Charles Kassab: When Absence Cast Its Shadow on the Plan

An architect narrator writes the name of Charles Kassab on the page and feels Damascus stir beneath it, then addresses him as the student who left Damascus University for the profession and came back to teach there. He imagines the drawing table at the end of the day, when the students have gone and the papers are still awake, and the teacher's task of seeing the fear hidden beneath a line; between the names of Michel Ecochard and Kenzo Tange he pictures a table wide enough for the world, and in Atelier de Damas, founded with Huda Al-Assil, a city hanging its cloak by the door and sitting down before the page. Later sections move through works tied to his name: Saint Elias Church near Dweila, the church in Muhradah, the Faculty of Economics in Talal Akili's office, housing for Damascus airport workers with Mamoun Al-Wareh, the Higher Education Graduates Association building, Tala Tower in Damascus and Al-Fateh Tower in Tripoli, Libya, and the Presidential Palace and Tishreen Park with Tange. Each building becomes an image: stone lowering its voice, a bell lifting a town by its shoulders, a tower tested at its feet, a park leaving the earth room to breathe. The closing lines tell him that he has gone and that life keeps entering through his lines.