Abstract:
The House Revisited, The City Remembered
by
Mohamed F. Awad
When Lawrence Durrell decided to come back to Alexandria in October
of 1977, he was filled with unease. He had known the city when he
worked as Press Attaché during the war period (1943-45) and had
described it in his Quartet: "The city, half-imagined (yet
wholly real), begins and ends in us, roots lodged in our memory" (209).
This is quite true, yet events have changed its society and transformed
its cityscape. The most cosmopolitan of the Mediterranean cities
and his city of "Five races, five languages, a dozen creeds" (17) exists
no more. Today Alexandria is a monoglot city: one race, one
race, once creed, fundamentally Islamic. The remains of cosmopolitanism
are marginal, its society is extinct or on its way to extinction, and its
physical heritage is hedged in and threatened. Yet something still
remains. She is still recognizable, despite the circumstances and
the effects of age.
Deus Loci 7 (1999-2000): 39-44.
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