He yearned for the onset of winter, a real winter, a winter from his childhood in the Normandy countryside with snow and rain and wind so strong it threatened to steal away the tiles from the roofs and the very breath from your lungs. There was none of that here in the white city, the Algiers of the holiday posters and steam packet boat advertisements. Here there had been weeks

It is Alexandria during Ramadan, a year or so after the Egyptian revolution in 2011 and Mohamed Morsi is president. Political conflict threatens Egypt, but a different kind of trouble looms within a group of expats. Things don’t always glimmer.