As he advises his American girl friend on filming Cairo street children, middle-aged Mustafa wonders what happened to his youthful idealistic belief in public democracy and private love. Not an easy read as the narrator dodges backwards and forwards chronologically, but I believe that anyone who has reached middle age will find Mustafa's preoccupations and sense of irony very easy to relate to: despite his belief that westerners can never understand the east.
