" ...he knows it is a city, but he thinks of it as a camel from whose pack hang wineskins and bags of candies fruit, date wine, tobacco leaves, and already he sees himself as the head of a long caravan taking him away from the desert of the sea, toward oases of fresh water in the palm trees' jagged shade, toward palaces of thick, whitewashed walls, tiled courts where girls are dancing barefoot, moving their arms, half-hidden by their veils, half-revealed. "

― Italo Calvino , Invisible Cities