Two loves give birth to and nourish this book. The first and most desperate is the homeland, its miracle and its curse. The most unexpected and incredible miracle of its wounded continuity, its half-dead spirit, its slandered flame of spirituality.

Who still knows from where it breathes and how it still drags its steps at the crossroads of History? Surrendered for centuries to the Turk, surrendered then and even more so today, to its good and chaotic, to its unreal and dreamlike and excessive self with the honor of the sudden memory of greatness and the nightly terrors of a future that always-belongs-to-others, it still hesitantly waves its little flag at the end of the gallery.