READING THE CITY
The city does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand.
Italo Calvino
Previous section: Ghost Market
New Management
Hoa Lo Prison 1896 - 1996
The 'Hanoi Hilton' has changed its
core business.
A real hotel and business centre now blot out sky.
No
longer, after a good lunch, do I cycle the street
in a dream and startle
awake, sobered by a concrete
presence, high walls, barred windows, and by
thoughts
of those locked a wall away. (The recent case of X...
is
whispered. His discussion group landed in a cell.)
The old section remains,
showpiece of colonial rule -
distant history is much safer. Here, tourism
rules,
with its dummy figures frozen in poses of shackled
misery. And
outside, a lesson in art - stories in stone,
celebrating a bas-relief world:
Good Fights Evil;
Heroism Triumphs; the Perfect State is installed.
Opposition and free speech are no longer needed.
And prisons now lie far
removed from the city centre,
in the deaf mute distance. Elsewhere, the mind
cage.
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