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Closure, if it exists at all, is either for the afterlife or for those who stay behind.
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Ultimately, it is the living who’ll close the ledger of my life, not I.
“Maybe what you need is less pride and more courage. Pride is the nickname we give fear. You were afraid of nothing once. What happened?”
And yet there must be some small joy in finding that we are each put in a position to complete the lives of others, to close the ledger they left open and play their last card for them.
Why Alexandria? could have meant so many things: from Why is this place as it stands now so central to the history of the West? down to something as whimsical as Why did we choose to come here? I’d wanted to reply, Because everything that’s meant anything to either of us—Ephesus, Athens, Syracuse—probably ended here. I was thinking of the Greeks, of Alexander and his lover Hephaestion, of the Library, and Hypatia, and ultimately of the modern Greek poet Cavafy. But I also knew why he was asking.
