October 6

Today was a national holiday. The day marks the 1973 crossing of 80,000 Egyptian troops across the Suez Canal, destroying the fortified Israeli Bar-Lev Line. This started the Yom Kippur War.
It also marks the date that Anwar Sadaat, the Egyptian leader who brokered the peace deal with Israel, was assasinated.
I am in Ismailaia visiting Tunt Tahani and her family. It has been twelve years since I was here, and I didn't remember the city well at all. The streets are clean and quiet and the villas compete with Savannah. We saw a movie being shot down the street from us. I have commented on how it seems like a rich city, but a couple of people have insisted that it only looks that way because everything is own by the Suez Authority and the reality is that it is actually a poor city. It's quite a cover-up though.
I went past the old villa. It was actually more beautiful than what I remember as a child. The mango trees are still there and filled with fruit.
They took me today over the Mubarek Friendship Bridge today, which spans from Egypt's African side of the country, to the Asian side. We drove over the Suez Canal where there were frieght boats the size of hotels. On the African side of the canal you see lush green fields with palm trees weighed down with dates. On the other, you find desert.