Invisible Neighborhoods: Ubashti
August 24, 2009
From time to time, I will post descriptions of “Invisble Neighborhoods,” a sort of homage to Italo Calvino and his excellent novel Invisible Cities.
In the shade of the Third Pyramid, you will find the pleasant neighborhood of Ubashti. There you will find pleasantly sunny streets and plazas of well-groomed sand.
Here a tabby lounges on a balcony, there a smilinng milk seller deposits chilled bottles of cream.
Then, it will occur to you, how simple and trusting are the inhabitants of Ubashti: It is not that there are no locks, but there are no doors.
Windows remain open onto fire escapes. Gardens are bordered by balustrades. There are no loud noises of drums, no lovers quarelling, no dogs barking incessantly at paperboys. Ubashti is neat, is clean, is quiet.
The only untidy aspect to this neighborhood are the still squirming fish, who seem to have fallen out of the buckets the men brought up from the River. Or, there is the occassional bird who is injured and stirs up dust among the well-planned gardens of papyrus and catnip. Or, there can be heard and then seen a mouse, lame in a foreleg, scuttling along a back alley at half-speed.
Suddenly, the visitor to Ubashti realizes that this neighborhood is not for him. That any place on Earth, a city, a mountain, a verandah, a jungle do not need him: the man. He may be welcomed, but he is not integral to the survival of Place.
This is painfully apparent in Ubashti, a neighborhood designed solely for the comfort of cats.
