Cairo: A Dog’s Tail Never Straightens

Cairo Changes, but Never Willingly.

OLEH BENNY ARNAS

I was amazed by how that 20-year-old youth from Sungai Tarab had become so utterly Egyptian when he spoke Arabic. To the people of Cairo—the city he had chosen as his path toward becoming an azhary, a student of Al-Azhar University—his voice was loud, insistent, almost shouting. Yet, like the locals, his pronunciation was crisp, his articulation sharp, and his staccato rhythm gave the impression of constant agitation.

“Alif,” he said. Not merely to introduce himself. More than that, he used it as a personal pronoun. “Even my parents don’t know what my full name means,” he said when I remarked that Hikmal Alif sounded distinctly Arabic.

In the Giza area, just before noon, when the turquoise sky solemnly spread above the desert where we stood among the visitors of that pilgrimage site, Alif refused to accept that—after our uncomfortable horseback ride, a discomfort that only grew once we realized—the guide wanted to charge an extra fee beyond what we had already paid. The dark-skinned Egyptian man argued that it covered an escort service and a gate levy, but to us it still sounded like a scam.

Perhaps because he had spent a year in Yemen studying Arabic at Al-Rayyan University before striking out on his own in this valley of learning, Alif understood how fierce Arabs could be, both in temperament and tone. As if forgetting he had only recently shed his teenage label, he argued with the locals with confidence.

“You have to be like that, Bang,” he said when I mentioned how his character had shifted—from gentle to tough, from quiet to expressive, from relaxed to intense. “They’re not angry, that’s just how they keep from looking weak,” he added as we discussed our misfortune on the ride back from Giza.

I fell silent, trying to recall who else among the young people I knew was like Alif. I combed through the list of Benny Institute facilitators. Then the names of those who had joined my creative projects. Then random names that floated up from memory. None fit. I stopped digging through my head when I realized what I should be searching for. Yes, I scolded myself for comparing people at all. My fascination with Alif wasn’t about comparison. It was about his ability to change—from a quiet boy of Sungai Tarab to an azhary who, situationally, became profoundly Arab.

Why highlight the ability to change? Because it is not merely a useful form of self-defense. I’m not talking about how Gigantopithecus, that great primate of the forest, went extinct because it could not adapt to a world turned to savanna; or about Sultan Abdul Hamid II, whose romantic nostalgia for Islam’s past glories made him neglect education and defense, forcing him to watch Britain carve up his empire after Germany’s defeat in World War I; nor about Kodak, which ignored its own engineer Steve Sasson’s invention of the digital camera in 1975, only to go bankrupt in 2012 when Canon and Nikon embraced the innovation.

No. This essay is not merely about the power to change. It is also about something deeper: who possesses the consciousness that allows change to happen.

Research suggests that Gigantopithecus did, in fact, eat grass. But its failure to adjust its instinct, to rewrite its forest-bound memory, led to its demise. Likewise Abdul Hamid II—blind to the maneuvering of Britain and Zionist forces—dragged the Ottoman Empire into alliance with Germany not with adaptive strength, but with an army still haunted by its losses to the Holy League that had stripped away Hungary, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and much of the western Balkans. And Kodak, which killed off a genius within its own ranks, became a cautionary tale for Japan’s camera giants less than thirty years later.

Those who fail to reshape memory into a new force deny the miracle of intelligence. For intelligence itself, as Albert Einstein once said with piercing simplicity, is the ability to change.
Because change is inevitable, the mind’s agility determines time’s rhythm: fast or slow, now or later. To the visionary, in a world this fluid, accelerating transformation is never optional—while lingering too long in its comfort is the sweetest form of self-betrayal.

This, perhaps, is what Cairo suffers from. The city, with its massive walls and three gates—Bab al-Futuh, Bab al-Nasr, and Bab Zuwayla—symbols of conquest, seems reluctant to step into the future. The winter air still dusty, the clamor of traffic evoking New Delhi, make it a nostalgic site, a city that moves in slow motion. Yet for tourists, not so fast. The aura of pre-Christian centuries and the glory of the Mamluk dynasty still linger, but keep your credit cards and e-wallets tucked away: most shops and street stalls accept only cash. And if your Arabic falters, meeting a merchant who refuses to recognize English as a global bridge—you already know what will happen, don’t you?

Cairo has changed—
but it was time that forced it to.

In this city, melancholia, romanticism, and sentimentality—those fragile companions of wonder and love—require terms and conditions. Awe is never enough; devotion alone cannot suffice.

Take, for instance, Taher Abu Fasha.
Born in 1908, he was a poet possessed—utterly enamored with Rabi‘a al-‘Adawiyya, the saintly woman of Basra, the mystic of the tabi‘u al-tabi‘in, known for her purity, her asceticism, her fierce love of God. Her name still trembles in the mouths of the pious, including Sufyan al-Thawri and Ibn al-Jawzi, the revered scholar and hadith collector.

From her, Taher drew his inspiration. Her verses became the lifeblood of his poetry, the source of Araftul Hawa—the love song carried by the silken voice of Umm Kulthum.

Only four lines of Araftul Hawa—from “عَرَفْتُ الْهَوَى” to “أُحِبُّكَ حُبَّيْنِ”—belonged to Rabi‘a herself. The rest, Taher composed. When Umm Kulthum asked him to turn Rabi‘a’s brief hymn of divine love into a song, Taher realized four lines were too few. And so he wrote—not to overshadow, but to complete. Later, the genius of Umm Kulthum made people believe, and perhaps they were right to, that if Rabi‘a had wanted to continue her poem but lacked the time, she would have trusted Taher to do it for her.

What was rare was not merely Taher’s devotion, but his fusion. His ability to merge his own voice with hers until the poem ceased to be a duet across centuries and became a single, seamless song. He could not have foreseen it as a boy, when Sheikh Rizk walked into his father’s bookstore and told tales of that luminous woman of Basra. The guest did not know—or perhaps did not notice—that a young boy listening in silence would never again put down the biography of Rabi‘a al-‘Adawiyya. Years later, when “that time came,” Araftul Hawa was born—an ode that transcended mere romanticism, rising beyond the sweetness of human love into something enduring, something sacred.

Then there is the case of Imam al-Shafi‘i, who chose Cairo as the place to rewrite himself. The city where he dared to revise his own jurisprudence, asking that the people “erase the old opinions” he had once written in Iraq. He called them qaul qadim—the old words—and replaced them with qaul jadid, the new.

He did not see Egypt as a land of prophets whose names his grandfather had borrowed for his father—Musa, Idris—but as a retreat for the mind. Here, he would sit in contemplation, testing every verdict he had once proclaimed. Were they right? Or had time, that quiet teacher, shown him something new?

Imagine the courage: a scholar revered across empires, asking others to disregard his own writings. There’s a saying, author unknown, that there are only two ways to change: “Right” and “Again.” Imam al-Shafi‘i did both. For him, Cairo—this city that he could not have imagined would one day grow so loud—was a lantern for reflection.

Though no comprehensive study yet explores this, his imprisonment under the Abbasids in Yemen must have reshaped him. Shackled, lashed, humiliated—he narrowly escaped execution when Caliph Harun al-Rashid himself presided over his trial in Baghdad in 806 CE.

The caliph, both ruler and scholar, had just executed the Alawiyin, descendants of the Prophet. Yet before him stood this young jurist, accused of sympathy with rebels. The trial turned strange when the caliph began to test him—not his loyalty, but his knowledge. The Qur’an. Astronomy. Arab history.

And there, in the seventh act of that drama, came the twist:
Instead of flattering the ruler to save his life, Imam al-Shafi‘i admonished him. Like Abu ‘Abd al-Rahman Tawus ibn Kaisan al-Yamani before him, he spoke with fearless candor. He exposed the corruption of governors, the decay of justice, and the caliph’s own gullibility in believing false accusations.

Harun al-Rashid did not grow angry. He wept. And his tears, once fallen, marked a turning point in both their stories. The caliph freed the imam, rewarded him with fifty thousand dirhams—which al-Shafi‘i immediately distributed among palace servants.

Afterward, he stayed in Baghdad for a while, teaching, shaping his school of thought. But Baghdad was restless. Civil wars tore through the Abbasid lands. The air was not fit for writing, for the precision of law. And so, around 814, having declined the caliph’s offer to serve as judge, he left. He came here—to Cairo.

Here, in Fustat, in what is now known as the Mosque of Amr ibn al-As, he wrote Al-Umm. His great synthesis. His legacy. Until the final breath that left his body in this city of dust and revelation.

That morning, bright and rising, Alif and I set out from Darasah. Our morning run—given its destination—had turned into a pilgrimage. As we approached Qadariyah, both sides of the road blurred into a tableau of centuries past: houses, tombs, and mosques cloaked in the same dust that painted everything the color of earth. Two hundred meters before the dome of Bani ‘Abd al-Hakam, we saw a cart of roses without a seller.

“Do visitors to the Imam always bring roses?” I asked when Alif decided to walk the rest of the way. The road had become too soft with dust for running, and the shrine was already near.

He didn’t answer. He just pointed ahead. “We’re here, Bang.”

I smiled. “Almost” and “already”—two words that mean the same when the goal is within sight. I didn’t correct his phrasing. The joy of nearing the resting place of the great Imam overpowered any urge for precision.

The complex was smaller than I imagined. Roughly the size of Al-Hidayah Mosque in my housing estate back home in Lubuklinggau. What stood out most was the dome—a structure behind the main prayer hall, part of the same building, crowned with an ornament shaped like a boat.

Suddenly, I recalled Andri’s words—an Al-Azhar alumnus who had joined me on this journey. “Imam al-Shafi‘i is an ocean,” he once said. “That’s why, on the dome above his tomb, you won’t see a crescent or a star. Only a boat—ready to sail the boundless sea.”

We were an hour early. From the caretaker—an ample man living ten meters across from the mosque gate—Alif learned that the tomb opened only at nine each morning.

“Even if the CCTV is broken, Allah still sees everything,” the caretaker said when Alif asked whether we might enter sooner.

I don’t recall whether Alif mentioned that it was my last day in Cairo, or that I had come from far away, hoping for a small privilege. What I do remember is this: his reply made me smile. Because the tomb of the Imam, like the faith he lived for, was guarded by a man who believed that truth does not bend for convenience.

***

In Cairo, melancholia, romanticism, and sentimentality—and their delicate kin—belong to the realm of memory. Outside that universe, the city’s architecture and its people refuse to take part. Here, nostalgia is a private affair, not a civic one. And if the people in question are Egyptians, such sentiments rarely survive the streets. Not only because of the Terms and Conditions outsiders might never understand, but because the locals are too busy living by what they believe.

“They’re not driven to be good,” Andri once told me. “They exist to be right.”
At first, I didn’t quite grasp what he meant—until I realized that almost every didi (Cairo’s microtaxis) and tremco (their boxy minibuses) I rode played Qur’anic recitations. And when they didn’t, there was always a copy of the Qur’an resting on the dashboard. Hardly a decoration, I thought; no one displays the Word of God as an ornament.

That, I learned, is Cairo’s quiet manifesto: it concerns itself with what is clear and affirmed—the divine word, and those who live by it. Anything beyond that—nostalgia, pleasure, curiosity—feels trivial. Or so I began to think, after a brief morning conversation outside Wisma Nusantara with two young Egyptians waiting for a didi.

“Speak English?” I asked one of them, a man in his early twenties.
He smiled, then guessed my nationality. “Indonesians smile a lot,” he said.
“Because a smile is charity,” I replied, pretending to sound wise.

Perhaps the hadith I had just echoed stirred something in him, because his expression softened. “We don’t smile as easily as you do.”

“Why?” I asked.

He sighed. “It’s like how the merchants in Mecca—locals—often choose to pray in their stalls instead of rushing to the Masjid al-Haram like the pilgrims do. You’d think they’d want the multiplied reward, right? But no. I went for umrah two years ago—it was… disappointing.” His tone turned rueful. “Today, you reminded me of a hadith from al-Tirmidhi. Do you know why we like Indonesians so much? Because of that very thing.” His face seemed to brighten as he said it.

“Come on,” I laughed, hoping to lighten the moment. “I came here to listen to Cairo from a Cairene. You can listen to Indonesia later.”
But Muhammad didn’t laugh. He only shrugged.
“You can read about our glorious past anywhere,” he said. “But you won’t find warmth or hospitality between the lines of any Egyptian epic.” Then he exhaled—as if regretting his own words.

Before I could respond, his didi arrived. “I live just behind there,” he said, pointing to the building beside Wisma Nusantara. “We’ll talk again later.”
We never did.

I had thought standing by the gate each morning would bring encounters like that. I hadn’t packed running shoes—thinking Cairo’s winter would bite harder than Leiden’s spring, where I had stayed for three months—so wandering the street seemed like a decent substitute. A way to greet the day, maybe find conversation more spontaneous than staying upstairs with Andri, who was always busy finalizing his sponsor report.

But on my second morning, I met another Muhammad.
“Do you have no other names to choose from?” I joked, before realizing my blunder. To question their devotion—even playfully—was to court irreverence toward the Beloved himself. Astaghfirullah. Suddenly I recalled the story of Imam al-Shafi‘i, who, when asked to introduce himself, would simply say Muhammad. Never his full name. Only when pressed would he mention his father. His public title, the Imam, he never invoked himself.

“For us,” this second Muhammad said, as we walked toward the fruit shop behind the guesthouse, “a name isn’t just a prayer. It’s a vision.”

I fell silent—partly to listen, partly to think.
“Vision without action is useless,” he continued. “And action without vision—well, that’s no better.”

Then I noticed his tote bag: a Japanese kanji printed across the canvas. “You’ve been to Japan?” I asked.
He laughed. “Last month. Visiting a friend in Osaka. Couchsurfing.”
That explained his openness.
“I study at Cairo University,” he added. “Final semester. Not too many classes left.”

I was about to ask his major when he spoke again, as if tugged by the same thread of thought.
“That saying,” he said, “I actually learned from a Japanese proverb. Anonymous. I didn’t realize until later how perfectly it described our philosophy of naming.”

He smiled faintly, repeating the words—softly this time, like a mantra:

“Vision without action is a daydream.
Action without vision is a nightmare.”

***

Yes, in Cairo, melancholia, romanticism, sentimentality—and their kindred spirits—belong to the realm of memory. Everything else is handled by that uniquely Arab mode of conversation: loud and assertive. For a traveler, such reality is part of the thrill. For a tourist without a local companion fluent in the language, it can quickly become a nightmare.

Perhaps that was what Naguib Mahfouz, the Egyptian Nobel laureate, meant when he said that the saddest kind of suffering is to have a sentimental heart and a skeptical mind. The writer—who won his Nobel ten years after Anwar Sadat received his for Peace—seemed to suggest that Egyptians may not be tender, but they are certainly not to be underestimated.

“Mahfouz didn’t live in an era when Cairo was flooded with tourists,” said Gracia, a senior psychologist who had lived there for a year. “Cairenes love seeing people from all over the world studying at Al-Azhar, but they also can’t—or perhaps refuse to—see those outsiders as equals. Take Khan al-Khalili, for instance.”

I tried to remember. Instead, my mind drifted to the Naguib Mahfouz Café which, like the Umm Kulthum Café, we never managed to visit because the night had grown too late.

“In that market of everything,” she continued, “they greet you not to show warmth—as Indonesians do—but to sell something.”

“That’s no different from Europeans,” I snapped. “Indonesians are the only ones who do it for vague reasons—either truly kind or still colonial at heart!”

I wasn’t sure why I sounded so bitter. But when I returned to the guesthouse later and thought about it, I found my answer. I was angry—at myself, and perhaps, envious of the Cairenes.
Envious of their way of healing wounds.

As nations once colonized by many powers, Indonesia should have been as proud—perhaps as defiant—as Egypt in facing outsiders. At first, I couldn’t understand why our postcolonial temperaments turned out so differently, until I found the reason.

Colonialism in Indonesia drained the land—its forests, mines, plantations—leaving behind physical wounds so deep they scarred generations. Meanwhile, Egypt’s colonial trauma was largely political: the British claiming the Suez Canal as a bargaining chip for independence, securing Egypt as a strategic stake while the Ottomans—its nominal rulers—sided with Germany and Austria in World War I.

When nature is violated, the wound stays raw—a living trauma that seeps into the lives of ordinary people for centuries. But when the struggle is political, the oppressor faces only the elite. The wound never truly reaches the common folk who, though bewildered, remain untouched by the full weight of conquest.

The first condition made Indonesians obsessed with building, but left their spirit unhealed. The second made Egypt lag behind in modern literacy, yet fiercely proud—rooted in an unbroken line from King Narmer to Cleopatra.

In such a condition, Cairo does not resist change—it simply does not desire it. It feels no urgent need. As if living out Paulo Coelho’s adage from The Alchemist:

Direction is more important than speed.

Indeed, change is a condition—a byproduct of purposeful movement. Strength lets one move fast; wisdom keeps one from losing direction. And if given the choice, Cairo would gladly sacrifice fitness for pace, mathematics for history, goodness for truth.

“Those who pay attention to direction,” Gracia said, as if to conclude our talk, “will always look forward. Maybe that’s why Cairenes dislike predictions. To imagine ‘what ifs,’ in Islam, is the devil’s work.”
She smiled faintly. “They seem to understand Murphy’s Law too well—‘the more you fear something, the more likely it is to happen.’”

“And the reverse?” I asked. “The more we believe in something, the closer it comes to reality?”

Gracia said nothing.

“Or Kidlin’s Law,” I added quickly. “The clearer and more specific you write down a problem, the closer you are to its solution.”

“Perhaps,” she said, sounding almost obliged to agree.

From the window of the guesthouse, I looked at the pale-brown buildings rising into the night. Their lights were still on. Were they cooking and chatting at this hour, or was there another reason? I didn’t care to find out. But on my last night in Cairo, when I stayed at the Indonesian student complex in Darosah, I noticed how the city seemed to move its daytime bustle indoors once the sun had gone to sleep.

Still, don’t mistake this for laziness, as in parts of Europe that only begin to stir at ten. Cairo wakes early—no, explodesinto motion by seven! Every mode of transport, private or public, jostles for space and attention. Amid the chaos, Cairenes possess a precision that borders on art: speeding, swerving, braking hard, shouting, honking—all in perfect rhythm.

“It’s pathological,” I told Alif when he asked what I thought of the madness. “As if the day wouldn’t feel right without those rituals of rage.”

Alif didn’t reply. I like to think that silence means agreement.

So, does all that noise—rising with the sun—make Cairo a genius city, like Kolkata, whose chaos gave birth to polymaths like Rabindranath Tagore and Jagadish Bose, men who could pluck needles of wisdom from haystacks of confusion?

No. Cairo does not concern itself with genius.

As an ancient city with a long memory, Cairo is a land of tarbiyah—a teacher of life. To understand existence here, one must go beyond classrooms and laboratories. One must learn to endure, to adapt. Because true tarbiyah is not a sermon about piety—it is the ability to face life’s tempests with maturity.

Cairo has that.
Yes—Cairo has that.

***

On the narrow streets of Darosah, two tuk-tuks coming from opposite directions—barely a meter apart—kept pressing their throttles until, at the very last second, they each swerved in perfect coordination, choosing opposite turns. The people passing by, gas-cylinder vendors pushing their carts, even the dogs and cats playing around, all possessed a kind of collective reflex—an instinctive choreography of avoidance. That precise communal instinct is Cairo’s blessing.

So don’t be surprised if, in the middle of a heated argument between two men at the al-Mu’izz intersection, they suddenly embrace the moment a peacemaker urges them to recite salawat; or when a middle-aged woman, furious at some teenage boys who accidentally damaged her street stall a hundred meters from the famous Baba Abdo restaurant because their football went astray, abruptly stops yelling when one of them runs up and kisses her head in apology.

Cairo has that kind of maturity—like a pomegranate perfectly red in every seed.

“Is it really that good, Bang?” Alif asked one night after we attended an event organized by the Forum Silaturahmi Alumni Madrasah Aliyah Keagamaan Negeri Kotobaru Indonesia (FS Al-Makki) in Egypt. We were wandering through Darosah’s fruit market, searching for dessert. “You sure you want to trade strawberries for pomegranates?” he teased.

“How could you not enjoy pomegranates in Cairo?” I replied. “Cairo’s pomegranates,” I explained, “remind me of the ones in Islamabad—red, and surely sweet.”

True enough, when we cracked one open at the dining table after finishing our biryani, Alif turned into a wide-eyed child discovering the world anew. His eyes gleamed at the sight of God’s bounty—something within easy reach, yet long ignored. “Unlike lemons,” I said, “pomegranates never taste the same. It depends on where they grow. In Indonesia, they’re miserable—no bigger than an orange, paler than a langsat, and their flesh—don’t even ask—is more bitter and sticky than an unripe mangosteen.”

Alif laughed, tossing another handful of ruby seeds into his mouth.

“Why are the dogs in Darosah calmer than those in Cairo’s streets?” I asked, watching the large street dogs simply stare at us as we passed.

I’ve forgotten Alif’s answer, but I later unraveled the riddle. The dogs in Darosah already know the regular passersby, whereas the dogs on Cairo’s busy streets, meeting strangers constantly, face a chaos of ever-shifting human temperaments.

“Why are there so many dogs roaming Cairo?” I asked again—and I remember, Alif didn’t respond. Perhaps because, deep down, that question had reminded me of an old Egyptian proverb: You can never straighten a dog’s tail, no matter how hard you try.

I struggled to grasp its meaning—until I stumbled upon an article by an Azhari writer on Kompasiana, claiming that Egyptians are, in fact, open and friendly. That image clashed with the one burning in my head: proud and stubborn.

“Moral standards in Egypt and Indonesia are different, Bang,” Andri’s words came to me like the opening line of a defense plea. “For Indonesians, goodness means politeness. For Egyptians, it means conviction.”

I stared blankly for a moment, trying to process that. Then guilt struck me—for having measured Cairo through a Western lens: that to be good is to be polite. And yet, how many corrupt officials back home are impeccably polite and soft-spoken (especially when cameras are rolling)?

Politeness, whispered a small voice within me, is too often a synonym for hypocrisy.

Cairenes play murottal in their vehicles because they believe the Qur’an’s verses are the best sounds the human ear can receive. That they might later immerse themselves in worldly contradictions—that’s another matter.

Like what happened to us on our way to Giza before Dhuhr: a man in his late thirties approached Andri and Alif as they were discussing our route to the pyramids. He and his ten-year-old son said they were from Alexandria. To prove it, the man—who introduced himself as Abdurrahman—showed us a photo of himself relaxing in a hotel room overlooking the soft-blue Mediterranean.

When we hailed a taxi, he invited us to join. And when we offered to pay the fare, he politely refused—insisting that accepting money would taint the sincerity of his kindness.

We were stunned.

On the road to Giza, Abdurrahman spoke at length about his experiences—his connections, his insider ties that, he claimed, would take us to an encounter unlike any other: a direct glimpse into the colossal burial complex of Ancient Egypt. He did not lead us to the public ticket booth as we had expected. Instead, he ushered us into a building that looked like an office. We felt lucky—honored even—to meet a local who treated us with such special regard.

But like fireworks, the warmth flared only briefly before fading into the dark.
Moments later, we were already mounted on horses belonging to a seasoned “player” named Ali. After receiving payment—without offering so much as a word of instruction, as though riding a horse were as simple as swallowing a pomegranate whole—Ali waved us off. “Don’t worry,” he said in English we could just understand, “these horses are mine. Under my control, everything is safe.”

For the first fifteen minutes, we enjoyed the gentle sway of the saddle, the soft rhythm of hooves pressing into the sand. Then, the horses began to run. Mine bolted. I struggled to hold the reins. Alif was lucky—his horse obeyed. Andri, on the other hand, later confessed that if Ali hadn’t grabbed his reins in time, he might have been thrown off, perhaps to his death.

“Cairo hasn’t changed,” Andri said on the way back.

I echoed him, thinking of the extra fees Ali demanded at the end of the desert ride, the ticket officer at Giza who moved with the grace of bureaucracy rather than hospitality, the scammers who swarmed even within the gates of the pyramids, and that terrifying brush with death on horseback. Ugh.

“What good deed did we forget to do, to deserve this kind of luck?” I tried to lighten the mood.

Andri was silent for a moment before murmuring, “I sensed something off the moment we arrived at Wisma Nusantara. That building, once a source of pride for Indonesian Azharis, now mirrors Cairo itself—once radiant, now addicted to decay.”

“But you still have hope, don’t you?” I asked.

“I don’t think I’ll come back,” he said softly, yet with the certainty of a man closing a chapter.

“Lif,” I said as our taxi neared Darosah, “find me water from the Nile tonight. Believe or don’t believe in its blessing—but I want to return here someday. If you don’t agree with the myth, just think of it as me wanting to taste the river that has flowed through human imagination for millennia.” My words, uttered amid Andri’s disappointment, sounded almost defiant. “I’ve walked through twenty-seven countries,” I said, perhaps too firmly. “Europe with its order, Korea with its stiffness, Pakistan with its clamor, and India with its chaos—all of them have given me their riches. But Cairo… Cairo feels different.”

“In what way, Bang?” Alif asked.

“Maybe because here, I can run at dawn toward the Nile—something I’ve done only in dreams. Or maybe because here, I meet young people like you, full of light.”

I knew my words sounded touristic, sentimental even, but I’ve always believed that great things often begin with small sparks at the right moment. I thought of Tenra, the head of Informatika, the student group that brought me to this City of Scholars. “He’d make a fine judge,” Andri once said, when we wondered why Alif seemed to command so much of our attention. “Because a judge must not draw attention to himself,” I replied, “lest his focus on justice be distracted.” Andri only laughed. I knew he didn’t fully agree, but perhaps he simply didn’t want to spend more energy after the Giza ordeal.

“Here,” Alif said later that night, setting a stainless jug beside my glowing laptop. “Drink, Bang. Straight from the Nile.”

I frowned, puzzled—until I realized that Cairo’s houses have direct access to the Nile, their water channeled straight from the ancient river. “Usually we use filters,” Alif explained. “So yes, we drink Nile water—filtered, of course.” He added that the stainless jugs served freely in Cairo’s restaurants also contain Nile water.

I smiled. No wonder the water I’d drunk on my first night here tasted cold, alive, almost sacred. And as the filtered, unboiled Nile water glided down my throat, something within me quieted. That night, I dreamed a beautiful dream—
a dream that came true the next morning:

A pilgrimage to the Tomb of Imam al-Shafi‘i.(*)

Draft 1: Dubai–Jakarta, 9–10 December 2024
Draft 5: Lubuklinggau, 25–26 February 2025