Cleopatras Palace a True Narrative

Alexandria, Egypt is well known for being the city where Cleopatra once ruled her people and both she and her famous lover, Mark Anthony met their final, tragic fates. It is where the "Pharos of Alexandria" lighthouse, one of the original Seven Wonders of the Ancient World stood as one of the tallest man-made structures in the world before her demise from a series of earthquakes beginning in 796 AD. No discussion of the famous city would be complete, however, without mention of the Great Alexandria Library which boasted more books, scrolls, manuscripts, maps and other documents containing the most complete collection of written knowledge of the known world. It was part of the “Mouseion” complex, a place dedicated to the Muses or nine goddesses of the arts. While exact dates of the Great Library’s physical existence remain in question by scholars today, estimates range from the reign of Ptolemy I Soter (c. 323–c. 283 BC) to its final disappearance, possibly in 643 AD when Alexandria was captured by the Muslim army of Amr ibn al-As. (See note 1 below). It was here, not long ago in this very city where I was living, working, and often found myself walking among those ancient ruins that I came upon a young man sleeping on a sidewalk. Perhaps "young man" is not the best description because in truth he was just a child. His clothes were tattered, torn and filthy with his feet covered in nothing more than a cheap pair of well-worn rubber shower sandals. He was quite simply a pitiful sight and appeared as if he probably hadn't eaten in days, stirring something deep within my foreign American soul. I thought about my own children back home, hoping and praying that they were all safe and warm in their clean, soft, blanketed beds until I was able to rejoin them again. I wondered where this sad young man's family was or even if he had a family at all. And I wondered how he ended up sleeping here on the side of a heavily trafficked road and why countless numbers of other people saw him before I did but chose to say or do nothing. My heart felt genuinely pierced and I found myself reaching into my wallet and pulling out a "20 pound" note, the equivalent to about five U.S. dollars at the time. I tapped him gently on his shoulder to awaken him and then placed the money in one of his pint-sized hands. The look on his face when he saw the unexpected gift and this unusual looking foreigner who provided it was beyond priceless because his face lit up, beaming like a harvest moon with a dazed, euphoric smile of appreciation from ear to ear. No words were spoken between us because I knew he spoke no English and my Arabic was "Survival Arabic" at best. And yet, within the bounds of this one special moment a silent connection had been made between us that transcended verbal language or religious, political, social and ethnic differences. For a few fleeting seconds in the eternity of time, this young man and I were a reflection of one another. I felt his pain of destitution, hunger and loneliness and I tried to imagine that he might have felt a little of my own joy of giving someone a slivering ray of hope that today would be better than yesterday and tomorrow might even be better. "I wish I could do more for this young man," I thought to myself. But time was racing on, and darkness was closing in fast. And so, I left him stranded there, lying on the sidewalk as I turned to walk away toward the ruins of Cleopatra's Palace. (1) Library of Alexandria - Wikipedia