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Freezing Temperatures Fail to Dull the Alexandria Waterfront Appeal

Street food vendor working at Alexandria’s promenade corniche, Asharq Al-Awsat
Street food vendor working at Alexandria’s promenade corniche, Asharq Al-Awsat
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Freezing Temperatures Fail to Dull the Alexandria Waterfront Appeal

Street food vendor working at Alexandria’s promenade corniche, Asharq Al-Awsat
Street food vendor working at Alexandria’s promenade corniche, Asharq Al-Awsat

High winds and crashing waves did not manage scaring off some of Egypt’s marine view lovers who rushed, namely in Alexandria, to see the northern coast on a rainy day.

Soha Salah, who recently moved to Alexandria, says that she and her husband choose to take regular seaside strides even if weather forecasts warn incoming heavy showers.

“Ever since we moved to Alexandria I eagerly wait for downpour to go out for a walk. Winter here has a unique accent. I love gazing upon high waves breaking and crashing against coastal rocks and the feel of a mix of wind and rain gusts brush against my cheeks,” Salah told Asharq Al-Awsat while citing the awe found in the occasional post-storm rainbows.

“We can walk for hours and I wouldn’t feel tired,” Salah said.

Alexandria locals find exceptional joy in the calm-accompanied winter visiting their city, which is otherwise packed with tourists for the summer.

Alexandria’s waterfront was built back in 1925 over six strenuous stages that birthed what today has become one of the city’s precious jewels. Restaurants, cafes and kiosks breathe live to the whole marine view as well.

The waterfront has also secured itself a special place at the heart of the works of many writers and artists who cite the location as a characteristic feature of Alexandria.

Renowned British author Lawrence Durrell in his The Alexandria Quartet tetralogy mentions the significance of Alexandria’s promenade corniche.

Street food sellers are another highlight not to be missed when exploring the waterfront. Despite winter’s freezing temperatures, Mohammad Saber pushes his cart packed with ice cream.

“My work starts at 8 in the morning and lasts till sunset, and cannot be halted even in extreme weather. Ice-cream buyers seek the treat whether it be during hot summers or a cold winters,” Saber tells Asharq Al-Awsat.

“I need every pound, so that I support myself without needing to ask anybody for help,” Saber added.

Unlike Saber, other street-food vendors choose to offer passers-by the comfort of a hot baked potato, freshly roasted peanuts, and warm tea during a rather frosty weather.

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In Beirut, a Photographer's Frozen Moments Slow Down Time and Allow the Contemplation of Destruction

A bomb dropped from an Israeli jet hits a building in Ghobeiri, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, October 22, 2024. (AP Photo/ Bilal Hussein)
A bomb dropped from an Israeli jet hits a building in Ghobeiri, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, October 22, 2024. (AP Photo/ Bilal Hussein)
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In Beirut, a Photographer's Frozen Moments Slow Down Time and Allow the Contemplation of Destruction

A bomb dropped from an Israeli jet hits a building in Ghobeiri, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, October 22, 2024. (AP Photo/ Bilal Hussein)
A bomb dropped from an Israeli jet hits a building in Ghobeiri, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, October 22, 2024. (AP Photo/ Bilal Hussein)

We watch video after video, consuming the world on our handheld devices in bites of two minutes, one minute, 30 seconds, 15. We turn to moving pictures — “film” — because it comes the closest to approximating the world that we see and experience. This is, after all, 2024, and video in our pocket — ours, others', everyone's — has become our birthright.
But sometimes — even in this era of live video always rolling, always recording, always capturing — sometimes the frozen moment can enter the eye like nothing else. And in the process, it can tell a larger story that echoes long after the moment was captured. That's what happened this past week in Beirut, through the camera lens of Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein and the photographs he captured.
When Hussein set up his camera outside an evacuated Beirut apartment building Tuesday after Israel announced it would be targeted as part of military operations against Hezbollah, he had one goal in mind — only one. "All I thought of," he says, “was photographing the missile while it was coming down.”
He found a safe spot. He ensured a good angle. He wasn't stressed, he said; like many photographers who work in such environments, he had been in situations like this one before. He was ready.
When the attack came — a bomb, not a missile in the end — Hussein swung into action. And, unsurprisingly for a professional who has been doing this work for two decades, he did exactly what he set out to do.
Time slowed down
The sequence of images he made bursts with the explosive energy of its subject matter.
In one frame, the bomb hangs there, a weird and obtrusive interloper in the scene. It is not yet noticed by anyone around it, ready to bring its destruction to a building that, in moments, will no longer exist. The building's balconies, a split-second from nonexistence, are devoid of people as the bomb finds its mark.
These are the kind of moments that video, rolling at the speed of life or even in slow motion, cannot capture in the same way. A photo holds us in the scene, stops time, invites a viewer to take the most chaotic of events and break it down, looking around and noticing things in a strangely silent way that actual life could not.
In another frame, one that happened micro moments after the first, the building is in the process of exploding. Let's repeat that for effect, since even as recently as a couple generations ago photographs like this were rare: in the process of exploding.
Pieces of building are shooting out in all directions, in high velocity — in real life. But in the image they are frozen, outward bound, hanging in space awaiting the next seconds of their dissolution — just like the bomb that displaced them was doing milliseconds before. And in that, a contemplation of the destruction — and the people it was visited upon — becomes possible.
Tech gives us new prisms to see the world
The technology to grab so many images in the course of little more than one second — and do it in such clarity and high resolution — is barely a generation old.
So to see these “stills,” as journalists call them, come together to paint a picture of an event is a combination of artistry, intrepidity and technology — an exercise in freezing time, and in giving people the opportunity to contemplate for minutes, even hours, what took place in mere seconds. This holds true for positive things that the camera captures — and for visitations of violence like this one as well.
Photography is random access. We, the viewers of it, choose how to see it, process it, digest it. We go backward and forward in time, at will. We control the pace and the speed at which dizzying images hurtle at us. And in that process, something unusual for this era emerges: a bit of time to think.
That, among many other things, is the enduring power of the still image in a moving-picture world — and the power of what Bilal Hussein captured on that clear, sunny day in Beirut.