In the "Alexandria Quartet", Lawrence Durrell, describes the carnival in Alexandria to us.
At this annual happening everybody is in disguise, all looking like dominoes. Here is some extracts to tell the story of Semira and Amaril:

"One feels free in this disguise to do whatever one likes without prohibition." "You cannot tell whether you are dancing with a man or a woman. The dark tides of Eros, which demand full secrecy if they are to overflow the human soul, burst out during carnival..." "It seemed that Amaril could never, would never fall in love." "Then, last year at the Carnival, the miracle happened. He met a slender masked domino. They fell madly in love - " The girl disappeared, still masked but she reappeared at the next carnival. When Amaril found her "...she made a run for it. Amaril chased the nymph. In his eagerness he snatched at her cowl when the creature, her face at last bared, sank to the doorstep in tears...She had no nose. Semira - the virtuous Semira. The old half-mad father locked Semira away in the rambling house, keeping her veiled for most of the time... But Amaril had come to a great decision...he walked the whole up to the top and kicked open the door of the father's room...and kneeling down with Semira, said 'I wish to marry your daughter and take her back into the world.' 'Who are you to take a woman without a nose?' 'I am a doctor from Europe and I will give her a new nose.' ....the most treasured feature of a woman's face which aligns every glance and alters every meaning and without which good eyes and teeth and hair becomes useless treasures. You see, he is after all building a woman of his own fancy, a face to a husband's own specifications; only Pygmalion had such a chance before! "

We sometimes feel compelled to disguise ourselves in order to protect us from the harsh norms of society. And in an age where the obsession on appearance has reached ridiculous proportions it is sad to see to what extent the 'perfect image' effects our own self-image. Our infatuation with the physical is also the origin of our misjudgments on the people we choose to enter relationships with, and the cause of our disappointment when we meet our lovers beyond the carnival. I find the carnival of disguise an apt metaphor for IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and we do have, like Amaril, that eagerness to unveil those minds that we are introduced too. And if we eventually meet these people, very few of us have the strength of Amaril, let's call it the Amarilian devotion, to remember the mind of that person we fell in love with. from the lover of minds


sparroy