Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - II. The White City
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Denna sida har korrekturlästs minst en gång.
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(historik)
from ground to roof, with green shutters or
glass-covered balconies all the way to the top. Clean, cool,
still, swathed in shadows - such is the city below us,
with its pillared courtyards in which fountains play and
palm-trees, nerias and plane-trees remain green all
year round. These courtyards are often roofed with
glass and furnished with rugs and lounges - cool
refuges in the summer heat.
But you will look in vain for real yards for
washing, drying, or bleaching in this densely built city,
where every block of houses is a single compact mass;
that is, you will look in vain until you take an
opportunity to ascend one of the five thousand towers of the
city and let your eye wander over the flat roofs. Every
house has its flat roof with a stone coping around it
and a little tower as outlet for the winding staircase.
Here is the yard, the laundry, the bleaching place,
sometimes even the garden and the workshop too - a
whole city spread out under a merciless sun and
blazing white in color. Five thousand cubes, some a little
higher, some a little lower, all in some way related,
seem from your point of vantage like a great
cross-section of a beehive floating on translucent waters,
adorned with little ivory towers, white linen and
blazing red pelargonias. The whole invites you to
meander through it, to leap over the narrow crevices
which mark the streets, and to gain the opposite shore
- if only the sun were not so hot that you cannot
remain very long on your tower. But it is lovely here
in the evening when the heaven flames and the ocean
moves in upon you from all sides like molten gold,
once more enriching this city of white.
The sand bank one mile long and a stone’s throw in
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