The city of Asyut sits in the heart of Upper Egypt, at a crescent-shaped bend in the Nile River, where the western bank is home to a university, a train station, approximately four hundred thousand people, and three shops in which Chinese migrants sell racy lingerie to locals. These shops are not hard to find. The first time I visited Asyut, I hailed a cab at the entrance of the city and asked the driver if he knew of any Chinese people in town. Without hesitation, he drove along the Nile Corniche, turned through a series of alleyways, and pointed to a sign that said, in Arabic, “Chinese Lingerie.” The two other shops, China Star and Noma China, are less than a block away. All three are owned by natives of Zhejiang province, in southeastern China, and they sell similar products, many of which are inexpensive, garishly colored, and profoundly impractical. There are buttless body stockings, and nightgowns that cover only one breast, and G-strings accessorized with feathers. There are see-through tops decorated with plastic gold coins that dangle from chains. Brand names include Laugh Girl, Shady Tex Lingerie, Hot Love Italy Design, and Sexy Fashion Reticulation Alluring.

Upper Egypt is the most conservative part of the country. Virtually all Muslim women there wear the head scarf, and it’s not uncommon for them to dress in the niqab, the black garment that covers everything but the eyes. In most towns, there’s no tourism to speak of, and very little industry; Asyut is the poorest governorate in Egypt. Apart from small groups of Syrians who occasionally pass through in travelling market fairs, it’s all but unimaginable for a foreigner to do business there. And yet I found Chinese lingerie dealers scattered throughout the region. In Beni Suef, at an open-air market called the Syrian Fair, two Chinese underwear salesmen had somehow embedded with the Syrians who were hawking cheap clothes and trinkets. Minya, the next city to the south, had a Chinese Lingerie Corner in a mall whose entrance featured a Koranic verse that warned against jealousy. In the remote town of Mallawi, a Chinese husband and wife were selling thongs and nightgowns across the street from the ruins of the Mallawi Museum, which, not long before the Chinese arrived, had been looted and set afire by a mob of Islamists.

All told, along a three-hundred-mile stretch, I found twenty-six Chinese lingerie dealers: four in Sohag, twelve in Asyut, two in Mallawi, six in Minya, and two in Beni Suef. It was like mapping the territory of large predator cats: in the Nile Valley, clusters of Chinese lingerie dealers tend to appear at intervals of thirty to fifty miles, and the size of each cluster varies according to the local population. Cairo is big enough to support dozens. Dong Weiping, a businessman who owns a lingerie factory in the capital, told me that he has more than forty relatives in Egypt, all of them selling his products. Other Chinese people supply the countless underwear shops that are run by Egyptians. For the Chinese dealers, this is their window into Egypt, and they live on lingerie time. Days start late, and nights run long; they ignore the Spring Festival and sell briskly after sundown during Ramadan. Winter is better than summer. Mother’s Day is made for lingerie. But nothing compares with Valentine’s Day, so this year I celebrated the holiday by saying goodbye to my wife, driving four hours to Asyut, and watching people buy underwear at the China Star shop until almost midnight.

China Star is situated next to the Ibn al-Khattab Mosque, and not long before the first call sounded for sunset prayer a sheikh arrived at the shop. He was tall and fat, with strong, dark features, and he wore a brilliant blue galabiya, a carefully wrapped turban, and a pair of heavy silk scarves. He was followed by two large women in niqabs. The sheikh planted himself at the entrance of the shop while the women searched purposefully through the racks and the rows of mannequins. Periodically, one of them would hold up an item, and the sheikh would register his opinion with a wave of his hand.

Valentine’s Day is one of the few times of the year when most China Star customers are male. Usually, it’s only women in the shop, and often they buy the lightweight, form-fitting dresses that Chinese dealers refer to as suiyi, or “casual clothes.” No Upper Egyptian woman would wear such garments in public, but it’s acceptable at home. This is one reason that the market for clothing is so profitable: Egyptian women need two separate wardrobes, for their public and their private lives. Usually, they also acquire a third line of clothing, which is designed to be sexy. The two women in niqabs quickly found two items that the sheikh approved of: matching sets of thongs and skimpy, transparent nightgowns, one in red and the other in blue.

The sheikh began to bargain with Chen Yaying, who runs the shop with her husband, Liu Jun. In Egypt, they go by the names Kiki and John, and both are tiny—Kiki barely reached the sheikh’s chest. She’s twenty-four years old but could pass for a bookish teen-ager; she wears rectangular glasses and a loose ponytail. “This is Chinese!” she said, in heavily accented Arabic, holding up the garments. “Good quality!” She dropped the total price to a hundred and sixty pounds, a little more than twenty dollars, but the sheikh offered one-fifty.

It was still unclear what his relationship was with the two women in niqabs. When we chatted, he said that he monitors mosques for the Ministry of Religious Endowments. He wasn’t bothered when I mentioned Valentine’s Day—some devout Muslims believe that the holiday should not be celebrated. But I couldn’t find a tactful way to learn more about the women. In Upper Egypt, it’s not appropriate to ask a man too directly about his wife, especially if she’s wearing a niqab. Whenever I’ve got to know a man whose wife wears the garment, he usually explains that it’s supposed to prevent other men from thinking about her. For a Westerner, though, it often has the opposite effect. I can’t pick up basic information—how old somebody is, what expression she has on her face—and inevitably my imagination starts to fill in the gaps. Were both these women the sheikh’s wives? Was one to be dressed in red, and the other in blue, for Valentine’s Day?

The sheikh and Kiki were still separated by ten pounds when the second call to prayer sounded. “I have to go,” he said, and handed Kiki his money. “I’m a sheikh! I have to pray.” But Kiki slapped him lightly on the arm with the cash. “Ten more!” she said sternly. The sheikh’s eyes widened in mock surprise, and then, with a flourish, he turned to face Mecca, closed his eyes, and held out his hands in the posture of prayer. Standing in the middle of the lingerie shop, he began to recite, “Subhan’allah wal’hamdulillah . . .”

“Fine, fine!” Kiki said, and rushed off to deal with other customers. The sheikh smiled as he left, the women trailing behind him. Later in the evening, Kiki told me that she thought one of the women was the sheikh’s mother. From my perspective, this changed the narrative significantly but didn’t make it any less interesting. Kiki, though, had nothing more to say about it: as far as she was concerned, the story had ended the moment the sale was made.