PETE HAMILL - FAREWELL TO ALEXANDRIA

I had been meaning to visit Egypt for the last 40 years or more, so last month I bit the bullet and went.

 

No big deal, except shortly beforehand Messrs. Netanyahu & Trump decided to blow the hell out of Iran. Everybody thought I was around the bend, but I had a feeling if I didn’t go then, I might never. Besides, my travel agent said I’d have the place to myself, and how bad could that be?

 

I needn’t have worried. You’re never alone in Cairo, a city of 22 million people with traffic so dense it makes Manhattan seem like a stroll in the park. I might add there are no pedestrian walk signs, hence crossing streets is up to you, your sense of adventure, and fancy footwork.

 

But it has the nearby Pyramids and the Sphinx, though every Tik-Toker in the universe seemed to be using them as backdrop for their narcissistic posturing. Not to worry, close by is the recently opened Great Egyptian Museum, designed by Mayo’s Róisín Heneghan.

 

You could spend a week there basking in the shadows of the various Pharaohs’ statues while weeping over the remains of Tutankhamun, the boy king, and what might have been.

 

Then down to Luxor where the Valley of the Kings can overawe you, or the Valley of the Queens and their sometimes still-born children show the more achingly human side of ancient Egypt.

 

But I had an ulterior motive – I wanted to walk the streets of Alexandria, and catch any remaining echoes of a series of books set there by Lawrence Durrell, the Anglo-Irish writer. (Durrell always referred to himself as an “Irishman” and considered England “the grey death.)

 

The Quartet books, Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, and Clea are set circa World War Two. They explore a romance influenced by a brooding portrait of the atmospheric city founded by Alexander The Great.

 

Justine gives a thrilling account of the love the narrator Darley has for Justine, the wife of his aristocratic Coptic friend, Nessim. As satisfying as the book is, it leaves you wanting more, and most people turn to its immediate sequel, Balthazar.

 

That’s where the real thrill is, and it becomes apparent that truth is relative as it unfolds in fits and starts over the course of the remaining books.

 

Pete Hamill and I shared an admiration for the Alexandria Quartet. We had both been introduced to it by women no longer alive, perhaps part of the fascination.

 

If Joyce masterfully captured the essence of Dublin in 1904 with Ulysses, Durrell did no less with Alexandria though in a more mysterious and hallucinogenic manner. But each writer’s city is more a character than just a backdrop.

 

Joyce’s Dublin is still glaringly there courtesy of the Irish people. You have to dig deeper in Alexandria as the Greeks, Jews, and British departed around President Nasser’s regime in the 1950’s and are barely an echo now in this bustling Muslim city leavened only by Coptic Christians.

 

But the Cecil Hotel still looms large. Darley, a penniless English schoolteacher, and the glamorous Justine met there, and its storied Monty Bar (Field-Marshal Montgomery) still reeks of a decadent colonialism.

 

One of the great bonuses of immersing yourself in the Quartet is that you become familiar with the poetry of C.V. Cavafy, “the poet of the city,”  a master at transmuting love, loss and life.

 

“One afternoon at four o’clock we separated

for a week only... And then,

that week became forever.”

 

Within strolling distance of The Cecil, Cavafy’s apartment has been turned into a miniature museum replete with photos, furniture and intimate artifacts of this Greek-Alexandrian’s life. He was Jacqueline Kennedy’s favorite poet, and fittingly the museum was founded and is supported by the Onassis Foundation.

 

Across the street from The Cecil is the Corniche, a long walkway by the Mediterranean where Darley, Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Cavafy and the hapless Clea gazed out across the sparkling waves, wondering if they’d ever escape the magnetic attraction of Alexander’s city, before they too would be swept away as his legendary library was.

 

It's strange how a book can have such an effect on you after so many years. But that’s the power and majesty of literature, isn’t it, and why writers sacrifice everything to capture one glimpse of its magic.