“Be afraid, we will do the rest.”
The maxim of every self-respecting authoritarian regime seems to resound today, thunderously, in our democratic, free Western societies. We are increasingly afraid: an ancient, deep fear that besieges us in our homes, in the streets of our cities, in every corner of this world of ours. And no matter how much we equip ourselves to defend ourselves, how many walls we build and how much narrower we make our borders: fear, this unwanted friend, is always there. With us, in us.
In a refined interplay of references to literature, history and philosophy, in these pages the city emerges in all its ambiguity: a place of fascination and at the same time of violence onto which we project our mirage: the illusion of achieved safety from terror, a safe haven that is not safe.
For the city is intimately bound to a covenant based on fear. Needless to complain about it, there is nothing we can do about it except for one thing, one thing only, as these pages attest: reckon with it.