‘Now she yawned and lit a cigarette; and sitting up in bed clasped her slim ankles with her hands; reciting slowly, wryly, those marvellous lines of the old Greek poet about a love affair long since past – they are lost in English. And hearing her speak his lines, touching every syllable of the thoughtful ironic Greek with tenderness, I felt once more the strange equivocal power of the city – its flat alluvial landscape and exhausted airs – and knew her for a true child of Alexandria; which is neither Greek, Syrian or Egyptian, but a hybrid; a joint.’
The Alexandria Quartet/Justine, Lawrence Durrell.
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