Franco Battiato
Concerto di Baghdad

Baghdad, city of gold and death, city of gardens and debris, of springs and barbed wires, city of blood, of life and of bombs, city of Abbasid caliphs, of a melting pot of languages and peoples, of Harun al-Rashid and of headlines on the news. How can I silence the heart I wonder, when the flames rise to the sky?

With heart in hand. Baghdad, December 1992. With heart in hand like that Battiato will never be again. Take an hour or a little more, send the world away, make silence around and within yourself and listen, and at the trembling of the wrists, when his voice speaks of life and death, do not close everything but hold back the pain, inside the lamp of the heart, until gradually it ceases on its own to hurt and only warms. Reach the very end. And then throw everything away, go out, or not, tie the heart to your wrists and vice versa. Do not go out, but come back in, burn, burn only, with the same ardor which, with heart in hand, that day, like never before and never again, pilgrim and strong lamp, Franco burned, with war, death, sprinkled gardens and the guttural call of muezzin at the hour when day falls around him, with an ardor that the fading of day and life will not leave smoke or ashes, but only warmth.