English author Alan Smart’s collection of three short stories takes its title from Egypt’s second largest city. But the tales in “Alexandria Lost are not studies in romanticizing the city; rather they paint images of decay, squalor and dislocation.
The first of the stories, “Sunstruck – Al-Alamein 1945, tells of an Italian doctor who served in the Second World War as a medical officer, and now lives his days in a bare hut in the scorching desert. Raised in some luxury in Alexandria, he has chosen now to live alone on the edge of the small town that lends its name to that great battle in which Monty defeated Rommel.
Traumatized by his wartime experiences, Benito has taken to morphine in order to blot out the memories. And it works well enough until his bubble is pierced by the arrival of a little Bedouin girl whose hand has been injured by some explosive remnant of the recent conflict. Attending to her injuries over a period of weeks, he begins to feel his inner disquiet, despite the morphine on which he has relied for so long. For the first time in years, he cries.
And, touched at last by both his inner hurt and the bravery of this girl, he is moved to change. He weans himself off the drug and sets about cleaning the desert of unexploded ordinance. Day by day, inch by inch, he marks out the sand and searches for shells, grenades and mines, hoping to defuse the Sahara.
His actions perhaps symbolize his hope of purifying his own scared inner landscape.
Smart’s style takes a little getting used to. It is minimal, and makes no particular effort to assist the readers in orientating themselves in the world he has created. Scenes are mostly described as if through the filter of a character’s mind; eyes blinded by light, a body soothed by morphine, a scream emanating from an as yet unidentified mouth.
And it may be that such a mode of explanation is well suited to the subject: dislocated and disoriented people who suffer the world like some interminable riddle, a barrage of experiences and frustrations, suffered for the most part alone. To describe scenes in any more conventional manner would perhaps suggest a connection between the individuals that is for the most part lacking.
But there are moments of lightness and insight too, such as when Benito, released finally from the grip of morphine addiction begins to see the world through clear eyes once more while soaking in the bath with a good book: “It was the sudden appreciation of these small pleasures that struck him as different, that demarcated something new. Before this, he couldn’t really remember when last he had knowingly enjoyed a physical or mental sensation apart from the soma of his drug … the hot water and yesterday’s desert dusk, his sister’s occasional smiles when they were together and his sparse breakfasts of cheese and bread, his work.
A common theme running through these stories seems to be solitude, isolation, simplicity, as if the complexity of the mind is seeking something purer to which it can relate. Perhaps faced by a troubled and dishonest world, it is seeking something more genuine, or perhaps a sterile space in which to heal wounds.
In the second story, that space is an English hospital. The tale concerns a man who is half-Egyptian and half-English, and who wakes after a beating at the hands of racist thugs. Lying in his hospital bed, he proceeds to reminisce about his life in Alexandria, the death of his chain-smoking mother from emphysema, and the moment when he realized he had to leave the Egyptian city that had become “a shoddy pile of crap trading on a dead past.
The trouble is, however, that the character is equally disaffected with his new English home: “The thought of my small terraced house with its carefully chosen junk and the photographs of another country makes me feel sick.
The final offering in the volume concerns an old European lady who continues to paint her pictures of Alexandria long after everyone around her has lost interest in either seeing or buying them. One day she hears that one of her earliest works is on sale in a shop, and she ventures from her fortress apartment into the noisy streets below. It is a poignant and romantic story, and the author renders the chaotic streets and fragile characters with the deft and loving touch of a master painter.
Alan Smart is a newcomer on the literary scene, but in his first foray he has demonstrated a strong and memorable personal style, and a passionate engagement with his characters and their troubled lives.
“Alexandria Lost by Alan Smart is published by Harpocrates, Alexandria. Tel: 03 486 2669. www.harpocrates.com.eg
