Alexandria: The Last Night of Cleopatra (33 page)

During those last nights of Cleopatra in January 2011 the ‘Arab Spring’ began. While I was sitting in Khat Rashid and Place
Saad Zaghloul, President Ben Ali of Tunisia, a man not well known outside his country despite his dictatorship there for a
quarter of a century, was escaping to Saudi Arabia with a jet full of gold. Any military anxiety on the road out of King Farouk’s
palace was well justified. A few days later, the streets of Cairo and Alexandria were filled with protesters demanding that
Hosni Mubarak too should leave his palaces for the last time, ideally leaving the national treasure behind but, if that were
impossible after thirty years in power, he should simply leave.

Eventually and reluctantly, Mubarak obeyed. His friends told him he had lost. In Libya there were already the first protests
against President Gaddafi. Commentators speculated on which of his own closest allies would abandon him first. There were
newspaper articles daily from Benghazi, Greek Cyrene as once it was, a place more freedom-loving than the rest, or so it was
said.

The Spring was spreading into Syria and Arabia. Back in London I felt a mild guilt that I had left the story just as it was
about to happen. But I was no longer a foreign correspondent or newspaper editor. Any journalist could go to Alexandria and
many did. I had been pursuing a different story and, in the peace of ignorance, had completed it.

For days I watched the Al Jazeera pictures from the Corniche, the banner-wavers who passed by the Metropole and Cecil Hotels,
wondering if I would spot Mahmoud or Socratis and, if I did, what side they would be on. There was one time when I thought
I saw the yellow-suited driver. If it was the right man he was definitely on the demonstrators’ side, but I could not be sure.
It was possible, even likely, that if my two Alexandrians had a choice they would be on different sides.

There was a news report that the New Year church bombing had been planned by the interior ministry in order to bolster international
support against al-Qaeda. This was close to Socratis’s own suggestion although, in those last winter days, he had not expressed
himself quite so firmly. Both men would eventually want to be on the winning side, Mahmoud the more so.

On 23 March Elizabeth Taylor died. For one night only there were news images on television of another Alexandria, the place
of silver and ivory, of gold, bright blue sky and the massive application of cosmetics.

Two days later a battered postcard of Hosni Mubarak arrived at the offices of the
Times Literary Supplement
. It showed the former Egyptian president in black-haired youth and black-suited severity, just the sort of picture that a
rejected dictator in a closely guarded hospital bed
would have distributed himself if he had been able to. It carried both an Egyptian and an English stamp. It was hard to read
the postmark. It smelt as though it had been pulled from a drawer of mothballs.

The message read: ‘RIP Cleopatra. All best to you and her for another thirty years, V.’

To all those who read the text: to Mary Beard and Paul Webb. To Raphael Cormack for Egyptian research and photographs. To
Jo Evans for picture editing. To Sigrid Rausing, publisher and editor, to Ed Victor, my agent, and to Maureen Allen, my assistant
at the
TLS
.

PETER STOTHARD
is Editor of the
Times Literary Supplement
and author of the books
Thirty Days
and
Spartacus Road
. He is a classicist and a political and literary journalist. From 1992 to 2002 he was the Editor of
The Times
. In 2012 he was chairman of the judges for the Man Booker Prize. He was knighted in 2003.

Jacket photograph by Raphael Cormack

Author photo © Teri Pengilley

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