Anything That Burns You by Terese Svoboda

Author:Terese Svoboda
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Schaffner Press, Inc.
Published: 2016-03-19T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 30

Babylon and Back

Babylon, once the largest city in the world, is the ancient “Gate of the Gods,” the city of every evil, the name of a whore riding on a seven-headed beast who rules over all the kings of the earth, the city that produced the world’s first wheel, first agriculture, first code of law, first base-60 number system, and possibly the first writing. It’s the home of Hammurabi, whose principles of justice are still recognized today, where Sir Leonard Woolley in Ridge’s day uncovered scores of priceless artifacts and claimed it was the site of the ancient flood and Abraham’s birthplace. Nebuchadnezzar did not maintain his Hanging Gardens in Babylon but Fritz Lang shot his 1927 film Metropolis there, and the workers constructing the Tower of Babel destroyed it for better working conditions. It is also the location of Saddam Hussein’s $5 million “Disney for a Despot,” an elaborate re-creation of a single Babylonian palace the size of the Louvre. It is a city brought down by babble and trumpets, a meme for the incessant noise of technology today, and the name of extremely popular translation software. The Babylon a/k/a Camp Alpha occupied by the U.S. Army in 2003 and 2004 resulted in the wholesale destruction of much of the city’s 5,000-year history.

Ridge arrived at the end of October 1931 and claimed to have moved into Baghdad’s cheapest hotel. But like the hotel in Damascus, the stationery she used bore the Ritz heading, and the price included three meals, afternoon and early-morning tea. She even indulged in breakfast in bed, “on special request so suppose it is more”—with all the imported luxuries: sausage, bread and butter, jam, and bananas. She met another American poet who was writing his own poem about Babylon, but she didn’t mention his name. “These things are in the air,” she writes. But the air was also “filled with sand that has been ground to a fine dust by innumerable feet and wheels. This dust is filled with appalling filth, it blows in one’s face [,] fills one’s mouth nose and eyes.” Still she was thrilled with her arrival and feeling up to its challenges, not the least of which was once again, a lack of funds. “It’s true I’ve lost my figure and my looks and can’t pose as a model now, but I’ll make out somehow, or someone will come to the rescue.” But she had certainly pushed her luck. In the same letter she confesses: “I did not stop at Beirut to use my letters of introduction, I’m without reliable information of any kind.” The next day she negotiated a lower hotel rate so she wouldn’t have to move. She says she had become fearful of relocating to a cheaper place because she and another woman were stoned by the locals while touring the neighborhood. “I asked the woman born in Baghdad before I left the ship, why Americans were hated in Alexandria. She said in innocent surprise, ‘Are they not

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