NPR’s comic examines how people in Cairo cope with punishing summer heat as forecasts indicate temperatures could reach 106°F (41°C). It matters because the piece frames extreme heat as an increasingly everyday challenge in Egypt, where access to air conditioning has expanded but is not universal.

The author, Malaka Gharib, recounts speaking with her father in Cairo when temperatures were already around 39°C (102°F). Drawing on childhood summers spent there in the 1990s, she contrasts a time when air conditioning was less common with today’s hotter conditions and asks how Egyptians are managing.