Cairo as the city that packs six thousand years into one unbroken street from the Nile to the desert — feluccas and a genteel Zamalek balcony, downtown's peeling Belle Époque, the minarets of Khan el-Khalili, a shaabi ahwa of backgammon and shisha, the Coptic quarter and the recyclers' cliff, a microbus jam past the City of the Dead — named the Conqueror, called Mother of the World, and always, gloriously, running late.