The City
Even if the way to Ithaca is more beautiful than Ithaca, the way to Damascus is not more beautiful than Damascus.
Ghayath Almadhoun 2011.
Translation: Catherine Cobham.
1
The city resembles wrinkles wrapped around one another like the bodies of those forgotten in the prison cells of the third world, as prominent as a punctured memory, as conspicuous as feast day clothes, as brazen as the threads in a Persian carpet. This city has always fascinated me with her accumulation of layers, one layer sleeping with another, giving birth without being pregnant, a city that wears a burqa on her face and leaves her brown legs bare. The city cuts through me when I try to seduce her. As I come and go each day, I cut through her like the godfathers of the proletarian revolution cutting off the heads of the bourgeoisie, then the heads of their own friends, I cut through her with the patience of a camel, the zeal of a Kalashnikov and the appetite of a locust heading for the fields in the morning.
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