الكاتب: kafej

Alexander the Great never saw the city he envisioned and had named after himself almost two and a half millennia ago. He was there to map it out, using grains of barley as the story goes, only to leave and carry on his conquests, before dying at the age of 32 in Babylon, more than 1,300km (800 miles) from Alexandria.

He may have died, but his city did not.

Alexandria: The City that Changed the World, by Egyptian-British academic Islam Issa, himself one of the 100th generation of Alexandrians, is the biography of what is now Egypt’s second city.

Alexandria, the bride of the sea as it is nicknamed in Arabic today in reference to its Mediterranean location, is often ignored when discussing the world’s greatest cities. Its importance – it was once a rival to Rome – is forgotten, but Issa takes the reader on a mesmerising journey through the city’s history, its stories, and its tragedies.

We encounter the city’s rulers – including a short period in the ninth century when it was controlled by pirates from Spain – and all the populations who have made the city home, including Greeks, Egyptians, Jews, Arabs, Turks, French, British, and Italians.

The eponymous founder

The book is not just the story of a city, but in its early chapters, of a man whose name has echoed through the ages.

Alexandria symbolises Alexander the Great. Both became bywords for cosmopolitanism: Alexandria in its mixed population and identity, Alexander in his impact across three continents.

But while the man named numerous cities after himself (Kandahar in Afghanistan and Khujand in Tajikistan were originally named in his honour), today, there is only one Alexandria.

Issa does a fantastic job of explaining the history, taking the time to share the stories, both mythical and factual, that have made Alexandria the city it is today, the largest on the Mediterranean Sea.

There are some fascinating links. Legend has it that Helen of Troy was taken to what is now Alexandria. The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem was modelled on a golden dome in the Egyptian city. Venice named its St Mark’s Basilica after a saint whose body was stolen by Venetian merchants from Alexandria. And Zionism, the Arab League and Egypt’s 2011 revolution all have ties to the city.

But in the beginning, Alexandria was Pharos, an island off the coast of Egypt. A causeway was built to the mainland, and the natural gradual deposit of silt widened it to form the geography we know today. The growth of the city on the back of its founding by Alexander and the rule of the Ptolemaic dynasty (305-30 BC) that followed led to a rapid influx of people from around the ancient Mediterranean world, attracted to what the author calls the “Alexandrian Dream”, a place of wide avenues, copious marble and giant parks, where the Pharos Lighthouse, an ancient wonder of the world, served as an ancient Statue of Liberty.

The modern idea of history is often one of struggle, but the book showcases the marvels of the past, such as the Library of Alexandria, with its large columns and sculptures, and ceiling-high cabinets filled with papyrus scrolls – and possibly over one million books in total by the first century BC.

The library itself was a state project that was envisioned from the very formation of the city. Rulers were willing to pay huge sums to acquire texts and sacrifice relationships with other states to keep them in Alexandria. At the Alexandrian equivalent of customs it was books that were seized, and not out of any attempt to ban them, but instead to decide whether to seize them for the library. Librarians were celebrities, with school students at the time tasked with memorising their names.

One of the world’s foremost scholars of Queen Cleopatra, Issa dedicates an illuminating chapter to the great Alexandrian, and a preceding one to the forgotten Cleopatras – the most famous one was the seventh of her name after all.

The queen, whose racial identity has now led to a controversy that Issa addresses in the book, was as cosmopolitan as Alexandria itself, speaking 11 languages. She was also the first of the Hellenistic Ptolemaic dynasty to be fully fluent in Egyptian.

Often portrayed in the West as opportunistic and reliant on the skills of seduction, Issa points out that Alexandrians view her differently. He explains how he grew up hearing celebratory tales. “She was a source of pride who, I would learn, was an intellectual who debated powerful men,” Issa writes, before bringing in medieval Arabic sources that portray the queen respectfully, focusing on her contributions to medicine, rather than her physical appearance.

Local knowledge

The manner in which Issa handles Cleopatra is a testament to the importance of Alexandria’s history being told by a native, someone of the city, at a time when the stories of the wider region are often told by outsiders.

And Issa’s storytelling and expertise speak to the love he has for his city.

Moving away from Alexandria’s ancient past, through the Arab conquest and then the European invasions, we come to more modern times, and the benefit of having a native tell the story of Alexandria grows in importance.

We learn more about Issa’s own family history in Alexandria, which takes the narrative away from those of the rich and powerful that naturally carries through the centuries to that of the common person: a fisherman, a scrap dealer, a teacher.

Issa’s grandfather was a neighbour of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser as a child in Alexandria’s working-class Bacos area – itself named after the ancient deity Bacchus. His parents have memories of the 1967 Six-Day War with Israel and a family member’s death in the October War of 1973.

Alexandria itself has expanded, from the original island and the causeway to it, and now across the bay, and deep into the south. Centuries of declines and rises, along with natural disasters and rapid development have turned it from the ancient wide avenues to a city of alleys, as the book describes it, where “everyone knows their neighbour’s news”. The unrest that has manifested itself across the rest of Egypt, partly as a result of the country’s economic difficulties, but also its repressive authorities, reared their head in Alexandria with the killing of a young man, Khaled Said, by Egyptian police in 2010. A Facebook group would form to demand justice, eventually becoming one of the groups that organised the protest movement that would topple President Hosni Mubarak the following year.

The strife has contributed to the city’s identity, but so does its history. Issa quotes a popular trap artist, Marwan Pablo, who sings “I’m not from Egypt, me, I’m from Alexandriaaa”.

That does not mean locals are not proud Egyptians, they are. But they are also Alexandrian.

The city is not as cosmopolitan as it once was, or as Alexander himself would have once envisioned. The Europeans and Jews have largely left, but not so long ago – Issa’s father still remembers the local patissier speaking to him in Egyptian Arabic as he gave him his order. He was of Greek origin, yes, but Alexandrian.

The Greeks and other communities may be gone, but Issa points out that it does not mean the city’s culture is a monolith.

“In a single space, there will be Muslims and Christians sitting together, a bearded man and a goth on adjacent tables, and in the queue, a woman wearing a colourful beach dress in front of another wearing a black face veil,” Issa writes. “In today’s Alexandria, in this globalised city, you are free to adopt whatever cultural identity you want.”

Yes, it is an Arab and majority Muslim city, but “today’s apparent hegemony is living in the shadow of a melting pot”, as the mixed heritage of its population proves. Issa ends the book by describing one of his own trips to Alexandria, arriving from the sea, and how the history of the city still lives on, in both his imagination and the scene that sits before him.

And this is not the end of the story. The present culture of Alexandria, the homogeneity that has accompanied the city’s postcolonial history, Issa points out, is about 75 years old, a tiny fraction of its 2,500-year-old history. “So, who’s to know what will happen two and a half millennia from now?”

Whatever the future does bring, it will be hard to tell its story in a more informed and affectionate way than Issa has. His history is a tribute to Alexandria, a reservoir of knowledge on the city, and sets a marker for those wishing to tell the stories of the world’s great cities.

“All I was after was the truth,” says Dr Jim Swire.

The retired GP’s 35-year search for answers has seen him board a US-bound flight from Heathrow carrying a replica bomb, hold a secret meeting with Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, and collapse in shock after a criminal trial at a former military base in the Netherlands.

His 23-year-old daughter was among the 270 people killed in the Lockerbie bombing on 21 December 1988 – the deadliest ever UK terrorist attack.

“I think I know who was responsible for killing her and I think I can prove it,” the old Etonian, now 87, says in a new four-part Sky documentary.

He keeps the evidence he has collected in cardboard folders in a metal filing cabinet in an office in the Cotswolds home he shares with his wife Jane.

‘No one had really heard of Lockerbie’

Flora “was everything a parent could wish for”, says Mrs Swire.

She was about to turn 24 and studying medicine when she set off to the US to meet her boyfriend for Christmas.

“Everything was booked up, except there were plenty of seats available on a certain flight known as Pan Am 103,” says Dr Swire, sitting in a leather armchair in his cottage, overlooking the rugged coastline on the Isle of Skye.

Less than 40 minutes after taking off from Heathrow on the transatlantic leg to New York’s JFK, the Boeing 747 was 31,000ft over the Scottish town of Lockerbie when the aircraft was almost instantly destroyed by a massive blast.

Residents remember “a huge explosion” before the sky lit up with “bright red flames” and a “great big mushroom ball of fire”.

“Before 1988, no one had really heard of Lockerbie,” says Colin Dorrance, who was a 19-year-old recruit just three months into his police career at the time.

“Life here was just undramatic.”

That all changed at 7.03pm that evening. All 259 passengers and crew members on board the plane were killed along with 11 people in the town as windows were blown in and wreckage destroyed their homes.

Locals are still haunted by images of the bodies that fell from the sky, some still strapped in their seats as they landed in gardens and fields.

The smell of aviation fuel hung thick in the air as they surveyed the carnage strewn with luggage and the Christmas presents victims were carrying for loved ones.

Peter Giesecke can’t shake the image of the woman still wearing one high-heeled shoe, while Margaret and Hugh Connell became “attached” to the man they found in a field near their home, watching over him for 24 hours until his body was recovered.

“We developed quite a love for ‘our boy’, not knowing who he was,” says Mr Connell.

As news of the disaster broke, relatives were desperate to know whether their loved ones were on board.

Unable to get through to Heathrow, Dr Swire rang the Pan Am desk in New York and could hear “chaos in the background and women screaming” as families of the victims, many of whom were American, received the terrible news.

Dr Swire, tall and slim with a full head of white hair, is measured as he recalls the kindness of the pathologist who allowed him to see his daughter’s body in the local ice rink, where the post-mortems were being carried out.

“She was barely recognisable,” he says, the grief which still bubbles just under the surface after all these years coming to the fore as he tells how he was allowed to take a lock of Flora’s hair.

“Human kindness can be very important when these things happen,” he adds, with tears in his eyes.

‘Nothing quite adds up’

It took investigators a week to discover the disaster was caused by a bomb in a terrorist attack against the US – the biggest in the country’s history until 9/11.

“My first reaction was of fury, which led me to want to find the truth,” says Dr Swire. And that did a lot to help with the grief because I was busy doing things. It was rather how, I think, Flora would’ve reacted.”

The prime suspect was Iran, but they have always denied any involvement in the attack.

Iran had vowed to take revenge for the accidental downing of an Iran Air passenger flight by the US Navy in the Gulf in July 1988, which killed 290 people.

But the sprawling international investigation was just beginning.

“Nothing is what it seems in the Lockerbie story, nothing quite adds up,” says local reporter David Johnston, one of the first journalists on the scene.

It soon emerged a call was made to the US embassy in the Finnish capital that a Pan Am plane from Frankfurt to the US would be bombed in what was known as the “Helsinki warning”, with American diplomats in Europe told of a threat.

Passengers and luggage were transferred at Heathrow to Pan Am 103 from a feeder flight originating in Frankfurt and Dr Swire believes the plane was only two-thirds full because people were “warned off”. “We weren’t warned. Nobody told us,” he says.

“I felt I had a right to know the truth about how my daughter had come to be killed and why she wasn’t protected against being killed. And those were the bases on which we very soon found we were being richly and profusely deceived by the authorities.”

The ‘biggest crime scene in history’

Wreckage from the plane was spread over 845 square miles in what Richard Marquise, who headed up the FBI Lockerbie taskforce, describes as “the biggest crime scene in history”.

Investigators concluded the bomb was in a cassette player that was wrapped in clothes and put inside a brown hard-sided Samsonite suitcase.

A fragment of Toshiba circuit board pointed to possible links to tape recorder bombs made by Iran-backed PLFP-GC, a Palestinian terror group active in the 1970s and 1980s, who were suspected of carrying out the attack for the Iranians.

Dr Swire took his own replica bomb – the explosive material substituted for marzipan – on a plane from Heathrow to the US to highlight the security flaws.

“It was an obsession,” he admits. “All I was after was the truth of why our beautiful daughter had been murdered and I was bloody determined to find out who did it.”

The kindness of the women in Lockerbie

Meanwhile, in Lockerbie volunteers were cleaning the mud, blood and aviation fuel from the victims’ belongings left scattered amid the wreckage and bodies.

Clothes were washed, pressed and folded, jewellery was polished, and the pages of a tattered bible were individually ironed.

Miami-based Victoria Cummock, whose husband John died on board, was surprised to receive his clean laundry.

“I got back his personal effects due to the kindness of the women in Lockerbie,” she says.

The Malta connection and the Libyans

Charred clothes which were packed with the bomb were traced to a shop in Malta, and two Libyan suspects came into the FBI’s sights.

Colonel Gaddafi’s Libya had a motive for the attack after an American bombing in capital Tripoli and a tiny fragment of circuit board, called PT35, found embedded in a shirt collar 20 miles from Lockerbie, was traced to Swiss electronics expert Edwin Bollier, who said he sold a batch of timers to the rogue state.

After CIA asset Majid Giaka, a Libyan double agent codenamed “Puzzle Piece”, said he saw the suspects with a brown suitcase at Malta airport the day before the bombing, two men were charged.

But there was little hope of Colonel Gaddafi handing over Abdelbaset al Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer, and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, a security official for Libyan Arab Airlines, to face trial.

Telling only his wife for fear he would be intercepted by the security services, Dr Swire travelled to Libya to meet the dictator face to face in an attempt to persuade him.

“I was pretty crazy at that time,” he says. “I was so determined that I wasn’t scared, nervous yes, but not scared.”

Dr Swire says he heard the “click, click, click” of Gaddafi’s female soldiers readying their AK47s as he opened his briefcase to reveal pictures of his daughter, then again at the end of the meeting when he pinned a badge reading “Lockerbie the truth must be known” to the Libyan leader’s lapel.

The meeting had no obvious impact, and it was not until 11 years after the bombing that Gaddafi finally agreed to extradite the suspects in the face of tough economic sanctions imposed in response to the atrocity.

‘The shock was so great I collapsed’

The trial was held at former US Airforce base Camp Zeist, in the Netherlands, under Scottish law, and Dr Swire rented an apartment with Rev John Mosey, whose 19-year-old daughter Helga died on board Pan Am 103, to follow the evidence closely over 84 days.

Supergrass Giaka crumbled in the witness box as he was shown to be a liar and a fantasist, while Bollier couldn’t confirm he supplied the bomb timer to Libya.

“I couldn’t continue to believe that there was a cogent body of evidence that justifies the finding of either of those two men guilty,” says Dr Swire.

The Scottish judges cleared Fhimah but found al Megrahi guilty of 270 counts of murder for which he was later handed a life sentence.

“The shock of the verdict initially was so great I collapsed,” says Dr Swire.

Families of the American victims were pleased with the guilty verdict and FBI agents felt vindicated by the finding Libya was behind the bombing.

But Dr Swire “couldn’t believe three senior Scottish judges could convict someone on that evidence”, which he believes to be “false” in order to frame Libya to protect the West’s fragile relationship with Iran.

“I wasn’t prepared to have anything associated with Flora’s death as untrue and debasing as the story that was raised by the authorities against those two men,” he says.

“I was very shaken up psychologically by the fact I knew al Megrahi was innocent, and the authorities protected her killers.”

Sky News has contacted the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service in Scotland for a response.

‘The truth is very simple’

In 2009, al Megrahi was released from a Scottish jail on compassionate grounds after he was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer, having spent just nine years behind bars.

But some believe he was freed in exchange for an oil deal with Libya.

He received a hero’s welcome when he landed back home with Scottish flags waved as he got off the plane.

Families of the American victims were disgusted but Dr Swire was happy and even visited him before he died in 2012.

From his Zurich office, Mr Bollier now claims the PT35 fragment is a fake and says he believes police tampered with the evidence.

He also says he was shown a brochure with two briefcases full of cash and offered $4m (£3.2m) by Mr Marquise, but the ex-FBI agent insists he didn’t offer him “one cent”.

For Dr Swire “the truth is very simple but the consequences of trying to conceal the truth are very complicated”.

“I think she (Flora) was killed by a bomb which was ordained by the Iranian authorities,” he says.

“They had had an Airbus destroyed by an American missile and 290 people killed. Therefore, they were lusting for revenge.”

Former CIA operations officer John Holt, the one-time handler of Giaka, agrees. “I have no doubt it was Iran,” he says, adding that the PLFP-GC carried out the attack on their behalf.

However, most people still believe the official narrative and Libya has officially accepted responsibility, agreeing to a $2.7bn (£1.95bn) compensation deal with the victims’ families, albeit with expectations sanctions would be lifted.

Dr Swire’s search for answers continues as the alleged bombmaker Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir al Marimi is in US custody awaiting trial accused of being the third man involved in the terrorist attack.

Back in Lockerbie, the Connells did find out who their “boy” was – New Yorker Frank Ciulla.

The couple have formed a lasting friendship with his widow Mary Lou Ciulla and daughter Michelle Ciulla Lipkin, who are greeted with warm smiles and hugs as they step into their home from the Scottish drizzle.

“I felt that he was alone somewhere and yet when I came here, he wasn’t alone,” says Mrs Ciulla, her friend Mrs Connell’s arm around her shoulder. “Mine was actually… a nice story.”

At least 31 people killed in Israeli attacks on the Bureij and Nuseirat refugee camps, officials say.

Israeli air raids have killed dozens of people, including children, in northern, central, and southern Gaza, Palestinian officials and media have said, as the besieged territory endures its 44th day of bombardment.

At least 31 people were killed in Israeli attacks on the Bureij and Nuseirat refugee camps in central Gaza, the Ministry of Health in the Hamas-governed enclave said on Sunday.

A woman and her child were also killed in strikes in southern Khan Younis city, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

Israeli forces also shot dead two people, including a disabled man, during incursions in the occupied West Bank, Wafa reported.

Issam al-Fayed, a 46-year-old disabled man, was killed at the entrance of the Jenin refugee camp, while 20-year-old Omar Laham was killed at the Dheisheh refugee camp south of Bethlehem, Wafa said.

‘Our life is hell’

The killings come on the heels of devastating assaults on schools and refugee camps in northern Gaza.

At least 50 people were killed in an attack on al-Fakhoora school in the Jabalia refugee camp on Saturday, Gaza’s Health Ministry said, while dozens of casualties were reported from an attack on a second school in Tall az-Zaatar.

“The scenes were horrifying. Corpses of women and children were on the ground. Others were screaming for help,” Ahmed Radwan, a wounded survivor of al-Fakhoora attack, told The Associated Press news agency.

“Dead bodies [are] scattered … pieces of flesh”, an unnamed witness told Al Jazeera. “No one can recognise their sons. Our life is hell.”

Marwan Bishara, a senior political analyst for Al Jazeera, said al-Fakhoora school could be described as the “al-Shifa of schools” as it has been repeatedly hit by Israeli forces like al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest medical facility, which has been a major target of Israel’s military campaign.

“There is nothing discriminate about the fact that a school that shelters thousands of people has been bombed from the air; that is meant to create damage, human loss, suffering and death,” Bishara said.

Patients fleeing al-Shifa

Meanwhile, al-Shifa Hospital continued to be the focus of humanitarian concerns as hundreds of people fled the facility on foot on orders from the Israeli army, according to its director.

Columns of sick and injured – some of them amputees – were seen leaving with displaced people, doctors, and nurses on Saturday, as loud explosions were heard around the complex.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA, described “horrifying images” of the scene, while Egypt called the bombing a “war crime” and “a deliberate insult to the United Nations”.

A World Health Organization assessment team on Sunday said 291 patients were left at the hospital. They included 32 babies in extremely critical condition, trauma patients with severely infected wounds and others with spinal injuries who are unable to move, the UN health agency said.

Since Palestinian group Hamas launched its surprise attack on Israeli territory on October 7, Israel has waged a devastating air and ground assault on Gaza, killing at least 11,500 people, more than a third of them children, according to Gaza officials.

The 44-day war has displaced some 1.5 million Palestinians, wrecked much of the territory’s infrastructure and sparked a desperate humanitarian crisis, aid workers say.

Ukrainian military says its defences shot down 15 out of 20 Iranian-made Shahed drones overnight.

Russia has launched several waves of drone attacks on the Kyiv, Poltava and Cherkasy regions of Ukraine, stepping up its assaults on the Ukrainian capital after several weeks of respite, according to Ukrainian officials.

“The enemy’s UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] were launched in many groups and attacked Kyiv in waves, from different directions, at the same time constantly changing the vectors of movement along the route,” Serhiy Popko, the head of Kyiv’s military administration, said in a message on Telegram messaging app early on Sunday.

“That is why the air raid alerts were announced several times in the capital.”

Popko said preliminary information indicated that Ukraine’s air defence systems downed 10 Iranian-made Shahed kamikaze drones in Kyiv and the city’s outskirts.

There were no initial reports of “critical damage” or casualties, he said.

The Ukrainian Air Force said on its official Facebook page on Sunday morning that Russia attacked the Ukrainian territories from its Kursk region.

It said air defences shot down 15 out of 20 drones that conducted the strikes.

The reports could not independently be verified and there was no immediate comment from Russia.

Intensified Russian attacks expected

Russia began carrying out strikes on Ukraine’s energy, military and transport infrastructure in October 2022, six months after Moscow’s troops failed to take over the capital and withdrew to Ukraine’s east and south.

Last winter, Russia pounded Ukraine with hundreds of missiles and drones, leaving millions without electricity, heating and water during the coldest months of the year – before easing the assaults in the summer.

After a pause of 52 days, Moscow resumed air strikes on Kyiv earlier this month. On Saturday, Ukrainian officials said all drones heading towards Kyiv were destroyed, but some hit infrastructure facilities elsewhere in Ukraine.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other officials have warned that Russia will resume its large-scale bombardment of Ukrainian civilian infrastructure during the winter months.

In his daily video message on Saturday evening, Zelenskyy announced new steps to bolster Ukraine’s air defences in the coming weeks.

“The closer we get to winter, the greater Russia’s efforts will be to step up its attacks,” Zelenskyy said.