Samarkand

"Samarkand became thus, the symbol of the ineluctable meeting between a man and his destiny"

(Amin Maalouf)

I have just finished reading the book of Amin Maalouf that I had mentioned in the previous post. It was a dense book that took me about one month to finish due to various reasons, among which the most important one was the lack of time. But each time I got the chance to go back to the book, even for a few minutes, I read it thirstily.

Samarkand is the name of a large city in the nowadays Uzbekistan. It is part of the long Persian history: Alexander the Great conquered it approx. 330 years BChr. (saw a tv show on Viasat History Channel about the Bactrian Empire, Transoxiana and became fascinated with that far, dusty, incredible place), then it was invaded by Mongols (Timur made it his capital), ruled by Turks,  Russians, and home country of the first paper mill.

It is like Samarkand is a tree with an old trunk surviving in a desert field to me. That's why, when Amin Maalouf describes the dusty streets of it and the white mulberry fragrance I felt like having lived there before. Samarkand is an encounter with the destiny and I had the impression that it has to be counted among the cities of Italo Calvino because of the invisible history preserved by the memory of the city, because of the numerous "entrances" on the board like the squares of a chess board.

Amin Maalouf uses it as a narrative trick: it connects the life of the poet and philosopher Omar Khayyam and his intricate life path in the11th century with a modern attempt to find his original manuscript of the Rubaiyat. It has a couple of touching love stories, revolutions, political affairs, history of empires and a sense of melancholy that I couldn't rid of.

Maybe I connected this unexplainable sadness with the movie I saw earlier, today, Incendies. The movie (a Canadian mystery drama from 2010) takes place in modern Iran. I actually have to write a review about that movie, but I have no idea where to start. It was touching in a different way. I cried like a baby following the journey of the two young brothers to their native country. The movie itself is like a sinuous path, with sudden contortions, twists, and revealing aspects of the cruelty of people no matter the religion they belong to.