Alexandria

A couple of days up here always means automatic happiness. At times I think it’s nothing more than the fresh air; a mere 4 days in Malta got rid of months of fatigue for me, and Alexandria does it almost every time. There’s nothing better than sea air.

Before accepting the job in Cairo and beginning to research the city, I had no clear sense of its geographical position with respect to the sea. It’s further than I used to think. Probably the closest option is to go to Ain Sukhna on the Red Sea, which may be be 2 hours by car. Alexandria is 2.5 hours by train. As soon as you get off the train, you know immediately that you’re in a different air-space from Cairo.

Cairo was built where it was because it’s more or less the final place on the Nile before the river breaks up into various branches in the Delta. That obviously makes it a strategic location.

The ancient Memphis and Heliopolis were both in the area (Plato is believed to have studied at the latter, which is still the name of a Cairo suburb). The Roman settlement here was called Babylon. Then came Fustat. And Cairo only afterward.

Medieval Cairo is still very much visible, including portions of the city walls. This is the bazaar district of the Khan al-Khalili, which is especially fun at night.

The Medieval area if located several miles east of the Nile, for the very practical reason that the city had to be out of flood range in those days. Now, of course, Egypt has Aswan High Dam since the 1950’s, and as early as the late 1800’s they had come up with flood control measures for Cairo itself (a levee or something), which made the area of the city along the river open to development for the first time.