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racked again with a fresh wave of manic laughter. The few remaining café patrons drinking their coffee looked on in bemused curiosity until two policemen hurried by. Everyone gradually went back to their own business, amused. However, at the sight of the policemen, Samir sobered up immediately.

 
    Chapter 8
    Ari gazed out the window of Hamed’s car at the multitude of Egyptians thronging the streets at night. Mostly men, but more than a few women, some with children in tow, bustling in and out of butchers, bakeries, laundries, restaurants, electronics stores as if it were the middle of the day.
    â€œHamed, the streets are full of people and it’s one in the morning?” asked Ari.
    â€œYes, Mr. Ari. Um al-Dunia, ” Hamed replied over his shoulder.
    â€œExcuse me?”
    â€œYou don’t know what is Um al-Dunia ? Cairo is ‘Mother of the World.’ Peoples in the street all night long.”
    Ari spotted a vegetable stand on the corner ahead. The owner seemed to be everywhere at once, stuffing an armful of cucumbers into the string bag of a woman wearing a black abaya, tossing a melon to a boy who threw back a coin; then, like a magician, seemingly out of thin air, he produced a glass of pulpy yellow juice for an old man with a long white beard.
    â€œHamed, pull over there. That fruit seller.”
    â€œBut, Mr. Ari, you will have anything you want in your hotel.”
    â€œI want the real thing. Pull over.”
    Hamed did so, and Ari jumped out, surprising the fruit seller. Ari pointed at the half-empty glass of pulpy yellow liquid at the mouth of the white bearded man.
    â€œWhat kind of juice is that?” asked Ari. He could already smell the sweet perfume of it.
    The fruit seller held up a soft orange and yellow mango with little black spots on the skin, so ripe it was almost rotten. “ Mangojus ?”
    â€œYes, mango juice. One.” Ari pointed at himself.
    â€œMr. Ari, the glass is not clean.” Hamed had appeared right beside him, full of worry. “Rinsed only.”
    Ari pointed at the cheerful old man’s white beard, which had a circle of yellow in the middle. “Ah,” gasped the old man, refreshed.
    â€œIf he can do it,” replied Ari, “so can I.”
    â€œThis man drinks from the Nile,” countered Hamed. “That you cannot do.”
    â€œI’ve shot in India, Haiti, Vietnam. I can take it.”
    But the fruit seller had already snatched up a knife, slit the bottom of the mango, and tossed the fruit into an ancient rubber press. He simultaneously pulled a lever and reached for a glass sitting upside down on an ornate copper drying rack holding six other glasses. As the first drop of mango juice fell, he caught it; then the deluge of fruit and pulp dropped in, filling the glass to the brim. In seconds the fruit had been crushed and was under Ari’s nose. The seller proudly smiled at his own sleight of hand. He knew he was as much a showman as a fruit man.
    Ari drank an explosion of taste just shy of the fine line between ripe and rotten, something the homogenized, pasteurized world of aluminum cans and plastic bottles could never deliver. Ari gulped down the whole glass.
    â€œOne more.” Before he could see how, his glass was full again. The white-bearded man was grinning at him with mango-yellowy teeth. Ari thought, I’m finally here, and the Egyptians love me. Everything’s going to work out. The camera will get out of customs, the Ministry of Defense will give me a new date, and whatever else they throw at me, I’ll deal. Cairo is sweet, just like this glass of mangojus !
    Then, to his delight, Ari heard music and singing. He couldn’t help but sway slightly. He wanted to sing along, but didn’t know the Arabic words. A gaggle of about twenty young people came around the corner, a handsome guitar player in their midst. They were cool. They were students. They sailed along on a deep