REORIENT:

Sidelong glances, dumbfounding back alleys, madcap laughs, and piss-soaked holes in the ground; Paris, how I love thee. I should be so lucky: not so long ago you had my brethren on their knees, they who succumbed to a heady perfume, whose scent seemed to rise ever upwards, a beacon amidst the benighted signalling progress, power – modernite! From pied divans they looked to you, westwards, for succour and stimuli, lost in a fog of sweet opium smoke, their heads reeling with thick, purple elixir and the smell of roses. To them, down and out in smoky Teheran, you were the pearl of the West; your children were fair and wore flowers in their hair, as once said a bopping imp. They sipped on bubbly, read belles lettres in their pleasure gardens, sat on four legs, and prodded their grub with strange, metallic things. These, you see, were the trappings of civilised men, de rigeur for those of taste and worth, the stuff of substance for the backwards (albeit handsome) brute wishing to ingratiate himself amongst the new conquerors of the world.

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