![]() Armilla is a city composed entirely of plumbing. In Hypatia, Marco can’t find things in expected places. They now understand that Zobeide is a trap. ![]() Men dreamed of chasing a naked woman who got away, and so they convened in Zobeide to build the scene of the chase. ![]() He insists that cities are built with desires and fears and most think that they were built rationally, but that doesn’t keep them standing. He describes one and Marco says it’s real, but it doesn’t have a name or location-it’s an imagined city with no connecting thread. Kublai declares that he’s going to describe cities and Marco will tell him if they’re real. As they learn to communicate in the same language, communicating becomes less fun until the two men spend most of their time sitting silently. Kublai finds that this leaves lots of room for him to use his own imagination. Marco describes things with objects and gestures. However, when merchants leave, they find that they can’t remember their own stories-others’ stories corrupt their own. 80 miles away is Euphemia, a trading city where merchants gather to exchange stories. Zenobia, meanwhile, is a city on stilts where people generally think that their ideal city looks like Zenobia. In describing Zoe, Marco suggests that people expect to be able to figure out a city quickly, but Zoe doesn’t allow this: a person can do anything anywhere. Each model Fedora is someone’s ideal version of the city. In Fedora, the city has a museum filled with model Fedoras. Marco suggests that the Maurilia of today and the Maurilia of the past are different cities. Nobody back then thought provincial Maurilia was charming, but they idealize it now. Marco describes Maurilia, a magnificent metropolis where visitors must look at postcards of Maurilia when it was still provincial. They imagine Marco saying that when people get lost they better understand where they came from and how they fit into the world. Both men fall into silence and conduct a conversation in their heads. As time goes on, Kublai gets annoyed that Marco doesn’t tell him anything useful. Marco insists that at that point, Kublai will become an emblem, just like the objects. Eventually, Marco learns the language and Kublai begins to ask if he’ll possess his empire once he learns the meaning of every object. Kublai memorizes the meanings of the objects. When Marco begins describing things to Kublai, he doesn’t speak Kublai’s language so he uses objects and gestures. Isaura was built over an underground lake, and there’s debate as to whether the city’s gods live in the wells or in its lake. Zirma repeats itself so that people can remember it, but different visitors remember different things. Marco tells Kublai about Despina, which looks different depending on where a traveler comes from. Zora is a city that is unforgettable, but only because it never changed. Because of this, he insists that people can never discover the city. Instead, people see pictures or sculptures of things that refer to other things. ![]() Marco details his experience in Tamara, a city in which people don’t see things. In this sense, Zaira’s past is written in those things while making people feel as though they can enjoy the city. Marco then tells Kublai about Zaira, where the measurements of certain things correspond to events from Zaira’s past. It’s possible to describe Dorothea by listing its exports, but it’s also possible to say, as a camel driver once told Marco, that Dorothea opens up horizons. In Isidora, a person can find every delight-but men who arrive there arrive in old age, not in their youth. It makes people feel envious of others who believe they’ve experienced similar evenings and think that they were happy. Marco describes Diomira, a city with towers. Through Marco’s stories, Kublai begins to see that there’s a pattern to his empire. Kublai’s empire is huge and he knows that he’ll never be able to truly understand his conquered territories, which makes him feel melancholy and as though his empire is an unfixable, corrupt ruin. Kublai Khan listens attentively as Marco Polo tells him about fantastical cities, even though he doesn’t entirely believe everything Marco says.
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