Fear and Loathing in Iskanderiyya

So, I'm sitting on the windswept granite benches of the library stealing internet to download the latest episodes of Bones-- which is my one English junkie addiction that I couldn't even break in the States and really just don't want to. But it's closing time and I get to watch the confounded whole college of arts walk by to catch minbuses and all the hijabbed librarians exit, some stopping to chat, others to use the ATM. It's quite a nice exercise in birdwatching.

Alex after Ramadan is an interesting place. After finishing Durrell's Justine and nearly getting decapitated by Mona for saying it was the most beautiful thing I've ever read, I think I understand a little more about the place. It's coping with a past, and the whole thing seems to breathe like a damaged girl-- so I suppose I can't really blame the inhabitants for not really seeming like the rest of Egypt. There are no Greeks or Jews or English here anymore, but the whole place seems to want to imitate another time, another location-- it has modernized too fast to the effect that the emulation of Western fashion is misunderstood, that the buildings are garish and gaudy, and all elements of the past that might make the place a little more beautiful for the environment fall to pieces or are covered over by advertisements. All history is left entirely to the memory-- and that, truly, is the shame of it all. The most historical city in the world with the least to physically offer.

There is a proverb: "Weep for those that weep for the past." I do not weep for the past. I weep that it is not remembered.

This is the City of Memory. Why does no one remember here?