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Three-shift Vacation in Alexandria
By Sherif Danish
When Khaled and I left a crowded coffee shop at 6am, we decided to walk home instead of taking a cab. To our absolute amazement, the beaches were so crowded at this early hour that we couldn't even see the sand. It turns out, this was the morning shift. The shift that just woke up to make room for those who spent the night at the coffee shops so they can go home to the same beds. Yes, a bed in Alex is rented three times in each twenty four hours: 10pm to 6am, 6am to 2pm, and 2pm to 10pm, so that three families can share the same apartment and hence split the steep rent.
For the last forty years, Bolbol, now in his mid seventies, has been the man in charge of setting up umbrellas at the exclusive Automobile Club of Alexandria. The reason I try to spend a couple of days in Alexandria every year is just to see Bolbol. I also run into childhood friends, now spread all over the world. Lunch by the salt water pool, sablé with tea at sunset, and crunchy loukoumades to complete the sugar fix are all long time traditions. This year, my friend Khaled and I decided to venture outside the club to mix with the real crowd of vacationers in Alexandria. The city once called the Pearl of the Mediterranean is witnessing an amazing transformation that reflects the deep reality of modern Egyptian society.
After spending a couple of days in Alex, my cousin and his wife invited me to their house in Ceasar Bay, a private resort on the north coast. There you find a mixture of Egyptian Tycoons like the Sawiris, and retired Egyptians who lived most of their adult lives in the western world. These people try to minimize their touch points with the Egyptian society and stay connected all day long with the cultures they are more used to through the Internet, thanks to a 3G network now available everywhere. At Ceasar Bay you will enjoy the wonderful white sand and turquoise water of its mile long beach where very few people are sunbathing or taking a dip in the warm water, and where a handful of teenagers are wandering around in electric golf carts.
They say that Egypt doesn't have a middle class but I think it certainly does. It is the class that, first of all, can afford a vacation at the beach. It is the class that walks around with in-your-face fake designer outfits. The class where young women wear skin-colored stretch tops under sleeveless dresses to look sexy and yet claim that they are covered. The class that doesn't pay attention to a mother changing the diapers of her baby on a car hood in the very crowded Khaled Ibn El Waleed Street, a major shopping area in Sidi Bishr. The class that bargains with five-year-old kids selling made-in-China gadgets at 4am while enjoying the breeze at thousands of beach-front coffee shops.
These people looked happy. They seemed very comfortable in this environment. You would easily conclude that they certainly like it this way.
The incredible contrast between my days in Alexandria and those in the north coast made me wonder if I really was in the same country!And what about the crowd of the Automobile Club that is still living on memories of King Farouk’s days? Well, for one thing the average age there goes up every year and I believe that one day this crowd will vanish. Who will take their place is anybody's guess.
Sherif Danish is not a professional writer. He is a regular guy whose right brain and left brain are fighting all the time with no clear winner.
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