This article examines idealised models of masculinity in Alexandrian literary texts of the 1910s
and early 1920s in Arabic, French, and Italian. It intends to contribute an insight into Egyptian
cosmopolitanism from a discursive perspective, through the lens of literature and with a focus on
Alexandria. Instead of embracing a theoretical vision of cosmopolitanism, it seeks to reconstruct
the horizons of belonging as they emerge from Alexandrian sources in different languages of the
so-called “cosmopolitan epoch.” The masculine heroes in the sources are meant to be universal
and, in some cases, exemplary. Yet they reach universality by erasing particularities, before cho
osing or accepting death. They die without having offspring. Their universality will be questio
ned from a gendered perspective, but also in terms of nationality and social class. National and
social boundaries will emerge under the claims of universality. Then, the nihilistic paths of the
heroes will be linked to the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the anxieties it brought about.
In the 1910s and early 1920s, the Ottoman horizon in Egypt was receding before the national
one was filled with meaning. Moreover, this process occurred under colonial rule. Nihilistic
universality can be regarded as a response to such a complex phase, when belonging either to a
declining empire or to a fragile nation-state may have seemed equally hopeless.