Alexander Is Buried There

My most salient memory of any writing by E. M. Forster is the introduction he wrote to Mulk Raj Anand’s book “Untouchable.”  I’ve made a cursory search on line and cannot come up with the precise quote*, but in it he recounts, as I recall, being aboard a steamer and hearing some other passenger pickup his book “A Passage To India” and read some line that alluded, discretely to bodily functions, at which point this proper gent through down the book in disgust, suggesting it was rubbish.  “What then . . . “ Forster continued, might this person have thought of “Untouchable?”  The book spends most of its story unflinchingly unwinding a tale of someone who’s job is human waste management.

Yesterday I began to look at his book: “Alexandria, a History and a Guide”, written, lovingly, after the First World War, during his time stationed there in the city.  And while I’ve always known it was a “Greek” city.  That is stood for Hellenism rather than anything particularly Pharaonic, I was surprised at how many simple, obvious things I did not know. For example, the obvious:  Alexander is buried there.  And much the way Genghis Khan would sweep over territory and leave sections of a swath too big for any one person to manage, to his various decedents, the Ptolemaic section of Alexander’s empire was based in this port at the mouth of Nile where it would remain, independent, until the days of Octavian. 

I had a sense of this pull between Cairo and Alexandria, that they both represented something very different.  One is the intellectual center of Islam and the other home to the Copts.  I note how early I am in the process of trying to consciously build out the story line from pyramids to Tahrir Square.  The three hundred and fifty years between Alexander’s death and the rise of Julius Caesar is just a small segue.  But this is where the story of this city begins and it is fine to sample Forster’s boyish enthusiasm for the place and this unlikely inception.

Caught up, once again, just now, on writing.  Two months or more worth of posting that has to happen.  For who?  So it can be consistent for someone who will never know me.  I want it that way.  That’s enough for now.  I want to take the time to reckon with what I’m experiencing and button it down so there’s a testimonial.  Now where is this book, "Alexandria"?  I want to take it into the bathroom. 

* "Some years go, I came across  copy of a book by myself, A Passage to India, which had apparently been read by an indignant Colonel.   He hd not concealed his emotions.  On the front page, he had written, 'burn when done', and lower down 'Has  dirty mind, see page 215'. I turned to page 215 with pardonable haste.  There I found the words:  "The sweepers of Chandrapur had just struck and half the commodes remained desolate in the consequence.'  This light hearted remark has excluded me forever from military society ever since.  

Well, if they Colonel thought A Passage to India dirty, what will he think about Untouchable, which describes a day in the life of  sweeper in an Indian city with every realistic circumstance.  Is it a clean book or a dirty one?"   E.M. Forster

Saturday 7/21/18