A nice home with a garden

My manner is as if I were ailing in all my limbs.
The sand of this desert upon which I stand has reached me.
-- 3,000-year-old inscription between the Sphinx's paws 

The slithy toves won't start wrecking stuff till after Friday prayers in the late afternoon, leaving me alone with my thoughts and a Nescafe on the balcony. A robustly healthy mango tree is in the background. I don't know where it gets water from. Oh, wait, I do.

One of the defining features of Cairo life is the dripping of water from air conditioners. It falls on the wicked and men of honest goodness, and is a minor reason why people don't use the sidewalks. Leakage from my neighbor's unit above slaps a single broad leaf of the mango tree with a metronomic "tick." At first it bugged the shit out of me, but now it's just a benign reminder that the world still turns. That's all I got.