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from
culture to culture, and although she liked Gabriella from what she
knew of her, she hadn't known her all that long and didn't know her
very well yet. So all she said was, "Thanks for the warning
again."
    Gabriella laughed. "I am
overdoing it a bit, aren't I? I guess you can tell that when I
dislike someone, I really dislike them. Not very laissez-faire of
me."
    "No, honest though," Leda said. Suddenly she
wondered if Gabriella and Namid had been romantically involved at
some time. Gabriella's wrath about the man was beginning to seem
like the grapeish kind—sour grapes. "Where's the market then?"
    "Oh, we've passed it already but—" She
leaned forward and spoke to the driver. "Turn down el-Nebi Daniel,
please, and stop at the corner of al-Horreya."
    The driver gave no indication of hearing but
hung a right at the next intersection.
    "Once we got into the main part of town, we
could have easily walked and seen more, Leda," Gabriella told her.
"But our time is limited, and I did want you to have a little taste
of the city on your first day. Besides," she said, indicating the
traffic stampeding around them like herds of buffalo about to jump
off a cliff, stopping for nothing and no one, "crossing the street
in Alex is an adventure all by itself."
    "Yeah," Leda said. "Someone must carry the
bodies off every hour, or the streets would be full of them."
    "Not really. You get used to the rhythm.
You'll learn."
    The taxi stopped, and Gabriella said, "This
was once the crossroads of ancient Alexandria. Al-Horreya is the
former Canopic Way. The name was changed when Nasser nationalized
everything. It was Canopic Way since the heyday of the Ptolemys.
Nebi Daniel was the main north-south road, running from the eastern
harbor to the harbor on Lake Mariout. Along here you would have
seen the colonnades, all white, a forest of pillars and fine
edifices. Littering was probably punishable by death," she added,
only half joking.
    Leda nodded. She had intended to come here
anyway. The guide books mentioned it, and she was hoping to catch a
little psychic rush from the past, but all she saw were the dreary
modern buildings, not very clean and not very well kept up, many of
them with graffiti scrawled in Arabic across their walls, and
everything smelling ripe with garbage and—aha! The infamous stench
of the displaced sewage Gabriella had referred to, now rerouted to
another section of beach. "What it makes me think of is one of
those postapocalypse movies where everything has gone to hell and
gangs roam around, people have chips in their heads, and you sell
body parts for spending money."
    "We are not quite as technologically
advanced as the postapocalyptic people are," Gabriella laughed.
"But I understand what you mean. It does feel grubby. That's partly
the desert's fault, you know. Even though we're on the coast,
everything here gets sandblasted just as it does in the rest of
Egypt. Probably even those ancient white pillars and colonnades
were grubby-looking, too.
    "It is said that the key to enjoying
contemporary Alex as a doorway to the glories of the ancient city
is a good imagination," she added ruefully. "There's very little
left of what it once was. We were so great, you see, so far
surpassed other cities, that our invaders were very jealous of us
by the time they came and set out to destroy everything. Cultural
genocide, I believe it's called now. Then the subsequent invaders
thought the remaining treasures were so lovely, they carted them
away. Which is why the earlier expeditions of divers tried to be
culturally sensitive by replacing everything they pulled out of the
sea, laboriously cleaned and examined, right back into the sea
where its destruction could be completed. But don't worry, Leda. I
promise you, my friend, that you shall see what remains."
    "Yes," Leda said. "And fortunately, I do
have a good imagination."
    "Rue Nokrashi," Gabriella told the driver.
"We had better do our shopping and return home if I am to put