Outside my hotel in Zamalek, the island neighborhood in the middle of the Nile that straddles the bank areas of downtown Cairo and Mohandessin, I wait on the street for Abduh. He’s the driver who will be taking me to orientation at the American University in Cairo, where I’ll be working as an assistant editor at The Cairo Review of Global Affairs (the university’s quarterly journal) for the next six months.
It’s not a short drive from Zamalek to New Cairo, where the American University in Cairo is located. Abduh and I exit Zamalek, take the 6th of October Bridge over the Nile, and make our way through Tahrir Square and Wasat al-Balad before downtown Cairo finally sneezes us out onto the highway leading to the university.
