"The city of lights is a myth"

The city of lights is a myth. All that is left is propaganda and capitalist masks. Tourists marching slowly to Paris's death parade : the squeaking of a tired accordion.

The true face of Paris is in its blighted neighborhoods. The revenge of a colonial past. I am a Moroccan youth.

I cannot go I cannot stay.

There is a struggle. Against alienation, a struggle with identity. The struggle has left the buildings and spilled out into the streets, overflowing like sewage after months of rain. The television lies, calls for complacency.

The coffee is expensive, conversation is abrupt, contact is limited to the rubbing of shoulders between strangers. The shining lights slowly fade away, the cafes board up their doors, the intellectuals go to bed. There are many like me. We are not known to the city, and it cares not for us.

I will put on my own mask, and recreate Paris.

--My friend Ali, a Bahraini architect who studied in the US, writes poetry when he's not designing buildings. He studied abroad in Paris earlier this year.