See the ruins of Babylon: mud bricks lie clumped in heaps, faint outlines of an ephemeral empire, perpetually dissolving sand castles enduring a higher tide. We grasp at its former physical form like Plato’s subterranean prisoners who evaluate shadows on a cavern wall. A vain replica of the glorious double gate of lapis lazuli (the original was stolen and re-presented in a far-flung museum) lies open to the northern horizon, where presently a new Babylon—Baghdad—is groaning beneath the tyranny of quotidian violence.
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