By: Azam Mairaj

They say, thousands of years ago, on the shores of the Arabian Sea, there lay a small coastal settlement. It was a natural harbor, and upon it depended the lives of its people. Their sustenance was tied to the waves of the sea, the sails of their boats, and the shoals of fish they caught. For this reason, neighboring rulers often drew swords and waged wars to claim ownership of this modest port.

Then time turned its wheel. The gaze of global powers fell upon the strategic importance of this settlement. Under their grip, the little town suddenly shone upon the map of the world. Soon after, the vast land to which this city had belonged for centuries was transformed into an independent state — and destiny made this small city the heart and capital of that new nation.

Though its political status did not last long, the city grew into a hub of commerce and industry. Its cosmopolitan spirit drew the poor and laboring classes not only from every corner of the country but from across the region. Waves of migration swelled its population to bursting, until its natural storm-water channels and pathways were choked.

Meanwhile, the elite the so-called builders of society grew intoxicated with the lust for wealth. Scarcity of land and the endless hunger for riches turned them away from all other productive avenues and into mere traders of land and property. Thus, both shanty towns and concrete neighborhoods rose upon storm drains and rainwater passages. From government officials to investors, all joined this frenzied gold rush.

The city became a graveyard of wealth and a jungle of concrete. Blinded by greed, its people forgot their collective responsibilities. Tradition holds that when, thousands of years ago, the greenhouse effect of global warming swelled the rains across the region, even ordinary showers brought urban floods upon this city. With waterways blocked, the floods reached into the enclaves of the wealthy themselves.

Yet, even then, the elite did not change their ways. At first, they sent their riches abroad. When that too became difficult, they began to adorn the graves of their ancestors and their own with gold and silver, seeking to rest in death as they had lived in wealth.

Time’s storms shrank the city into a handful of small islands. The river deltas and the edges of the sea turned the rest into marshland. One day, the floods swept away even the palaces of the elite. Plagues, famines, and clashes of civilizations closed the gates of the wider world. Those who had once come from the north now fled back to their own towns, while the descendants of the elite remained stranded upon those shrinking islands.

Thus, the city that had once been a cradle of craft, culture, and civilization was reduced, in less than a century, to a handful of swampy isles inhabited by scattered tribes. These tribes survived on fishing and lived like pirates of the sea. Their greatest treasures were the ancestral graves that held precious metals buried with their forefathers. Often they looted each other’s tombs, stealing silver and gold. Wars broke out over such thefts, but when a clan unearthed a hidden hoard, they celebrated all night.

They sang songs of pride, retelling the tales of how their ancestors had torn the earth apart to hoard wealth. They gloried in the art of greed, and in this way the story of a once-great civilization turned into nothing more than a parable of ruin and folly

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