Talking Location With Carol Cooper – ALEXANDRIA

1st April 2021

#TalkingLocationWith… Carol Cooper, author of The Girls from Alexandria – Alexandria, Egypt

Chances are you think of Egypt as the Pyramids, the Valley of the Kings, or a Red Sea resort. Or perhaps your impressions owe more to Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile. Well, Alexandria is like none of these. It’s nothing like Cairo either, please note. Alexandrians and Cairenes have as much affection for each other as the Montagues had for the Capulets.

Why did I set my novel in Alexandria? It was impossible to use anywhere else, or any other time period. The mid-twentieth century crystallised with geography to create a cosmopolitan world filled with remarkable characters of different nationalities and races that co-existed in a peaceful patchwork. My story would be nothing without them.

There’s also a personal angle. I grew up there with my mother’s family. Originally from Syria and Lebanon, they settled in Alexandria about 100 years before I was born. My fictional characters Nadia and her sister Simone have the same origins, trod the same streets, and made sandcastles just where I did as a child. Like me, they had to make sense of the Suez affair and the many changes that came in after Nasser took over.

I didn’t do much research to write The Girls from Alexandria. While the plot is fiction, every chapter is steeped in memories that warm me as the summer sun once did. Even decades later, I can taste the corn grilled over charcoal on the seafront, the blood from licking my skinned knee as I escaped a visit to the doctor’s, and sweet homemade lemonade that made everything better.

I hear conversations from back then, too. Most people we knew spoke at least three languages. You were hardly Alexandrian if you didn’t leap constantly from one language to another, mid-sentence or not. It was also normal to talk with your hands and to make sure you could be heard in Peru.

Pompey’s Pillar

As a child, I felt the earthquake of 1958. It caused little damage, but I thought the world was about to end. True, this cosmopolitan world was on the cusp of huge change. Nadia was a child when the book begins. It’s easy to see why, in her later years, she yearns for the old days.

While much of what my characters and I grew up with is no longer there, the same cool breeze blows off the sea and keeps Alex at the perfect temperature all year round (unlike Cairo, of course). All along the Corniche, just as before, little boys sell necklaces made from jasmine flowers threaded onto lengths of cotton. And there are still stray cats and dogs that Nadia’s mother always believed would give you rabies and other dread diseases.

I haven’t been back to Alexandria for years, but YouTube helped me relive some of Nasser’s speeches, and Cambridge’s University Library allowed me to dip into more academic sources. Most enjoyable of all were long conversations with relatives who’d either returned often or never left.

If you go to Alexandria now, make sure you visit the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Completed in 2002, it is both a tribute to the Library of Alexandria that was lost in antiquity, and a spectacular new centre for culture and study.

Marvel at Pompey’s Pillar. It was actually built to honour Roman emperor Diocletian, but it’s said that someone misread the inscription at the base of the pillar.

The catacombs at Kom el Shoqafa are well worth a look.  They consist of tombs in Roman, Greek, and Egyptian styles. Some statues are Egyptian but have Roman clothes and hairdos. I like to think this embodies the city’s cosmopolitan spirit.

Amble along the Corniche and admire the panorama. Come sunset, the sky turns every shade of pink, purple, and red. As the last slice of the sun sinks, you might catch sight of a green flash. That’s when you can make a wish. Be quick. There’s only a brief moment before the sun drops like a rock into the sea and the sky turns dark.

Unfortunately much of the splendour of the city founded by Alexander the Great is no more. Once magnificent period buildings have fallen into disrepair. The population is soaring and new buildings have sprouted everywhere, with little regard for heritage, planning regulations, or common sense. Some of them collapse into rubble just as quickly. Below ground lie layers of history going back two millennia, but it’s a race against the frantic speed of construction to save the past. You may well wonder as you gaze at high-rise blocks whether one or two of them are leaning. They probably are, a little.

Carol Cooper

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