How to disappear

The homes are eternally wounded, covering up their lesions with ever more drapes and veils. A man passes his whole life within them concealed behind walls, until, one day, a distant sound comes to his ears, a sound that flows through all these obstacles, overleaps and is channeled through them. How did this sound make it in here? he ponders, silently, searches for the chink through which it entered and stops it up. The waves of sound, its unseen frequencies, spread out about him and wheel at supernatural speeds, reflecting back of certain rooftops and penetrating others. The sound waves from without tangle with those already present within and they swell and gather and flow out in all directions. For an instant, everything vanishes before these joyous waves.

This publication proposes a set of aural exercises that show readers how to disappear, reappear, join a group, or leave a group. Its annex is a lexicon of some of the sounds that dwell in or are banished from the middle-class household.

Editors: Maha Maamoun and Ala Younis
Translated from Arabic by Jennifer Peterson (Preliminary Exercises) and Robin Moger (Sounds of the Middle Classes)