Who built the seven gates of Thebes?
The books are filled with names of kings.
Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone?
And Babylon, so many times destroyed.
Who built the city up each time? In which of Lima’s houses,
That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it?
In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished
Where did the masons go? Imperial Rome
Is full of arcs of triumph. Who reared them up? Over whom
Did the Caesars triumph? Byzantium lives in song.
Were all her dwellings palaces? And even in Atlantis of the legend
The night the seas rushed in,
The drowning men still bellowed for their slaves.
Young Alexander conquered India.
He alone?
Caesar beat the Gauls.
Was there not even a cook in his army?
Phillip of Spain wept as his fleet
was sunk and destroyed. Were there no other tears?
Frederick the Great triumphed in the Seven Years War.
Who triumphed with him?
Each page a victory
At whose expense the victory ball?
Every ten years a great man,
Who paid the piper?
So many particulars.
So many questions.
So I just went through three notebooks to find this, because I knew it was there.
I was at the ROM, about six years ago, at a special exhibit on Babylon. And there was a brick, formerly part of a palace. And Nebuchadnezzar, the one who built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, had had his name in cuneiform stamped on every single brick, to emphasize that he had built it.
And on this one, a workman had carved his own name, Zabina’, into the block too, in Aramaic. Here’s the brick. It’s 2600 years old.
a friendly reminder that microaggressions against asians can also look like this:
pretending to gag at asian food
pretending to be weirded out by asian customs and cultures
excusing cultural appropriation (often through ignoring the stories of asians who have been mocked for wearing their ethnic dress while praising a white person for doing so)
not trying to learn how to pronounce an asian person’s ethnic name correctly, or asking, “can i call you by something else?”
adopting an asian name for the ~aesthetic~
using the words “oriental” and “exotic” to describe asian people, particular asian women
ignoring the experiences and stories of south, southeast, and central asians
making sweeping assumptions about asian countries (including their political, historical and cultural landscape)
treating the entire asian community as a monolith and ignoring the fact that the experiences of asian nationals are remarkably different from the asian diaspora/migrant community
co-opting asian aesthetics into creative media without acknowledging their history
