On 18 Doumani Street, Furn el-Hayeck, Achrafieh, once stood a French Mandate–era residential building. It consisted of four floors, each containing a single apartment designed according to the central-hall scheme that had prevailed in Beirut since the mid-19th century.

On the building’s interphone was written, in Arabic:

مدام ناديا خ. س.

أشغال يدوية
Madame Nadia K. S.
Hand Works

Madame Nadia was a dressmaker. She created custom-made outfits for the ladies of local society, often drawing inspiration from fashion and couture magazines. For a time, probably in the 1980s, she lived in Paris. In her phone index appeared the names of friends and acquaintances of my mother, Annie.

In 2014, the building at 18 Doumani Street was demolished and replaced by a parking lot. The place where Madame Nadia once lived, received her customers, and sewed her dresses disappeared. Yet, for some unexplainable reason, fragments of her world resurfaced: her designs seemed to echo in architectural details—capitals, consoles, moldings. Even her interphone bell reappeared the same way. .