Gunfire and tear gas in Alexandria: Remembering a Greek poet in old city

Once again, the news from Egypt is alarming and violent.  The disorder has approached a city dear to me, Alexandria, thus extending the violence that has already killed hundreds in Cairo. The past has been kinder to Alexandria than the present; it’s not clear that a city that survived centuries will be able to survive modern weaponry and warfare.  Two years ago, a human chain protected the rebuilt Library of Alexandria from mayhem – I wrote about it here and here.  I wonder if the future will prove this ambitious and visionary effort to be Babel-like.

I love the old capital, not only the heart of an empire and the center of world learning, but also home to Constantine Cavafy.  As I wrote a dozen years ago for the Los Angeles Times:

I had occasion recently to visit Cavafy’s Alexandria, to wander the western side of the city, past street side hawkers, vegetable and fruit carts drawn by donkeys, heaps of garbage that filled gutters and potholes and strings of the faded laundry hanging over the chipped and peeling 19th century facades. Ducking into an unpromising doorway in a dirty side street, I came to 4 Sharm el Sheikh, formerly Rue Lepsius, Cavafy’s home for the last 25 years of his life, now a museum.

Cavafy nicknamed this street “Rue Clapsius”: In his time, a brothel occupied the lowest floor of this four-story building. Step outside on his tiny balcony, into the sudden sunlight from the dark interior of his apartment, and you will see the same sight that greeted Cavafy daily: the rooftop of white St. Sabia, surmounted by a cross, perhaps a block or two away to the right; and, apparently equidistant to the left, the grim rectangular lines of the Greek hospital. Cavafy was hospitalized in the latter during his final months; his funeral was held in the former. Cavafy called them “Temple of the Body” and “Temple of the Soul” and called the nearby bordellos of the Attarin district, the third apex of his Trinity, “Temple of the Flesh.”

“Where could I live better?” he asked. It was a small world, a claustrophobic life.

Even this small world has been rendered more precarious by the unpleasant tug-of-war that has enveloped the museum’s history of the Greek community, whose roots go back to the city’s founding by Alexander the Great. About 132,000 Greeks lived here in Cavafy’s time; that number has dwindled to a tenacious 500. Thanks to Nasser’s program of land reform and the nationalization of banks and industries, the majority “returned” to Greece, abandoning this once-European city.

You can read the rest here.  I had only a week in Egypt, and most of it was closer to Cairo.  My brief stay in Alexandria was made memorable – and really, possible – by an elderly Egyptian friend Mohsen, who had fought the British occupation for independence.  He guided me through both cities, showing me the chic restaurant with its forgotten hiding places for the Egyptian patriots, negotiating the streets and public transportation with me, and arguing with the museum guardians to make sure Cavafy’s home would be open to us (it seems to be keeping more regular hours at present, according to its  website).

I wonder what will happen to the tiny museum now, the home of the greatest Egyptian poet of modern times – he wrote in Greek, in an Arabic-speaking country, he was Orthodox in a Muslim nation, and wildly, guiltily gay.  Demonstrators are already torching the churches. What happens when a people do not value their own civilization?

What I remember about Alexandria now, most of all,  is the ever-present and eternal Mediterranean, the raison d’etre for this remarkable city.  It will remain even if the city is burned to the ground.

Tags: Constantine Cavafy

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 15th, 2013 at 10:54 am by Cynthia Haven and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.