Zamalek

This guide to Zamalek in Cairo opens on a July afternoon in 1944 at the Gezira Sporting Club racetrack, where the singer Farid al-Atrash learns that his sister, the singer and actress Asmahan, has drowned near Mansoura, a death still tangled in wartime spy rumors. It steps back to the club's own founding in 1882 from a Khedive's botanical garden, once closed to Egyptians until sponsors were required to enter, and further to Khedive Ismail's transformation of the island for the 1869 opening of the Suez Canal. Along the way it points to Empress Eugenie's old palace, still standing nearby as part of a hotel.