Alexandria, Then Everywhere Else

The flight from Sri Lanka to Egypt carried me across the Arabian Sea, over the edge of Oman, and down the spine of the Red Sea. A few days layover in Dubai broke the journey — glass towers and air conditioning so cold it felt like winter in July. Then the second leg. Then Alexandria.

I did not know what to expect from Egypt. The little I knew came from movies and the Bible. Moses parting the sea. Cleopatra's asp. The opening scene of Lawrence of Arabia. That was the extent of my education. Thirty-eight years old, thirty countries behind me, and I was still learning geography from Hollywood.

The plane descended through a haze of dust and sea salt. The Mediterranean spread out to the north, gray-blue and ancient. Below it, Alexandria: a sprawl of white buildings, minarets, and crumbling colonial facades. Two thousand years of history compressed into a city that looked like it had been bombed and rebuilt and bombed again.

After landing and getting cash from the ATM, I split a taxi with a young guy I met on the flight. He was heading the same way — into the city center, toward the port. We negotiated the fare in broken English and hand gestures. Egyptian pounds changed hands. The driver lit a cigarette and pulled into traffic.

The forty-five minute ride was a lesson in controlled chaos. Alexandria's streets operate on a logic that cannot be explained, only survived. Lanes are suggestions. Horns are punctuation. Pedestrians move like water around obstacles. Our driver wove between trucks and donkey carts and Mercedes sedans with the casual indifference of a man who had cheated death so many times he no longer feared it.

We were dropped off next to the port. The young man from the flight pointed toward a falafel stand. We ate quickly — fried balls of ground chickpeas wrapped in flatbread, tahini dripping down our fingers — and parted ways. I never learned his name. That is how travel works. Brief alliances. Shared meals. Then dissolution.

The hostel I booked was a simple multi-story building. More hotel than hostel, but at five dollars a night, I was not complaining. My room was very pink — walls, ceiling, even the sheets. A queen bed dominated the space. A small television sat on a rickety desk. The bathroom was across the hall, shared with whoever else happened to be staying on that floor. The window faced an alley where cats fought over fish bones and a man sold tea from a cart.

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What I Actually Did

I went inside the Alexandria Library and looked around at all the old print machinery. Then I met a group of hoodlums outside, took a few pictures, and headed to the mirror place. Went all over it, fucked around, and then ate two big ass shawarmas with lamb and lots of salsa from a street stand for almost nothing.

Then I took a train to Cairo, where I stayed in a hostel with an elevator that looked like it was about to fall. Met a hot short Chinese chick, explored the pyramids, climbed to the top, saw the Sphinx. Then hit the Mount Sinai peninsula — didn't meet God. Fucked a few people. Had a good time.

Went to Israel, crossed at Eilat, slept in a construction building in Jerusalem because it was expensive as fuck. Went to Tel Aviv for a week. Flew to Budapest — best city life, fuck. Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey. Robbed a few people in Turkey. Crossed to Greece. Montenegro, Mostar (fuck), Slovenia, Croatia, Slovenia again, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Morocco. Casablanca — got robbed for $5k worth of a shitload of currency.

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The Deeper Part (Alexandria)

Alexandria is not Cairo. Cairo is chaos compressed into a scream. Alexandria is chaos diffused across water. The Mediterranean softens everything. The sea breeze carries salt and the memory of empires. This was the city of Alexander the Great, founded in 331 BCE. The city of Cleopatra. The city of the Library — the greatest repository of knowledge in the ancient world. The Library is gone now. Burned. Destroyed. What remains is fragments. That is Alexandria's lesson: everything ends. But some things leave marks.

Over the next few days, I explored the massive fort called the Citadel of Qaitbay. It sits on the eastern point of Pharos Island, on the very site where the Lighthouse of Alexandria once stood. That lighthouse — the Pharos — was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It stood for over 1,500 years, guiding ships into the harbor with a fire at its peak and a mirror that could supposedly reflect sunlight a hundred miles. Earthquakes destroyed it. What remained was scavenged for building materials. Now the Citadel stands in its place, built from some of the same stones.

The Citadel is an adventurous site to behold. Massive carved stone blocks rise from the foundation like a fortress dreamed by a giant. The walls are thick enough to stop cannon fire — which was the point. Qaitbay built it in the 15th century to defend against the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans never took it. The British bombed it in 1882. It still stands. That is the second lesson of Alexandria: survive long enough, and everything becomes a monument to survival.

The view from the top displays the coast of Alexandria as if it were a pastel painting. The yellow of the massive fort contrasts against the blues of the Mediterranean Sea. The coastline below spreads out in a ribbon of colorful cars and buildings — white and blue and faded ochre. Fishing boats putter along the harbor. Cargo ships sit anchored off the coast, waiting for clearance. Far to the east, the modern library of Alexandria glints in the sun, a disc of granite and steel built to replace what was lost.

Inside the Citadel, a group of school kids on a field trip scurried up and down the narrow passages. They moved from the dungeon — dark, damp, smelling of old stone — to the lookout towers complete with huge cannons. The children laughed and shouted, indifferent to the history beneath their feet. One boy stopped and stared at me. A foreigner. A curiosity. I stared back. He grinned. I grinned. He ran off to join his friends. That is the third lesson of Alexandria: children are the same everywhere. History is just a backdrop to their games.

The fort is cleaned daily by the sea mist that beats against the rock below. Salt erodes the stone grain by grain. The walls are softer than they should be. Run your hand across them and you feel centuries of wind and water. A historic statement of strength, the Citadel of Qaitbay is also a statement of impermanence. Every fortress falls. Every empire ends. But the stones remember.

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The Chain

The Lighthouse of Alexandria guided ships for 1,500 years. It was a tower of stone and fire built to say: you are not alone out there. Someone built this so you could find your way home. Then it fell. The stones were reused. The memory faded. But the idea of a lighthouse — the idea of building something to help strangers find their way — that did not fade. That became every lighthouse that came after. That became every act of kindness from one traveler to another. That became the falafel stand where I ate with a stranger whose name I never learned.

The Library of Alexandria held the sum total of human knowledge. It burned. But the idea of a library — a place where knowledge is preserved and shared — that did not burn. That became every library in every town. That became Wikipedia. That became the stack of books on your nightstand. That became the words you are reading right now.

The Citadel of Qaitbay was built to defend against invasion. It failed. The British bombed it. The sea erodes it. But the idea of defense — of building walls to protect what matters — that did not fail. That became every door you lock. Every hand you hold. Every choice you make to keep something safe.

I did not know what to expect from Egypt. I expected monuments and mummies and tourist traps. I found something else. I found a city that has been destroyed and rebuilt and destroyed again, and still refuses to die. I found a culture that measures time in millennia while selling tea from carts on street corners. I found a people who have seen empires rise and fall and rise again, and who still wave at strangers.

Egypt is not the Bible. It is not the movies. It is a place where the past is not buried. It is just there, in the stones, in the sea mist, in the eyes of children who stare at foreigners and then run off to play.

I left Egypt on a plane to somewhere else. Turkey, maybe. Or Jordan. I do not remember. The countries blur after a while. But I remember Alexandria. I remember the pink room. I remember the falafel. I remember the fort rising from the water like a question carved in stone: what do you build that will last?

The answer: nothing. Everything crumbles. Every lighthouse falls. Every library burns. Every fortress erodes.

But the act of building — the act of creating something for someone you will never meet — that lasts. That is the only immortality we get.

Alexander the Great founded this city in 331 BCE. He died four years later at age thirty-two. He never saw Alexandria at its peak. He never saw the Lighthouse or the Library. He just drew a line in the sand and said, build here. That was enough.

I am not Alexander. I am a man who stole a car and spent five years in a Colombian prison. I am a man who will miss his daughter's wedding. I am a man with no permanent address and no stable income and no future that looks like what most people call a life.

But I have been to Alexandria. I have stood where the Lighthouse stood. I have watched the sun set over the Mediterranean from a fort built on ancient stones. I have eaten falafel with a stranger and slept in a pink room for five dollars a night.

That is not nothing.

That is the whole point.

We build lighthouses because someone out there needs to find their way home. We write stories because someone out there needs to know they are not alone. We travel because someone out there built something worth seeing.

Alexandria is still there. The fort still stands. The sea still beats against the rock. And you — wherever you are, whatever you are doing — you are connected to that place. Because someone built it. Someone preserved it. Someone wrote about it. And now you are reading about it.

That is the chain. That is the connection.

Egypt to you. Alexandria to wherever you are sitting.

The stones remember. And now you do too.