PatternExon

From the Holy Mountain- William Dalrymple.

// February 6th, 2007 // books, reading, review

A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium -

I have been a Dalrymple fan for couple of years now. After In Xanadu, Age of Kali & City of Djinns this was very different. It was written in 1996. The world has changed twice in those parts. But I think because it was written before ‘Terror-ism’ became the most common word in every westerner’s vocabulary – what has been preserved is important. There are insights into a spirally complicating, dark life of minorities which once was prosperous & simple. I had some perspective & innate knowledge that made reading his earlier works fun – his research has always been quite incredible I was amazed by the Delhi he portrayed in Djinns. Though my knowledge of the Levant is a few scrapes that I have read as history – a lot of biased propaganda & its ridiculous refutes, the portrayal of beauty in culture, geography even the idiosyncrasies of Mediterranean false-friends is impeccable.

Dalrymple travels from Mt. Athos in Greece to Turkey, then Syria, Lebanon, Israel and finally Egypt – tracing the life & path of John Moschos, an early Christian spiritual from about 300 AD. The author has a deep – a little too technical for me – understanding of architecture of churches & mosques. I had to pick up a guide to church & monastery architecture to understand a few details that excited the author.

But the journey is beautiful, romantic – it is eye opener in what today would be believed impossible – a the shrine of a Christian saint that is worshiped by Muslims or can you imagine the tomb of Sufi saint where Christians kneel & pray. Today, such confluence of faith would be labeled shamanic & its practitioners – heretics & excommunicated if not bombed. Tolerance has to be identified in oneself & in others. The author meets with a Christian Arab from Palestine that is living in a refugee camp in the outskirts of Lebanon in ‘96 – WOW. I can hardly gauge the plurality of identity that he would have to pursue & capture to just survive.

An eyeopener! very lucid, very descriptive, very good.