Have I not said enough about Alexandria? Am I not to be reinfected once more by the dream of it and the memory of its inhabitants? Dreams I had thought safely locked up on paper, confided to the strong rooms of memory! You will think I am indulging myself. It is not so.
-Balthazar, Book II of the Alexandria Quartet, Lawrence Durrell
I too thought I was done with Alexandria, and for that matter with Egyptian pulmonologists. In Cairo I’d had too close an encounter with Egyptian surgery and hospital stays, admitted twice for- diagnosis: spontaneous pneumothorax, aka collapsed lung, treatment: chest tube insertion, hospital: Agouza, time: the same day Pope John Paul I died, so the Italian nuns who ran the place were praying to God, not ministering to patients.
When I broke down in tears the second time Dr. Gamal Abu Sinna inserted the chest tube (the first time did not work as planned, despite him saying the bismillah before picking up the scalpel), he asked me if I were a soldier in the army. Why? I asked. Because, he said, The only men I have seen cry are Egyptian soldiers facing the Israeli enemy.
That was in 1978. Fast forward forty one years and I found myself in another hospital, this time in New York, with yet more lung trouble, and I was treated- successfully the first time!- by Dr. Bushra Mina, graduate of University of Alexandria School of Medicine. His expertise goes far beyond chest tubes. How about catheterization of the femoral vein aiming for bilateral submassive pulmonary emboli?
According to my guess as to their names spelled in Arabic, sinna means “pinprick” and mina means “port” (not to be confused with mani meaning “sperma genitale”- as per the Joseph Catafago dictionary of 1873). Either way, Cairo’s Agouza Hospital or Alexandria’s School of Medicine, I am glad to have seen their best.