We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 December 2009
There is a word in Arabic that I heard uttered over and over in the city; ghamidh, meaning ‘mysterious’ or ‘ambiguous’. If Baghdad's soul is loss, its mood always seemed to be ghamidh. Through that word, I began, at first in a woefully superficial way, to understand the panorama of attitudes that is Baghdad. Communicating that shifting truth has been a challenge.
Anthony Shadid, Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War (New York, 2005), p. 10Such massive physical change has destroyed the mental map that made the old Tibetan culture possible. Lhasa is no longer Lhasa.
Patrick French, Tibet, Tibet: A Personal History of a Lost Land (2003), p. 155Make no mistake, London cannot be called stable on any day covered by this book. ‘The city's sure in progresse’, Thomas Freeman noted nervously in 1614. ‘Shee swarmes’, Donald Lupton wrote, choosing a vivid verb for effect that lets us feel what it was like to sit fretting in a Guildhall hot-seat or with Lupton at his desk in 1632, pen poised, anxieties spinning. By now there was no going back to a time that no one could exactly date or define when things seemed stable and settled. Mind-boggling growth was the reality, that sometimes left people lost for words. Like Lhasa, London was no longer London. It had become ‘the size of half the world’, Venice's ambassador wrote in 1620, in the sort of embroidered rhetoric that was quite typical for these times.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
