The City & The City - pg. 41

Read the travelogues of the last-but-one century and those older, and the strange and beautiful right-to-left Illitan calligraphy -- and its jarring phonetics -- is constantly remarked on. At some point everyone has heard Sterne, from his travelogue: "In the Land of Alphabets Arabic caught Dame Sanskrit's eye (drunk he was despite Muhamed's injunctions, else her age would have dissuaded). Nine months later a disowned child was put out. The feral babe is Illitan, Hermes-Aphrodite not without beauty. He has something of both his parents in his form, but the voice of those who raised him -- the birds."