A newcomer to Alexandria’s Spitfire Bar is greeted with two questions: “What do you want to drink?” and “Where are you from?” The second question dictates what kind of music they’ll put on. The man most often asking the question is Hassan Fouad Osman, who tells me, “I’ve never bought an album in my life. I don’t need to: People leave me music from all over the world.”

Every port city in the world, large or small, has its own version of the Spitfire Bar. It’s the type of place in which you can only start to make out what passes for décor a few moments after entering as your eyes adjust from the harsh Egyptian sun the establishment’s low, reddish lighting. The walls are covered with stickers and posters representing most of the world’s navies and shipping lines, all of them jostling for space with tattered, ancient photos of regulars and friends. The stickers are interrupted by aquariums and the inevitable picture of dogs playing pool as well as the pin-up girl posters which one of the owners, Ari, insists are actually photos of his wife.

In fact, the only place where the Spitfire Bar is a little out of place is Alexandria. While there is no shortage of bars in Egypt, this is the only ‘just a bar’ that I know of. There is no restaurant, night club, hotel or swimming pool attached. The Spitfire is a bar, nothing more, nothing less.

Perhaps the most often quoted remark about Alexandria is, “The most historical city in the world with the least to show for it.” Not an entirely fair statement. Alexandria has magnificent relics of all of its various incarnations — you just have to look for them. Admittedly, they’re not always easy to find. You need scuba gear to visit Cleopatra’s Palace, and the largest known Roman burial ground in all of Egypt, the Catacombs of Kom ash-Shuqqafa, are completely swallowed up in a low-rent, maze-like section of the Carmous district. Similarly, if you weren’t looking for the Spitfire Bar, you would probably walk right past it without even noticing it. The sign hanging over the only door is easy to miss while you’re dodging traffic on the narrow road.

And like many things Alexandrian, the Spitfire owes both its name and existence to foreigners, even if it is a 100 percent Egyptian-owned watering hole. The nation’s Second City spent about the first 2300 years of its existence being arguably the least Egyptian city in Egypt. From its inception, the city’s fate was governed by external forces. Built on the site of a small Mediterranean fishing village in 331 BC, it still bears the name of its Macedonian founder, Alexander the Great. The Ptolemaic dynasty of Pharaohs begun by one of Alexander’s Greek generals, Ptolemy I, saw Alexandria grow into the second-largest city in the world, second only to Rome itself. It became the cultural and learning center of its time with the world’s largest library and the home of one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the Pharos Lighthouse. The coming of the Romans signaled a slow decline for Alexandria. During the invasion, the great library was burned to the ground and it never fully regained its position as the world’s center of learning. When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, zealots, caught up in the fervor of their new faith, set about destroying anything they deemed pagan. The grand temples of the Pharaonic and Greek gods were torn down, as were centers of learning. The theater and the library which had been built to replace the original were gone forever, and there was little left to entice the Muslim armies arriving in the seventh century to keep Alexandria as their capitol. Instead, they left it to its fate and moved south to establish the city that has been the capital ever since, Cairo.

The once great city of Alexandria once again became little more than a fishing village with an estimated 8,000 inhabitants.

Kim Piper Hassan Fouad Osman with one of his many scrapbooks documenting the life of the bar. Some of which date back to the 1940s.

Alexandria was resurrected by another foreigner, an Albanian general named Mohammed Ali. Under his rule, the Mahmoudeya Canal was dug linking Alexandria to the Nile and it quickly reclaimed its place as one of the busiest ports in the Mediterranean. A cultural revival accompanied the economic recovery, a host of poets and writers sprung up in this era, and Alexandria rejoined the ranks of international cities.

By the 1940s, nearly half of Alexandria’s population was non-Egyptian, and its truly Egyptian story begins with Nasser. After the revolution and nationalization, the foreigners flooded out of Alexandria, leaving businesses and some belongings behind. The relics of the age preceding nationalization are much more visible than those left by previous eras. The architecture lining most of the Corniche could only be described as ‘colonial.’ But for the true relics, for the Alexandria described by Constantine Cafavy and Lawrence Durrell, one has to dig a little deeper.

This brings us to number 7, Rue de l’Ancienne Bourse, in the heart of the old Greek District.

In 1883, a Greek immigrant opened a small restaurant and bar called, Dimos Khararambo. In 1935, owner Dimos hired an 11-year-old local kid named Hassan Osman. This was the first in the chain of events which led to Hassan’s nephews Hassan, Ari and Gamel now owning the Spitfire.

“This place was very popular with the British pilots during the Second World War,” Hassan tells me, “so my uncle he changed the name to Spitfire,” after the name of the storied fighter they flew. “During the war, most of the people left Alexandria, but my uncle stayed and he became Dimos’ right hand man.” The Germans advanced nearly all the way to Alexandria and nearly every building from this time frame, the Spitfire Bar, included have bomb shelters.

When Nasser and nationalization came into being, foreigners were not allowed to own businesses in Egypt without an Egyptian partner. Dimos sold half the business to Hassan and died shortly after. He left behind a wife and daughter who had no interest in the bar and sold Hassan the other half of the business.

The Spitfire Bar was now truly a family business, Egyptian style.

“We still have the contract my uncle signed with the Greek man’s wife,” Hassan says. “We still have the original contract he signed in 1883 to open the place,” he pauses, then adds with a smile, “somewhere.”

“My father also worked here from the time he was very young,” Hassan continues, ”and I started working in here when I was seven years old.” He pulls out one of the scrapbooks to prove it. “See there,” he points. “That is my uncle, and see there,” he says, pointing again, this time at a young boy standing behind the bar next to the uncle, a boy barely able to see over the top of it. “That is me.”

All you can make out about the patrons from the faded black and white photo was that they were obviously blond and fair. “There were lots of Germans in those days,” Hassan explains. “I learned German before I learned English.” If the Germans saw any irony in drinking in a bar named after the Luftwaffe’s nemesis, they showed few signs of it. Looking through the scrapbooks, you can watch as the boys grew up, the men grew old and the various styles and fashions of the patrons came and went. You also watch as the once clean walls gradually fill up with seemingly chaotic decorations.

Hassan Osman passed away in the 1970s. Since he had never married, the bar went to his younger brother, Hassan, Ari and Gamel’s father. When their father died 10 years later at the exact same age as his brother, the Spitfire Bar was passed to his sons.

“We all have sons,” Hassan says, referring to himself and his brothers. “But things are different now, they all go to school.” He points around the bar and says, “This was my school.” He doesn’t know if any of them would want it anyway considering the extremely high tax rate on businesses that sell alcohol. “Before, it was no problem, but Bush, he killed my business,” he grumbles.

Sailors from American warships, he explains, are no longer allowed shore leave to wander around town. “Before, when we found out they were coming, we would have to bring in extra refrigerators. We would go through four cases on just one round. Maybe when Bush leaves they will let them come back,” he adds hopefully. “We still get a lot of British ships and other navies, but there were a lot more of them before.”

“It’s not just Bush who is trying to ruin our business,” Ari chimes in. “Someone told us that a German man wrote a book about this place and said the bar was haunted.” That wasn’t the worst of it. “This man even wrote that we had our father’s body in the freezer. We don’t even have a freezer!”

The Spitfire Bar is only a couple of blocks away from the house in which Durrell wrote his Alexandria Quartet, and even closer to the offices and homes of other of Alexandria’s literary greats, so asking about famous visitors seemed only natural.

“Who would know,” Hassan told me. “Maybe they were here, but it was before they were famous. We did have one though,” he then adds. “One afternoon, we were just sitting in here and all of a sudden policemen and security agents busted in. We were terrified, I was wondering, what did I do?” The wondering was soon over. As soon as the bar was declared safe, David Welch, then the American ambassador to Egypt and now the assistant secretary of state for the Middle East, came in.

“He was a nice man,” Hassan recalls. “He only stayed for a little bit, but he was very friendly. We talked for a little bit, he bought a t-shirt and then left.” Hassan points at the autographed picture now hanging on the wall and says, “Who knows — maybe he will come back to see us some time.”

Maybe he will come back. The unique character of the place and the characters that both work and hang out there make finding excuses to return easy to find. The dim lighting and the chaotic décor can at first come off as slightly seedy. After you take it all in, though, you realize it’s cluttered but clean. Their somewhat odd habit of piling up all your empty bottles and glasses on a side table alleviates any and all argument when it comes time for the bill. And although it’s not a restaurant, you can occasionally get a bite to eat there. On one visit, Gamel gave me a plate of something, and after a short game of charades, I learned the word ‘gamous’ and he learned that it was called ‘water buffalo’ in English.

Even if the Spitfire doesn’t get passed on to the third generation of the Osman family, it’s not leaving their hands any time soon.

“I am the oldest of my brothers and I’m only 48,” Hassan says. “I am a young man.” Alexandria’s most famous landmarks, the great library and the Pharos Lighthouse, are gone forever. The Spitfire Bar may not measure up to these historic structures, but in its own way it is a holdover from a bygone era.

If you think even that is a bit of a stretch, stop by and think it through over a drink, perhaps while reading the history up on its walls.  et