Small trek in the West of the East

The writer's intentions were not to write a travel guide or even a philological synecdium. These notes are based on two simplistic starting assumptions: First, how all places, even the most endowed or significant, beyond their historical weight, cannot be understood without the animate material that inhabits them today. And secondly, that the approach and understanding of the places and their inhabitants cannot be understood without the involvement of the visitor, even if a "politically correct" observation requires the freezing of the gaze and the inner distance of the observer from the observed. Ultimately, these notes are the missing fruit of a single ambition: to capture moments, images, sensations and associations on paper, so that they may be given a more permanent place not in the glossy showcases of academic information but in the shadowy edifices of the mind and knowledge. In short, something like a tongue-in-cheek response to a "Come and see."