Trafika Europe 12 - French Bon-Bons

Jacek Dehnel

URARTU

Who has heard of Urartu? Some fusty docent at a respected college. Their cities leveled into silence, their homes inhabited by snow and pine roots, their land plowed into another’s. They had their own priests and leaders and wise men. The general schemed against the eunuch, the eunuch conspired with soothsayers. The cobbler his whole life envied the tailor’s shop. The baker had ambitions. Of Urartu’s culinary arts, not a clump of radishes remains. Their songs have been muted, and no anthology has collected their lore. Even their name we know only from chronicles in other tongues, which cannot convey the sounds— light vowels and harsh consonants in “Urartu.” For our entire knowledge of them, a stone must suffice: awkward statue with head a touch too big,

handful of polished shells with a string motif. What would you say if these epitomized you:

a plaster Saint Joseph, glass shard from Ikea,

or polyester remnant preserved in sand?

154