Earlier this month, I was on the North Coast for a few days in reality. Since then, I have been visiting Alexandria from time to time ��" but that of the past, through the recollections of Alexandrians now scattered throughout the world. I had previously read some of their memoirs but on this occasion my interest in the past of a city and its cosmopolitan inhabitants was re-ignited by a delectable and original e-mailed forward. It was sent to me by an Egyptian friend living in Europe and had reached her from Latin America via Australia. Its topic was the pâtisseries and tea rooms of Alexandria in the early 1950s and the evocative accompanying contemporary song ya zahratan fi khayali (‘You Two Flowers of My Imagination') was by Farid al-Atrash. An exile himself, the brilliant musician was a Druze prince from Syria who made his musical name in Egypt. The compilation is dedicated as a moment of nostalgia to those who shared a childhood in Alexandria and knew its beautiful days. The text, written in French, by César Pinto in Brazil, poignantly ends with the words that they still breathe the perfume of those days of the pâtisseries, whose taste is on their lips and memory in their hearts. The photographs by Mike Sharobim Hiver of Alexandria today include surviving pâtisseries, other buildings and its inimitable sea vistas. The evocation of the pâtisseries, most of which were then Greek, begins with Athenéos, which also offered tea dances (as did a few other establishments) and light classical music. They included Délices, Pastroud?s, Le Grand and Le Petit Trianon, Tornazaki and numerous others. As well as Greek, the cakes and pastries were French, Italian, Swiss, Syrian, Turkish and Viennese in origin, reflecting the then cosmopolitan character of an antique and classical city named after a Macedonian, Alexander the Great. Their delicacies, mainly sweet but also savoury, are described in mouth-watering detail. Does remembered smell and taste evoke the past more clearly and beguilingly than visual memories and writings? Marcel Proust's epic masterwork A la recherche du temps perdu was evoked by recalling a madeleine (a rich cake) dipped into tea. André Aciman recalled his father's aversion to the pervasive smell of the popular drink hilba (fenugreek) in his award-winning memoir Out of Egypt (Riverhead Books, New York, 1996), a vivid chronicle of three generations of a Jewish family from its arrival in Alexandria in the 1900s to its exodus in the 1960s. He continued," … all homes bear ethnic odours … anyone born in Alexandria would just as easily have sniffed out a Sephardic household like ours, with its residual odour of Parmesan, boiled artichokes … as they themselves could recognise an Armenian kitchen by its unavoidable smell of cured pastrami, a Greek living room by the odor of myrrh, and Italians by the smell of fried onions and chamomile." All these ethnic groups are evocatively recalled, documented and described in Alexandria 1860-1960 ��" The brief life of a cosmopolitan community. The illuminating book is edited by Robert Ilbert and Ilios Yannakakis with Jacques Hassoun, translated (from the original 1992 French edition) by Colin Clement, and published by Harpocrates Publishing, 1997, Alexandria, Egypt. There is some fascinating information in its appendices which include extracts selected by Max Karkegi on Alexandria from the revised 1872 second edition of the 1860 guide and yearbook of Egypt by a French resident of Alexandria at the time of the Khedive Ismail, François Levernay. He states unequivocally that it "is divided into perfectly distinct parts: the Arab town and the European town", the latter recently created and growing. The overall population was then 200,000, of whom he stated almost 100,000 were Europeans and more than 100,00 indigenous. The book includes an interview with the late great film director Youssef Chahine. Of Lebanese descent through his father and Greek through his mother, he was born in 1926 and brought up in Alexandria. On the composer Bairam al-Tounsi, who wrote the songs for a film of his, Chahine said in the interview: "He had the quality which I look for in an Alexandrian, still look for everywhere, the type of cosmopolitanism, which has been so denigrated, unjustly. But the word is lovely, cosmos, the whole world ��" it is what I have always searched for and still do, because it existed in Alexandria." The sea pervaded his memories; "Always when I was sad, or happy, or feeling a certain loneliness the sea was my friend… I used to take long walks by the sea… The noise of the sea was part of me." Of Arab and European descent, Chahine was an emblem of the coastal city and port he so loved, which featured in some of his most famous films. The Egyptian Gazette, which is now published in Cairo, was founded in Alexandria by British residents and celebrating its 130th anniversary this year. It is fitting that Alexandria is now celebrating its Arab and European legacies and identities. It has been chosen as the Capital for Arab Tourism in 2010 and last week hosted a Mediterranean cultural festival supported by a range of partners, including the Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Foundation, whose executive director Andreu Claret stated that it was only the beginning of a series of such events. A Gazette colleague reported on the festivity. Traditional food, mainly savoury dishes, and drinks from throughout Europe were served. I asked him what he tasted and smelt and he unhesitatingly replied, "the salt of the sea".
Faraldi has lived in Upper Egypt and then Cairo, since 1991, working in higher education and as a researcher, writer and editor.
