The Egyptian cat mystery

"Is it a saying of some kind?" Rick asked.
Hassan nodded. "The little jackal barks — but the caravan passes."

Moustafa yelled desperately, "Don't try anything, or I shoot the Americans!"

Some of our dissatisfied citizens still think it's more efficient to make changes with bullets instead of ballots.

Hassan smiled apologetically. "Americans many time do thing I not understand."

In Cairo itself, the traffic was the kind that would send an American traffic cop screaming for the riot squad. Here, no one seemed to think anything of it.

Rick was awed. Coming from a new land where a hundred years seemed a very long time, the antiquity of Egypt stirred his imagination.

You see, the cat is important in Egyptian history. There was even a cat goddess of the Upper Nile Kingdom, called Bubaste. In the ancient tombs there are sometimes mummies of cats. Some cat lovers think our land first developed the domestic strain of cats.