Cairo's summer tourist speaks Arabic

Cairo has a tourist season in the summer, and almost none of the plans written in the city treat it as one.

The visitor is a Gulf family. They land after midnight. There is a grandmother, a couple, three children, sometimes a driver, and a flat rented for six weeks rather than a room booked for four nights. Nobody is going to the pyramids on the second morning, because that was done years ago and the children did it last summer. They move between a handful of districts, the river, a club, two or three restaurants the father grew up on, a hospital appointment, a tailor, and the same place for coffee every night at eleven.

They speak the language. No menu needs translating, no guide, no orientation.

They also get none of the welcome, because the word tourist in a Cairo hospitality plan means a European in February. Everything built for that person assumes a short stay, an early dinner, a fixed itinerary and a language that is not this guest's. The season is winter, and the summer is the quiet stretch to be got through.

So the visitor with the most money in the city is served by default: by whoever is open late, by whatever the family group recommends, by the place an uncle took them to a decade ago that has not changed a chair since.

Which is a strange customer to leave alone. Weeks, not days. The whole household in one decision. Nothing booked in advance and everything decided the same evening. Forty people at home who will hear about it.

The guest with the most to spend in a Cairo summer needs no translation and gets no welcome, because the welcome was written for somebody who is not coming until winter.