“Find yourself a sponsor” was the captain’s prudent advice. He embraced Uri and went off on his own business toward the docks.
Uri found himself at the end of a long line supervised by a group of listlessly sweating soldiers, among callous-handed, shabbily dressed Egyptian and Greek workers who had returned to pick up permits — not, as became clear from their conversations, for the first time. Elderly people and children jostled and yelled (the young children howling), and the sun was scorching and uncomfortable. The Egyptians also spoke Greek, though at times they would use incomprehensible words; quite possibly they had come from nearby villages in search of work as dockers. They looked askance at Uri, since he was on his own. A few poor Jews from Palestine, just as shabbily dressed, spoke Aramaic, but Uri did not enter into conversation with them.
It took a long time for Uri to get to an official, by which time he was hungry and thirsty.
The official in the alcove before which applicants had to pass mopped his perspiring, bald pate.
“We’re done for this morning,” announced the official. “I’m off for lunch.”
“No you are not!” exclaimed Uri, slapping down a drachma on the counter.
“Well, all right,” said the official, shaking his head in disgruntlement and breathing heavily. “Why are there so many of you today?”
Once Gaius Theodorus had declared himself to be a Roman citizen, he issued a small piece of papyrus granting a five-day temporary residence permit; his name was written in Greek lettering in the empty space.
“Come back in five days,” the official said in friendly fashion.
“And what if it’s not ready then?”
“There are too many of you,” said the official. “That’s not our fault.”
Uri stood on the shore. There was a great coming and going; people of many races and nationalities were prowling around, bustling about, or strolling over the paving of marble mosaics in the Roman style. There was no way of telling who among them might be Greek, Jewish, Macedonian, Egyptian, or whatever: Jewish-looking faces passed by, though they wore no beards; there were also blond, bearded, curly-haired Greeks, some in richly ornamented tunics, others in nondescript garb, a few even in white, though they did not look like priests. A few extremely attractive brown-skinned women, maybe Indian, accosted him with invitations to lunch with them, but Uri shook his head to decline: he did not feel free to accept, though he had a sense that he would soon lose his virginity, Alexandria being a superb place for that purpose, as for every other — that he did not just feel but knew for sure.
Here even middling buildings were taller than the tallest tenement blocks in Rome, or even the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline, and they were built close next together; plots of land must be expensive. Uri comprehended right away the city’s matchless planning: the Ptolemies had established parallel streets, so the city consisted of a grid, the whole being planned out in advance but so generously that the huge jumble of buildings of various styles from various ages made the otherwise rigid network lively, rich, and homely. Uri was surprised that he did not feel that the gigantic buildings were about to topple over him and crush him, but he soon worked it out as he strolled eastward along the harbor: it was because of the sheer multitude of people teeming at the foot of the buildings. A person does not look up if he can behold all of this colorful, captivating life at eye level. Taverns, guesthouses, state edifices and tenements — the chaotic stuff of life. Rome would never be like this.
Uri thought of Matthew, who wanted to erect a synagogue in Ostia, on the shoreline, and who had already visited Alexandria and had talked about it. His words, of course, were inadequate to give one the real flavor of the place, from which Uri inferred that Matthew was counting on Ostia becoming Rome’s main port, a city that might one day grow into a miniature Alexandria. Not a bad gamble at all to build on the seashore in Ostia: land prices would be boosted many times over. Alexandria’s only major drawback was the dense system of canals that threaded through it: the waters stank, the skiffs plying them moved through what was little more than sewage water.
He was headed for the Delta district, the city’s Jewish quarter; he needed to find the Basilica, where he was supposed to hand over to a responsible individual a calculation regarding the timing of Rosh Hashanah. While still in Jerusalem he had asked how he would be able to find the place, and they had just smiled: there was no chance of missing the palatial building with its double colonnade.
He made his way eastward along the seashore in the direction of the chain of hills which shut in the Great Harbor on the east, and beyond which lay the buildings of the royal palace; the Delta quarter was over that way, south of the palace, he was told by those he asked along the way. He was now confident in addressing anybody, no longer ashamed if there was something he did not know. Tiny shrines, palaces surrounded by enormous peristyles, villas, and apartment blocks succeeded one another, and he noticed that there were more stone houses, and fewer of brick (let alone gimcrack timber structures), than in Rome. This was a city that would never crumble away, nor would it ever burn down.
It was early afternoon, yet even so the sunshine couldn’t manage to make its way to pavement level, whether by the east-west or north-south streets: so tall were most of the buildings that a comfortable shade prevailed, and Uri saw only a blinding whiteness if he looked up toward the tops of the marble-clad edifices.
From the summit of a promontory — no doubt the famed Lochias — he was able to look down upon the Royal Harbor of Cape Lochias, kept segregated from the Great Harbor by a sparkling stone causeway. Two small, tranquilly rocking biremes were anchored in it, one most likely the prefect’s, the other belonging to his bodyguard, should they ever need to flee. But then there was no reason for anyone to flee. Who, he wondered idly, was the prefect of Alexandria and Egypt? Not that it made a lot of difference. Someone of equestrian rank, that he knew for sure; Augustus himself, when he defeated Egypt, had decreed that no senator would be allowed to set foot in Alexandria or Egypt, and so it had been ever since.
He had grown peckish so he decided to take a seat in a hostelry; it was a luxury he could afford since — for the first time in his life — he still had enough money left over. I’m a dignified traveler, he told himself, and would have smiled had there not already been a smile on his face from the moment that he’d glimpsed the city’s grandiose outline from aboard the ship through that crystal.
He stepped through the low entrance, which was separated from the street not by a door but a thin curtain, and sat down at a table. It was a hostelry comparable with a classy Roman tavern, on a whitewashed wall was a menu, written in Greek, of the all the day’s dishes, along with their prices. Uri converted from Egyptian drachmas to Syrian drachmas and discovered that the place was very cheap. A plump woman emerged from the back to ask what the guest would like to eat, and Uri requested fish. The woman then started to enumerate all the different sorts of fish they had, until Uri interrupted her: he had no idea about all of these varieties, but did they have any barbel? Naturally. How much is that? Barbel is not exactly cheap, to be frank: five drachmas for half a cubit, poached or fried in oil, served up with all kinds of sauces. Uri thought he had heard wrongly, but the woman repeated it.