Read by Nicky Diss
Almost Visible Cities: Iduba is taken from the OneWorld short story anthology Beacons. All profits go to Stop Climate Chaos. It is author Gregory Norminton's homage to Italo Calvino's classic Invisible Cities.
Cities & the Desert · 1
The best way to approach Iduba is by sea, and that reclining on deck half asleep after a meal, for only by mistaking it for a dream can the mind accept what the eye perceives. The masters of Iduba, in founding their city on the coast of a vast and featureless desert, appear to have forgotten the story of Babel, for the buildings they have commissioned rise as if they would escape the earth which is the destiny of all our endeavours.As your boat nears the harbour, you strain your neck to see the tops of the towers, and at once you long for their windswept heights, for you have entered the heat and dust which is the lot of the city’s migrant workers. You see them in their thousands, sweating in the sun or shadowed in the dry wells of the towers, while in the upper storeys the citizens grow fat on revenue from Iduba’s famous export. This mineral salt, which locals call hulum, grants whoever tastes it an overwhelming sense of ease and prosperity. Little wonder that it should be valued above all the spices, for its use bankrupts nations, whose populations turn for comfort to the very illusion that first enslaved them.
To the beneficiaries of Iduba’s wealth, plenty appears the natural condition of life; yet even in the midst of luxury there are signs of decay for those willing to read them. It is possible still to visit those islands built in the shapes of palm trees and crescent moons in the waters off the coast. For a time their whitewashed villas were the most desirable residences in Iduba. Now the poisoned sea laps at their foundations, while lurid blooms of algae stifle the brackish lagoons between abandoned gardens. From the vantage point of the towers, few citizens choose to look at these corroded strips of reclaimed land. Instead, they retreat with their purses into vast bazaars where the luxuries of the world accumulate.
It is said by the workers that these temples of commerce are destined to become the mausoleums of Iduba, or to vanish entirely in one of the ever more frequent sandstorms that bury whole streets and drift as high as date palms against the dusty towers. Visiting dignitaries, generously hosted in return for singing the city’s praises, insist that its mineral wealth will allow Iduba to meet all challenges. Yet nobody knows how long the deposits of hulum will last.
Idubans dread to contemplate their depletion, for without revenue to bind them to their employers, the migrants will drift elsewhere in pursuit of work, and the day will dawn when Iduba proves to have been nothing but a mirage, a vision that dissolves into the timeless and levelling sands from whence it seemed, once, to challenge the heavens.
(c) Gregory Norminton, 2013
Gregory Norminton was born in Berkshire in 1976. He has published four novels, including The Ship of Fools and Serious Things. Gregory lives in Manchester. His website is www.gregorynorminton.co.uk
Nicky Diss trained at The Bridge TTC. Credits include: The Railway Children (Image Musical Theatre); Two (Dispense Theatre); Arthur of Camelot (Place Theatre, Bedford); Romeo and Juliet (Ashcroft Theatre); Caucasian Chalk Circle (The Space); A Midsummer Night's Dream, Sense and Sensibility, A Christmas Carol and Cranford at Christmas (Chapterhouse Theatre Company).
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