Warning.. a long post from Simon!!

Hey there,

We just lost internet here for a couple of days because of some underwater cables which THE WHOLE MODERN WORLD RELIES ON so I've been freaking out a bit because I was a bit cut off. This was especially the case because I was itching to pass on some of the things I've been
feeling about Egypt now I've made it to the proper part of the country. Now it's become a bit of an extended ramble with no real linking aesthetic and I feel somewhat despondant that you're getting a weeks brainfart all in one splurge.

The first thing that surprised me upon hitting mainland Egypt was how verdant the whole thing was. I'm not used to it in most of the Islamic countries I've visited. As soon as I crossed over the Suez canal there was a massive profusion of green, making sense of how Egypt used to be the breadbasket of the Roman Empire. Even the buildings themselves seem to be in a constant state of growth or decay, organically changing in tune with the life around it. Lower Egypt so far reminds me of the Punjab, but with African light instead of Indian. This particularly true in the canal zone where most of the architecture is colonial (spruced up with joi de concrete moderne).

The first place I stayed, Ismailia, could have been designed as a demonstration of the word genteel, all colonial verandas and massive gardens. I went to a restaurant there which boasts of having been founded in 1950 - I think what they meant was locked in time since then. The playlist was incredible, a mix of Eurovision also-rans (a French song about the fate of an Italian fishing village pre and post WWII), some easy classics ('We're All Off to Sunny Spain') & country
and western songs about wishing you weren't paralysed so you could kill your cheating wife. It reminded me of nothing so much as the hour after Tez returns from a charity shop run and drops all the best ones on me - I was rather nostalgic as I tucked into my fish.

The next day I took the train to Port Said, which is at the mouth of the canal and is an uneasy alliance of resort town (a bit too much faeces on the beach for me) and industrial port. The train ride was great, although stinking of piss and absolutely filthy. When I asked for a student discount the guy decided not to charge me. You look out of one side and there's loads of trees and crops, out the other side there's sand dunes with the occasional tanker seeming to plow through
them. That's a pretty cool sight.

Port Said has lots of fantastic architecture, and a cool free ferry across the Suez canal which I took a few times - it was especially magical at sunset as gulls swoop around you and the light reflects off the massive ships. On one of these ferries I got talking to a chap named Adel, who told me he liked my clothes. He asked for my name & e-mail address, which I supplied. Then things got a bit weirder:

"Now write your name here." [Gestures below]
[Suddenly feeling uneasy for unknown reason] "Mish faahim (I don't understand)"
"Your name. Write it. Here."
"Aasif. (Sorry) Mish faahim." [Feeling a bit pathetic that I'm putting up such a resistance]
[Drawing loveheart where he was gesturing] "Your name. Simon. Here.
Write next to this."
'La, la. Aasif."
[Sighing, as if explaining to idiot child] " Write name. Please.
Here, next to this."
[Starting to wonder if this is just a cultural misunderstanding] "La, la, aasif, mish faahim."
"My name here" [writes Adel next to loveheart] "You write name here."
[Noticing ferry is pulling in, jumping up to leave] "Aasif."
"Me, marriage, no."
"Really."
"I want to sex you up."
[Hoping he's telling me his favourite Color Me Badd song] "Bye, good
meeting you!"
"You. Me. Sex Now."
"BYE."
"Okay, nice to meet you."

Still, there generally needs to be one such encounter every holiday, and this was better than the mentally defective dwarf, at least.

Anyway, I pulled out of Port Said soon after and through the extensive wetlands that mark Egypt's coast. They support teams of birds - herons, storks, swallows, sparrows - some hanging in the last vestiges of sunlight, others stalking their pray through the shallow pools, as well as countless fishermen throwing out their nets in the rose red rays. As I hit the delta proper, I passed many huge cities which foreigners probably never visit, surrounded by vast plantations and fields.

And so to Alexandria. Despite being founded by Alexander the Great there's very little ancient history to show for it - some tombs, a pillar. The Pharos lighthouse toppled and was replaced by a little fort - it lives on only as a particularly popular shape for minarets. The Great Library was destroyed and has recently been replaced by a great library. In fact, even the relatively recent history has very little to show for itself.

The city was rebuilt in the 19th century along European lines, as is evidenced by the Venetian Gothic, Neo-Classical, Art Nouveau & Deco stylings that much of the city once had. But it's as if you got all the people out of a beautiful European city, smashed it up with some sledge hammers, then left it to decay for a hundred years before moving twice as many people back in. It's filthy and collapsing.

There are numerous old coffee shops around done out as it would have been but they overcharge and the coffee's been over-roasted.

It still has the energy and buzz that it used to have, but rather than this culminating in a fever pitch of desire and creativity as it did when the city was a cosmopolitan mix of Arabs, Jews, Greeks, Italians & anyone else who fancied a piece of it, it seems now to all have been sublimated into shopping. All night, men walk around the main streets arm in arm, window shopping. Despite their disavowal of shoes (and boy do they love that chucking shoes at George Bush event, there was one TV channel which had it on repeat for 3 hours), there are hundreds of shoe shops, as well as windows and windows of dressing gown displays and sharp suits on offer. Naturally that which is dirt has been fetishised.

In fact, to some extent, Alexandria started to annoy me. It just seemed a waste of a great city. I went to see some Arabic music at the opera house, and was severely told off for not wearing a tie, and was made to borrow one. Once inside, everyone chatted merrily throughout the performance, texted away, even answered phone calls when their ringtones rung out. Now, I'm willing to accept that the Western attitude to music can be a bit stuffy at times, and it could be quite refreshing to have people clap when they heard something they loved (maybe), and why shouldn't they treat it like a social event out with their mates, but it did seem that they had their priorities wrong and were focussing on the image over the music.

And bars! I could accept having none, and drinking being off limits, but they had 2 (plus a couple of restaurants that sold it). One was ridiculously expensive, and their Best of Disco CD got stuck and I started to wonder how many times one could listen to the first minute of 'Love to Love You Baby' - for me it was 17 and a half times (note that's over quarter of an hour), so I'm afraid I can't report on how long everyone else could take it. The other one has been described as a Bangkok bar without the gogo girls - in this case they been replaced with fat middle aged men dressed in cardigans & moustaches (not gyrating, don't worry). When I told one of them I was Scottish, he branded a Jimmy Hat at me.

This felt badly wrong, and I felt I should make some kind of reperations for my nation scarring his culture. Having said this, the music they play alternates between UB40 & BOB
SHITTING MARLEY, as if to rub their hatred of reggae in my face.

It's also difficult to try and find restaurants, as they're all in the residentual areas very far from where they put the hotels. I would end up circling for ages, before sadly sitting down to pizza again, or negotiating another kebab. I did have some wonderful meals - the fish is great - but it seems like such a trial.

The trams are also unbelievable, moving at a subambulant pace. To be fair, they occasionally break into a light jog, but you can always catch up with them and jump on. They're more there as a labour saving device than as any increase in speed - a child can (and frequently does) outpace them - but in a city stretched out along the coast as much as this one they can come in handy. And they do cost 3p for any trip, so it seems churlish to complain. It does also seem that the
locals hold their ridiculously slow speeds in a good natured mixture of awe and pride.

But their transport is messed up generally. The corniche, a road running the length of what is one of the world's classic bays, and lined by historic buildings, is an 8 lane highway. You can chill
where Churchill sat and all that sits between you and the harbour Alexander the Great founded is a impenetrable stream of heavy traffic. That's not entirely true - you learn a great faith out here that cars will swerve by you if you stride out into the road. It's almost beautiful in its own way; as if the sea were parting around you; as if an invulnerable bubble surrounded you. It reminds me of when I was scared as a child in bed, and used to imagine an invisible shield of
love protected me and prevented any of my imaginations terrors from getting close to me.

The Friday prayers were weird too. They broadcast it out of every mosque and it reverberated round all the streets. The mosques were full to overflowing and people were praying across the whole main street. I've been quite digging the fact that they enjoy listening to people singing the Qoran on the radio, and that my lift here sings me a choice verse as I ascend or descend, but this was the first time I felt like an outsider, walking round a ghost town where every street was shaking to a different sermon. Also, something I've never seen before, is that the really devout people have a bruise or callus in the middle of their forehead from praying too hard. I was initially all like, "Wow, can you inherit birthmarks?" untill I realised what caused them.

But, after a couple of days I realised I'd got it all wrong, and I was judging Alexandria by my standards of what a great city should be like. Their nightlife is all about the late night sha-clack-clack of Dominoes & Backgammon in Ahwas, chess players sucking sheeshas and the
old gang sitting round drinking tea and laughing. Their culture's built round caffiene, not alchohol. And it's a pretty cool culture...

I found the greatest Ahwa ever down this alley two people can't pass in, set into this amazing old 19th century department store. It opens up into this amazing courtyard which is a complete shambles, but they've covered it up by painting it this baby blue, except where they ran out of paint and finished it off in pink. Every now and then some unseen person would yell long & loud, but no-one took any notice of them, too involved were they in their own little worlds. 3 cups of
tea and a sheesha set me back less than a coffee in any of the oldy world mock-European efforts, and the staff carefully rearranged or replaced my coals every 10 minutes or so to keep them fresh. It was a beautiful shithole, and I loved it.

I had been concerned about the lack of youthful, live music, but as if on queue I ran into a wedding procssion on my way home, and they were drumming some feirce beats out, singing & clapping as they walked the bride and groom up and down the street.

The souqs are vivid as well, a much more human commercialism. Tables of blue-legged crabs, white bellies pointing up, next to a creche of goats heads, eyes tight shut and mouths open as if a sweet voiced choir. Baskets of tightly packed fish, innocent rabbits siflaying unaware of the fate they face once a buyer likes the look of them, great mounds of feta. Baskets keep descending on strings from upper windows, for people to drop some groceries in. It's a joyous place to be.

The new library is astonishing as well. It's a beautiful thing, architecturally, all space and pillars with the native lotus capitals. From the outside it looks like a giant disc rising out of the sea, in
another homage to the Pharos. It also has a reasonable collection of books, but there is a wierd high pitched buzzing sound which was thankfully masked in the Philosophy section. I went and caught a lecture by Stephen Greenblatt (shout out to my literature homies), basically all about the subject of my philosophy book, but relating it to Shakespeare, which was quite surreal.

In the end, I think it comes about because the familiarity of Alexandria makes you think it should make sense, should fit your pre-conceived notions, but it doesn't. It looks European; it's part of our history; our dreams. Yet it's a very different place. Cairo fits in much easier; a giant capital with a generally Islamic culture but where anything can be found or could be going on, where globalisation is a reality. Alexandria is a genuinelly Islamic megalopolis in European clothing, nowhere near as universalised as its past or looks would imply.

It doesn't really fit its skin, a bit like Warsaw, a bit like myself, and despite its collapsing, stinking, mangy exterior, I do love it. I've been debating whether I could live there, as I always do, and I still don't have an answer. It did have a particularly good juice bar though...

Anyhow, I'm in Cairo now, and judging by the fact that the bar I was in played Wham's 'Last Christmas' twice I feel I should be giving you season's greetings. Keep safe one and all. Please keep e-mailing me; I savour even the slightest missive.

Enjoy Christmas, and I hope the unreality it has for me makes it all the more real for you.

Remember you're all wonderful, never to be repeated snowflakes,

Simon