In her memoires, Esther Zimmerli paints the picture of a childhood in the cosmopolitan Alexandria of the early twentieth century. She evokes the life of a Swiss family and community with its traditions and customs blending in with other foreigners and local Egyptians. Through the eyes of a child, we witness life in Alexandria during the Second World War and right up to the eve of the 1952 Revolution. Decades later she returns to find the city of her childhood totally transformed. As she visits old haunts, she discovers a changed city oblivious of its past.