Socratis, ‘things were going on that first gave us Colonel Nasser and now something much, much … the same.’
He hesitated and swept his right hand from side to side, palm down like a cricket umpire signalling a boundary. Maybe Socratis
is a professional guide – with one or two unofficial opinions. Mahmoud may perhaps be a guide too, even though he has the
complexion of an office-dweller rather than a man of the outdoors. Perhaps he is an organiser of guides, shrinking back nervously
from the restless, blinkered horses.
Or perhaps he is not frightened of the horses but of something else. ‘Careful, careful,’ Mahmoud whispered to both of us with
warmth and a threat: ‘Zaghloul, Nasser, Mubarak, all of them good men.’ Socratis, unmoved and mud-eyed, suggested that we
all meet later in a place he called ‘my cafe’. First he had to make some hospital visits.
I too need to pause. Before I begin this last Cleopatra, the one that this time I will finish, I want to describe myself a
little, to try to see myself as I see Socratis or Mahmoud or as I see the past, revealing first what is easiest to reveal.
So what do I see?
First: a sixty-year-old man, settling into his room, as tall as a wardrobe, as broad as a pillow, hair the colour of a greying
sheet, stubble like a scratchy blanket and a long horizontal scar across his stomach like the crack in the door.
What else?
In order to write I have my back to the sea. The view of the steely Mediterranean is desirable but distracting. This is a
cramped and crowded room – with a high ceiling, generous wall space but little accommodation for another chair. I have not
yet rearranged the furniture. I am standing upright, scribbling in a notebook with a pen pressed against the door as though
it were a desk.
A closer observer – if suitable surveillance were installed – wouldsee me writing quickly, almost as though I were talking. Just occasionally my jaw moves in emphasis or amplification, a movement
made clearer on unshaven cheeks.
I have no need to look respectable. Twenty-four hours ago I left London unexpectedly, and no one I know will see me here.
I could have fixed to see writers or politicians or critics, the contributors to the newspaper that I edit. I might have brought
crisp, clean clothes, linen suits and a laptop computer. Instead, I am wearing frayed jeans, scuffed suede shoes and am pushing
out words on a notepad against a thin panel of wood.
This is not how it was supposed to be. For the last weeks of my fifty-ninth year, I had a suitcase packed for a different
trip, to the winter sunshine five thousand miles to the south. But Christmas was frozen. The London airports were iced for
many days; and when the ice melted there were too many travellers for South Africa and not enough planes. Egypt was an easier
ticket to buy – from Hampstead to Cairo, to the fluorescent checkpoints of the desert and the Metropole Hotel, to a tiny,
tall room with a balcony overlooking the sea.
Rue Nebi Danial
Socratis gave me instructions about where I should be going next. The walk was short. The directions were simple: right on
Al Horreya, left on Nebi Danial, past the bookshops and piles of trousers where the two streets meet, the Piccadilly Circus
of Alexandria, as the guidebook says; past the lives of Fidel Castro and Richard Burton, catalogues from JCPenney and the
Modern Dining Centre, past dozens of purple overalls, an advertisement for a discussion aboutJean-Paul Sartre in 2002, a brown-and-white radio mast in Eiffel pattern and a tightly shuttered home for French missionaries.
I was told to sit in the cafe by the fountain, the ‘Sea Fountain’ I think he called it. Just before Nebi Danial ends in a
bus station there is a low, iron fence around a sloping, green-marble slab broken by grass. Above a watery-coloured rock sits
a concrete swirl of foam speckled by golden mosaics and on the foam, riding erect, or as erect
He hesitated and swept his right hand from side to side, palm down like a cricket umpire signalling a boundary. Maybe Socratis
is a professional guide – with one or two unofficial opinions. Mahmoud may perhaps be a guide too, even though he has the
complexion of an office-dweller rather than a man of the outdoors. Perhaps he is an organiser of guides, shrinking back nervously
from the restless, blinkered horses.
Or perhaps he is not frightened of the horses but of something else. ‘Careful, careful,’ Mahmoud whispered to both of us with
warmth and a threat: ‘Zaghloul, Nasser, Mubarak, all of them good men.’ Socratis, unmoved and mud-eyed, suggested that we
all meet later in a place he called ‘my cafe’. First he had to make some hospital visits.
I too need to pause. Before I begin this last Cleopatra, the one that this time I will finish, I want to describe myself a
little, to try to see myself as I see Socratis or Mahmoud or as I see the past, revealing first what is easiest to reveal.
So what do I see?
First: a sixty-year-old man, settling into his room, as tall as a wardrobe, as broad as a pillow, hair the colour of a greying
sheet, stubble like a scratchy blanket and a long horizontal scar across his stomach like the crack in the door.
What else?
In order to write I have my back to the sea. The view of the steely Mediterranean is desirable but distracting. This is a
cramped and crowded room – with a high ceiling, generous wall space but little accommodation for another chair. I have not
yet rearranged the furniture. I am standing upright, scribbling in a notebook with a pen pressed against the door as though
it were a desk.
A closer observer – if suitable surveillance were installed – wouldsee me writing quickly, almost as though I were talking. Just occasionally my jaw moves in emphasis or amplification, a movement
made clearer on unshaven cheeks.
I have no need to look respectable. Twenty-four hours ago I left London unexpectedly, and no one I know will see me here.
I could have fixed to see writers or politicians or critics, the contributors to the newspaper that I edit. I might have brought
crisp, clean clothes, linen suits and a laptop computer. Instead, I am wearing frayed jeans, scuffed suede shoes and am pushing
out words on a notepad against a thin panel of wood.
This is not how it was supposed to be. For the last weeks of my fifty-ninth year, I had a suitcase packed for a different
trip, to the winter sunshine five thousand miles to the south. But Christmas was frozen. The London airports were iced for
many days; and when the ice melted there were too many travellers for South Africa and not enough planes. Egypt was an easier
ticket to buy – from Hampstead to Cairo, to the fluorescent checkpoints of the desert and the Metropole Hotel, to a tiny,
tall room with a balcony overlooking the sea.
Rue Nebi Danial
Socratis gave me instructions about where I should be going next. The walk was short. The directions were simple: right on
Al Horreya, left on Nebi Danial, past the bookshops and piles of trousers where the two streets meet, the Piccadilly Circus
of Alexandria, as the guidebook says; past the lives of Fidel Castro and Richard Burton, catalogues from JCPenney and the
Modern Dining Centre, past dozens of purple overalls, an advertisement for a discussion aboutJean-Paul Sartre in 2002, a brown-and-white radio mast in Eiffel pattern and a tightly shuttered home for French missionaries.
I was told to sit in the cafe by the fountain, the ‘Sea Fountain’ I think he called it. Just before Nebi Danial ends in a
bus station there is a low, iron fence around a sloping, green-marble slab broken by grass. Above a watery-coloured rock sits
a concrete swirl of foam speckled by golden mosaics and on the foam, riding erect, or as erect
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