Zahraa Adel Awad has sent me more photographs of the destruction of the Villa Ambron (see previous post) where Lawrence Durrell lived in a very different Alexandria during the war. These photographs were taken by her friends Dr Mohamed Adel Dossouki and architect Sherif Farag. All are campaigners for the preservation of Alexandria's heritage and all are very sad.
This
little room, how well I know it!
Now
they’ve rented this and the next door one
As
business premises, the whole house
Has
been swallowed up by merchants’ offices,
By
limited companies and shipping agents …
O
how familiar it is, this little room!
Once
here, by the door, stood a sofa,
And
before it a little Turkish carpet,
Exactly
here. Then the shelf with the two
Yellow
vases, and on the right of them:
No.
Wait. Opposite them (how time passes)
The
shabby wardrobe and the little mirror.
And
here in the middle the table
Where
he always used to sit and write,
And
round it the three cane chairs.
How
many years … And by the window over there
The
bed we made love on so very often.
Somewhere
all these old sticks of furniture
Must
still be knocking about …
And
beside the window, yes, that bed.
The
afternoon sun climbed half way up it.
We
parted at four o’clock one afternoon,
Just
for a week, on just such an afternoon.
I
would have never
Believed
those seven days could last forever.
- Constantine Cavafy's The Afternoon Sun, translated by Lawrence Durrell
'Were
it not to see you again I doubt if I could return again to Alexandria. I feel it fade inside me, in my thoughts, like some valedictory mirage — like the sad history of some great queen whose fortunes have foundered among the ruins of armies and the sands of time!'
- Clea, the final volume of The Alexandria Quartet, by Lawrence Durrell
Zahraa says: 'I am so sad for the villa especially I used to take my tourists group around for Lawrence Durrell tour in Alexandria; now it is totally gone. The developer is Mr Abdel Aziz who will build a new apartment building called Al Amraa Palace (Royal Princes Palace)'.
