A Trip to Alexandria, Egypt

I loved the shabbiness of the streets and cafés, the melancholy which hung over the city late of an evening….- Charlie Pye-Smith, The Other Nile

Review by S. Franklin, of the Chicago Tribune:

“From the synagogue, I stay on Sharia Nabi Daniel (the Street of the Prophet Daniel), and in a few minutes and after a few turns, I am at the Souk Attarine. Once it sold spices and perfumes from distant markets and countries. Nowadays, it is an antique market, and after a few minutes, I consider it one of my favorites in all the Middle East.

I like the adventure of wandering up and down small streets, not knowing what is next. There’s no sense of the suffocation that you get from the giant, old marketplaces. Attarine is not enclosed and it rambles for blocks. The streets are so narrow cars can’t get through many of them. Some stores are crowded beyond imagination. They have been cut in half to create a small second story.

A changed city

“It’s too hard to find good old things,” complains an elderly shopkeeper in the doorway of one of these tiny stores, who doesn’t blink as we chit-chat in Arabic, a language I learned a quarter of a century ago. I find his words hard to believe because his store has an unbelievable selection of fine old ceramics, mirrors and furniture. But I agree with him, and try to keep a stoic uninterested glance so I won’t ruin my bargaining mojo.”“