Zamalek.

I often skip the fiction in the New Yorker — so much to read, so little time — but I read the first few sentences of Hisham Matar’s “New Shoes” (archived) and was hooked; by the time I finished I was thinking of Proust (it even features memories of Venice). But what brings it here is a Cairene place name: The other day, he said that I had been spotted sitting alone in a café in Zamalek, that old and illustrious neighborhood he and I admired as young teen-agers. I remembered us walking through it with romantic dreaminess, looking up at its late-nineteenth-century buildings, picturing ourselves someday living there. I’d run across mentions of Zamalek before, and suddenly (you will not be shocked to learn) wondered what the etymology was. Wiktionary had an entry, but all it says is “Arabic الزَّمَالِك (az-zamālik),” with a red link. So I googled [zamalek etymology] and found Samir Raafat’s Cairo Times piece (15 December 2000) “The Zamalek Legend 1860-1940,” which starts with a section on…

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