Cairo

"You need three things to drive in Cairo," Reham tells us. "Good horn, good brakes, GOOD LUCK. " Reham, our guide to the ancient sites near Cairo (Memphis/Saqqara/Giza), is certainly right about that. And it seems that each of the millions of drivers in Cairo is constantly testing all three elements to see whether they still work. To start, I don't remember seeing more than five traffic lights during our trip through Egypt. More would just be a waste of electricity, since drivers don't feel compelled to stop on red anyway.

As I stepped off the plane onto the runway, a wave of heat enveloped my body. I saw almost nothing but brown, arid sand. This place was unlike any other place I had ever been to in my life. Imagine the hottest summer day you have ever experienced. Now add 15 degrees to that. However, the sudden difference in temperature was a welcome change from the cabin of the plane. After a thirteen-hour flight this weekend, two hours of which were spent sitting on the runway, anyone would look forward to stepping into the steamy rays of the Egyptian sun. My first instinct, like any other tourist, was to take pictures of anything and everything that I saw. However, the security guard who was escorting us into the crowded terminal had other ideas.

If no ordinary Egyptian would have anything to do with it - if it has been used up, broken, shredded, spindled, emptied or eaten to the rind - the chances are very good that it will wind up in a dusty shantytown on the eastern outskirts of Cairo. That is where the zabaleen - the "garbage people" - live. Trash is not their livelihood. It is their whole existence. They do not merely collect the stuff. They dump it onto the floors of their dwellings and pick through it, tossing the food scraps to their pigs.

A week ago, I was in Egypt, soaking up the sun and culture of Cairo. My first visit was back in 1978 when I met and talked with President Anwar Sadat. Changes there inspire awe. My purpose in going to Cairo was to examine the differences between that city (pop. 10 million) and American metropolises. The differences were many and obvious. The people possess an unmistakable pride, whether they are rich or poor, black or white. Self-pride is first, but it extends to community, region and country.

The four youths, laborers from Upper Egypt, wear clothes retrieved from rubbish heaps and sneakers laced with discarded electrical wire. By day, they work in a dusty alley, scraping the rust off scrap metal and cutting the metal into strips to be recycled into pots and pans. By night, they inhabit a drafty mausoleum, resting place of "the lost soul Sheik Mohammed Abdeen," a teacher who died in 1925, and of another Egyptian, whose name is no longer legible on his crumbling tombstone.

By noon of the first day, the air conditioning was out of order at Mubarak Station in downtown Cairo. There were long lines at the ticket windows, and the arriving trains were almost as crowded as the infamous buses that people had gone underground to escape. The Cairo Metro, which opened to the public Thursday, may not be perfect. But Egyptians are accustomed to traveling in the most uncomfortable conditions imaginable. For them, the new subway - the first in the Middle East and Africa - was much more than adequate, much more than a pleasant surprise.

An amiable disorder is what you notice first about the Cairo camel market. Great splay-legged beasts lurch through the crowd, frantically pursued by whip-wielding men with turbans. Camels bray in fierce protestation as their handlers try to stuff them into pickup trucks for delivery to their new owners. The next thing you notice is the smell. If you stay long enough, you pick up on something else. You realize that for the men who buy and sell these dun-colored giants - moving mountains whose peaks protrude through crude burlap covers - honor is what matters most.

Arab League foreign ministers agreed in principle yesterday to move the organization's headquarters back to Cairo from Tunis, ending an 11-year arrangement prompted by Egypt's peace treaty with Israel. Egyptian Foreign Minister Esmat Abdel-Meguid announced the unanimous decision yesterday at a biannual Arab League session. Egypt's Middle East News agency reported the announcement in a dispatch from the Tunisian capital. Abdel-Meguid said the move would take place in September.

CAIRO - Massive clashes raged yesterday in downtown Cairo, drawing Christians angry over a recent church attack, hard-line Muslims and Egyptian security forces. At least 24 people were killed and more than 200 injured in the worst sectarian violence since the uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak in February. The violence lasted late into the night, bringing out a deployment of more than 1,000 security forces and armored vehicles to defend the state television building along the Nile.

GREG PORTER, the Drexel University sophomore arrested last week during protests in Cairo, returned to Philadelphia this weekend. A family member standing outside Porter's Glenside, Montgomery County, home told a reporter yesterday that Porter would not be available for comment but that the family is grateful that he is home. The 19-year-old La Salle College High School graduate was met Saturday evening by his parents and other family members at Philadelphia International Airport.

Claude Feninger, 87, of Malvern, who built grand luxury hotels around the world for Hilton, Sheraton and Omni, died Sunday, April 28, of kidney disease at his home. Before his retirement in the early 1990s, Mr. Feninger was president of international operations for Aramark. His responsibilities included servicing the Olympic Games for many years. Throughout his career, Mr. Feninger brought European hotel luxury and services to the United States. On the world stage, he developed, constructed, arranged financing for, and created hotel operations at 85 properties on six continents.

CAIRO - Supporters and opponents of Egypt's Islamist president battled in the streets near Tahrir Square on Friday as an Islamist rally demanding a purge of the judiciary devolved into violence. The rally centered on a contentious aspect of the country's deep political polarization - the courts. Islamist backers of President Mohammed Morsi say the judiciary is infused with former regime loyalists who are blocking his policies, while opponents fear Islamists want to take over the courts and get rid of secular-minded judges to consolidate the Muslim Brotherhood's power.

Carmen Weinstein, 82, the leader of Egypt's dwindling Jewish community, known for her tireless work preserving synagogues and a once-sprawling Jewish cemetery, died Saturday. She will be buried Thursday in the Bassatine cemetery she had worked to save since 1978. It is the only Jewish cemetery left in Cairo and is the largest in Egypt. Since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, an estimated 65,000 Jews have left Egypt, most of them traveling to Europe and the West. Some settled in Israel.

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt - Clashes erupted Friday in two cities in northern Egypt, and protesters rallied in Cairo in the latest demonstrations against Egypt's Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, who claims the recent wave of antigovernment unrest is the work of conspirators. In the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, hundreds of unidentified assailants threw stones and fire bombs at protesters rallying against Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's most powerful political group. Morsi, who hails from the Brotherhood, was elected after longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak was forced to step down in the 2011 popular uprising.

CAIRO - A commercial airliner left Egypt for Iran on Saturday in what was the first direct passenger flight between the two countries in more than three decades, Egyptian airport officials said. Cairo-Tehran relations have warmed since the June election of Egypt's Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi. Diplomatic relations were frozen after Egypt signed its 1979 peace treaty with Israel and Iran underwent its Islamic Revolution. Cairo airport officials say a private Air Memphis flight departed for Tehran carrying eight Iranians, including two diplomats.

CAIRO - Thousands of Egyptian protesters clashed with riot police and backers of the president's Muslim Brotherhood on Friday, ransacking several offices nationwide as anger over allegations of beatings and power-grabbing boiled over into the largest and most violent demonstrations yet on the doorstep of the powerful group. As night fell, streets surrounding the Brotherhood headquarters were littered with shattered glass, charred vehicles, stones, and gloves stained with blood. The number of injured reached nearly 100 from the two sides.

CAIRO - Thousands of Egyptian protesters clashed with riot police and backers of the president's Muslim Brotherhood on Friday, ransacking several offices nationwide as anger over allegations of beatings and power-grabbing boiled over into the largest and most violent demonstrations yet on the doorstep of the powerful group. As night fell, streets surrounding the Brotherhood headquarters were littered with shattered glass, charred vehicles, stones, and gloves stained with blood. The number of injured reached nearly 100 from the two sides.

CAIRO - Egyptian security forces arrested a close aide of ousted Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi on Tuesday following a siege at his Cairo home, a security official and witnesses said. Ahmed Qaddaf al-Dam surrendered to Egyptian security forces after shots were fired, they said. An intelligence official under Gadhafi, Qaddaf al-Dam is among dozens wanted for their role in Libya's 2011 civil war that ended with Gadhafi's capture and killing. Police surrounded his home in the Cairo neighborhood of Zamalek before dawn Tuesday.

CAIRO - During its heyday, it was famed as the lively and romantic heart of Arabic music - a Cairo street modeled after Paris' boulevards, home to musicians, belly-dancers, and instrument-makers. But Mohammed Ali Street is fading. It had already been in decline for years as a music center. Now the crunch of postrevolution Egypt may finish it off, amid economic crisis, uncontrolled urban sprawl, and the rising influence of Muslim conservatives, its patrons fear. The street in downtown Cairo, parts of it lined by French-style arched arcades, is now dominated by mobile-phone and electronics stores, donkey carts, and heavy traffic.

CAIRO - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad discussed the crisis in Syria with his Egyptian counterpart Tuesday in the first visit by an Iranian leader to Cairo in more than three decades, marking a historic departure from years of frigid ties between the regional heavyweights. Ahmadinejad's three-day visit, which is centered around an Islamic summit, is the latest sign of efforts by Egypt's Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi, to improve relations, which have been cut since Iran's 1979 revolution.