I admit that in the years since 2003, I’ve begun to expect significantly more when it comes to knowledge about the Middle East. I’m troubled by the number of people who lump all Arabs and Muslims into one large, threatening category, support U.S. intervention in the region under the guise of “spreading democracy,” without any contextual understanding of the situation on the ground, and vote for xenophobic, uninformed candidates who also have limited knowledge of the region. My expectation is in some ways hypocritical, as I myself have displayed a great lack of political and cultural knowledge in the Middle East. In moments of fury my mother has suggested I write a book called The Way It Should Be for Everybody but Me. I’ve fumbled in Arab countries many times, and in Egypt I once inadvertently bought a one-humped camel.

I was visiting Cairo with my mother at the time. For all the summers that I’d spent in the Middle East, I hadn’t really visited any of the landmarks that people travel specifically to see. Every year I said I would sightsee the next year, I would visit Petra, Wadi Rum, Ba’albek, until it became clear that I would spend my summers in the same hotel visiting the same relatives. But that summer in Egypt I would finally be a tourist. Naturally, any Egyptian sightseeing expedition entailed a trip to the pyramids, and I went with my mother’s friend’s daughter, Farah. She seemed friendly enough and I didn’t mind having company. Plus, Farah was from Cairo, so I assumed her native knowledge would come in handy.

The sky in Giza that morning was untainted; an interrupted expanse of blue. I climbed up a few rows of the Great Pyramid, dipping into the openings between the weathered limestones, as Farah stood at the base and snapped pictures with my camera. I inched my way back down and we waited in line to see the Sphinx, batting flies and taking in the cacophony of mostly Scandinavian languages around us, blond people in hiking boots carrying large backpacks and clutching guidebooks. We got up close to the mythical cat and walked along her perimeter without ever actually touching her. Once I’d had my fill, we headed back to the parking lot to find a taxi. As we approached a cluster of cabs I heard a voice call out behind me, in English, “Ride the camel?”

I turned around to see a very old man with burnt-rubber skin pointing to a camel draped in a red carpet and flanked by furry, multicolored puffballs, its lips moving methodically as though it were chewing gum. A little boy stood on the other side of the animal, holding a rope as its rein.