The best belly-dancing in Egypt, it is said, costs $50 a show and can be found at five-star hotels like the Meridien Le Caire or the Parisienne. At the Palmyra club, which is within walking distance of the Sultan Hotel, admission is about $1.50. The performance value (I suspect) is calibrated accordingly.

When our disheveled traveler posse arrives from the Sultan to take a table in the back of the Palmyra, a man in a djellaba and two women in chadors are happily shaking their moneymakers on the dance floor. At first I think this is a prelude to some kind of Islamic-themed striptease, until I realize that these people are just overzealous customers. The real dancer -- a big-haired, large-breasted girl in a faux snakeskin jumpsuit -- is at the back of the stage, idly joking with the accordion player. As my eyes get used to the darkness, I take in the surroundings. The club features tall ceilings and textured rock walls, accessorized with red curtains. If the lighting were improved and the velvety curtains replaced with, say, country knickknacks, this place could easily pass for a family restaurant in Minnetonka, Minn.

The crowd, however, is decidedly non-Middle America: Bedouins in red-checkered kaffiyehs and long gowns wave 5-pound notes (each about $1.45) at the edge of the dance floor; Egyptian office types with wrinkled neckties leap up from their tables to clap along with the music; fat men with thin mustaches sit alone in corners, sweat stains growing out from their armpits. The band looks straight out of a David Lynch movie: the melancholy lute player who blinks and stares at the floor as he strums; the grinning, leather-faced bongo drummer who wears brown pants over white, patent-leather shoes; the keyboardist who stops playing in the middle of the song to light a cigarette. The music is rhythmic, dissonant, deafening.

Eventually, the girl in the snakeskin jumpsuit starts to dance again, humming to the music into a cordless mike. After 30 minutes of this, she yields the stage to a dull-eyed blond with feathered hair and a sequined evening gown. This new dancer is so amorphously plump that her rear end seems to start just below her neck. As she dances, the slightest wiggle sends her sequined extremities into a gelatinous fury of motion. For those of us at the Sultan table, the effect is mesmerizing and somewhat disturbing. The Egyptian men, however, go nuts, barking along to the music and periodically jumping onto the stage to bust a few dance moves and shower the blond with 1-pound (30-cent) notes.

By 3 a.m. we can take no more of this, so we return to the Sultan Hotel lobby to discuss the merits of the performance. Since Tom's duty-free booze stash was nearly depleted the previous night, Don the Canadian brings out a bottle of Egyptian whiskey -- a Johnnie Walker Black Label knockoff called (literally) "Johnny Wadie Black Tabel." We sip the medicinal-tasting Egyptian spirit and grimace as we debate the dubious erotic merits of the belly-dancing performance.

We have nearly exhausted this topic when a previously taciturn Canadian girl suddenly begins to instruct everyone on her preferred methods of attaining orgasm. All conversation pauses momentarily, and before long everyone is merrily debating the merits and challenges of clitoral vs. vaginal stimulation. The more we delve into this topic, however, the more Orgasm Girl seems disappointed. Her purpose, it seems, was not to initiate an objective debate on the physiology of erotic climax but to create a personal mystique -- to pique any romantic attentions that might have been dulled by the belly-dancing fiasco.

Unfortunately for would-be Cleopatras and Mark Antonys, the physical realities of the Sultan Hotel pretty much preclude amorous intrigue. Within the entire complex -- which spans three floors of a run-down building in downtown Cairo -- there is not a single place wherein one can fornicate with any sense of dignity. The kitchen and lobby are always otherwise in use, the roof is home to a small community of Egyptian squatters and the back stairwells are swamped in years of accumulated garbage and grime. Coitus is technically possible (for the well coordinated) in the cramped shower/toilet stalls, but there is the ever-present danger of slipping on soap scum or impaling oneself on the unspeakably soiled copper bidet hoses that curve out from the toilet bowls.

This leaves only the dorm rooms themselves, which, in addition to being officially gender segregated, are crowded enough to discourage sexual dalliance. Thus, whereas cleaner and roomier backpacker dives on the travel trail can resonate with romantic maneuverings in the boozy wee hours, the sexual currents in the Sultan are for the most part friendly, theoretical and platonic. After a few more drinks and some pulls on the sheesha pipe, the sex chitchat gives way to talk of Sudanese visas and Israeli border stamps, of Arabic history, of where to score weed.

Perhaps chagrined at losing her spotlight, Orgasm Girl goes to bed early. Flaubert, no doubt, would have shared her irritation.

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