A City of the White Wall

Poetry is not the record of an event: it is an event" Lowell Jackson Thomas: a writer and traveler (1892- 1981)   

A city of the white wall

Can a big city, a very historical, archeological and tourist situation, like the old city of Tripoli be introduced in a creative writing? Because it is unusual to read about the historical and tourist cities in the figurative language, the publishers prefer the language of numbers and facts to present this situation. 

For me, the old Tripoli is not only a story of historical facts. It is a story of the white wall. The white wall is a slight wave which can tell the story of the whole sea.  The white wall is a spiritual guard, a shadowy space where lovely faces without names in my memory used to sit there and share me my bread of curiosity.

The white wall is not only that part of the city which had been watching by a traveler. When the traveler approached Tripoli, he said" the brilliant whiteness of the city with the reflection of the sun nearly blinded us therefore I realized why it is called Albayda ((the White City))".  The white wall is the whole part of my love tale, a tale of one score and four years.

Every minute, there is something black and horrible creeping toward its sunny whiteness and eating a lovely nanosecond of my flowery tale; a tale is more than four thousand years old.

The white wall challenges the laws of nature by being a part of people's memories. It loses its magical beauty as long as there is setting sun, as long as there is a black cloud over the city. Time can be a friend as it can be an enemy.

The houses, mosques, schools, churches and every small piece of the local architecture in the old Tripoli can feed the brilliant presence of my wall.  Mutability can be there but it cannot be everywhere as long as my imagination and my knowledge walk together hand in hand the memory lane.

I really appreciate this white wall for being there whenever I need a shoulder to lean on. I want to thank it for being there whenever I need an ear listening to me.

I know the old city of Tripoli and I love it. I wish love and knowledge to be sufficient to me to write its story in the lights of poetry and history.