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The Proclamation of Baghdad, issued by Major-General Sir Frederick Stanley Maude, March 17 1916, a week after the city’s occupation by the British. (via Harpers, seven years ago)

To the People of Baghdad Vilayet:

In the name of my King, and in the name of the peoples over whom he rules, I address you as follows:-

Our military operations have as their object the defeat of the enemy, and the driving of him from these territories. In order to complete this task, I am charged with absolute and supreme control of all regions in which British troops operate; but

our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators. Since the days of Halaka your city and your lands have been subject to the tyranny of strangers, your palaces have fallen into ruins, your gardens have sunk in desolation, and your forefathers and yourselves have groaned in bondage. Your sons have been carried off to wars not of your seeking, your wealth has been stripped from you by unjust men and squandered in distant places.

Since the days of Midhat, the Turks have talked of reforms, yet do not the ruins and wastes of today testify the vanity of those promises?

H-hello. Hello? Is this thing on?

Then the malestrom spit Odysseus out, clinging to what was little more than a splinter, what was left of his boat. Persephone, it was revealed, had eaten several seeds of Hades’ pomegranate. Psyche opened the box but did not find the beauty she expected. Orpheus looked back.

Thanks for reading.

RIP

PJ from a couple of years back

 ”Ah, well, what you cannot correct you can at least insult,” is a Barry Hannah quote. Also a strategy that I seem to have, if not accidentally than at least unconsciously, taken to heart.

Not so interesting morning-after moment: Having already woken up, drank gatorade, taken several advil and a shower, I summoned my will (by which I mean ate a banana) and dismissed my omnipresent anxiety —yellow squiggles and zig-zags mostly—as hangover-induced and baseless. Then I threw up. Soon but not soon enough I was back in bed, dividing my attention between the ceiling (the plaster is really uneven where I patched the hole from the failed pull-up bar) and turning, one more time, through my memories of Last Night. It was then that I realized: one, I was presently in the middle of Sunday morning, not Saturday; and two, the night before I actually did say something atrocious—insensitive, uncalled for, and spot-on.

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Our hero in the hour of the erotic arrow, Amor.

RIP