This is a very early draft (written about four years before I finished the book; no part of it remains in the final draft of the book) of a small section of I Know Many Songs, But I Cannot Sing (1996) published by Simon & Schuster:

A few moments later Ib approaches a blood red Mercedes Benz, which is probably waiting for a hashish pickup.  Its darkened driver's window glides open.  "What are you doing here, sir?" a young man asks.  Of course, this would have been as appropriately asked of Momo, who is more out of place here than Ib.  To prevent Ib from asking such a question, Momo unlocks the passenger door and beckons his former English tutor and tennis coach to join him listening to some stunningly loud Beethoven on his fine stereo system, and Momo launches into a long description of his brother's most recent party, which by some unpardonable oversight Ib's name was temporarily not welcomed to the guest list of.  Ib sinks into the seat, which emanates unnatural warmth, and lets the music embrace him.  Momo, a nickname for Mohammad, rambles on, but Ib cannot understand what he is saying, until he bursts out with the phrase, "Green slime," as if it were the punchline of a joke. "What?"  Ib says, lightly fingering the dial to turn down the volume of the symphony.

"We found green slime in the guest bathroom bathtub the next morning!"  Ib asks if something was reproducing there. Momo opens his mouth into a perfect O, as if speaking his own name very quietly, and looks longingly at his reflection in the side mirror, which he adjusts from the inside for this purpose.  Then he says, "Not to change the subject, but I've heard that you are planning to marry an Egyptian woman. I think you should know that European men and Moslem women do not make effective partners.  I have never heard of one working, even the ones that last.  For an Egyptian man to marry a Western woman is another matter, of course.  I myself have had my eye on a Greek girl for a year, the daughter of a manufacturer of ball bearings—you remember we have a house on Samos.  My father agrees it might be a successful match.  But I thought it might be my place to warn you of this marriage. Perhaps you can convince her to have an affair.  Many now perform this worldly option."

Ib is again reminded how well twenty-year-old Momo speaks English when he is repeating his father's words verbatim, but not when he has to depart from the template.  In the distance, Ib sees a young man holding a stained brown paper bag above his head as he threads his way through the scattered crowd.  Ib guesses that this is Momo's hashish dealer.  He asks Momo to unlock his door.  There are none of the usual formalities upon this leave-taking.  "Right. Bye," Momo says.  Ib turns a corner a few car lengths away and sees the boy with the brown bag slipping in an exaggeratedly stealthy manner into the passenger side of Momo's father's Mercedes.

A laugh bubbles up and out of Ib.  A few steps later he discovers the source of the laugh: Bill Dickens.  They have been walking toward each other for some time, both involved in conversation, Ib with himself, Bill with a strikingly American big-boned beauty, the type of woman who does not think she's attractive at home, but who by dint of the constant attention and harassment nevertheless blossoms in Egypt.  Ib realizes he has been staring at Bill's face long before he recognizes it.  The laugh rises not out of sudden recognition, but because of the plastic shape of Bill's features as he speaks in soothing compassion about something like a roommate problem, in a half-hearted attempt to seduce, despite the loving omnipresence of Bill's fiancée "back home," which also registers on these features, as if one side of the face were arguing with the other side: "I am doing this only to test my reluctance, and to give this girl what she wants, practice at flirtation without the danger of sex."  All this is written on the instant of Ib's apprehension of Bill's wonderful face.

"This is Stacy," Bill says to Ib. Stacy begins to talk immediately, a very interesting mini-lecture of her own from a lecture someone who looks like Ib gave recently at the Dutch Institute on a theory of chaos applied to the market district of medieval Cairo.  Ib has been mistaken for this man before.  "Let's get in this cab," Bill says, and a wave of the hand causes a taxi appear in front of them. "Stacy and I were going to my map merchant, but I've lost the impetus suddenly."  Ib realizes, as he squeezes into the ancient tiny car, that he has to choose to understand either Bill or Stacy, but cannot do both, their different speeds making simultaneous comprehension impossible.  Ib chooses Bill, but occasionally Stacy's words make something like sense.  She is from Tennessee and Williams cow ledge—some kind of joke in there because she laughs violently, with all her body.  At one point in her long elusive monologue, Bill leans forward and tells the driver to pull over, arbitrarily, it seems to Ib.  When the automobile shudders to a halt, Bill says to the girl, "Why don't you go home now.  You're bothering me.  Nothing personal." Stacy climbs over Ib, kissing him "European-style" on both cheeks, announcing this is how she is doing it as she does it, perhaps taking this all as a joke, but also possibly quite hurt by Bill's abrupt decision to send her home.  The taxi chugs off, the driver going slowly past Stacy, who looks briefly at Bill with a longing Ib is embarrassed to have seen.  Bill and Ib watch her walk away as the driver says what they are both at least in part of their minds probably thinking, "She walk like she make love, beautiful."  Bill grabs the cabbie's shoulder with his big right hand (Bill is a small man) and says, "In Georgia we don't speak of our women that way."  The driver gapes into the rear-view mirror, while still expertly dodging traffic at high speed.  He shows his passengers an open palm on his chest, which means he is very sorry for misunderstanding his guests' bizarre layers of morals.  Bill now tells the driver in a generous voice where to take them: back to where Ib had first met Bill.  "To my map man," Bill says.  "You will enjoy this place."

They stumble out of their cab.  Fumes from a pancake restaurant twist in the gloomy light over the heads of the thousands of walkers on this busy mercantile street, which, rare for Cairo, is straight as an arrow and wide and not meant for motorized traffic.  Bill takes hold of a tiny truck, no taller than him, which is moving slowly but steadily through the crowds.  Follow me, Bill signals.  By staying in the wake of this Korean midget truck they avoid the clutching, shoving, and smearing of the dense pack.  Ib enjoys this sensation, but Bill does not, and retells in shorthand a story he knows he's told Ib many times about getting robbed by mud-splatterers who then offer to clean off your pants with convenient tissue papers. 

They come to a hole in a wall, not a street nor even a walkway, but an artery of some sort, a vein, and Bill, "almost certain," leads the way into deep darkness.  Ib holds his friend back for a moment, whispering, "Give my eyes time to adjust."  The Muski was by no means brightly lit.  But this alley contains river upon river of blackness, obscuring and confusing layers of darkness.  Finally, Ib agrees to move.  They trip over piles of bricks.  A small child's voice startles them, as its owner darts between their legs.  They come to a fragment of light around a corner, a flickering low watt bulb attached to a wall only by its wiring, where a mangy dog is absent-mindedly barking, barking as if to test its memory of how to bark. "This is it," Bill says.

The map merchant materializes in the gaseous light and squeals with recognition.  But then he whirls around and disappears into an opening in another building, repeating, "Ustaz, ah, Ustaz," a kind of trail for Bill and Ib to follow as he hurries up a maze of stairs.  After a few minutes, they arrive.  A long couch is covered with torn bits of paper.  Ib flops down on the softness, greatly relieved by the protective aura Bill gives off, and now suddenly aware of the distances he has walked tonight without food but with plentiful supplies of coffee.

"I remember your friend," the map merchant says in English to Bill.  Ib tries to convince him they have never met, also in English, but meets with stout denials.  "No. You buy a map of Brazil several times."  Ib asks why he would buy a map of Brazil more than once.  "You study the country very carefully, my friend."  When Ib insists in Arabic that he has never set foot in this shop before, the map merchant relents. " As you wish," he says, full of regret.  But on Ib's request, he joyfully orders three bowls of fuul—hot garlic-smothered beans.  The bowls arrive in moments and Ib begs for all three.

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