Book review: Visiting an anonymous city by the Mediterranean

Khaled Ziyada's City by the Mediterranean is an encyclopaedic work after which the true identity of the city remains ambiguous

Tholatheyet Madinat A'la Al-Motawaset (Trilogy of City by the Mediterranean), Khaled Ziyada, Cairo: Dar El-Shorouk, 2010. pp. 370.
Khaled Ziyada'sCity by the Mediterranean is an encyclopaedic work after which the true identity of the city remains ambiguous. It is reminiscent of Walter Benjamin's The Arcades Project and Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time, not only in subject matter —the relation one develops to space and time ­—but also in its existentialist concern with the condition of modernity and its effect on the individual and collective identity of people and the space they inhabit.
Ziayada, who is Lebanese and currently resident ambassador in Egypt, recalls birthplace memories in Tripoli and his many personal journeys across Lebanon and other parts of the Middle East. Combining historical analysis across five centuries and autobiographical writing, the author uncovers layer by layer this mysterious city by the sea in three parts, comprising the full trilogy published separately in 1994, 1996 and 2008 —namely, Friday/Sunday, The Family Alleys and Leisure Avenues, and The City Gates and the Imaginary Wall.
The first part bears a personal flavour, as we are able to visualise the author's childhood and the city's nascence almost hand in hand. The protagonist is at once the city and the author himself. His exposition of the history of the city seems at times linear and at other times circular. The expansive bent of the narration towards the end of the first part seems to come as a natural development of a linear progression of events in the author's own biographical timeline. So as a child we accompany him on his summers, in the holy month of Ramadan, at school and his growing awareness of different religious denominations, and his involvement in student politics and his first attempts at romance.
It is in this aspect that we can identify with the historical survey that unravels late Medieval Mamluke rule, the spread of the Ottoman Empire, Western imperialism, rise of nationalism, and then Arab nationalism, along with the hero-worship of Nasser, and so on. The historical outline of these eras is revealed through the bazaar, the mosques, the alleys, and schools, which can be found in any city in the Middle East. The reader can recognise the physical traces; the architecture of the place, the language used as well as the “sense of time” that Ziyada captures with sensitivity and deep understanding.
Next the reader is taken through the primary urban nucleus of the city, as the historical and physical centre from which all other developments take place. There is an elliptical sense of time and each chapter seems connected with and yet independent of the next. The writer explores the relationship of the original residents to the new Ottoman model for urbanisation and the expansion of the city at the time of colonial rule, the establishment of the first railway and how they reacted to sweeping changes that always seemed to come from outside, disturbing the peace and rhythm of the old city.
That sense of unmitigated, inevitable change becomes even more apparent in the second part, where the author, as the central character, seems to blend into his surroundings as he walks around the city, retelling its history, and how it changed in significant ways and yet remained the same in others. He dives into a detailed examination of the effects, physical and sociological, that colonialism left on the city, such as the account of the Zone Francaise with its cinemas, theatres, gardens and bourgeois dwellings —all that was once cultivated lands. There is the hill and the plateau, once the abode of a Sufi master renowned for his piety and near-magical powers, transformed by the English who built their colonial clubs and schools.
As the narrative surveys more locations, there is a sudden rupture in time as Ziyada explores the various churches on Easter Sunday, invoking memories from the past and mixing them with the present while speculating about the future all at once. He reveals the different states of existing Christian communities and how the number of churchgoers dwindled in some areas and increased in others, reflecting socio-political and demographic changes. In the final line, the author wonders how the city copes with such changes.
During the final part, a surprisingly complete change of narrative structure and authorial voice takes place, introducing a whole set of characters and active participants in events, not only fleeting images in a narrative as in the previous parts. Each represents a particular era, with a whole line of ancestry and heritage, all residing magically in the city at the same time. This shift results in an overflow of dialogue and we get a longer glimpse of the author, not so much as a central character but as one participating in a far broader narrative. This seems to imbue the story and the history of the city with a certain humanness not felt previously.
Ziyada delves into preserved manuscripts, court transcripts and rare books, all in the hope of understanding the history of the city better. It would seem as though he cannot help but get involved with the characters, each being a descendant of one ancestor or another, or taking part in a certain historical process and —like the author —all interested in the history of their city, its meaning and significance in the here and now. To reflect these various historical perspectives and how different characters envision their history, Ziyada cites myriad quotations from historical works. The characters introduced are at once keen to preserve history but are also burdened by it.
Ziyada's Trilogy is overwhelming not only because of its scope, but also because of the questions it poses about the history of Tripoli for the past four to five centuries, and the inevitable changes that have affected it and its inhabitants in ways seen and unseen at the same time.