The Story of a Green Line and a Yellow Building (fairy tale version)

Once upon a time, there was a lavish green line formed of interweaving wild plants, separating two quaint villages known as West and East Beirut. The line fostered balance and harmony between the inhabitants of the two towns. A pale yellow building bearing smooth curved lines and elegant columns looked over the line, reflecting light and profusion unto its vegetation. Symbiosis was prevalent, until one day an army of microscopic beasts spread out of the line eating away, painfully and slowly, all the elements of the two towns.
The yellow building moaned resisting erosion as it witnessed the crumbling of everything around. The elements’ spirits forced to escape decaying matter found refuge on the walls of the building where they carved small niches.
Time led to a total erosion of life and non-life. Only the yellow building was left, preserving in its small cavities the souls and memories of the two towns and their green line’s infinite components.
Spreading all over, the army of tiny scavengers finally grew into new forms of life around the yellow building. The memories of the old times were left undeterred. They went on resting in peace for years, mirroring from time to time parcels of the past to passersby.
But the occasional escape of rebellious past memories was seen as a poisonous threat to the modern town’s bare atmosphere.
The wise descendants of the scavengers unanimously decided then to asphyxiate all the spirit particles of the past. The refuge holes should all be filled forever; they said. The past’s parasitic interference would be defeated for good; they triumphed.
They decided to baptize the new yellow building finally ridded of its infinite minute pasts as: the Museum of the Memory of Beirut (the name of one ancient Atlantic city mentioned in some weary manuscripts.)
Having one clean polished Memory was regarded as a safe foundation base for a glorious future. By that same principle, the citizens of the new modern town were subjected to regular meticulous sessions for cleaning their internal organs. It was suspected that some undisciplined past particles might have escaped into the souls and minds of the good citizens.
Soon, the heavy past would be lost forever prompting an uncontested air of unity in the modern town of Beirut.
The people and the structures of the city would be beautiful and glittering on the outside with an inside so pure that it’s absolutely empty. © El Periodista