Scotty muttered, "Fewer close calls today."
Rick winced as the car almost scraped a woman with a basket of fruit balanced on her head. "Fewer, but closer."
The costumes on the street were mixed. There were many people, including women, in Western dress, but there were also many women in cloaks, and men in the traditional Arab bornoss, the enveloping robe called a burnoose in English. For the first time, the boys saw several men in blue gowns, and Rick asked Hassan what they were.
"Fellahin," Hassan replied. "How you say? Farmers. From country. Man tell me that is where your word 'fella' come from."
Rick looked with new interest. He had heard of the fellahin, the farmer-peasants of Egypt. Many of them lived and worked as their ancestors had centuries ago, plowing with wooden plows, living in mud-and-wattle houses. They represented the past of Egypt, as installations like the atomic energy plant at En-Shass, or Inchass as it was sometimes called, represented the future.
There were soldiers along the route, too, dressed in British-style brown uniforms. Some carried Sten guns, vicious little submachine guns originally of English manufacture.
"Why the soldiers?" Scotty asked.
"Camp near," Hassan replied.
And then, abruptly, the boys lost interest in people, because looming ahead, like something from a travel movie, was a pyramid!
Hassan rounded a corner and another pyramid came into view. They were enormous, Rick thought. He hadn't expected anything so huge. "Are we at Giza already?" he asked.