Alexandria

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There used to be a boat that sailed from Piraeus via Latakia in Syria then on to Alexandria on the north coast of Egypt. A long time ago I travelled down to Latakia from Aleppo on a truck carrying bales of cloth and caught that boat as it was about to leave. A day later I was in Alexandria, first time in Egypt and never saw a single pyramid the whole time I was there. I really didn’t want to see pyramids poking their pointy heads above the hubbuby crowds among jostling foreigners, and you get a better look at them in photographs. What I did find were seedy little bars in hotel basements were an obviously disaffected crowd gathered to drink and wander in and out through mysterious curtains, carrying rolled up newspapers under their arms. The newspapers, which seemed to be part of everyone’s sartorial equipment, made the scene all the more seedy looking, especially when I realised that no-one ever seemed to read them, just carry them. Every western style hotel along the seafront was equipped with one of these smoke chambers where the air was either yellow, green or blue with smouldering tobacco or whatever. I thought of them as portals that connected East and West. The Cecil was different however. It was clean and opened onto the street and air used to blow in from the ocean through the doors and windows. In the bar at the Cecil there were neither pyramids, camels nor newspaper-carriers. At the Cecil one bought a newspaper, opened it and read it while Frank prepared one a cocktail to get the evening going. I loved Alexandria.