Alone in my condition neither friends nor Fridays the city of shades exists in me and gazing through metal shafts of view I rest confused wherever I peer I see a giant eye-ball scrutinizing me. I drop my eyes like ‘Pindi maidens to run up against concrete and clay that bakes me in. Can spiders endure their own webbing? as the chill of uncertainty, a church-bell tongue, touches me on a parched oesophagus. I exist. Only in my city: the poltroonery of an ecaudated monarch. The writer is the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies, School of International Service, American University, Washington, DC