One official, a recent appointee newly returned with private medical team in tow from a life and career in Berlin, noticed something nobody else had considered, something that left the district, for all its Europeanness, somehow un-European. In a flash of inspiration, he put his finger on the problem: the squares and street corners lacked the one thing that marks public spaces in Europe. Street performers! Buskers! Musicians and magicians, singers and artists, filling the streets with merriment while at their side—next to their instruments or drawing materials—elegant berets lay unobtrusively inverted so that the passers-by could give what they wanted, if they wanted—not harassed or bullied, but from a natural generosity rendered even more pliant and tender by the performance.

Beggars in Egypt, even traditional favorites like fire-eaters, had let their skills degrade and go into decline. The entry of large numbers of newcomers into the trade, that didn’t help. But then, as economic circumstances declined still further, they were joined on the streets by half the population and the profession was no longer a profession. As even the desire to pretend faded, as the effort required to fake the look of a traditional beggar became too much, the old schools and guilds died off. A beggar no longer shammed wiping the windshield of your car or claimed he wanted to sell you some tissues. Feigned injuries were out, and female beggars wouldn’t thrust babes-in-arms at you while crying that they were ill or dying, or whatever. Where were the people swearing to have lost their wallets and asking the fare of a train ticket back to their village? No more dramatics. Now, a beggar simply sidled up to you, or just waited for you to sidle up to them, and then, dressed pretty much the same as you, just… asked for money. In the same tone you might ask the time.

This had its upside. People were free to refuse with the same casual spontaneity and feel no guilt.

Occasionally, despite the police’s best efforts to drive them off or disappear them (when they weren’t already undetectable in the uniform of the average citizen), a few beggars would still manage to sneak onto the renovated streets of this Little Occident. But of course, they were not what was wanted at all.