This drawing I made from a hotel window in Cairo. It was 1988. We just left Israel, where I had worked on a kibbutz for three months. There I met my Swedish girlfriend Suz, and we decided to travel to Egypt.
All the Israelis told us we were crazy because Egypt was very dangerous. We would be robbed and/or killed, but we decided to go anyway.
It turned out to be very safe in Egypt. This, of course, was before Al-Quaeda and fundamentalist terror attacks and so on. It was a more innocent time, I guess. Egyptians were a lot friendlier than Israelis, who are very (and I mean very) direct. It was common to see two men walking through the street holding hands. I especially remember the sight of two soldiers walking hand in hand. I thought:" No wonder the Egyptians lost all their wars with Israel!"
We enjoyed wandering through Cairo day and night, and we never felt unsafe. Maybe this was our youthful naïveté, I don't know.
We stayed for a few weeks in al-Qāhirah. After that, we took the night train to Luxor, more than 600 km upstream. Maybe I will tell you about that later, but only if you insist…