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U Mubarak It kind of grows out of traffic The staccato hiss of an exhaust pipe begins to sound like record scratching Skidding and braking, the vehicles resume their car horn concerto Braying, bawling, crashing, farting, fortissimo hustling cut in Then comes the imperious vroom of a makana – the Arabic corruption of the Italian word for ‘machine’ – as a motorcycle is called on the streets of Cairo…     R 1998 That staccato hiss is how the city breathes while you’re bumping along on your feet You’ve been taking in toxins, dodging potholes and garbage mounds As you slip in mud, now, you catch the tail-end of something rough and magnificent that’s just gone past your ear It must be playing inside that Speed-like murder motor there, not a mini but a micro bus: fatalistic transportation of the poor You almost fell on your side as it charged, with all those bodies tripping over you and each other in the metal-rubber-and-asphalt cruelty of its passage, the punishing heat and no room to walk Yet you listen hard as you balance on the curb, leaning back to make way for a huge wicker board piled with bread and balanced on the head of a cyclist pedalling barefoot and unperturbed   It’s a hit you recognise: an old sound by the urban folk legend Ahmed Adaweyah (b 1945), a waiter by trade It dates from the mid seventies, pretty much when you were born So you don’t know if the city was as it is when it was made, but this Cairo breathes through it exactly as it should: beautifully   You want to heave a nostalgic sigh – just as your lips part, a fresh discharge of exhaust blows in your face So you light a cigarette instead Round the far corner there’s a kiosk that sells chilled green bottles of the local Stella beer They come wrapped in crinkly black bags so the pious sons of bitches don’t know what you’re drinking – more seriously, so they know you know they don’t want to know what   The kiosk owner smiles as he recognises your face He’s playing a Darth Vader-sounding Saudi recitation of the Quran on his little stereo, the hypocrite You ask if he’s got any Adaweyah for your sake and, crouching in the shadow of the