I am sitting in the back seat of a taxicab in New York City. The traffic is Midtown, stuck bumper to bumper.

“Everything is turned upside down!” the cabbie shouts, pumping his arm up and down in the air. “Five years ago it was not like this!” he cries.

The taxi driver is not talking about Midtown Manhattan traffic. He is from Alexandria. Not the Alexandria we know on the Washington Beltway, but the Alexandria in Egypt, named after Alexander the Great.