Bloomberg’s Middle East correspondent visits the Cavafy Museum in Alexandria, Egypt:
… Much … has disappeared from Alexandria: the taverns where Cavafy’s illicit liaisons took place, the exotic interaction of a diverse population and a tolerance that inspired the late Egyptian filmmaker Youssef Chahine and the novelist Ibrahim Abdel-Meguid.
… In Cavafy’s era, the Mediterranean port city was a mix of Greek, Italian, Armenian, Syrian, Maltese, British and other nationalities adding to the majority Arab-Egyptian population, all lured there by trade in cotton and wheat.
The city, and Egypt as a whole, grew more homogenized after the ouster of the monarchy in 1952, the rise of Arab nationalism and the confiscation of private property by Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul Nasser.
In the past two decades, the emergence of Islam as a prime source of identity among many Egyptians made Cavafy’s sensuous subject matter unfashionable. By all accounts, Alexandria is a stronghold of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s biggest opposition party. The brotherhood wants Egypt ruled under Islamic law. Alexandria was once a place where women strolled in sun dresses, not headscarves and caftans, and where religion was a matter of personal choice …
After visiting the museum, I discuss Cavafy at the office of Sobhi Saleh, a Muslim Brotherhood member of parliament. Saleh says Islamic law precludes publishing Cavafy’s poetry.
“Cavafy was a one-time event in Alexandria,” he says. “His poems are sinful.” …
Cavafy wouldn’t be surprised. Long ago he wrote a poem, Walls, about the failure to pay attention to the killers of cities, the builders of burqas.
Without consideration, without pity, without shame
they have built great and high walls around me.And now I sit here and despair.
I think of nothing else: this fate gnaws at my mind;for I had many things to do outside.
Ah why did I not pay attention when they were building the walls.But I never heard any noise or sound of builders.
Imperceptibly they shut me from the outside world.
October 13th, 2009 at 3:14PM
I know this dude. He wrote Ithaka. I love that poem.
http://www.enotes.com/ithaka/text-poem
The last stanza is IT.
Weird to think Egypt has gone backwards w/ respect to modernity.
Weird.
October 13th, 2009 at 5:22PM
I long wanted to made a literary tour of Alexandria, in the footsteps of both Cavafy and the characters if The Alexandria Quartet, but everything I hear is discouraging.
Nothing like Bloomsday in Dublin.
I suppose it all started with Pres. Nasser chasing out the Greeks.