Queer Places:
The Museum of Fine Arts at Moharram Bey, El-Mohandes Ahmed Ismail, Emberouz WA Moharram Beik, Moharam Bek, Alexandria Governorate
Gaston Zananiri (January 9, 1904 – March 2, 1996) was an eminent scholar,
historian,[1] and poet of Alexandria, Egypt. The Atelier des Beaux
Arts in Alexandria was co-founded by the homosexual Gaston Zananiri, whose
father was a Syrian Greek Catholic, his mother a Hungarian Jew. Among his
lovers were Thomas Whittemore, of the Byzantine Institute of America, and a
young American dancer called Kirk Prince. Zananiri was a friend of
Constantine P. Cavafy’s,
and later became a friend of Lawrence Durrell’s.
Robert Liddell believed Durrell’s
Balthazar, the eponymous central character of his 1958 novel, was based on
him.
Gaston Zananiri was born in 1904 in the city of Alexandria in Egypt. His father Georges Zananiri Pasha (1863–1956) was Secretary General of the Sanitary Maritime and Quarantine Board of Egypt.[2] He belonged to a Syrian Melkite family which had migrated to Egypt from Syria centuries earlier.[2][3] Gaston's mother was Marie Ines Bauer, of Hungarian Jewish extraction on her father's side and Italian on her mother's side.[2] She converted to Christianity and moved in Zionist circles in Egypt and Palestine in the early 20th century,[4] Gaston would also follow in his mothers footsteps and associate himself with Zionist movements in Palestine.[3] In his youth Gaston attended Victoria College, Alexandria, where he received his education.[2] Gaston worked for the Egyptian Foreign Office from 1940 to 1950. In 1948 Gaston founded the 'Alexandrian center of studies and in 1951 he moved to Paris in France and became a Dominican priest.
In 1939 Gaston published L'Esprit Méditerranéen dans le Proche Orient. Gaston's life work was entitled Dictionnaire général de la francophonie. He completed his memoirs in 1982.[2]
My published books:
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