Once upon a time, at the remote edge of the Mediterranean, there was an island so beautiful and so blue that many travelers, pilgrims, crusaders, and merchants fell in love with it and either never wanted to leave it or tried to tow it back to their own country with hemp ropes.
Legends, perhaps. But legends exist to tell us what History has forgotten. Many years have passed since I went to that place by plane, carrying a suitcase made of soft black leather, with the intention of never returning. Since then, I adopted another country, England, where I grew up and thrived, yet not a day goes by without longing to return. To my homeland. It must still be there where I left it, rising and sinking with the waves that crash and foam upon its rugged shores. There where three continents meet – Europe, Africa, Asia – and the Levant, the vast and impassable region, completely vanished from today’s maps.
A map is a two-dimensional depiction with arbitrary symbols and engraved lines that decide who will be our enemy and who will be our friend, who deserves our love and who our hatred, and who simply our indifference.
Cartography is another name for stories told by the victors. There is no name for the stories told by the defeated.