Christ of Saint John of the Cross

Standing before Dalí's Christ of Saint John of the Cross, a Syrian architect sees a cross suspended in space with no nails, no blood and no crown of thorns, hanging above a calm sea, a small town of grey roofs and boats resting in the harbour. Passage by passage he reads the parts of the scene: the face hidden in shadow, which becomes the face of every viewer; the view from above, as if from God's own eye; and the body that glows from within while the town below stays dark. Seen as architecture, the cross is a bridge between heaven and sea that floats as domes float above the mosques of Damascus; seen through Sufism, it is a moment of annihilation of the self, a mirror for every divine lover from al-Hallaj to Ibn Arabi, and the painting becomes a mihrab. He then looks at Damascus from Dalí's angle, a deeply wounded city of ruined minarets and broken houses that appears from above as a dome of light, raising a new dome wherever a dome burns. The book closes with the cross still suspended, Damascus becoming a hymn, and pain turned into light, ruin into meaning and crucifixion into resurrection.