Chapter One

Those masterful images, because complete Grew in pure mind, but out of what began? A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street, Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can, Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone I must lie down where all the ladders start, In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

-William Butler Yeats, "The Circus Animals' Desertion"

I am reading another verse than Yeats's, this one a text message on an Egyptian medical student's mobile phone in a TGI Friday's by the Nile in Cairo:

SATURDAY NIGHT PARTY BOMBS IN WORLD TRADE CENTER SPECIAL DJ OSAMA BIN LADEN FLY IN COURTESY OF AMERICAN AIRLINES

Sitting with us are a young corporate lawyer and a first-year law student. The three are sisters, from an established but not eminent Egyptian family, and are fashionably turned out in tight black slacks and T-shirts several sizes too small. The medical student's pink shirt, from Naf Naf, reads "Girls Only." They are all giggling, waiting for me to appreciate the satirical phone text. When I am slow to respond, the lawyer, Ingy, takes it on herself to explain: "So, all people in Egypt admire bin Laden, because he is the one who hit the U.S. So, he is like a hero for us, rather than a terrorist."

I have come here trying to understand the attraction and resentment, the imitation and rejection that America inspires everywhere. I am hoping to glimpse the place where ideas and feelings begin.

Ingy is my special friend in Cairo, having adopted me after her employer-a friend of a friend-offered to help me navigate this challenging city. She