Nâdî l-Mustaqbal

In a Damascus basement, a decrepit billiard room and its owner. The young customers play their games without noticing the cold looks of the portraits on the walls. The old Damascene, who surveys the premises, is bitter and weary. He tells of his life from the 1950s until today-a life of toil that has gone from relative hard-won comfort to the brink of ruin and ill health. His tired, mutilated body is the metaphor of a country that has run out of breath. “In my country, even the walls seem to have been exhausted by the last thirty years.”