The Epic of Damascus: The City That Sleeps upon History

Dawn arrives late to Damascus because the city has already gone ahead of it into the light, and the book follows her from the Barada, which entered her like a letter, and the green cloak of Ghouta to the straight roads and columns of the Romans that still lie beneath her streets. At her heart stands the Umayyad Mosque, where civilizations gather in a wall and the memory of John the Baptist, Yahya in Islam, turns history into interlocking circles, and from there the book passes through Bab Sharqi, Bab Tuma, Bab Kisan and Bab al-Jabiya. It opens the Damascene house, silent outside and bursting inside with a sky at its center, a fountain, lemon trees and colored glass, praises jasmine as the little architect who carries no ruler, walks Souq al-Hamidiyah, stops at the citadel whose stone learned caution, and listens to the call to prayer, church bells and the coppersmith's hammer. It turns to poetry, where Damascus is a woman, a mother, a beloved and a wound, to the wars, fires and displacement that left their scars, and to the Damascene in exile who carries a window, a house key and the scent of jasmine to New York, Berlin or Paris. At midnight Damascus speaks, measuring her age by those who loved her and telling Time that whenever he demolished her she rebuilt herself from memory, and the book ends with the conviction that she remained because memory is stronger than stone.