5. View Master III

I’m the new Mecca. Oh yes, I love these changes. I’m all about change. I’m all about thinking big, thinking out of this box I’m limited to. Thinking out, but keeping the riches in. I’m all about possibilities, but the right kind of possibilities. My kind.

‘Look!’, I hear them say, day after day, as I show them the third tallest building behind the Ka’aba in full 3D. ‘Look!’, as I seamlessly remove the old icons and bring in the new! ‘Look!’, as I show them the incredible scale, the grandeur of the tower overshadowing them, the symbols of capitalism, the rise towards the skies and the simultaneous fall towards avarice and pride.

And the tower shouts back to me: ‘I am taller than most buildings in the world. Seated upon a destroyed fortress, I am renewal and change. I am the way forward and the way back. Whilst I tower over you, I am also teetering. To look up at me is to be dizzied by my height.’

I bring you so close to reality that sometimes those who look through me reach out to touch the visions I bear. And in turn I reach in, my third dimension stealing the memories of the people who look through me. I absorb all their thoughts, all the facts and pieces of random but important information. Sometimes I’m given memories, at other times, imaginings or flashes of thoughts that they try quickly to dispel, but little do they know that I take them all in and use them to bolster my spell.

I’m the source of the myriad images you see today, on the magical screens of iPhones and tablets. I’m the start of Instagram, for I hold the key to the trick of the eye on which these new forms play: what you see in front of you isn’t necessarily what actually exists. Just as all humans look at the world from their particular view, my view is that of the anonymous photographer and relies on the preconceptions and dreams of the owner. You might say I’m a jinn, for I conjure and collect all these tales from this little red case in which I sit. My visions appear from nowhere, existing beyond this casing, triggering an endless chain of recounted tales, bringing to life the stories of pilgrims, tales told but not written down of Mecca, the past, the present and glorious future. The minds of pilgrims who have long since passed through are captured forever in this idyll, this view, this magic box.