Three Apples: Belonging and Belongings
a column for the Asbarez newspaper BY PAUL CHADERJIAN Once there were and there were not golden, grand, palatial, marbled malls of commerce in modern-day Dubai that are incomprehensibly surreal and amazing. But this column starts with the premise of the more conventional malls of commerce in our incredible and bountiful American nation. In the fashion fairs, park plazas, grand gallerias, and other generic malls of the American suburbs, the world outside our borders dissolve to nothingness. When we are there, we focus on wanting and having. We see the goods, abundance, the colors, the cleanliness, the air conditioned carpeted and tiled environments. Inside these grandiose architectural halls of business, a shopper or spectator loses himself to the reality of the global human experience. We forget that there can be ungodly places where other human beings at that very same moment are doing their living, eating, shopping, or sleeping. These unimaginable places are not only south ...