The Epic of the Door: The Mouth of the House

The door is the first word a building speaks and the first question it asks the visitor: who are you, and why have you come? It is followed from the threshold, the first door and the knock to the wooden door, the doors of Damascus and Bab Sharqi, the surprise inside the Damascene house and the doors of Granada, then the doors of mosques with their verses, churches, Gothic portals, royal doors, fortresses and city gates. Japanese sliding doors, revolving and automatic doors, glass doors and the doors of New York's subway and elevators bring it into the modern city. The book then stands at the door of the child, the mother, the immigrant, the closed door and the door of opportunity, and ends with the door as the threshold between what a person was and what they may become.