Remembering Cosmopolitan Egypt: Literature, Culture and Empire by Deborah Starr (review)

This monograph about the way Egypt's unique brand of pre- and post-WWII cosmopolitanism has been represented in Arabic and Hebrew fictional narratives is divided into three parts. The first, "Colonial Anxieties and Cosmopolitan Desires," focuses on readings of Alexandrian novelists Edwar al-Kharrat and Ibrahim Abdel Meguid; the second, "Counterpoint New York," analyses the autobiographical fictional films of the late Alexandrian filmmaker Youssef Chahine; and the third, "A Mobile Levant," discusses two Israeli novels, Yitzhaq Gormezano Goren's Alexandrian Summer and Ronit Matalon's The One Facing Us. Note that this last title, which is set primarily in Cairo, is the only headlined work that is not set, directly or indirectly, against the backdrop of Alexandria. Alexandria dominates here, and one wonders if Deborah Starr chose to feature Egypt rather than Alexandria in the title of her book in order to accommodate her chapter on Matalon. The subtitle, too, is perhaps too broad, for the book is almost entirely about literary texts and literary interpretations of filmic texts, and although the author situates this body of literature within its colonial contexts, and although these contexts are foregrounded in the works she analyses, the scope of her study is not as broad and multidisciplinary as its subtitle would suggest.

The strength of Remembering Cosmopolitan Egypt is its original observations about its core primary texts. Starr argues, for example, that whereas in City of Saffron (1985), al-Kharrat represents his native Alexandrian community primarily as a "binary" of mostly working-class Muslims and Copts that coalesces in order to fight off British occupation, in that novel's sequel, Girls of Alexandria (1990), al-Kharrat constructs a more porous and multifaceted identity for Alexandrians that includes and in some sense embraces cosmopolitan elements of the population which are compromised by their association with the occupier. Starr sets up, in other words, an interesting point of comparison between the two novels, which would initiate a dialogue with an informed reader. Similarly, in the chapter on Ibrahim Abdel Meguid, she suggests that his portraiture of the cosmopolitan city in No One Sleeps in Alexandria (1996) is inherently antinostalgic: the novel represents "not an idealized model of coexistence, but rather a cosmopolitan, pluralist nationalism forged through interethnic conflict" that is "uncoupled from anti-colonial sentiment" (60). Given that the novel is constructed around a sympathetic relationship between two railway workers—one Muslim and one Copt—this cynical undercurrent is not necessarily readily transparent.

The most intriguing if problematic section of the book, and the one that serves as the focus of this review, is that which deals with Youssef Chahine's autobiographical quartet Alexandria . . . Why? (1978), An Egyptian Story (1982), Alexandria Again and Forever (1989), and Alexandria . . . New York (2004). This chapter lends coherence to the monograph in the sense that it serves as a transition to the section of the book treating Hebrew-language fictional reminiscences of Jewish life in cosmopolitan Egypt. This is because whereas Jewish characters in Abdel Meguid and al-Kharrat are mentioned only in passing, Starr argues that in Chahine's films "Jews are not merely part of cosmopolitan society—they represent its primary, essential component." (86, emphasis in original). Because the term "cosmopolitan" has historically been employed as a code word for "Jew" in some forms of antisemitic discourse, she finds an "uneasy ambivalence" in this identification of Jews with cosmopolitanism even if Chahine's portrayals of Jews are meant to "dislodge" misconceptions (87). Starr does make some interesting observations about particular aspects of the films and offer some good insights, but her argument in this chapter is forced and ultimately unsubstantiated. Jews hardly figure in the story planes of the second and third of the autobiographical films, and in the fourth (which I have not yet seen in its entirety), it seems to be American support for the state of Israel, rather than Jewish cosmopolitanism, that figures as a central theme. Chahine's reference to Jewish artists...