Cosmopolitan cities

Alexandria!  I can't get that city -- or that idea of a city -- out of my mind.

It all started years ago, when I read Durrell's Alexandria Quartet -- a Proustian story set in a partially fantasized Alexandria.  Then I discovered André Aciman -- that Jewish refugee from Alexandria, whose memoir and essays on memory and nostalgia hearken, over and over, to his Alexandrian boyhood.  E. M. Forster, and his 1922 history and guide of Alexandria.  Bits of the poetry of C. P. Cadafy. 

A city of world importance, from its founding by Alexander the Great in 331 B.C.  But what is it that haunts my own imagination?  I think it's the fascination of a "cosmopolitan" city, a city shared by many ethnic groups, many religions, many languages -- all living together, not always comfortably, but reasonably peaceably.  A city where a child or an old man can see much of the world by simply walking down one of its streets.

I feel the same way about Istanbul -- or rather about Constantinople, when the city was the capital of the Ottoman Empire.  Filled with not only the ruling Turks, but with Greeks, Jews, Armenians, Serbs, Syrians, Arabs, Egyptians.  And I feel the same about -- although I know less about -- Vienna, capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  Filled not only with the ruling German-speaking Austrians, but with Bohemians, Slovakians, Jews, Slovenes, Italians, Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Rumanians, and -- of course -- Hungarians.

Constantinople and Vienna were exciting cities in which to live, but their cosmopolitan nature was each based on the incorporation of many nations within a single empire.  Alexandria was somewhat different.  It was a city within the Ottoman Empire, but it was not a capital city.  And it drew nationalities from outside Ottoman territory.  People were attracted to it for many reasons, including the very fact of its cosmopolitanism.  British and French, left over from colonial adventures in Egypt.  Jews, fleeing persecution in other countries.  Armenians fleeing violent oppression by the Ottomans, and later, by Turkey.  Many Greeks, who settled throughout the Eastern Mediterranean.  Syrians.  Albanians.  Italians.  Coptic Christians.  Non-Egyptian Arabs.  And, of course, Muslim Egyptians.

One by one, it seems, the great cosmopolitan cities of the world have collapsed.  Vienna is now the capital of a small German-speaking country, not always welcoming to immigrants.  The post-war Turkish Republic moved its capital to Ankara, and -- to a large extent -- welcomed only Turks as citizens.

Alexandria remained a fading but fascinatingly cosmopolitan city until 1954 and the Suez war.  Aciman, in his writings, recalls how -- as a result of that war -- first the British and French, and then the Jews, were expelled from Egypt.  (The Jewish population dropped from 50,000 to about 50 today.)  He doesn't describe the fate of other nationalities -- Alexandrians whose ancestral countries weren't belligerents in the Suez hostilities -- such as the large Greek minority.  But Wikipedia notes that Nasser's nationalization of private property, which reached its zenith in 1961, led almost all non-Egyptians to flee the city. 

Alexandria's cosmopolitanism, and the death of that cosmopolitanism, brings contemporary America to mind.  When the president rails against "globalization," and shouts loudly in favor of "America First" and "America for Americans," he is generally perceived as worrying that American jobs are migrating overseas.  When he decries immigration, and expresses dislike of treaties (Iran, Cuba, NATO, NAFTA), he is seen as worrying about immigrants who take jobs that citizens could be handling, and about agreements that help other nations while harming America.

And to some extent, these perceptions of his intentions are correct.  But at a deeper level, he is appealing to nativism, to nationalism, to tribalism.  Insofar as possible at this late date, he wants to limit foreign influence on what he and his followers see as "true" American culture and nationality.  He wants to make America white, or at least white in its culture and values. 

Trump doesn't get along with many foreign leaders.  Who does he get along with?  The leaders of Turkey, of Saudi Arabia, of Israel, of the Philippines, of Poland, of Hungary.  Of Russia, sometimes. Of supporters of Brexit in Britain, and of those wishing to weaken the European Union in Europe.  His every instinct is to prevent and reverse a mixing of races, religions, and cultures.  He would have understood fully Gamal Nasser's drive to make Egypt a nation filled only with Egyptians; he would have supported Nasser's successful efforts to drive the Greeks, Jews, Armenians, and Albanians out of Alexandria.

If you look at voters in "blue" states, and compare then with voters in "red" states, one way to distinguish the two is the extent to which residents in each group of states enjoy living in communities that are "cosmopolitan": the extent to which they see value in rubbing shoulders with people different from themselves.  That distinction has become one of the fault lines in American culture and politics.  It explains a number of other fault lines, and any number of disputes over public policy.

I suspect that anyone who reads about Alexandria before World War II with a sense of nostalgia is the sort of person who feels most comfortable living in a blue state.

Like those states in the Northwest Corner.