LONDON: Among the fans of the British crime writer Agatha Christie, it’s no secret that the literary mother of such enduring fictional characters as Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot loved Iraq and, for some years after the Second World War, lived in a house in Baghdad.
According to recent reports originating from Turkiye’s Anadolu Agency, that house, in the city’s Karrada Maryam district on the west bank of the Tigris, is now a near-ruin, in danger of imminent collapse.
As the story goes, it isn’t only Christie’s association with the property that makes it a heritage gem worth saving for posterity.
Known as the Beit Melek Ali, legend has it that the house once belonged to Ali bin Hussein, the former King of Hejaz who sought sanctuary in Baghdad after being deposed in 1925.
English detective novelist, Agatha Christie (1890-1976) typing at her home, Greenway House, Devon, January 1946. (Getty Images/AFP File)
