THE threat of summer heat already lies heavy over Cairo and the rest of Gamal Abdel Nasser's Egypt. The city police have changed their blue flannel uniforms to summer whites. Jacaranda trees are blooming richly purple in suburban Heliopolis, remnants of the district's lost elegance. While the triple peaks of the pyramids of Giza shimmer on the horizon, stately feluccas sail down the Nile as silently as they have done for centuries. Overhead, hawks wheel lazily in gyres. The pace of the people in their flowing gallabia robes, never very fast, has grown a step or two slower.
Though much...
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