Victory City

Have you ever wondered if our destinies have been set such that we have no control over anything, and the joke of the divine is for us to think that we are? 

Those were my thoughts as I turned over the remaining pages of the book Victory City by Salman Rushdie. A book that took me nearly three months to finish, which in hindsight, I suppose had been destined to be finished at a certain location.

The thought about destiny became more intriguing because I had been reading about a “Victory City” that never came real to me until I found myself on a hammam slab in downtown Marrakech. In that moment, it occurred to me that Marrakech symbolized victory city.

In that city, I was visited by the divine, thrice, in the most unorthodox way. The first time was at the hammam I earlier mentioned, the second at a local shopping store and the third was on my final day at a Riad. The divine gave me Victory City, Hajib and Good Luck.

At the end of it all, we are all living beings with organs. Little bits of a mighty whole. We are happy, we are sad, we are energized and then tired, we love and sometimes face betrayal but most importantly we are here. Here to experience every bit of it. This is the beginning, this is the end and dear reader if you made it till here, I pray you recognize divinity when you are visited.

I close with the last paragraph of the book;

I, Pampa Kampana, am the author of this book.

I have lived to see an empire rise and fall.

How are they remembered now, these kings, these queens?

They exist only in words.

While they lived, they were victors, or vanquished, or both.

Now they are neither.

Words are the only victors.

What they did, or thought, or felt, no longer exists.

Only these words describing those things remain.

They will be remembered in the way I have chosen to remember them.

Their deeds will only be known in the way I have chosen to remember them.

Their deeds will only be known in the way they have been set down.

They will mean what I wish them to mean.

I myself am nothing now. All that remains is this city of words.

Words are the only victors.

P.s- Salman Rushdie is most likely a genie.