Daniel's Ages in the City of Threads - Ahmed Abdul Latif

In the first sentence of "Daniel's Ages in the City of Threads," we read a scene of puppets on balconies and windows looking at a scene of sacrificial puppets below. This doubled mutation, or double death, places us at the heart of the shock, and opens our eyes to a city burdened under a heavy punishment. We encountered in "One Thousand and One Nights" more than one distorted city, either as divine punishment or without a clear reason, like "the City of Copper." But the punished and unpunished cities' people in the nights turn into statues, and they no longer feel pain, unlike the human puppets in this city who feel horror from killing, from the confusion of their children amid chaos, from the city drowning under an endless rainstorm. And despite the punishment inflicted upon them and their city, they still have the desire to escape, trying to do something, while Daniel, the son of light, the son of darkness, continuously writes pages he stacks behind him, as if he were Pharaoh building a pyramid of papers to be immortalized beneath it, while the symphony of Schumann's Largo Romance repeats as if it were a cosmic performance. Ahmed Abdel Latif built the city of puppets from a harsh imagination; because fantasy here is firmly grounded, originating from reality and returning to it.