I.S. Berry

“The slums unfurled like a giant moth-eaten quilt as I exited the highway at Al-Maqsha. Qaryah, the villages—a country unto itself, whose backroads had become grossly familiar to me, an unwanted second home. Piles of garbage rose from the streets like dying trees. Layers of houses were crammed into alleys; dingy fast-food restaurants and cold stores pockmarked every corner, the emaciated commerce of poverty. No skyscraping hotels here, only stubby broken-shutter lodgings with misleading wistful names—Riviera Palace, Oriental Retreat. The most noticeable feature, a sprawling tattoo stamped across an already-mutilated body, was the graffiti. Bright protests neutralized by government blackouts then covered with more rallying cries, a laughably unavailing cycle. In the end the blackouts mostly prevailed. Above the graffiti, above the jagged rooftops, black Shiite flags tried to best”
― I.S. Berry, The Peacock and the Sparrow