The sea is calm, shining, deep blue. It lifts, and falls. A gentle swell, no more.

I say, “My late wife had one just like it.”

TWENTY-FIVE

My darling—

As Sébastien once said to me, I say to you:

Au revoir, mon chéri, et bonne chance

Goodbye, darling, and good luck

Pense à moi (pas trop souvent)

Think of me (not too often)

Souviens-toi de moi à Amiriya

Remember me at Amiriya

J’avais quelque chose dans l’oeil  Peut-être un grain de sable

I had something in my eye  Maybe a grain of sand

Peut-être pas

Maybe not

A NOTE ON PLACE

Unlike the village of Upton in Hampshire, the Upton of Think of Me is an imaginary place, as are the towns of Waltham and Alver Shore and the hamlet of Barrow End. The Egyptian city of Alexandria, of course, is real, as are the events described as part of the North African Campaign of the Second World War. With the exception of some well-known generals, Alexandrian musical figures, and one gifted eye surgeon, the people depicted in this novel are entirely fictional.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

My maternal grandmother had a brother who married a Cairene émigré. Jacqueline was beautiful, soignée, charming. She deftly and kindly fielded my enthusiastic, ignorant questions about Egypt. When I myself went to Egypt, I translated a novel, City of Saffron, by the renowned Egyptian modernist Edwar al-Kharrat. The world of City of Saffron is the Alexandria of the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. Only then did I properly understand what Jacqueline had experienced. That the cities that she had known as a child, Cairo and Alexandria, were so utterly changed as to have almost disappeared. That you can be exiled from the places of your heart, not only by distance but also by time.

A great many families left Alexandria in the 1950s. Many were of Lebanese, Italian, or Greek heritage; of Orthodox, Catholic, or Jewish faith. They were mostly French-speaking—at least, they chose French out of a multitude of familiar tongues as their common currency. They had to start again in new lands; to become American, Canadian, Australian, English. They strove for prosperity, brought up children, and—so important—enjoyed life. They had the courage to say: That was then, and this is now. We will not think about our birthplace, the wondrous, incomparable, vanished Alexandria—or, at least, not too often.