She dropped the sponge into the water and spoke to the ghosts sitting around her in the bathroom on the
Tatanya Annanovna
.
I have not forgotten you, she thought. My glorious Alexandria. How innocent I was when I landed on your shores! We were a party of naive foreigners, semisophisticated young ladies and gentlemen just out of Smith, Vassar, Harvard,and Yale who had notched New York, Paris, and London under our belts and thought ourselves world travelers.
Young American innocents abroad, cruising on a Greek millionaire’s yacht — the father of one of our friends, who was determined to show us Egypt. A few house parties in Alexandria and a taste of the desert and he guaranteed us our lives would never be the same. Our host was right.
It’s funny, thought Arabella. Even all these years later I can still remember feeling disappointed that none of the group wanted to stay and explore Alexandria further, as I did. Yet, at the same time, I had been relieved to separate from the group and discover the life of the Levant without them.
As Arabella soaked in the steamy, fragrant bath, she remembered that time in Egypt.
The port was filled with the most exotic ships, both large and small. Dhows and feluccas bobbed up and down with caiques and schooners from every part of the world. Sailors in white suits, sailors in galabeahs with great white turbans, sailors in baggy shorts and in worn denim called out to each other in languages as exotic and sweet-sounding as one could possibly imagine.
As soon as she set foot on Egyptian soil, she knew she was in a strange, exotic land. She also sensed that a new world was about to open up for her, and she trembled with excitement as the city covered her like a blanket. She felt disoriented, slightly mad, as a Westerner walking through those ancient streets for the first time, watching the mélange of people — blue-black Sudanese; olive-complexioned Greeks; dark, sultry Egyptians; white-skinned descendants of Europeans enmeshed in a living theater. They wore exotic costumes: galabeahs, caftans, tarbooshes, turbans, and ties. The women in voluminous black dresses down to the dusty streets, black shawls over their heads, not a hair showing, their soft faces with black, liquid eyes highlighted in kohl, were in strong contrast to the most beautiful Egyptian women of wealth, who wore elegant dresses.
There were exotic cafés, taverns, and open-air coffee shops where men smoked their narghiles and drank tiny cups of strong sweet black coffee, or small glasses of thick sweet mint tea, and played backgammon, and where the occasional poet might be seen writing. As contrast, there were elegant, expensive coffee shops where handsome men and women met clandestinely to gossip and flirt and a Greek banker might be seen reading his paper. In between there were street vendors by the hundred.
Delicious Alexandria, your colorful people, the heartbeat of your city, a spectacle so rich I see it all again all these years later, thought Arabella.
The luscious city by the sea, filled with crushing poverty and exquisite beauty, teemed with sensual life, seemed to ferment in the sun. The Americans walked its streets and squares and became familiar with the broken marble fountains no longer gushing water. It was a city filled with the smells of garlic and jasmine, the desert, sea, and sun, always the sun. It was so strange how even the night smelled of the sun. Arabella would watch, mesmerized, as the darkness gave way to a white-hot moon.
Suddenly her senses seemed alive as they never had before. Alexandria made Europe and America, her friends and her life up until then, seem pale and dull, sexless and very far away. As if seduced by the city itself, she gave in to it and felt herself changing, growing away from the people she had come there with and toward something else as she mingled with the Levant and Africa.
Silently, Arabella let some water out of the bath, then turned on the tap to let some more hot
Tatanya Annanovna
.
I have not forgotten you, she thought. My glorious Alexandria. How innocent I was when I landed on your shores! We were a party of naive foreigners, semisophisticated young ladies and gentlemen just out of Smith, Vassar, Harvard,and Yale who had notched New York, Paris, and London under our belts and thought ourselves world travelers.
Young American innocents abroad, cruising on a Greek millionaire’s yacht — the father of one of our friends, who was determined to show us Egypt. A few house parties in Alexandria and a taste of the desert and he guaranteed us our lives would never be the same. Our host was right.
It’s funny, thought Arabella. Even all these years later I can still remember feeling disappointed that none of the group wanted to stay and explore Alexandria further, as I did. Yet, at the same time, I had been relieved to separate from the group and discover the life of the Levant without them.
As Arabella soaked in the steamy, fragrant bath, she remembered that time in Egypt.
The port was filled with the most exotic ships, both large and small. Dhows and feluccas bobbed up and down with caiques and schooners from every part of the world. Sailors in white suits, sailors in galabeahs with great white turbans, sailors in baggy shorts and in worn denim called out to each other in languages as exotic and sweet-sounding as one could possibly imagine.
As soon as she set foot on Egyptian soil, she knew she was in a strange, exotic land. She also sensed that a new world was about to open up for her, and she trembled with excitement as the city covered her like a blanket. She felt disoriented, slightly mad, as a Westerner walking through those ancient streets for the first time, watching the mélange of people — blue-black Sudanese; olive-complexioned Greeks; dark, sultry Egyptians; white-skinned descendants of Europeans enmeshed in a living theater. They wore exotic costumes: galabeahs, caftans, tarbooshes, turbans, and ties. The women in voluminous black dresses down to the dusty streets, black shawls over their heads, not a hair showing, their soft faces with black, liquid eyes highlighted in kohl, were in strong contrast to the most beautiful Egyptian women of wealth, who wore elegant dresses.
There were exotic cafés, taverns, and open-air coffee shops where men smoked their narghiles and drank tiny cups of strong sweet black coffee, or small glasses of thick sweet mint tea, and played backgammon, and where the occasional poet might be seen writing. As contrast, there were elegant, expensive coffee shops where handsome men and women met clandestinely to gossip and flirt and a Greek banker might be seen reading his paper. In between there were street vendors by the hundred.
Delicious Alexandria, your colorful people, the heartbeat of your city, a spectacle so rich I see it all again all these years later, thought Arabella.
The luscious city by the sea, filled with crushing poverty and exquisite beauty, teemed with sensual life, seemed to ferment in the sun. The Americans walked its streets and squares and became familiar with the broken marble fountains no longer gushing water. It was a city filled with the smells of garlic and jasmine, the desert, sea, and sun, always the sun. It was so strange how even the night smelled of the sun. Arabella would watch, mesmerized, as the darkness gave way to a white-hot moon.
Suddenly her senses seemed alive as they never had before. Alexandria made Europe and America, her friends and her life up until then, seem pale and dull, sexless and very far away. As if seduced by the city itself, she gave in to it and felt herself changing, growing away from the people she had come there with and toward something else as she mingled with the Levant and Africa.
Silently, Arabella let some water out of the bath, then turned on the tap to let some more hot
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