I knit an imaginary thread between Damascus, Jerusalem and Istanbul, three cities dear to me. They share a complex past, they have been capitals of mighty empires streaching itselves far from their territories. Istanbul was Byzantium and Constatinople before and the populations became a hybrid, merging foreigners born far from the cities and people settled down inside the city limits. In Istanbul I was overwhelmed by Sultanhamet, the oldest part of the city where Hagia Sophia and the big mosques has seen the city change and evolve. I read Özcan Pamuk's book about the city and it helps me to understand the resilience of the city, it's capacity of change and implode weaving in the stimulus and the influences from outside into it's own canvas. When I stay in Jerusalem I stay barely twenty meters from the Al Aqsa mosque, Islam's second most precious and most sacret place after Mecca. I stay in the monastery Ecce Homo, ruled by the Canadian catholic order Notre Dame de Sion. The monastery is one of the oldest parts of the city, the Antonia fortress, and the spot where Pontius Pilate's washed his hands giving away Jesus to the jewish priestership. The city has been a canaanite city, a jewish city, a roman city, an arab city, now a contested city. But the city's s´resilience has suceeded melting in invaders and traders, merchants and scientists. In Damascus most beautiful mosque, the Omaya's, where now the people clashed by their liberty, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NULwxE1Y4js I saw a catafalque covered by a green drape, the colour of the profet. I asked who he was and they told me it was John the Baptist. It made sense. The mosque was before a byzantine cathedral and the remains where there, John, Yasha, is also revered by the Moslems. The byzantine cathedral was before a roman temple erected to honor Jupites Damascenus and before that a temple to the syrian god Hadad. It was about resilience this post, yes :) Ana
-- http://www.twitter.com/caravia1585959 http://www.scoop.it/t/art-and-activism/ http://www.scoop.it/t/food-history-and-trivia http://www.scoop.it/t/gender-issues/ http://www.scoop.it/t/literary-exiles/ http://www.scoop.it/t/museums-and-ethics/ http://www.scoop.it/t/urbanism-3-0 http://www.scoop.it/t/postcolonial-mind/ mobil/cell +4670-3213370 "When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you will always long to return. — Leonardo da Vinci
_______________________________________________ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
