The 57 short essays that comprise this book were written during 1990 to 1995 while the author, Dr Lilllian Craig Harris, a former American Foreign Service officer married to British diplomat Alan Goulty, lived in Cairo. The essays explore Egypt’s cities, deserts, societies, monasteries, and circumstances in a time of widespread unrest, which helped set the scene for the Arab Spring two decades on. Included are essays about life in Cairo, diplomatic difficulties, religious tensions, the problems of the poor (including a growing resort to suicide), unrest under the Mubarak regime, travels in the Egyptian deserts, Upper Egypt, the Sinai, and the far west of the country––and more.



The following is a sample of topics discussed: Malfunction of government, deepening corruption, and growing anger over dictatorship; religious tensions between Muslims and Coptic Christians; antigovernment violence, usually well shielded from foreign eyes; marginalization of the poor; the growing anger of impoverished and marginalized Egyptians; the importance of the desert tribes; national dependence on the Nile and the great river’s encounters with tourism; the importance of faith, Islam as well as Christianity, in helping people cope; expansion of the Coptic monasteries while many secular Copts left the country; unsustainable use of the fragile desert environment; the resilience, hope, faith, and hospitality of the Egyptian people; a high rate of suicide, as revealed by Befrienders Cairo, a suicide prevention charity the author set up; the love/hate relationship between Egyptians and their former colonial master, the British––and more.