The World of Dams and Restrictions

The world of dams and restrictions now - for me and for everyone who passes by - is that isolated building in an area isolated to one of the outskirts in some of Cairo''s many wide neighborhoods, as if it senses people''s alienation from it and its alienation from people. Its name in government records is Egypt''s Public Prison, and its common name on the tongues is "Qara Maidan."As for the day when I used to take refuge in it and did not see anyone else or hear about the world except from behind its walls, it was not an isolated building, nor was the area in which it was an area isolated to one of the parties, but it was the entire world, its earth and its sky, and the outside world was a subsequent part of it added to it, and that is a characteristic of the human soul to move the center of the entire universe to where it is.Abbas Mahmoud Al-Akkad