"Irem, the Pillared City. She will rise from the zee and the ice like dawn. She will be garlanded with red and decked with gold. The Seven-Serpent will watch you longingly from its high pedestal. You will always arrive as a stranger, but when you leave, some part of you will always remain."[1] "Oh God. Oh God. What tense is it written in? Oh God. Look, just read it to my colleague here. He'll give you your fee. I'll be over there when you're done."[2]
Irem was an archipelago east of Avid Horizon.
A Place of Rare Truths[]
A seven-sided Justificande coin.
Irem will appear to be very close to that dream world Londoners will call Parabola.[3] They say it always was, always is, always will be. It is a place where time is confused and collides with itself.[4]
The people here talk in riddles, and Irem and Whither are locked in an intense rivalry of rhetoric.[5] Justificande Coins are the primary currency in Irem, heptagonal coins infamous for their adverse effects on the ticking of clocks.[6] These coins have negative value, placing their owner into debt - fitting for a place such as Irem.[7]
Maybe's Daughter thinks of Irem as her home, as she was conceived in Parabola.[3]
Since time is (for lack of a better term) weird in Irem, it is somehow significant to Salt. It did lie dangerously close to his domain in the distant east, and looking east and speaking poorly of it in Irem did likely incur it curse upon unfortunate zee-captains.[8]
Its counterpart is Kingeater's Castle, where the world ends.[9]
Origin[]
Irem has many similarities to the ancient lost city of a similar name. Iram of the Pillars, also called Aram, Iram, Irum, Irem, Erum, or the City of the Tent Poles, is a lost city, country, or general area that is mentioned in the Quran. Iram became known to Western literature with the translation of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights.
From the Quran:
Did you not see how your Lord dealt with 'Aad? / [With] Iram – who built lofty pillars / The likes of which had never been created in the lands / And [with] Thamud, who carved their homes into the rocks in the valley? / And [with] Pharaoh of the obelisks? / [All of] whom transgressed within the lands / And spread much corruption. / So your Lord poured upon them a scourge of punishment.[10]
In other words, the residents of the city (or members of the tribe, as some interpret it) angered God and their settlement was driven into the sands, never to be seen again. The city is often associated with Ubar, the "Atlantis of the Sands."
References[]
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