City of Love and Ashes

I am reading at the moment the City of Love and Ashes by Idris Yusuf. There are a couple of excerpts I thought are very interesting. The first one below I believe describes the city of Cairo with such vivacity and accuracy.

"Cairo's streets were day, its lane dawn, its alleyways jetback night. The many districts -Shubra, Abdin, Sayyida, Zaynab, Old Cairo, al-Azhar, Tulun, Fuad Street, al-Darb al-Ahmar; enromous buildings of five, ten, twenty stories; hundreds of throusands of windows; thousands of doors and doormen; apartment blocks whose residents had gone to sleep, blocks that had not yet slept, and blocks that never slept, people out for the cinemas, people out for a good time on the streets and in the nightclubs; evening dress and afternoon wear, suits, woolens, overcoats, bright colored gowns, beautiful women decorated with powder and lipstick, wrapped in pelts of fox and bear and possibly tiger and lion; red, green, yellow traffic signals and neon lights of all colors; cleaning workers and workers far from clean; black soldiers and white soldiers on bicycles, on vehicles, and on patrol; prodigious bank buildings resting solidly like pyramids of the modern age- the National, the Misr, the Credit Lyonnais, the Arab Nation, the Bank of the Colonies and Overseas; Europeans, Turks, Greeks, people of every faith and color; garbage collectors, hawkers, and beggars; people ending their day and people beginning their day; people dying and children being born; radios broadcasting the latest news, reports, and announcements; prices tumbling, prices rising, and people tumbling and rising without price; drinks being mixed, hashish; customers enticed and bargains struck; negotiations over the formation of the cabinet; horse-cabs waiting, and Cadillacs, and taxis piling up like flies whenever a nightspot disgorges its clientele; drivers heaping curses on each other; greeting eachother, joking with each other; they all have a place to go, and places not to go, places they do not even know. Fawziya and Hamza were stealing into the middle of all this, surrounded by the black night and the light of the cars. What frightens people is seeing this, and living among it, but knowing they have no place in it." p. 114

"The night progresses with no thought for the city, and the city lives with no concerns for the night. Its great buildings appear small, its houses like ants' nests, its streets narrower than the eye of a needle, and people, people, people. Fawziya is at Hamza's side and in his essence, her arm through his arm, her breast close to his, a glitter and a challenge in her eyes all around them, and danger every step."