By Mursi Saad El-Din Very much on my mind these days is one of Britain's well-known writers -- I describe him as British since William Dalrymple is of Scottish descent. I must admit that out of Dalrymple's many books I have only read three: In Xanadu, City of Djinns and From the Holy Mountain. Dalrymple has won quite a number of awards, both English and Scottish. While these awards were given to him as a travel writer, I claim that he is a great deal more than this, his books being not mere recordings of comfortable travels in foreign lands, but a mix of adventure, history, philosophy and, above all, a narrative that is spiced with humour and deep feeling for the places he visits. I don't remember reading such favourable reviews of books as I have of Dalrymple's. In Xanadu: A Quest was described as book which "is so uncommonly satisfying because of the rare skill with which William Dalrymple blends his ingredients: history, danger, humour, architecture, people, hardships, politics". The book carries the reader back from the Holy sepulchre right across Asia to the palace of Kublai Khan -- the "stately pleasure dome," as Coleridge's poem memorably has it. In Dalrymple's City of Djinns : A Year in Delhi, which again received rave reviews, I found myself exploring a city that I have visited so many times never got to know with such dazzling clarity. It would not be fair to describe the work as a travel book. During his year-long stay in Delhi with his wife Dalrymple was able to fathom life in that great city in great detail. We get to know about the Sikhs' massacres after Indira Gandhi's death, partition, the Empire and the East India Company, back into prehistory and archaeology. The book, in the words of Charles McKean in Books in Scotland, is "history chronicled in reverse", beginning with current events and working backwards. As for From the Holy Mountain, this brings us nearer to home. It is a study of the appearance and demise of Christianity in the Middle East. Here, the author travels the back in time to ancient Byzantium through the present day Middle East tracing the journey of the 6th century monk John Moschos, the traveller and oral historian through his book The Spiritual Meadow. His quest to follow the development of Christianity takes Dalrymple to Egypt, beginning with Alexandria. Chapter six of the book is entitled "Hotel Metropole, Alexandria, Egypt, 1 December 1994". By coincidence, I was in Hotel Metropole last Friday, having my breakfast, as he did, in the first-floor breakfast room. Looking at the waiters "in white jackets and black bow ties" hovering at the edge of the parquet floor, I brought out From the Holy Mountain and read his description of the "classical frieze of naiads and centaurs [that] runs along the dado overhead". This chapter gives the past and present of Alexandria, comparable to E. M. Forster's Alexandria: A History and a Guide. We read about Alexandria as a city inhabited and served by Greeks, Jews and Armenians. "You have to look quite hard," writes Dalrymple, "to find any last remnants of the old order lurking in the back streets of the town." He finds that some of the shops and hotels may still recall the multinational Levant of the late Ottoman Empire -- Epicerie Ghaffour, Cinema Metro, Hotel Windsor and "some of the most famous names are still extant: the Trianon, even Pastroudis (where the fictional Nessim [of The Alexandria Quartet ] would drink coffee with Justine)..." But apart from these recent memories, the chapter narrates some important historical events, which I shall deal with in my next column.
