Broken dreams

By Mahmoud El-Wardani

The Aziza Fahmy Palace

Translated by Mohamed Abu Rahma, and with an introduction by Shawqi Fahim, Zimmerly-Hartmann's Hayati fi Misr: Mudhakirat Fatah Siwissriyah 'Ashat fi'l-Iskandariya (My Life in Egypt: Memoirs of a Swiss Girl who Lived in Alexandria, 1934-1950) once more brings to life an Alexandria far more humane and beautiful than today's city, variously defaced by the excesses of the nouveau riche.

Zimmerly-Hartmann is not a writer. In fact this is her only book.

She was born in Alexandria and lived there for 16 years, from 1934 till 1950, after which she left for Europe. The beautiful city haunted her for 27 years until she returned -- only to have her dream shattered. She sat down and wrote this, her sole book, in an attempt to immortalise the features of what to her was the most beautiful, most delicate of cities.

Her father was a doctor, a chest specialist practicing in Switzerland. While in London as an FRCS student, he was offered a job at the Fouad Sanitarium in Helwan. The young doctor agreed to begin his career in what was then a British colony and in 1929 he traveled to Egypt to work for three years at the sanitarium.

He loved Egypt so much that when his contract with the Fouad Sanitarium was over he decided to stay in Egypt and moved to Alexandria, the city with which he and his wife had fallen in love. He established a clinic of his own and became fluent in Arabic.

The Alexandria in which he and his wife settled had a population of 800,000 people -- Europeans, including the huge Greek community, and natives mixing freely, living in harmony. With Hitler's rise to power in Germany, the tolerant and rich melting pot of Alexandria became a refuge for a substantial number of European Jews. Fabled establishments with Greek names, that still stand in today's Alexandria, were landmarks of Esther Zimmerly-Hartmann's childhood Alexandria. Remembering it, she writes:

"I used to go often to the Ibrahimiya Market. In the Ibrahimiya district people from different Mediterranean countries used to live in one or two story houses. In addition to Egyptians, there were Jews, Levantines, Maltese, Armenians, Italians, and many other Mediterranean nationals. The voice of the popular French singer Tino Rossi could be heard coming from one of the open windows. You would find girls standing in front of old houses cursing each other in Arabic, Italian, Greek... The Levantine girl watching this exchange of curses and who understood the words of each one of them would laugh from the heart...."

Such is the nature of the sketch that Zimmerly-Hartmann creates in her attempt to portray an enchanting cosmopolitan city, a city that had an amazing capacity to fuse various ethnic groups into a harmonious whole -- a city where Rudolph Hess was born and where a Swiss doctor, Esther's father, would receive in his clinic the mother of the Iraqi king Faisal (who was assassinated in the 1958 Revolution).

But Zimmerly-Hartmann's narrative does not concern itself with momentous historical events. Rather it is with the intimate, homely detail, the more personal, delicate nuance that her memoirs proceed: her family's move to a larger apartment, their getting a fridge for the first time, Amina the maid who taught Esther's mother "Eastern cosmetic practices" for the removal of unwanted hair, the Armenian girl who used to stay with them once a month to make clothes for Esther's family, and so on.

In her memoirs we see World War II from a new and different perspective. With the influx of Allied soldiers it was a golden age for Alexandria's taxi drivers and for its shoe shines:

"If an Allied soldier wanted to have his shoes polished he would immediately be attacked by many shoe shines. The winner would be the oldest and largest of them. The English soldier having his shoes shined would be reading a newspaper, heedless of the fact that the shoe shine had tied his shoelaces together. He paid a pound and waited for his change. The shoe shine, a boy, runs, turning down a side-street, laughing. Tied up, the soldier, flustered, face red, could not pursue the shoe shine..."

Elsewhere, Zimmerly-Hartmann writes:

"One day I was watching a boy of my age playing on the shore, but without looking in the least bit happy. I felt sad for him. Even though he was surrounded by attentive people, he seemed very lonely. Later I discovered that this boy was Faisal, the king of Iraq. Another time I saw him playing with a boy of his age called Hussein -- Hussein who would later become king..."

Nuances, details to which only a little girl alert to the small things around her would pay attention: in the market, the coffee house, the pastry shop, downtown... the tens of newspapers in different languages published in Alexandria... the Moulid Al-Nabi (the Prophet's birthday) festivities... extreme poverty side by side with extreme wealth... moloukhia, falafel, mahshi. Neither does Zimmerly-Hartmann forget her Alexandrian school friends who came from all corners of the world, or King Farouk, in front of whom she one day found herself when he visited the Swiss Club for a bowling tournament.

The dream had to end. She had to go on with her studies. Her family had to leave Alexandria. In September 1950, together with her family, Esther climbed aboard a ship bound for Europe. In her little red handbag was a little box, and in the little box was sand from the shore of Sidi Bishr.

Zimmerly-Hartmann writes that, indeed, he who drinks of the River Nile must return to its land. She returned -- 27 years later. Anguish and sorrow lay in store for her. She found another city, one she hardly recognised. Weeping as she looked out the bus window to see an ugly, crowded city packed with gargantuan apartment blocks suffocating the sea front, she tried to recollect an age that passed and a beautiful city that she had forever lost. Where to look for the city? Is Alexandria finished, over and done with?