It goes on being Alexandria still. Just walk a bit/along the straight road that ends at the Hippodrome/and you’ll see palaces and monuments that will amaze you./Whatever war damage it’s suffered,/however much smaller it’s become,/it’s still a wonderful city./And then, what with excursions and books/and various kinds of study, time does go by./…So the days go by, and our time here/isn’t unpleasant because, naturally,/it’s not going to last forever…
-from Exiles, Constantine Cavafy
Cavafy’s Greeks in 9th Century Alexandria were not unlike us 20th Century Americans in Cairo, both young and living for the moment in a land of marvels, studying a vernacular language wildly distorted from the classical. They read the poet Nonnos of the Dionysiaca and the Gnostic obscurantist Zosimos, both from the town of Panopolis, modern Akhmim across the Nile from Sohag. Thus they both were Sa’eedis, hillbillies, the butt of the kind of jokes we told in our colloquial class and the word we searched for in our well-thumbed Wehrs where we found sa’eed spelled with the letter sa’d, not the letter siin. One means Happy, the other Upper Egypt. In Alexandria, Cavafy’s Greeks had what remained to them of the Hippodrome and the Serapeum, the Pharos and Pompey’s Pillar. In Cairo, we took our classes on AUC’s Greek Campus and went to the cafes Riche and Liberte where we drank Stella beer and zabib, Egyptian ouzo. For both of us it wasn’t meant to last, our time in Egypt. But it was fun while it did.