Dr. Ahmed Elbeshlawy is a scholar of comparative literature, author, and poet. His books include Khamriyyat Hong Kong (Wipf & Stock, 2025), Sahara (Wipf & Stock, 2023), Unappeasable Ghosts (Yorkshire Publishing, 2021), Savage Charm (Proverse Hong Kong, 2019), Twenty-Five Meditations on Writing and Subjectivity (London Academic Publishing, 2019), Woman in Lars von Trier’s Cinema (Palgrave, 2016), America in Literature and Film (Routledge, 2011). His other publications include various articles and book chapters in The Bloomsbury Handbook to Literature and Psychoanalysis (2023), The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Urban Literary Studies (2022), The Palgrave Handbook of Literature and the City (2016), Sexuality and Culture (2014), The Comparatist (2008), Scope (2008), and fe/male bodies (2005, 2006). Dr. Ahmed is currently working on a new poetry collection entitled “Wagner”.
Alexandria
Forster, Durrell, Cavafy –
But also where I saw the sea
For the first time in my life,
All Egyptian, Greek, Roman,
And Pharisee,
Deep down, in spite of the chains
Constraining its roaring waves.
Once the greatest city on earth,
Reduced to nothing
By the dark winds
That came to it from the East.
Struggling through crowded
Dirty streets,
I tell myself it is only
A matter of time in these
Unbearable intestines
Before I reach an exit
To the sea,
The city’s unchanging aspect –
Its beautiful old face
Renewing itself eternally.
At last, the childish ecstasy;
The sun in my eyes,
The sand on my feet and knees.
The ruling sea drowns my disdains.
Only Hellenistic love remains.
Marsa Matrouh
My far-sighted father
Could see
English letters written on liners
Far out at sea
From his recliner
In the hotel balcony.
Every morning, the tall
European lady swam
Across to the other side
Where the Nazi flag was
Still displayed inside
Rommel’s Cave beside
The General’s military coat.
Every morning, I waited,
Impatiently,
After breakfast and milk tea,
For beach time –
The crystal clear water,
The purity of the air,
And the cruelty of the sun
That inflamed my young skin.
Matrouh shaped my childish desires.
My desires, in return, shaped the town.
It was paradise.
Thebes
On my first visit as a teenager,
I was dumbfounded
By the sheer size of the columns
Standing as if weightless
On the desert sand.
The King’s clenched fist
Spoke of absolute authority
On the land;
The smiling face dead sure
Of its destiny.
On my second visit as an old man,
I could not but think
Of the disconnection
Between the past and the present.
The guide’s broken language
Spoke of poor education.
Women covered in black
From head to toe
Seemed unimpressed by
The surroundings,
Yet glanced furtively at one
God’s embarrassing erection
Depicted on a temple’s wall.
The city is proud to display
Another gigantic picture;
That of ‘His Eminence the Grand
Sheikh of Al-Azhar”.
Great Thebes is long gone
And replaced by
Diminutive Luxor.
Cairo
A feast of senses
Broken language
Cut sentences
Lights
And pitch black nights
Alleys and illusions
Shadows and delusions
Fair yet cruel
Packed yet beautiful
Shunned and missed
At once
The smells and
The sounds
The citrus blossoms
The dusty surfaces
Somehow
The buildings
The desert
And the river
Have the same color
Born of each other
Cafes of political
Discourse
That changed
The course
Of poverty or poetry
Songs
Of unconditional
Loyalty
No matter what
A dead-end street
Decreed
From above
An abyss of
Unrequited love