This taxi does not go to Zamalek

This article addresses encounters as “everyday exchanges across difference” with regards to researcher experience, focusing on the Egyptian context. Drawing on three examples from encounters I had during my own fieldwork in Cairo, I show how even brief exchanges with strangers may destabilise the often takenfor-granted idea of the position of the researcher in the field as always occupying a position of power. Indeed, being marked as female and coded as African in the Egyptian context placed me in a situation where complex systems governing Egyptian and Sudanese gender roles were at play, sometimes corresponding with the dangers pinned to Black bodies. I use these encounters to show the ways in which all involved in an encounter have varying degrees of power based upon intersectional factors.