Recuperating cosmopolitan Alexandria: Circulation of narratives and narratives of circulation

In the mid-20th century, the foreign-minority communities that had played a significant role in shaping the culture, institutions, and built environment of modern Alexandria were compelled to leave Egypt. In the intervening years, as Alexandria's status was transformed from cosmopolis to regional capital, the foreign minorities, if recalled at all, were cast as compradors to colonial interests. Since the 1990s, there has been a revival of interest in Alexandria's modern cosmopolitan past, as evidenced both in urban renovation projects and in Egyptian literature. This article aims to interpret these separate but parallel trends. The connection this article makes between these two distinct forms of narrative hinges on the trope of circulation. The renovation projects, including improvements to the circulation of traffic, reflect a marketing strategy that circulates nostalgic images or narratives of the city's cosmopolitan past. The novel discussed in this article, Ambergris Birds by Ibrahim Abdel Meguid, is likewise a narrative of circulation concerned with recuperating Alexandria's cosmopolitanism. In reading the two narratives against each other, this article attempts to unpack the ideological underpinnings of their recuperative gestures.