upon a time or just yesterday. Take the Albanian makina. Derived from the Italian macchina, it means machine or car, but car as merely machine is very childish, of course, if not ridiculous, but that’s its charm, just like the Spanish tienda means tent or store.

Call me biased, but the cutest along that line is the Vietnamese for crocodile, cá sấu, which literally means ugly fish.

Man plays with language, for it’s his most available toy, and costs nothing, except loss of employment, prison or even death, if he’s corralled inside a Satanic system. Worse off than dogs in a necropolis, he can’t even bark.

Smile, you’re not quite there yet, but watch your back.

If you consider death as the total erasure of reality, then its eclipse is always a partial death, so how dark has your noon become?

As I waver between turtles and rosettes, Fred Buscaglione is belting, “Guarda che luna! Guarda che mare!” From this night, without you, I must remain. OK, Fred.

During those suffocating decades of Enver Hoxha’s Communism, Italian radio broadcasts, heard surreptitiously, were all Albanians had of the outside world.

In return, Albania beamed its Stalinist and Maoist messages towards Italians, but such relentless hammering and sickling wasn’t too popular, so music had to be interspersed.

In December of 1972, Hoxha have had enough of this diluted nonsense, so he ordered Radio Tirana’s directors, composers and singers sent to internment camps, along with their families.

Few things are as weird as a Communist song and dance routine, for it is most awkwardly pistoned by rigid, coerced emotions. No spontaneity is allowed, not even an impromptu smile.

I witnessed this firsthand at a North Korean restaurant in Phnom Penh, where the stiffly pretty waitresses wore the most plastic faces as they gutted out shlock rock or pop numbers. Their guitar, bass and drum playing was adroit, but as anyone with a soul must know, precise muscle twitching alone doesn’t make music. It was torture, especially for them.

Granted, to be civilized is to compose and choreograph yourself constantly, but under a totalitarian regime, this imperative is pushed to an insane degree, at all time, even when you’re alone, for Big Brother has been implanted inside your skull.

Everyone is always watching everyone else, and himself, for ideological deviations. A single thought crime can finish you off. No playfulness is allowed. Hyper conscious, your mind eats itself.

Even with your children, you must always be on guard, for they have been well indoctrinated, day after day at school, to detect and denounce heretics.

In Tirana, the former headquarters of the secret police has been turned into a museum, House of Leaves. Here, thousands were taken to be interrogated, often under torture. Like its innocent name, this sinister place has been mostly scrubbed of its terror.

In one room, though, there are photographs of political prisoners on trial. Violated, humiliated and hopelessly doomed, their faces show fear or abjection, of course, but also a stubborn dignity, with more than a hint of disbelief, as in how can such savagery occur in a land they so love and think they know so well?

I’m in downtown Tirana. My 7th floor room has a fridge, desk, three chairs and a wardrobe. There’s also an electric kettle, which is useful not just for hot beverages, but instant noodles and soups. Heat is love.

My private bathroom is clean and new, with plenty of hot water, and strong shower jets. My wide window affords a panorama of tenements backstopped by a mountain range. Each dawn, a soft, considerate sun rises, cheering my prospect. On my wall, there’s a nice kitschy painting of snow-capped, craggy peaks.

For all these privileges, I pay just $427 for four weeks.

Although my landlady speaks no English, there’s no problem. Tiny, pleasant and hushed, she’s in the next room. Walking by her door, I can barely hear her television murmuring, if she’s there. In her 60’s, she’s as scatterbrained as me.

When I paid her at check in, she looked perplexed, before remembering she had left her money purse under my mattress. Fishing it out, she giggled at her own battiness. Still amused at herself, the old bird handed me my change in leks.

With suppressed excitement slightly tinged with dread, I should lift the mattress to see what else she has forgotten? There’s liable to be anything, from a broken comb, to tangled hair, to a mummified mermaid. In Egypt, where I was just at, you can book a fully furnished apartment, wink, wink, and get your musty cellar hosed out by the en suite maid.

Leaving Cairo was more eventful than necessary. An airport employee asked repeatedly for a tip just for lifting my backpack and duffle bag onto the luggage scanner, although I had told him specifically not to, for who needs such a service? Although it was only a minor shakedown, I didn’t pay him.

Two security guys then spent five minutes examining my three hard-drives, with one demanding I checked them in. After I firmly balked at this, he backed of.

At passport control, an officer steered me to another who said I had to pay $23 for overstaying my visa. After I explained that Egyptian laws allowed visitors to overstay for up to two weeks without being fined, both officers cracked up and promptly let me through. Guffawing along, I merely blurted, “I loved Egypt so much, I had to stay another week!”

Don’t get me wrong. Ordinary Egyptians were fine. On subways, strangers would offer me their seats, since they couldn’t stand to see such a white-haired guy standing with his eyes shut. (I often close them to focus or just rest.) Cairo’s streets invigorated me, and its architecture is second to none, though awfully decayed, as I’ve already stated.

What’s wrong with Egypt, above all, is its government. As established by Nasser, it is a police state dominated by the military, with socialist policies that have wrecked its economy.

Since Nasser gave the poor free bread, free land and practically free rent, he was hugely popular among them, but by chasing out the enterprising class, Nasser destroyed Egypt’s development.

Promising a job to every college graduate, Nasser created a huge bureaucracy of state employees who did almost nothing. His universal welfare triggered a huge population explosion, so now, there are over 100 million Egyptians on a land meant for a fraction of that.

Nasser’s revolutionary zeal also led him to intervene in Yemen, a catastrophe that drained his treasury and weakened his army, but the great, charismatic man with plenty of bon mots couldn’t see this, obviously, for he kept on threatening Israel most bombastically. Only a spectacularly humiliating defeat in the Six-Day War could puncture Nasser’s hubris.

Arriving in Cairo just before New Year, I noticed many armed soldiers, and even armored vehicles, around Tahrir Square. This was a preventive measure against crowd disturbance or terrorism during the holiday, I thought, but the military never left. It’s there, 24/7, primarily to prevent fresh protests against the government.

A clerk at my hotel was jailed for a month just for snapping photos of a protest, but luckily, he wasn’t abused while locked up, a too common practice there.

Twice, I was accosted by armed cops, one with an assault rifle, for merely taking photos of Coptic churches. Outside Faisal Metro Station, an un-uniformed cop grabbed my camera after I had snapped some funky food stand. He then forced me to follow him inside to see his supervisor. In Alexandria, an angry cop told me to stop photographing a tenement.

Seeing a smiling Sisi often, I couldn’t help but photograph his face at butcher stalls, a laundry service, draped on a hotel, inside a subway station, over a café, another café, a snack and soft drink stand, at a machine part dealer, a coffee and tea store, clothing store, behind a vegetable stand, by a garage, stuck to a tenement, on the side of a truck, outside a spice shop, paired with the Sphinx, saluting himself, and here shaking hands with the always clueless Pope Francis.

Flying into Egypt, I was given a one-month visa, which I got right at the airport for a small fee. One is allowed to overstay for two weeks, however, so I’ll likely take advantage of this. I’m getting more comfortable in Cairo, and why not?

In any unknown neighborhood, you must figure out where you can drink coffee, eat affordably and buy the basics, and if you’re partial to green bottles with cheery labels, where you can get buzzed for just a slurry song.

A conservative Muslim country, Egypt is not exactly a bar hopping paradise, but there are hoppy joints. Being right downtown, I have options.

Since my hotel receptionist is an Armenian, he has no qualms about boozing, “But I don’t really socialize. Prices have gone up. I go home and stay home.” He lives near the Giza Metro Station.

“Let’s go to Stella!” My treat, of course, except I haven’t been able to find it. It has no sign.

Although alcohol consumption is allowed, it must be discreet, so no loud music or butt flossed bartenders, such as they have in even frostbitten Michigan. Nothing like Hooters, in short. (Hey, there’s an untapped market here. Go for it!) Most of Egypt is bone dry.

Prowling around looking for elusive Stella, I have been approached by unctuous strangers who began their pitch with “my friend.” In any country, it’s never a good sign.

When I replied to a dark, scrunchy faced man in English, he blurted, “Ah, you’re an American! My wife is from the Windy City.” Yeah, right. “What do you do?”

“I’m a writer.” I wanted to see where this was leading.

“Fantastic! I’m an artist.”

“Really?”

“Yes. My studio is right there.” He pointed. “Let me show you.”

Following this fellow, I was led into a small souvenir shop jammed with miniature pyramids, sphinx, cats, nefertitties, pharaonic icons luridly painted on supposedly papyrus and body oils with exotic or concupiscent names, such as you’d find in American ghettoes. There’s none tagged “Barack Obama,” however.

“Would you like a cup of coffee?”

“No, thanks.”

Uncapping Cleopatra’s Secret, he held it to my nose. “Nice?”

I shrugged.

“It’s for at night,” he grinned.

For most contemporaries, Cleopatra doesn’t conjure up Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra or Dryden’s All For Love, but a naked Elizabeth Taylor submerged to her cleavage in a sumptuous marble bathtub, or getting a voluptuous back rub. That queen, too, is history, for “Golden lads and girls all must, as chimney-sweepers, come to dust,” wrote some antisemitic white dude. Don’t read him!

This Cairo man was an exceedingly minor hustler. In Skopje, North Macedonia, I ran into a very short man who was wandering around wearing a USA cap. In perfect, accent-free and colloquial English, he explained that he had just been robbed by five Gypsies in Ohrid. Though they had taken his IDs, three credit cards, $40, new iPhone and passport, he still had a wallet, first red flag, which he pulled out to show me a photo of an exceedingly gorgeous blonde in a US Army uniform, second red flag. As if to explain why he was so tiny, he said he had been a jockey in Louisville for three years, where he saw nine other jockeys die in violent wrecks, third red flag. As if to snuff out suspicions he wasn’t really a Yank, he said he could name all “44 US presidents, with even their middle names,” and he actually rattled them off, in order, as we were walking along the Vardar. I’m not going to nitpick and say there were actually 45 American prezzes, but the final red flag was when he said his father owned 50 industrial supply stores, one in every state, and that’s just ridiculous, amigo. Still, it was a very impressive performance, so when he asked for $10 halfway through, to get the cheapest hotel room until his wife sends him cash the next morning, I readily coughed up. Plus, there was an outside chance he was genuine, for he hadn’t mentioned the 50 stores in 50 states. Hell, it would be disgraceful to deny a fellow American in trouble ten lousy bucks.

Searching for Stella, I serendipitously discovered Horreya, so that’s where I am now, having my first beer in more than three weeks, a personal record. Stella is Egypt’s only beer brand. First brewed in 1897, it’s a respectable lager, just a notch below Beer Lao. The only other choice is Heineken, so no, thanks.

Horreya is a tall ceilinged, spacious room with long-stemmed, three-bladed ceiling fans and large, multi-paneled windows, so you can clearly hear car horns and motorcycle vooms above the low roar of conversations. There’s no music, thankfully. The hummus-colored walls are decorated with shaped mirrors and a sign from nearly a century ago, “Votre Boisson PRÉFÉRÉ/ VIMTO.” The light is naked neon, such as you find at bus stations.

There’s a tin ashtray at each table. After spitting on the floor, a nattily dressed young man rubbed out the sputum with his shoe. The waiter patrols the floor with bottles ready to be dispensed, and adroitly opened with a quick flick of his wrist. Most patrons are men. Just now, though, some matronly broad just ambled past me. Ten feet away sits a fierce eyed, sharp chinned and tightly smiling beauty, with her cigarette, beer and bearded, prematurely balding boyfriend.

Behind a square column are two joined tables of possible Americans, judging not just by their faces, but body language. Pudgy and pasty, they may be professors at the American University here, but who knows? Perhaps they’re Cornhusker offensive linemen from the mid-80’s, here on a quirky reunion.

“Hey dudes, let’s go to Cairo!”

“Man, that’s just a pissy little village! My sister lives right on the corner of Mecca and Alexandria, near the Baptist Church. There ain’t nothing in Cairo but the Medina Coffee Shop…”

“I don’t mean Cairo, Nebraska, dumbshit! I mean Cairo, Egypt!” So here they are.

An Egyptian Mau lurks, frowns, eyes you with hope and resentment then bounces away. In Muslim countries, stray dogs don’t wander indoors, but cats do. In Cairo, I spot them often inside metro stations, sometimes nibbling from small plates. At Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia, I encountered meowing pussies, licking themselves most indecorously.

Horreya means liberty, by the way, and that’s apt, for it is an oasis of license in a culture that generally shuns alcohol. The Koran (2:219), “They ask you about intoxicants and gambling. Say, ‘There is gross sin in them, and some benefits for people, but their sinfulness outweighs their benefit.’” True enough, so get shitfaced responsibly, and don’t gamble.

For 1,375 years, Egypt has been Muslim, but not entirely, for there are significant Christian communities here, with beautiful, well-maintained churches, 500 in Cairo alone, some of them huge.

For thousands of years before the Muslim conquest, Egyptians downed more beer than Bavarians, Brits, Koreans or whomever else you could think of. In fact, they were one of the first brewers. The oldest large-scale brewery anywhere was in Nekhen, Egypt. In 3600BC, it cranked out the equivalence of 650 bottles a day. In 2580BC, a laborer at the Giza Pyramids was allotted four to five liters of beer daily. (When I was housepainting in Philly, our boss, Joe, only gave us one bottle of Samuel Adams at quitting time!)