An
Alexandria Anthology: Travel Writing through the Centuries
2014,
AUC Press, 978-77416-672-3, $18.95 hb.
Reviewed
by Robert W. Lebling
'Alexandria.
At last. Alexandria, Lady of the Dew. Bloom of white nimbus. Bosom of radiance,
wet with sky-water. Core of nostalgia steeped in honey and tears…. Alexandria,
I am here.'
This
collection of short writings by travelers from Plutarch to Naguib Mahfouz
depicts Alexandria from its founding on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast by
Alexander the Great, to its Hellenistic golden age, to Roman rule, to the Arab
conquest, Alexandria’s rebirth under the pasha Muhammad Ali and its move toward
modernity amid the world wars and into today’s era. Some of the works are
impressionistic, some starkly realistic, others humorous, melancholy,
informative or poetic. Ibn Battuta writes of his 1326 visit, when he viewed the
remnants of the legendary Pharos lighthouse. Florence Nightingale (1849)
surprises the reader with adventure, as she luxuriates in Pompeian baths, wages
war against mosquitos and describes riding one of Alexandria’s sturdy little
donkeys, which “runs like a velocipede.” Rich portraits of early 20th-century
Alexandria are furnished by the likes of E.M. Forster, Constantine Cavafy and
Lawrence Durrell. Durrell’s friend Gwyn Williams describes a chilling descent
into the little-known catacombs at Kom el-Shogafa. Amid all this, we are
constantly reminded of Durrell’s reference to Alexandria as a “dream city,”
where the glorious past hovers over the reality of a sometimes drab but ever
genteel (and essentially Levantine) seaside metropolis.
