ALEXANDRIA THE THIRD TIME

It's like returning to visit an old friend—rushing towards the sea of masts behind the sea of white towers glittering beside the sea of Mediterranean blue. At the first glimpse of that multitudinous shipping you lose interest in the sea of green delta through which you are rushing; the mud-walled village-islands rising from it lose charm in anticipation of the big city you know so well. You remember it with a sort of yearning for its nobility. For noble it is. There is no nobility in Cairo, except seen from the fringe of the Mokattam Hills as you stand on the Bey's Leap at the Citadel looking down on the busy expanse under its wealth of minarets. Cairo is more interesting, because more truly Oriental; it has the charm of utter strangeness. Alexandria is better built, more stately, less evil-smelling; it's the charm of a well-ordered European city that holds you; and there is always the loveliness of that Mediterranean outlook from the clean, generously-broad esplanade. The sea about Cairo is true desert-sand, unending, which is not lovely, except at the dawn and sundown, when the colour leaps up about the far horizon.

For three hours, since leaving Cairo, you have been scouring the green plain in a train of the Egyptian State railways, which bears comparison well with most other rolling-stock that a limited knowledge of the travelling world has given you. The Delta is unnaturally rich and almost unnaturally green. Many centuries of Old Nile depositing of fat mud have seemed to concentrate within that Nile Valley all the richness that is in the soil of Egypt. Nor is it a green that is ultra-rich by contrast with a desert background, for as far as you see either way there is no sand; you're in the heart of the crops. There's a monotony of level cultivation which tires you in the end, however rich; a monotony broken only by a monotonous succession of out-cropping palm-groves, sleeping canal, white creeping sail, mud-walled village, and dilapidated mosque. You tire of the regularity of recurrence. There is a hankering after the quiet stir and variety of the city of Alexandria quite as strong upon you as Johnson's fervent passion for the atmosphere of London.

There is a simple crudity in the man who persists in being an Englishman to the backbone in the land of Egypt. The Australian enters much more aptly into the spirit of the country—worms his way into the intricacies of the bazaars and markets, and talks much with the Alexandrian denizens, if only in pantomime. He "does as they do" far more consistently than the restrained Tommy—even to the extent of consuming their curious dishes, riding on their beasts and in their vehicles, tasting their drinks and smoking their pipes. The Englishman tends to call always for English beer and for roast beef, and sticks tenaciously to his briar.

Alexandria has changed, too, at the quays. The transports are no longer lading noisily, nor, when they are lading, taking in ammunition. Mostly they are lying out quietly in the harbour, waiting. In March of last year the harbour was alive with barges bearing fodder and supplies and ammunition, and with motor-launches rushing to and fro carrying officers of the General Staff. Now an occasional Arab dhow drifts lazily, bearing nothing in particular, and the quay-sides are noisy only with a sort of civilian bustle.

And the ubiquitous nursing-sister was not ubiquitous last year; she was rarely to be seen in the streets; then she was like the motor-car twenty years ago: you turned round and looked until her gharry was swallowed in the traffic. Now she is, in twos and threes, in the cafÉs, the Oriental shops, the car, the post office, the mosque; on the esplanade, on the outlying pleasure-roads of Ramleh, the golf-links, the race-course; the Rue Cherif Pacha teems with her, shopping or merely doing the afternoon promenade. She is sprinkled among the tea-parties at Groppi's; her striking red and grey adds colour to the Square of Mahomet Ali, the Rue Ramleh, and the Rue Rosette.

Do not infer, gentle reader, that there is nothing to be done in hospital. There is; but less. Gallipoli wounds either are healed or sent to Australia to heal in the fine St. Kilda air. It's mostly sick in hospital now, and sick requiring merely routine attention. And, beside, there are more hospitals than a year ago. Since the Turkish fight began they have been increasing; and now it's over, the Lemnian hospitals of the advanced base have sailed back, and, in cases where they are not yet re-established, their Sisters are running about the capital unchained, revelling in a well-earned respite, with the Ægean roses blowing in their cheeks.

Of hospitals there is no end, in the airy suburbs. The splendid houses of rich Beys fly the Red Cross at unexpected stages of the ride to Ramleh. An amazing number of private houses are in use thus. The convalescents wander over the lawns and through the shrubberies and perch on the balconies. There is evidence of the havoc played by Turkish weapons and Turkish sickness on all hands. The impression is of Alexandria's having been hard put to it to find hospital accommodation.

In these respects Alexandria has changed, but not in itself. It has the same well-bred appearance as a city. There is the same absorption of its regular population in business or in pleasure. The Bourse, the hub of the city, is as animated as ever with bearded, gesticulating French, Italian and Greek financiers taking their coffee on its verandah looking down the Square. The Rue Cherif Pacha is as close-packed as before with the carriages of rich French dowagers and pretty French aristocrats. They have their coachmen in livery, and they know how to dress irresistibly. There are not many finer human sights in this world than is made by a young French mother, gowned and toileted with an art that conceals art, reclining in the barouche with her daughters in the Alexandrian winter afternoon sunshine. The Melbourne "Block" brags of its reputation for beauty, but here is a fine essence of beauty such as Paris at her best would own, which Paris, one suspects, actually does flaunt in the summer. The best beauty of Paris, Milan, and Athens, winters here. So does much of England. At present it is chiefly the wives of officers; and they are no mean stock.

That Place Mahomet Ali is endlessly interesting and endlessly picturesque. The gamut of the city's life is run-over here any afternoon. It's a stately Square: stately in the buildings that surround it—Stein's and the majestic Bourse and St. Mark's and the best hotels. There are the rows of well-kept gharries and well-groomed horses—kept as well as most private carriages. The two well-planted islands stand green and quiet in the midst of the gentle roar and moving colour, and the fine equestrian statue of Mahomet Ali looks with dignity down upon it all. It's perhaps the most cosmopolitan crowd in the world that moves about the Square. The typically Arab quarter is segregated—lies in a labyrinth of bazaars in a well-defined area off the Square. Cairo is flooded with the life and business of the Arab in every quarter. Cairo, too, is compassed about with so much of Ancient Egyptian relics as to distract you from the occupation of first importance: looking upon the living. They are of more import than the dead. In Alexandria the ancient monuments are few, but those few are well preserved and mostly confined within the walls of the Classical Museum. You may watch the life of Alexandria undistracted by any subconscious urging to be out stooping and panting through the Great Pyramid for the fifth time (that nothing be lost), or wandering among the silent Tombs of the Caliphs.

A right good sight in Alexandria is the broad, mansion-skirted promenade of the Rue Rosette on a Sunday morning. The French "quality" of the city seems to reside there, and the best of it all is to watch the dainty little French girls going to Mass in the pleasant sunshine. They promenade that street in groups for two or three hours until all are retired into the residences for the mid-day meal. There is a delicacy of beauty in these little girls that affects one strangely after eight months from the haunt of woman and child.

The Rue Rosette in the morning, or the Quai Promenade Abbas II., fronting the lovely Crescent of Port Est: this is the place to laze away a morning, hanging over the broad stone wall on the water's edge, or lounging in the open cafÉs behind the smooth road. There is that generous expanse of glittering sea heaving gently between the horns of the bay. The Fort Kait Bey lies brown on the western lip and Fort Sel Sileh on the east, half embracing the blue. A rich mellow colour they have, and a richer blue it is for that. And the white piles of Alexandria thrust up all about the bay's brink, fringing the clear basin with a sort of stately splendour. It's fine, too, the comfortable laziness of the red-tarbushed fishermen on the wall, smoking and fooling away the morning in the soft landbreeze blowing sweet off the city. The only movement is with the Arab boys racing along the parapet or the quiet motion of the fishing-smacks lying off. An old Russian aristocrat is taking the air in a gharry; the nursemaids are out with the babes; the well-dressed unemployed Egyptians (they throng the city) are sipping their morning coffee in the glass-walled cafÉs. Alexandria often gives the impression—except in the Square—that there are no livings to be made. There is a luxurious spirit of idleness abroad in the place, which appears on the balconies of the houses, in the cafÉs, in the carriages of the suburbs. The idle rich—who are largely not the vulgar rich—are here, whole battalions of them. There is nothing like the studied idleness of Edinburgh Town or of Naples—nor of Cairo. There are plutocrats who know how to dress and how to take their ease without boredom, and to pursue pleasure without apparent ennui. All these things (you feel) have they observed from their youth up; they practise none of them crudely. They are well schooled in a placid and luxurious enjoyment of life.

The Alexandrian night begins about 9.30. It is for that hour the opera overture is timed; then cafÉs and music-halls begin to be thronged. At one in the morning it is at its height. The opera may conclude at two; and after that is the supper, and after that the drive. Far the best way to see it all is to sit up in the diggings of your friend overlooking the brilliant Rue Ramleh from twelve on toward the dawn. There are sacred pipes and Alexandrian fruits, and other things; they include the conversation of the man who has lived in Alexandria a year and looked about him not casually, and who realises the import of all he sees in the pulsing street below.

This is the fine side of Alexandrian night life. There is the sordid aspect, not good—i.e., pleasant—to look on nor to relate. Alexandria cannot compare with Cairo in lasciviousness. Perhaps no place on earth can, nor any under earth. For crude carnality you are to be commended to the Wazzia of Cairo; there the flesh-pots of Egypt are seething and steaming. Apart from the temperately-conducted biological friendships of the leisured French and Russians and Italians, the carnal traffic of Alexandria is limited very closely. It does not clog the alleys, as in Cairo, on every hand. Indeed, it is rather the pot-house and the tavern, where the sole business of the waitresses is to bring traffic in beer, that is the scourge of Alexandria. Their blandishments mostly are content with coquettish inducements to "fill 'em up again"; to achieve that they will perch on the knees of the soldiers and stroke their visages in a fashion not just maidenly, but effective in the eyes of the beer-boss. These taverns are at close intervals in all the poorer streets. There is always a piano, at least, and an employed performer; sometimes there is an embryonic orchestra—harp and fiddle—whose rÉpertoire is Tipperary and another—or perhaps two others. There is a continuous fierce roaring, which subsides only when a Tommy rises to sing. The pianist ramps out an improvised accompaniment. No pianist has ever been known to decline to make an attempt. Everybody joins in the chorus. By the time the chorus of the fifth stanza is under way, there is a rare drunken hullabaloo, and spilt beer and broken glasses. Ogling girls and flushed, embracing Tommies, yells for more beer, and drunken miscalculations of the score and feebly thundering band—all are checked with a parade-ground suddenness when the red-caps appear with their roars of Nine o'clock! And the pot-house, so to speak, closes with a slam.

The picquets are irresistibly strong and numerous. They parade in squads in half-sections, each under an officer. The Provost-Marshal, with a scrape o' the pen, has placed out of bounds most of the danger-zones which a year ago were open territory to the soldier.

The Arab quarters are at their best at midnight. They have their music-halls, blatant and raucous and evil-smelling. The star performers are usually confined to one bloated, painted woman who screams an Arab rhythm at intervals under the influence of hasheesh, to the accompaniment of an orchestra of pipes and drums whose performers are elated by the same familiar spirit. Arab music is strident to a degree that sears the nerves. No drunkenness in the audience ever drowns that. It soars like a siren above the frantic mirth of the drinkers. Applause breaks forth at unprovoked intervals. The lady is never perturbed. She is reinforced occasionally by the brazen-throated orchestra, which is chorus too. The din is unimaginable when they are working in concert. The Arab sense of rhythm is unerring. Their rhythms are irregular and without consecutiveness in their habits, to the European ear that is not closely attentive; drawn out, as it were, into irregular strands—totally unsystematised, it seems—with the intervals at cross-purposes. They despise the Western mathematical rhythmical "groups" and the regular Western recurrence of stresses and intervals. English rhythm is as much unlike it as the characters of a London morning sheet differ from the gracefully irregular type of the native Egyptian press; the difference is as striking as between the tortuous Eastern mind and the British downrightness; as between an English tweed suit and the Arab flowing robe. Yet in this rhythmical maze no member of the orchestral chorus ever loses his way. There is perfect agreement in the disclosing of the scheme, which, after half an hour's turbulent listening, begins to show its shape through the rhythmical murk. And you know before you leave that though English music may make a sweeter sound than this, the Arab mastery of rhythm is mastery indeed. And that knowledge is, of course, deepened if you'll stop any day and listen to a group of Arab workmen chanting at their job.

So long as you withstand the glad-eye of the serpent of Old Nile (who descends now and then from the boards and collects baksheesh piastres) and keep to coffee, you will find these Egyptian music-halls absorbing enough. There are never women in the audience. The Egyptian woman—at any rate in the lower and middle classes—is never a "theatre-goer," as far as can be judged. She earns most of the living. All the feloose would seem to go into her lord's mighty hand, which does the spending—mostly on himself. Night after night he comes there in his red tarbush and sees the evening out with liquor and vociferous talk. Somewhere in the small-hours a gharry comes for the lady, and the hall noisily gets emptied. And as you climb up to your room in the hotel opposite, you can hear the dispersing throng in argument and criticism far along the emptying street. Standing at your balcony door, it merges imperceptibly into the subdued murmur of the city, broken by a belated wailing, street-cry.

In the morning you wake at some hour later than rÉveille, and gloat for a time that is indefinite over the luxury of a spring-mattress and of a day's time-table that is of your own framing—that shall be when you summon up energy sufficient to begin upon it. The city wakens almost as late as you. By the time you have bathed and dressed at exaggerated ease and meandered round to the Italian restaurant it is ten o'clock. Exotic Italian dishes are good for all their strangeness.... Across the peopling Square you get a car to Pompey's Pillar, towering above the Arab cemetery. The green mound bearing that granite column is an oasis in the desert of squalor about it. From the crest of the hillock you see Lake Mareotis spread out like a cloud in the morning mist—those shores now waste that grew the wine beloved of Horace.

The old municipal guide totters up the slope and offers you below, through the Catacombs. You have seen the other Catacombs, beside the Lake, which alone are really worth seeing. He shows you the Roman mortuary-chapel in sandstone at the entrance to the galleries, lights up his candle-lamp, and you traipse after him through the labyrinth. The niches in the wall are robbed of their mummies; all epitaphs are long since gone—assuming there ever were any; there is hardly anything to be seen that is even symbolic. The old fellow mutters continually in a lingo quite unintelligible, except in short and isolated fragments. The linguistic accomplishments of many of the official attendants on the ancient monuments of Egypt are deplorably shallow. You notice it far more at places that are of far more historical importance than the Catacombs. The tombs of the Sacred Bulls at Sakkhara afford the most striking instance. A relic so bound up with the ancient religion as is the Serapoeum ought to be in charge of an attendant who not only can speak English fluently, but is beside alive to the import of his subject. The old dotard at the Serapoeum has no further English (obviously) than: Sacra' Bool! Sacra' Bool! and Bakshish and T'ank you, Sair!

The Catacombs par excellence, lie along the Rue Bab-el-Melouk south of Pompey's Pillar; but since we've been there before rather more often than once, they must be passed over.

And so must a great deal else.

The Greek and Roman Museum hard by the Rue Rosette is hard to find, retiring into a side-street with a true classical unobtrusiveness. It is less famed than the Egyptian Museum at Cairo, but more interesting. Most people have at least a nodding acquaintance with the history of the classical occupation of Egypt—and here are the relics of it; whereas Egyptian history is not popularly read, even in a cursory fashion. In any case, for the inveterate Egyptologist there is a small mummified Egyptian section. The Cleopatra relics are well preserved, and especially a magnificent bust of the Siren. Mural and portal decoration of Roman and Greek houses are there in fine fragments, and there is a legion of vases and other ornaments from the living-rooms. Probably the most significant specimens, historically, are the coins; of them there is an enormously large collection. And the priceless papyri lie near at hand. Of sepulchral emblems there are a great many, but none beautiful except the laurel-crowned cinerary urns.

The museum is small but highly charged with meaning. There is a courtyard attached for the preparation (and restoration) of specimens, and it has some Roman monuments and gateways too huge for the interior.

The faithful Soudanese are the janitors and the conductors. Here, again, they are ignorant and English-less, and you sigh for a well-informed, well-paid, and intelligible informant. Only within the last fifteen months has a catalogue been compiled; and that is in French—though in that there is hardly any legitimate ground for complaint.

Most Australians at home will have heard of the Nouzha Gardens lying along the Canal Mahmoudieh: the gardens in whose cafÉ their men have sat listening to the band and drinking afternoon beer and watching the youngsters romp—and even joining in the sport; and finding a welcome, too. But few Australians will know of the Jardin Antoniadis, beyond Nouzha, and only half as large; but finer, which is a bold saying. It's the garden of a rich Greek Bey who has attained almost the splendour of the Hanging Gardens. He employs sixty men. In theory, you cannot enter without a pass—to be obtained, Heaven knows where; perhaps "at the warehouse." But five piastres in the palm of the trusty sa'eda at the gate passes you through, and you wander amazed for a couple of hours amongst those flowers and lawns, fountains and nymphs, ghouls and fauns and satyrs and dryads, and centre about the master's palace buried in the heart of the garden. It is gardening on a scale of magnificence and ingenuity—so it is said. Any public map of Alexandria will show the Jardin Antoniadis in bold letters. The afternoon we paid a visit we were puzzled to know the motive which could have obliged a dozen stalwart gardeners to stand at intervals of a dozen yards beating tins and howling at the sky. When questioned, they pointed alternately at the heavens and the freshly planted lawn, and we thought they must be calling primevally upon the water-gods for rain. But on consideration the unromantic conclusion prevailed: merely scaring birds or locusts from the springing grass.

The fine drive is from Nouzha round the shore of Lake Mareotis and back to the Square by way of Ramleh—the Toorak of Alexandria. You are defied to conceive a suburb better bred. To drive through it in a gharry is to put yourself in the dress-circle.

If you are back in time—that is, by 6.30—you may perhaps go to the weekly organ-recital at St. Mark's. Nothing will bring Home before you more vividly than the tones of a pipe-organ. But you must close your eyes, for almost everything else in the church tears you back to war. There's more khaki than tweed in the pews, and most of the women present are Sisters from the hospitals. And the organist is a private who plays at an Edinburgh church when peace is on, and the soloist (and well he can sing) is an A.M.C. Sergeant. The "Gyppo" hired servant is even here—as he is everywhere—creeping up and down the aisle in his incongruous colours: none the less incongruous for his brushing against the Cambridge graduate's gown of the Assistant-Chaplain, distributing programmes. Music of Handel and Bach sends you aching back to your hotel. That night you do not want to go into the Arab quarter.