Gretchen Mccullough: 2 books

The first story is told from the point of view of Keiko, a Japanese girl in Cairo preparing to return home to teach Arabic to businessmen in Tokyo. The apartment above her is supposed to be empty, but Keiko hears noises. Cairo is noisy. Of course the Bawab, the super, tells her she is imagining things,...

In the Empty Flat Upstairs, a Japanese woman, Keiko, has mastered Arabic but is driven crazy by her insistence on knowing the literal truth in a city which values hyperbole and exaggeration. In contrast, an Egyptian neighbor, Mona, becomes so obsessed with watching her foreign gay neighbor that she completely...