No, first of all let him say hello, with a new and unexpected appreciation, to Alexandria. “Mahatta Ramleh”, he directed the driver.
As for beggars and bashas, they were like wallpaper in a house. One soon ceased to notice them, and one rarely asked what degree of moral or aesthetic hardening that obliviousness implied.
-Academic Year, D.J. Enright, a novel about an English teacher in Alexandria
Alexandria, I am here. On the fourth floor I ring the bell of the flat. The little judas opens, showing Mariana’s face. Much changed, my dear! It’s dark on the landing; she does not recognize me. Her white face and golden hair gleam in the light from the window open somewhere behind her. “Pension Miramar?” “Yes, monsieur?” “Do you have any vacant rooms?” The door opens.
-Miramar, Naguib Mahfouz
I spent an academic year in Cairo, and Egypt was getting me down. Since the word for Cairo used by most Cairenes is the same word they use for Egypt, from time to time I had to get out of Masr and go away to Iskandariyya. For that you had to go “down”, I mean “north”… let’s just say I had to go bahri, seaward. My cousin was visiting so we went seaward together.
We checked into a pension on the corniche that could have been in a Naguib Mahfouz novel. In fact he wrote one about this place. Miramar, with old timer pensioners sitting around the common room, its windows thrown open to the Mediterranean breeze, all complaining about their aches and pains and Nasser and his revolution. They preferred the king and wanted him and his days to return. The place certainly had not been cleaned since Farouk left, or even since Nasser died. That was eight years ago
I liked getting off the train in Alex, it was as if Cairo had never existed or was in another country. There were horse drawn carriages waiting at the curb, caleches you called them there, since Alex was much more francophone than Cairo. And also Hellenophilic. I was amazed to see three Greek papers for sale in the news kiosk in Mahatta Ramleh, just outside a taverna serving ouzo not zabeeb, with white table cloths and waiters in bow ties and whole fish in ice trays at the front door. It could have been Athens.
And just as in the Mahfouz novel, the pension’s desk clerk was a real misanthrope. A grouch and a complainer. And even worse, totally unimpressed that I spoke to him in what I thought was my pretty good Arabic. He must not have believed that I understood what he said to me, because he would turn to the old timers in the common room’s lounge chairs and make jokes about the dumb khawaja. Especially that I didn’t like.
So I did something I had never done before and never will again. I left without paying. On our third or fourth day, when it was time to check out, my cousin waited downstairs on the sidewalk while I went up to the room. The desk clerk scowled and didn’t answer my greeting. I threw our bags out the window to my waiting cousin and left the room again. Back soon, I told the clerk. Back to Masr. And as in that great Youssef Chahine film, Iskandariyya…leh? Alexandria…Why?
