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I accompanied Musa Saif al-Nasr to his home . . .We walked along the seafront road, the corniche, but I can’t remember if we walked by Burj al-Arab or not . . . The beach to our left was crowded with sunbathers, the sun spread its rays over the asphalt and the street filled with summer crowds.To the right rose tall buildings, their balconies facing the sea. At the house, he introduced me to his sons, asking Ahmad in particular to take care of me. There was a female house-guest there as well, and we all gathered around the table to eat. The living room was large, and the dining room was furnished with Louis XIV – or is it XVI? – furniture, sturdy wooden sofas embellished with gold. The dining chair I sat on was imposing but it wasn’t comfortable for eating. Different foods covered the dining table. Near me was a dish of mulukhiyya and he mentioned that its original name had been mulukiyya, the dish of kings, brought to Egypt by the Fatimids . . . did we have it in Tunisia, he asked. I said that we did, since the Fatimids had come to Egypt from our lands, although we prepared the dish differently. I remembered my uncle, who would also tell us the story of the dish’s real name, mulukiyya, named after kings, whenever he saw it on the dining table. After lunch, the Basha went in for a nap and left me in the care of his son Ahmad. We took our bathing trunks and some towels, and headed towards the beach cabins at the club. The place was full of summer tourists, swimming suits and coloured clothing as flashy as in any Egyptian film, throngs moving around under the giant eucalyptus trees, street scenes still redolent of the 1960s.We walked over 20 BANIPAL 43 – CELEBRATING DENYS JOHNSON-DAVIES
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KHALED NAJAR to our cabin and put on our trunks, then headed down to the seashore, where the sand looked to me to be golden, almost brown. The sea was a deep blue, stretching into the horizon. As soon as we had sat down, Ahmad said: “Look there”, pointing with his right hand at something in the distance. “Can you see that villa and then the second one near it, at the water’s edge? Can you see them now? Two villas, on their own out there . . . those are the homes of Abdel Nasser and Abdel Hakim Amir.” I think he added: “There, at the tip of the land.” I felt a bitterness in his tone, a resentment of this new elite that had removed them from power. We spent the whole afternoon on the beach; evening had started to encircle the earth and the Alexandrian sea was turning dark, all but for the silver tips of the waves.The shore was emptying; the noise of the crowd now came from the middle of the city, carried on the breeze and in the shadows of the stumbling autumn. I said to myself: “Here I am, in Alexandria,” and the feeling of the place settled over me, in a way that had not happened as I left the car and its driver at the head of the agricultural road, and stepped out into the neat, balcony-lined Alexandrian neighbourhood. I remember the old barbershop, the clothes-presser, the donkey cart laden with meat from the slaughterhouse, and the sun filling the colourful street; to me, the whole scene appeared to be straight out of the southernmost Latin American cities. After that, I rode the bus through the square with the statue of Mohammad Ali Bek standing on top of a thick stone pedestal, in the Italian style . . . Nor did I sense Alexandria when I passed through those streets opening onto the sea, in the bus that brought me to Sidi Bishr. We came home via the corniche; Alexandria was the first city in which I had ever seen such crowds. At home, the Basha repeated his advice to me, sensing my internal tumult and my apprehensions about travel: “Don’t be anxious, my son, calm down.You’ll get on theYugoslavian train and get off at Cairo Station; from there, go straight toTahrir Square and to Talaat Harb Street, and there you’ll find the Grand Hotel, a good guesthouse, where I always stay when I am in Cairo.” The Basha and his sons saw me off with a lot of kindness, and as I left their home, the Basha repeated, standing at the door: “Don’t get BANIPAL 43 – SPRING 2012 21

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I accompanied Musa Saif al-Nasr to his home . . .We walked along the seafront road, the corniche, but I can’t remember if we walked by Burj al-Arab or not . . . The beach to our left was crowded with sunbathers, the sun spread its rays over the asphalt and the street filled with summer crowds.To the right rose tall buildings, their balconies facing the sea.

At the house, he introduced me to his sons, asking Ahmad in particular to take care of me. There was a female house-guest there as well, and we all gathered around the table to eat. The living room was large, and the dining room was furnished with Louis XIV – or is it XVI? – furniture, sturdy wooden sofas embellished with gold. The dining chair I sat on was imposing but it wasn’t comfortable for eating. Different foods covered the dining table. Near me was a dish of mulukhiyya and he mentioned that its original name had been mulukiyya, the dish of kings, brought to Egypt by the Fatimids . . . did we have it in Tunisia, he asked.

I said that we did, since the Fatimids had come to Egypt from our lands, although we prepared the dish differently. I remembered my uncle, who would also tell us the story of the dish’s real name, mulukiyya, named after kings, whenever he saw it on the dining table.

After lunch, the Basha went in for a nap and left me in the care of his son Ahmad. We took our bathing trunks and some towels, and headed towards the beach cabins at the club. The place was full of summer tourists, swimming suits and coloured clothing as flashy as in any Egyptian film, throngs moving around under the giant eucalyptus trees, street scenes still redolent of the 1960s.We walked over

20 BANIPAL 43 – CELEBRATING DENYS JOHNSON-DAVIES

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