« Exploring Kabul, I Found, Required The Same Principles That Help In The Reading Of Mystical Persian
« Exploring Kabul, I found, required the same principles that help in the reading of mystical Persian poetry, in the relationship between the zahir, or the overt, and the batin, the hidden or implied. This works on the tacit understanding that what is being said is an allegory for what is meant or intended. To talk of the moon, for instance, is to talk of the beloved; to talk of clouds across the moon is to talk of the pain of separated lovers; to talk of walls is to speak of exile. Such wandering leads through circuitous routes to wide vistas of understanding. Like walking through a small gate into a large garden. It is also a useful reminder that in this city, what is seen is often simply one aspect of the truth. What lies behind – the shadow city – is where layers are revealed. »
Shadow City: A Woman Walks Kabul, Taran N. Khan
More Posts from Eternallybeirut and Others
« I’m thirty-four and I meet a man with very blue eyes who looks inside me. He tells me he can see me at sixteen, at eight, as a child when he makes love to me. His eyes open and close very slowly next to my face. Sometimes they half close and look down and they are grey-green, cool, and then they slide up and pierce me with open sky. Sometimes he lies close and breathes into my mouth and the breath is sweet, whatever we’ve done. I clutch momentarily at the edges of this deep drop into his love, then free-fall, my chest open to the heart, and drift in on his sweet air. »
To William with love. Sept 21st 1967 - March 13th 2018
Victoria Harwood Butler-Sloss, The Seamstress of Ourfa (Dedication)
« There is no such thing as identity with a single name, there is only identification with multiple names. Identifications cannot and must not be considered via proper names because they lead to improper circumstances: it is those imaginings that prioritise ethnic identification over being an islander, or that prioritise identity to make it the higher, proper or uppercase, that have been the central culprits for the legacy of bloody binary contests and conflict in cases of partition. »
Alev Adil, Nicosia Beyond Barriers: Voices from a Divided City
“I undressed and left my clothes on the sand. I was not at ease with my body, not even in the darkness of night. It had been unloved, perhaps forever. Untouched by a lover for a long time. I didn’t know what to do with it when it was not in conversation with a piano. Or how to respond to the way Tomas gazed at the green jewel pierced through my belly button.”
— Deborah Levy, August Blue
« The town looked golden and antique and the mountains next to us were covered with thin pine trees. Beirut, from this bench, was like a dream, a winding staircase of awkward memories and people who no longer were, who one day would no longer be. »
Nur Turkmani, Black Hole (Source: Rusted Radishes)
Beirut’s stony Melkite Greek Catholic cathedral of Saint Elias.
It was initially built towards the end of the 18th century and reconstructed in 1849.
Style: Byzantine, baroque, Islamic
The only remaining Mameluke building in Beirut, Zawiyat Ibn Arraq.
Once a complete private madrasa, only the zawiya (prayer corner) remains of it.
Today, someone seemed to have made it their own prayer corner and unrolled a prayer rug inside.
Date: 1517- used till Ottoman times
Beautiful to see what we treat as “monuments” being reused as such. Do we glorify what is historical only because we know it’s historical? Do we love these stones only because we know they’re hundreds of years old? What’s so intrinsically beautiful about what’s historical?
Can we even call them monuments? Is it history? Is it present?
i don't pay attention to the world ending. it has ended for me many times and began again in the morning.
― Nayyirah Waheed, Salt
My Women are Tabla & Qanoun by Nur Turkmani
— Sarah Bakewell, from “Sarah Bakewell on Posthumanism, Transhumanism, and What it Actually Means to be ‘Human’” (via LitHub)
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XXs | beirut, lebanonStoryGraph: @hakawatiyya Side Blog: hakawatiyya
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