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Travel Tips While traveling, it’s good to have a companion, since bus seats always come in pairs. It’s nice to sit next to someone you want to share a blanket with, especially if you can hold her hand under the scratchy green wool. At a rest stop halfway across the Sinai peninsula, you can watch men eat greasy gray sausages under a pavilion lit by bare hanging bulbs, then walk behind the bus and look up at a sky doused with stars. This is the real desert, the desert you’ve always heard of, where out beyond the rest stop’s circle of light drifts nothing but sand. While traveling, it’s good to have a guide, especially if she knows how to go down to the water where the boats moor, talk to the sailors and buy something you can all smoke furtively at her dad’s place. Three American girls can hide in a pale blue apartment in Cairo. Your guide will take care of you because she has to: she’s taking care of her reputation. When her cousins come visiting she’ll shove you into her room, lock the door from the outside and say something about towels. You might laugh loudly enough for her to come in again and tell you to shut up. When her cousins finally leave and she unlocks the door she’ll say something about pigeons. Those pigeons from the cousins, stuffed with rice, will come apart between your eager fingers. You’ll eat their bluish flesh for days and wonder where they lived. While traveling, it’s a good idea to learn the numbers as well as hello and how are you? Reading price tags determines if you can afford cheese or just the usual lentils and rice. Saying hello and goodbye in the local language will earn you a smile, maybe a lollypop. If you’re white, you’re coasting in the wake of the British Empire. Don’t forget this.
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