Alexandria

a car-bomb went off last night blasted the entrance to an entrenched Coptic church

we won’t tell my sister young as she is but we won’t tell my mother either – neither

of them read the news or listen to it my sister too sullen my mother too distracted by newness abroad

we don’t say why the army is in the streets today why the corniche is emptier but livelier than yesterday

at one end there is an imposing old citadel built in the 15th century I can’t focus

on the history because I need to shit dangerously close to disaster I find a man retailing squares of toilet paper

one square for five pounds and I only have ten pounds I sprint and find my dad he gives me all his money

this only gets me five squares I pinch and ration myself in the WC

my brother walks me to the end of the corniche next to the citadel to the fish market where he haggles

in a loud voice with a man in a skinny stall for a large red fish its open eyes staring at everyone still living

my brother knows of a restaurant that will grill and stuff it for us and only charge for the cooking

the fish now tiger-striped steaming swollen with citrus dropped between us and I eat watching all around us

the bombing was the worst attack in a decade they say somewhere else in the city Copts and Muslims

are demonstrating pelting police with rocks Yehia a friend of my brother says it was Mubarak

but also Islamists but also both but also all the dead have become martyrs for God

my mother keeps bringing up Lawrence Durrell looking at me like I’m the one who should care

“you know his Alexandria Quartet” she states I nod yes pretending I know – • I’m conscious of my self on these streets on Fouad St. I can feel my torso twist

to look around at the streets nameplated in enamel on the walls of buildings the Arabic and the French both in white

these names aren’t real anymore they’ve been replaced by the latest names on green street signs in English nobody uses the green names or seems to know them

my brother is teaching me things

he takes a beat drinks his tea smokes his cigarette and cats run underfoot and between chair legs

“the greatness of a city is proportionate to how many feral cats it has the more the better just saying” ok

they’re saying it was a suicide bomber now at least now I won’t flinch at parked cars

I see Pompey’s Column buttressed by two small sphinxes but it’s not even his it belongs to Diocletian

it’s made from pink granite with Corinthian spitfires at the top poor thing with nothing to hold up

we go to the library swooping in grand brick curves as it faces the road with glyphs stamped into gray blocks

but we enter on the side of the Mediterranean and a huge slide of glass covers the library inside

like the steps and seats of a wooden amphitheater people with their heads down or in the stacks

I’d seen this movie Agora with Rachel Weisz she’s the Greek Hypatia teaching boys in the Ancient library

I think of when the Christians sack the place burn the scrolls and knowledge with them

they’re saying the bomber was foreign influenced one source is saying it was Hamas

there’s a small window in my room that looks out on the

Mediterranean in a gloaming when dust and dirt reflect the setting sun a thousand particle terrors become gold at the balcony next to me I see young men smoking

Western tobaccos lingering like gunshot residue on hands overlapped over the railing

Yehia takes my brother sister and me to a café in Sidi Bishr the ocean is unseen to the north but heard in small distant crashes

“Two Saints over there a couple blocks down” Yehia points away from the sea

I can’t see much other than a clog of people “that’s where the bomb went off”

my sister looks at us

“wait what happened”