In Cairo, collective yearning for miracles tends to coincide with periods of political and economic stress. Egypt's population is ten percent Christian. Not long after the country's crushing defeat in the Six-Day Arab-Israeli War of 1967, people began to see visions of the Virgin Mary nightly on the roof of a church in the neighborhood of Zaytoun, appearing first as a bright light, then as a dove. Her apparitions during the course of a year attracted millions, both Copts and Muslims, a phenomenon that drew the notice of the New York Times and which to this day remains one of the Arab world's biggest spontaneous civilian gatherings.

West of the airport, near Ain Shams University, Zaytoun is far from the city center and the tourist trail. I took the Cairo Metro, a miracle of efficiency that circumvents the city's horrendous traffic, to see St. Virgin Mary's Church, whose central dome features a huge portrait of the Blessed Mother smiling soothingly down on pews of worshippers. From there, I walked to a covered market where Muslim fruit vendors and Christian fishmongers work side by side under hand-painted murals of buxom women while cassette players broadcast tinny recordings of Koranic recitation; the market is one of Cairo's most convivial, an example of the city's famous but now diminishing miracle of tolerance.

Trees and shrubs that communicate with humans are, of course, famously Egyptian. A burning bush delivered the Ten Commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai. A pharaonic love song, preserved on papyrus, refers to a talking pomegranate tree that compares a woman's breasts to its ripe fruit. In Matariyya, across the Metro track from Zaytoun, I made a pilgrimage to see an ancient sycamore fig believed to have sheltered the Holy Family on their flight into Egypt. Reputed to have healing powers, it is protected within a walled compound in a working-class neighborhood of dirt alleys and squat apartment blocks, its enormous, vinelike branches supported by wooden crutches under the watchful eye of a veiled woman, an employee of the Antiquities Department, who sits in its shade and passes time by reading the Koran. The tree is next to an old well associated with Atum, the ancient Egyptian god of genesis, and some say Mary's sycamore is the original Tree of Life, on whose leaves Atum wrote down the names of his creations after bathing. In April, fat black bees buzz in the branches, and on the day I went, an orange tabby cat curled contentedly on a bole beneath green leaves coated with fine desert dust.

In the days following the traffic jam, amid stories about Iraqi violence and Egypt's constitutional referendum, Cairo newspapers ran accounts of the talking tree on the road near the airport. Some details differed. A soldier in the watchtower had heard the tree praising Allah, and overnight, words written in fire had appeared on the trunk, accompanied by a pleasant odor of musk. A passerby heard murmuring and noticed blood dripping from the bark and saw the words Allah Muhammad Taha, one of the ninety-nine names of God, suddenly appear. Everyone agreed that the tree was quickly becoming a place of pilgrimage, to the dismay of the authorities. The notion that a tree can vocalize "is ridiculous," the Islamic intellectual Gamal al-Banna scoffed in the Egypt Daily News. "If this was a revelation, God would tell us through the angel Gabriel." A committee of scientists sent to investigate the phenomenon inspired more curiosity and made the traffic jams worse. When the Cairo prosecutor's office was reported to have requested that the police chop down the tree to put a halt to the public disorder, more people rushed to the site to kiss the trunk, tear off leaves as souvenirs, and take pictures of the miracle with their cell phones before it disappeared. Anti-government commentators, meanwhile, accused the regime of misusing state media to propagate "irrational thinking" as part of a conspiracy to undermine the country's democratic evolution.