business center, the plastic plants, the obvious kitsch of an international luxury hotel, whereas they were looking for the red leather from before the war, the smoke of cigars, the Greeks the Italians and the Jews of Alexandria, the war and Nasser little by little sent them into exile, to the North, today Alexandria is an immense Egyptian city more populous than Paris, sanctimonious and poor, but it takes pride in a beautiful library, built by a government in love with pharaonic projects, one of the emptiest libraries on the planet, symbol of the regime of Mubarak the opinionated, a beautiful grey shell in Aswan marble — nothing returns from what has been destroyed, nothing is reborn, neither dead men, nor burned libraries, nor submerged lighthouses, nor extinct species, despite the museums commemorations statues books speeches good will, of things that have gone only a vague memory remains, a shadow gliding over sorrowful Alexandria a phantom shivering, and that’s all the better no doubt, all the better, you have to know how to forget, let men animals things leave, with Marianne I had met a well-born British couple who were exploring the city in a horse-drawn carriage, they didn’t want to take a taxi, they were willing to pay hundreds of maravedis to sit enthroned behind a team of scrawny horses driven by a turbaned Egyptian, the Englishwoman was wearing cream-colored jodhpurs and a close-fitting jacket, the man was in a safari jacket with a wide-brimmed hat model ANZAC 1915, and the only touch of color in this riot of earth-tones was their faces roasted by the Egyptian sun, two ripe tomatoes under old-fashioned hats, he was reading the guide to Alexandria written by E.M. Forster in 1920 and she Death on the Nile, they were a little over twenty and very much in love, of course they were staying at the Cecil, we had discovered these specimens in a historic patisserie near the Grand Place, and it was like finding two pteranodons at the traffic circle on the Champs-Elysées or two dolphins from the Yangtze in the Seine, Marianne was delighted to talk with them, although she was a tiny bit jealous of leather luggage and luxury hotels, their English was very refined, very elegant, accompanied by the bobbing of a prominent Adam’s apple, they were at their ease sunk into armchairs in the immense patisserie, sipping teabag tea, they were well-informed cultivated knew Cavafy by heart and ancient Greek, real characters, I wasn’t especially jealous, the ruddy British girl was bony her breasts flat nothing to compare to Marianne’s white blouse whose buttons looked as if they were about to pop from the pressure, Marianne whole and spontaneous was leagues apart from the affected Englishwoman, the Egyptians seemed not to notice anything abnormal, they were happy with the tips and other bakshish the young couple showered them with, in the greatest colonial tradition — his name was James and he was Scottish, a fan of rugby and Greek statuary, they offered to take us on an excursion in their carriage, to Montazah, to visit the palace and gardens, I wanted to say we’ll see if ridicule does any harm, but I abstained, after all it was amusing and the next morning we were ready, Marianne was wearing her “country” outfit, a red gingham blouse and a little matching scarf, we piled into the coupé despite the cries of the turbaned postilion, who wanted us to take two vehicles, James ended up convincing him to accept the overload for our weight in pounds sterling, and we were off, in the midst of taxis and crowded buses and exhaust in traffic jams car horns tram bells the mare’s feet struck hard on the asphalt at a jogging pace, we were shaken by the tired springs our eardrums pierced by the constant scrape of the badly greased axles and the carriage-driver’s shouts who whipped his palfrey like a madman, it was a wonder to watch dung escape from the animal’s ass and pile up on the pavement at every stop, we weren’t about to win the gold sulky, despite the coachman’s aggressiveness toward his courser, to reach Montazah we had to travel six or seven miles, the horse had trouble trotting, which got her a double ration of the whip, our British friends sat enthroned, straight as I’s in the jolts, taking in the landscape of the sea plain, proud and happy, to the point where I wondered if we were seeing the same thing, the distress of the old nag sweating under the charioteer’s meanness the poverty of Egypt the hell of the traffic the discomfort of the jiggling cart the whiffs of diesel oil from the buses the begging children black with filth who ran after us and whom the driver chased away like flies lashing them with his knout, maybe our hosts had visions of Cleopatra, of Durrell, of Forster, of Cavafy, blinded by the lighthouse of Alexandria, Marianne wasn’t much at ease either, the cars passed us in a fury honking their horns, forty-five minutes later we were in Montazah, why did the British have to love their barouche, I was exhausted my buttocks beaten to a pulp almost as much as the heroic nag’s, the palace in question was in the midst of magnificent gardens planted with mangos pepper plants bougainvillea oleanders, a castle that looked as if it had been built from red-and-white Legos an exceeding strange building, Austro-Ottoman-kitsch for Farouk forced to abdicate by the Free Officers, by General Naguib and Nasser the Alexandrian with the thick eyebrows, finished with princes and princesses of sumptuous palaces, make way for martial themes and shouted speeches of the revolution underway in the tremolos and sighs of Umm Kulthum the chubby-cheeked, since there wasn’t much to see aside from the gardens we went to drink mango juice at the terrace of a hotel that the tourist board had had the good taste to place by the water like a black chancre with twenty floors, our phlegmatic friends had another visit to suggest, this one more original, it involved going to see the childhood home of Rudolf Hess the aviator friend of Hitler and vice-Führer of the Reich, Alexandria had produced everything, poets warriors spies singers high-ranking Nazis, for James it was an almost familial visit, Hess fell into my uncle’s garden, he said, in May 1941 Rudolf Hess at the controls of a Messerschmitt modified for the purpose flies to Scotland under the nose of the English coastal defenses, and, short of gas, parachutes down to land on the property of a Scottish nobleman dumbfounded by the unexpected appearance of Hitler’s dauphin in his hydrangea, we still don’t know why, probably to try to negotiate peace with Great Britain before the invasion of the USSR, without the Führer’s orders perhaps, Churchill immediately had him locked up in the Tower of London, then sentenced to life in prison in 1946 at Nuremberg the deranged aviator went to keep company with Speer the builder of Teutonic temples in Spandau Prison, mad amnesic hypochondriac depressive his agony would last until 1987, in sadness and solitude, the last inmate of a jail demolished after his death, in his last years Rudolf was haunted by the memory of the bay of Alexandria, all day long he sketched Greek porticos and views of the vanished lighthouse, obsessed with the city he had left eighty years earlier, the Mediterranean light last flame of his empty eyes, unable to remember his trial in Germany but speaking of his Italian governess with tenderness, of his garden, his school, the girls in white dresses, the receptions at the Place des Consuls, his swimming lessons at the Chatby baths, his father’s splendid villa in the Santo Stefano neighborhood, a stone’s throw from the sea, fourteen years of childhood in Alexandria and over forty years of prison, what to think about, what to remember, did he think of Antony and Cleopatra when he took his life at the venerable age of ninety-three, one hot August day Hess managed to isolate himself in a garden shed in the Spandau bastion with five feet of stolen electric cable that he twists around his neck, he squeezes hard with the help of a window bolt, more ingenious than Leon Saltiel, more determined too, Hess asphyxiates himself to escape overlong life, the interminable fate of the recluse, Hess warrior with no battles, with no glory aside from an air raid and an exceptional longevity, having left Alexandria in 1910 the man of no interest the war criminal with no war dies in the ambulance where they try hard to revive him, last great living Nazi last representative of an extinct species, James the eccentric Scot had reason to be disappointed, at the spot of the Hess family villa by the sea there was a grey building similar to hundreds of others in front of the Corniche, might as well say in front of the highway, no more luxuriant garden, no more sumptuous residence, the trace of Hess’s fate had been erased without a qualm by modern Egypt, so we got back into the jolting carriage in the midst of the yellow taxis and warning signals to get back to the center of town, the horse had begun to limp and stubbornly refused to trot, it kept to a walking pace and unleashed the fury of the coachman who shouted, standing up to whip the obstinate horse with all his strength, furiously, the leather lash struck hard and scattered flies and drops of sweat, the old nag shook its neck, neighed, it looked ready for the knacker’s yard, its driver was in the process of finishing it off, the animal stumbled from time to time on the asphalt, in the carriage the ambiance was nothing to write home about, the Brits no longer looked at the gleaming sea but at the horse on its last legs receiving the turbaned charioteer’s fury, Marianne ground her teeth and let out a little yelp every time the whip came violently down on the animal, four young proper Europeans were responsible for the torture of a nag covered with foam, its nostrils dilating, but no one got out, the carriage ended up bringing us back to the front of the Cecil, James resettled his hat straight on his head and paid the agreed-on price to the coachman who demanded extra for his poor Rosinante, and the Scotsman told him literally to fuck off, if I understood right, with great pleasure — he was close to taking the whip himself and administering a neocolonial thrashing to the Egyptian, the British are sensitive when it comes to horses, he however was responsible for the suffering of the little mare, we separated as good friends promising to see each other again, every time I returned to Alexandria I thought of the anachronistic couple, of Rudolf Hess and the carriage, lunching with my Egyptian generals lovers of whisky great hunters of terrorists, they proudly showed me the construction site for the new library, let’s hope it experiences a fate different from its burned-down ancestor, a respite in time before ending up drowned by the rising water of the Mediterranean, after the polar ice melts, its beautiful ash-colored granite jetty transformed into a smooth pleasant beach for the laughing seals, who will play there sliding on their bellies trumpeting with delight