SONG OF ISIS

 

I seek my love in a  land  as dry as the bones of prophets.

Scriptures burn  on a demon’s breath.

It is written

he will come as a serpent,

shedding skin like rope.

Twine it in your hair,

 but do not look back.

So sayeth the Lord.

Words fall like widows  from a pyre.

Ashes vault across the sand.

My mouth filled with sorrow’s stone.

Love compacted on the tongue

is a weight that cannot call him.

His silence, a chamber  of broken flight,

feathers falling

without mercy.

Revolution from the east

Footsteps from the south

Rumours from the north

Gunshot from the west

You are a constellation of broken promises

glittering in the ancient dark,

resurrecting the deaths of every moment

When will you come my warrior, adorned in grief,

your one eyed snake wet with conquest?

My longing for you

is  the aim  of an arrow

a miracle of coincidence at war with fate

crossing  this land.

My crown of stones

Shadows birth in the dying light, bearing  shrouds,

but  I am no buried  bride banished to dust.

My sorrow is a lust

rising like a hawk .

I shall  drown  you in the delta of my thighs.

Love will tear

The lotus from its roots.

In this land of scarab and scorpion, the carrion crow is king

Come! Beak of  divine oracles,

pluck out my eyes,

blind me to what is gone.

The whore of darkness whispers her trade:

lifts her skirts over the river,

straddles the sun

Snivelling tides salt our harvest, singe the barley.

We march on a map of famine, 

lost in  loss,

finding fools

slicing air with  cunning blades of fear,

until his body is a

scattered tribe.

Grief has worn me to a sparrow.  Even the moon  is a widow, her breath a broken mirror. He will not come .

His heart is

a robbed drum 

His voice a locked door. Silence is a messenger

kinder than the

gossip of death.

My arms hold each piece of you: thirteen  suckling babes.

Resurrection without memory is a wasted song,

your body  an empty casket,

your shrines  turned to sand.

I hear your voice whispering, flooding my dreams,

your divinity unshed,

your soul unsheathed

 I am Isis, she whose tongue is the waters of the Nile,

Whose mouth is a vessel for your thirst.

LOSING ALEXANDRIA

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Alexandria  in the rain is melancholic  -  as good as a poem by the Egyptian poet,  Konstantin Cavafy .  His  poems of lost passion, Alexandria’s ancient past   and  its gods befit the moody, subdued Alexandria that I  can see from the eleventh floor of my apartment.   

Cavafy, was born in Alexandria and spent most of his life here until his death in 1933.  His parents were Greek and he was  a true son of what was then, a cosmopolitan  city. Cavafy was a man  obsessed with the transitory nature of beauty and  happiness and like his friend, Durrell,  saw  Alexandria as a City of Memory. 

A secretive man, probably because of his homosexuality – Cavafy worked for most of his life as a part-time clerk in the Egyptian government’s irrigation department. His tempered routine life, belied the rich inner life of a poet who looked at the human condition through  history with a sensual irony.

The apartment where he spent his last 35 years, in Lepsius Street - now renamed "Charm El Sheik" has been turned into a museum honoring his life and works. The building once housed a brothel, and overlooked a hospital and a church.  Cavafy once remarked, “Under me is a house of ill repute, which caters to the needs of the flesh. Over there is a church, where sins are forgiven. And beyond is the hospital where we die.”

The apartment  was turned into a cheap hostel after his death before becoming a museum dedicated the poet. The museum is supported by money from Greece, where Cavafy  is considered a national poet. Egypt's celebration of his work is  uneasy  and ambiguous - his homo-erotic poems do not sit well in a society which is becoming increasingly conservative.


 As I climb the two flights of marble stairs  to his apartments thick wooden  main door,   I can hear a voice reciting  Ithaca - the poem that Jackie Onassis requested to be read at her funeral. The voice - American and recorded hangs eerily in the stairwell. When I step into the museum I am greeted by the  lines ..... To arrive there is your final destination /but do not rush the voyage in the least/Better it lasted for many years/and once you are old cast anchor on the side…  Shivers ran down my back.

  

The hall is long and gloomy. Furniture meant to replicate the original is dowdy.  A brass bed catches the light from an open window, a replica of his desk stands in a dark corner. I sit at it and stare across the black stained floors towards the hall and imagine Cavafy returning home from a liaison with a beautiful young man, closing the door  behind him with a sigh, and standing by the window.

 

‘He is entirely devoted to books – but he’s only twenty-three years old, and very handsome; this afternoon Love passed through/ his ideal flesh that is so full of beauty / passed the erotic fever; /with no silly modesty about the nature of pleasure…..

The paintings on the walls, many of them by Cavafy himself,  are unremarkable. Books from his library are scattered throughout the rooms, while Cavafy looks down owlishly  on visitors from portraits revealing his angular nose and round glasses.  

Just as much else has disappeared from Alexandria, the hospital and brothel are now replaced by a garage and a store. Only the nearby  Elite bar remains from a number of taverns  where Cavafy sought his  illicit liasons with young men.The rest are gone, along with  the cosmopolitan community and its tolerance. In Cavafy’s era, the city was a mix of Greek, Italian, Armenian, Syrian, Maltese, Jews and the British and other nationalities adding to the majority Arab-Egyptian population, all lured  by trade in cotton and wheat. 

Alexandria was once a place where women strolled in sun dresses, not headscarves and jelabayas, and where religion was a matter of personal choice, not political campaigning.The foreigners  left  after the ousting of the monarchy in 1952, and  the rise of Arab nationalism.  Cavafy’s cosmopolitan Alexandria disappeared.

Cavafy did not live to see the exodus, but he would not have been surprised.  His historical poems draw on Alexandria’s Hellenic past, and are infused with a tragic pessimism – all human beings are doomed to defeat, with, or without their gods.  

.

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. Alexandria is a stronghold of the Muslim Brotherhood - Egypt’s biggest opposition party and majority winner of the Lower House of the  new Egyptian Parliament. The Brotherhood wants Egypt ruled under Islamic law.   Sobhi Saleh, a Muslim Brotherhood member of parliament says Islamic law precludes publishing Cavafy’s poetry.

“Cavafy was a one-time event in Alexandria,” he says. “His poems are sinful. It’s an extreme misunderstanding of Islam. In any case, Cavafy was brave to write as he did. Now, he probably could not be a poet in Alexandria. He’d be driven out.”

Maybe it wouldn’t have made any difference to  Cavafy. In his poem “In the Same Place,” he wrote of the coffee houses, home and neighbourhood where he spent his years,  not as they were, but as he made them..... I crafted you amid joy and amid sorrows: Out of so much that happened,/ out of so many things/And you’ve been wholly remade into feeling; for me.

 

In The God Forsakes Antony,   Cavafy writes of the doomed Marc Antony watching in despair as  the Roman troops enter the city.  Perhaps, by then, the poet  already sensed the end of the Alexandria he knew and loved. He urges Antony to  …… bid farewell  to the Alexandria you are losing.

The Italian cemetry, Alexandria


http://www.cavafy.com/


 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_P._Cavafy 

WINDOWS

View from the window of Egyptian poet, C.P Cavafy

Within these dark chambers, where I live through 

oppressive days, I pace up and down,

trying to find the windows. - When a window opens, it will be consolation

But the windows are not to be found, or I am unable

to find them. And perhaps it's better that I don't.

Perhaps the light will be a new tyranny.

Who knows what novel things it will reveal.

C.P Cafavy

TENTS AND CAKE

Alexandria's Revolutionary dead

Alexandria's Victoria Emanuel square  once served as a field hospital for the injured and dying in the recent demonstrations against the ruling military. The recent  elections have preoccupied  protesters  and now only a hard core of activists remain, sleeping in tents  pitched in the square (which is actually round)  – several hundred yards from the police headquarters.

Egyptian flags have been placed in the hands of two large statues. They flutter above the clutch of six tents and the   traffic circulating around the square. Drivers honk their horns in support. 

Ahmed walks around the tents, taking photographs. 

'I’ve got 8GB of photos already, “ he says and slumps when I suggest he edit them.

We walk across the grass looking for Abdul.

'I’m worried about him,' Ahmed says.  'He looks terrible. He has no money. He breathed in a lot of  toxic gas during the demonstrations.’

He rings Abdul’s number but there’s no reply.  He tries again but is diverted by an approaching woman.   Like the other women in the square, Zainab will not be camping all night, although she is there everyday, and intends to stay until the military step down. She and her friends are very keen to know what the British  think of Egypt's  25^th January Revolution.  Uncomfortable with my role  as spokesperson for the UK, I say  that the Egyptian people  are an inspiration for us,  and that one day Trafalgar Square could be our Tahrir. 

‘You’ve never had a revolution, and you never will,' someone scoffs. Zainab looks puzzled.

'Everyone should have a revolution,’ she says.

Zainab brings  tea and Mary joins us.  She’s a slight figure in her twenties and  is dressed entirely  in black.  Unlike Zainab, her hair is uncovered and hangs in a loose bunch down her back. Ahmed whispers in my ear.

‘She’s been in prison for three days. She was demonstrating and the  police accused her of murdering  someone – I don’t know who. “

Mary overhears and says  the charges were dropped.

“Close shave,” Ahmed says.

‘How were you treated by the police?” I ask.

Mary  looks up at me with wet eyes. Zainab casts me a warning look.

Suddenly there’s a loud explosion  and the clattering of what sounds like guns. Zainab jumps and turns white. She clamps her hands over her ears.  She begins to shake.

Ahmed tries to convince her it’s a wedding party, but Zainab walks away from the noise.

'I was in the crowds outside the police headquarters and they kept firing toxic gas at us. We ran, but you can never get away.  The noise was dreadful. I can’t bear to hear loud noises any more.'

Zainab is a widow and has a small daughter.  Her husband was killed  while working in Iraq during the  American and British occupation 2003.

'I’m sorry “ I say and she claps her hands together and laughs.

'Didn’t you like him much?”  

She shakes her head. ‘If he was still alive I wouldn’t be allowed to come here on my own like this. The Revolution is my life. It is dangerous but I have made many friends. We are equals here.’

Ahmed  points across the gardens  to a hunched shadow passing through the trees. Abdul is wearing a reverse baseball hat  and his computer is, as usual, slung around his back.   When he lifts his head to greet us, I am shocked  at how thin he has become and by the grey yellow tinge of his skin His eyes are dark  and glazed. He fixes me with an unnaturally bright stare .  Ahmed takes him to one side, and they stand whispering to each other.

‘Money has been stolen from the funds,' Ahmed tells me later. ‘We are trying to find out who it is. We have our suspicions. ‘

Abdul  sits outside  the management tent and clicks through his various Facebook accounts. I express concern at his appearance.

‘What do you expect?' he says. 'I’ve been hit with five different gases….mustard gas, nerve gas, CS gas. You name it - I've inhaled  it. ‘

When I ask if he is taking the medicines and vitamins necessary to counter the effects, he says he was, but has  run out of money.  I offer him some money so that he can  buy more. He  instantly  doubles the amount. I agree. We cross the road  to  a patisserie to change some notes.  Abdul stops in front of the shop window and  stares at the display of  gateaux glistening  in phosphorescent light. He fixes his eye upon the eclairs. 

‘Two people died  where we are standing,’ he says. 

.

BEARDS

Alexandria is beard city – it is  the headquarters of  the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice party and the Al Nour party of the ultra-conservative Salafi. Beards have  been sprouting on chins  like weeds. There's   the uncut version, the running-wild look, the trimmed bush and the beard that can't seem to make up its mind whether to come or go.  

Posters and banners still  festoon  the city like decorations left in a room long after the party is over. The  Islamist candidates continue to gaze at us with benign  authority and reassuring smiles. Not all of them are bearded, but  all of them have the  middle of their foreheads  marked by the zebeeba which means ‘dehydrated grape.’  The dark mark indicates the amount of times their foreheads have hit the floor praying.

    

The  Islamist’s campaigning was slick, pumped with money and included free handouts in the name of charity. Their success  in the first leg of Egypt's three-stage parliamentary vote has surprised and alarmed those Egyptians worried about what this might mean for freedoms and tolerance.  The Muslim Brotherhood party and the  Salafis are likely to emerge as a vocal bloc in the first legislature since Hosni Mubarak was deposed by the Egyptian people. The Salafis are predicted to come second to the  more moderate Muslim Brotherhood.

Many Muslim scholars do not believe beards are compulsory.  Mohammed never stipulated facial hair was must for his followers in the Quran, although he himself is believed to have sported one – probably   because  he was so busy  being a prophet he didn’t have time to shave.

Sayings of Mohammed reported  after his death give the impression he was a militant beardist. ‘Trim the moustache closely but let the beard flow,’ he is reported to have said. One Muslim scholar states, ‘No one has called it permissible to trim it (the beard) less than fist-length as is being done by some westernized Muslims and hermaphrodites.'  In a statement that could   put barber’s out of business, he stated ‘It is  forbidden for a man to shave another’s beard.

Beards themselves are not the issue. George Clooney looks great in one. The 25^th January Revolution was led by young people most  of whom wanted to see Egypt become a  modern leading nation  in the 21^st century. Instead, a large group of bearded men (and a few covered women) will be a major influence, viewing the world from the 8th and 9th centuries.

When Salafist leader and Alexandrian parliament candidate, Abdel-Moneim El-Shahat  recently described the literature of the late Egyptian Nobel prize winner, Naguib Mahfouz, as ‘inciting promiscuity, prostitution and atheism,’ he sent shivers through the artistic community.

In a television  interview, El-Shahat  (who looks like a gnome with a third eye) said, Mahfouz’s novels ‘are mostly set in areas involving brothels and drugs,' and that his  acclaimed,  Awlad Harretna (Children of our Alley),  was a novel 'whose symbols promoted atheism.’

The  beardless bartender at the Four Seasons Hotel says he voted for the Salafis and for the Muslim Brotherhood as they  ‘will be fair and just.’

When I pointed out that he would be out of a job if the Salafis   succeeded in banning all alcohol, he merely shrugged his shoulders.

‘I’ll find another job,” he said, apparently  oblivious of Egypt’s high unemployment rate.  

 When asked if he knew what Al Nour  would do for the economy, he shook his head. In conservative Egypt, moral rectitude is taking priority over economic sense.

I recently watched a television  interview with  a Salafist who clearly had his eye on the Ministry of Tourism. He said that all female tourists arriving in Egypt should be given a uniform on arrival which would cover them from head to toe. The Pharonic statues they had come to see, would also be covered. He also promised to increase the revenue coming into the country from tourism.

Mahfouz once said, ‘If you want to move people, you look for a point of sensitivity, and in Egypt nothing  moves people as much as religion.’ He also said, ‘It is clearly more important to treat one’s fellow man well, than to be always praying and fasting and touching one’s head to a prayer mat.’

TOXIC GAS

 Ahmed rings me. I can hear gun shots and a helicopter in the background.

 “It’s a battle ground here. It’s terrible,” he says in a fragmented voice.

A friend seizes the phone and tells him what to do if he breathes in any of the toxic gas the police   are firing on the demonstrators.   Ahmed suddenly rings off.

He and Abdul have been attending every demonstration in Alexandria. Their demands for  Field Marshal Tintawi, leader of the  Supreme Council of the Armed Forces  to resign, is gaining momentum.  The moment they thought would never come, has arrived. For months they’ve been  attending daily meetings with other activists  around Alexandria – mostly in cafes or in gardens. The last time I saw them, Abdul had  opened up a bag revealing several cans of spray paint and rolls of  black and white photo copied posters. He held one up. ‘We need our rights, our health, our money, our blood,’ it reads.

He was preparing for a late night  session of spreading the message around  the city. I thought of offering to help until Abdul said they would start at 3.00 am.

 “You’d be safe,” he said. ‘We have lookouts posted everywhere.’

It’s not illegal to put up political posters if they are part of the election campaign. Ahmed and Abdul do not have a party – but  are part of a coalition of activists who believe that any  elected government will be  illegal.

‘We haven’t  even got a proper constitution. The Revolution has been stolen from us.  The military are scum,’ Abdul says.

 Every morning in the micro bus I see evidence of their nightly missions. Their posters are plastered all over the granite walls of Haturam Gardens. A huge version dangles from a statue outside the Alexandria Library. Heads turn in the bus. The posters are everywhere.

More recently, travelling to school each morning  has been like turning the page of a book. Ahmed’s black and white  photo-copied posters are soon covered  by the slick posters  of the Muslim Brotherhood party.  By the following morning they, in turn, have been obliterated by the bright  new posters of another party.

For  several months Ahmed and Abdul have tirelessly devoted themselves to keeping alive  the spirit of the 25^th January Revolution. “We were cleaning the streets together. ' Abdul says. 'For the first time, I got to know  my neighbours. We were one big community, helping each other, Now it’s gone back to what it was. ' 

Moments later he is in the  middle of junction trying to sort out a traffic jam. 

“This is what we did during the revolution. There was no one to control the traffic.’ Ahmed says.

We pass a parked car belching steam. Abdul rushes over and starts trying to force open the bonnet. The owner is nowhere to be seen . A crowd gathers. Ahmed and Abdul are now pulling so hard on the bonnet, the car is bouncing.  The owner appears.

“We thought it might blow up,” Abdul says peering into the engine. Ahmed examines the battery and gives up.

There’s no time for any of this any more.  Their moment has come – again. Their objective – to rid the country of military rule – looks increasingly likely. 

At a  demonstration in Alexandria, thousands poured through the streets towards the main police station. Flags waved. Voices chanted ‘Mother Egypt we are you sons. We shall relieve you of your burden,' and  called  for freedom.  Families, the elderly, and above all the young,  pushed bravely through the city aware of the risks they were taking.  

Shoes were held aloft when Field Marshal Tantawi, head of SCAF, announced his concessions. (To show someone the sole of a shoe here is an insult) .The crowd jeered and continued their calls   for  him to stand down.

“It’s Mubarak all over again,” someone says.

A candy floss man pushes past us, his bags of pink sugar fluttering from a pole.  A car creates a path  through the crowds. A young woman  in the back is bent double from toxic gas. A small field hospital has been set up under some trees. Further down the road a deadly mist rises above the demonstrators.

I walk back to the apartment block where I live. It’s just across from The Four seasons, a $700 a night hotel.  Attached to it, like an incubus, is the shopping mall.  This is the place where rich kids hang out. Costa Coffee is packed, women buy handbags and shoes, people queue for KFC, Macdonalds, and Pizza Hut.   Outside, someone has pulled down a  large Muslim Brotherhood banner, and slashed the rest. In a shop   people huddle around a television. A presenter announces that the toxic gas cylinders being fired  on the demonstrators, are manufactured in America.

COME BACK?

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Nabi Daniel Street was once the heart of  Alexandria's  thriving Jewish community. Set back from the shops  lining the street, is number 69 -  Elayahu Hanavi synagogue. The imposing baroque building  can be viewed from the street.  In front of its  high  iron gate security men and police lounge on chairs  drinking tea.  I hand my passport through the railings to a guard. Several minutes later a key turns in the lock and I step into synagogues peaceful  courtyard. For the first time in a long time, I can hear birds singing.   

The 130 year old synagogue is the largest in the middle east outside Israel, and was once one of 16 synagogues in the city. Most of them have been torn down or converted to other use. Elayanu Hanavi   is an enduring testimony to a community that  until the middle of the 20^th century once numbered over  40,000. There are now only 20 elderly Jews remaining, some of whom are married to Muslims. 

My guide is  Rasha  Nabi, whose father, Abdul Nabi, is the synagogue’s caretaker. She is a Muslim, and wears a multi layered jhijab which is fashionable with young Egyptian girls. She understands very well the incongruity of her presence in a Jewish house of worship.  Her father has taken care of the building and its gardens for 26 years and she has lived in its grounds  all her life.  

“I love this place," Rasha says,  as we walk through the tree filled gardens, “It’s like  home to me,”  

Inside the bright interior, rows of polished wooden benches stretch from the dais. Each one bears a name etched onto brass plaques reflecting Alexandria’s cosmopolitan history. Jews  from Egypt, the Maghreb, France , Greece, Britain, Italy, Armenia  all sat together in  the grand pillared interior.  

“You can’t even smell dust, ” Rasha says proudly. “It’s as if  there’s just been a prayer.”

We turn back to the doors of the synagogue as if expecting the congregation to enter. But most of Alexandria’s remaining Jews  are too old to travel.

 The history of the Jews of Alexandria dates from the foundation of the city by Alexander the Great. They continued to form  a very large portion of the population under his successors. A separate section of the city was assigned to them by the first Ptolemies,  They set up hospitals, homes for the aged and charity programmes and they ran many of the city’s successful businesses.  Today’s ramshackle and run down department stores still bear the names of their Jewish founders; Cicurel, Benizon, Chamla. The creation of the state of Israel, the rise of  Arab nationalism  and a series of Arab Israeli wars  led to their mass expulsion. Properties and businesses were confiscated, bank accounts frozen.

But many of the relatives of those who left, return to find their roots and connect to the city that is their ancestral home. 

“It is very emotional when people find the seat their great-grandfather  used to sit in,” Rasha says. “I have seen many Jewish tears.”

Two years ago the synagogue was renovated by the Cairo University Ventre for Antiquities and Environmental Studies. At the time, Ali Hilal, project manager at the Supreme Council for Antiquities said the synagogue was the most notable of preservation plans for Egyptian monuments. 

Rasha admits that  once her fellow Muslims discover what she does and where she lives, she is asked what Jews are like.  “I tell them they are like everyone else.," she says." Egypt has had Jewish communities in its major cities for centuries, and we are not anti-Jewish people.  It’s Zionism  and the state of Israel that is the problem. It’s politics that causes all the trouble. ”

As a Muslim, Rasha believes that Islam is the conclusion to all Abrahamic religions. “It makes sense of it all, but the fundamental basics between Jews, Christians and Muslims are the same. We are  brothers and sisters.”

Light pours down from the high windows as we approach the bimah, the table from which the prayers are read.  Silver candelabra shine upon the dais and books rest upon the rabbi’s desk. It’s as if everyone has left in a hurry, leaving everything behind as it was.  Behind the bimah hangs the curtain of the Torah Ark, behind which  the old religious scrolls are kept. It is a long time since a service was held, but visiting Jews often address the empty synagogue with prayers. 

“One woman came from America," Rasha says.  "Her ancestors  had been Egyptian Jews for centuries.  She considered herself Egyptian although she has never lived here. She started to pray in Hebrew. She was crying and she kept waving her arms about. Afterwards, I asked her what she was saying. She said, ‘I was calling, ‘Come back. Come back. Come back.' "