At some point—who knows how—I found myself a member of a WhatsApp group that seemed to have been set up as a safe space for sharing complaints about the capital city of Czechia. A couple of messages written by people who “just wanted to say I had a nice time there” were answered with polite but firm reminders that there was a different group for people who had had a nice time in Prague, and that group should be sought out independently. OK then …

… I thought I’d take a quick look at the complaints. I expected ten or twenty ill-founded grievances aired by the type of person who throws a tantrum when they come across locals who don’t seem grateful that foreigners are “taking an interest” in their part of the world. (More like poking their noses in!) Ten or twenty stupid sob stories … but that wasn’t what I found at all. Astonished, I scrolled for hours. So many harsh experiences, so much legitimate angst! Recounted in numerous languages. Some of the incidents referred to had taken place many years ago; apparently quite a few of them had happened to the narrator’s grandparents (?).

The messages written in Czech were the longest, and pulsed with furious sarcasm. The messages written in Japanese were both the shortest and the most damning. The group members shared superficial information about themselves—nationality, ethnicity, age, height, in some instances weight and body measurements—it read as if they were victims trying to understand if their assailant had a “type.” They were wasting their time; there is no “type.” The city distributes its insults and outrages indiscriminately.

Once I’d read enough, I wrote and sent a riposte that was almost immediately lost in the horde of far more compelling messages that appeared at the exact same instant.

I wrote that I didn’t remember any of these incidents; nor did I remember any of the people involved. Not if the characteristics they’d provided were supposed to serve as memory aids, at any rate. I was sorry for what had happened to them. However—however, I was no more to blame than they were. I was sorry for every bad thing that happened, every scam and every diminishment of their self-respect—but what is it worth, the sorrow of the onlooker? And that is what I was. The onlooker, not the cause. A little bit more than bystander, but still … what did all these people want, what had they really expected? COME ON, KIDS, I wrote. Don’t go to the city and then get all scandalized by city life. I’m not even one of the grander metropolises! If I was I could have just eaten you and yours alive! I didn’t, but no need to thank me! My self-esteem is in good health and doesn’t require your gratitude!

That was the gist of the message. I slightly regret having used so many exclamation marks. I wrote the same thing in Czech and in German. As far as I’m concerned, if you don’t know both languages, then whatever it is you think you know about Prague is fundamentally compromised. Which only really matters, of course, if compromise or being compromised in this context really bothers you. A quick test: I didn’t write that WhatsApp message of mine in English, so all that you received just now is a series of paraphrases. How does that sit with you? Feels yucky, does it? Then farewell.

I gave that little message of mine five minutes to be seen by anybody who needed to see it—then I deleted WhatsApp. Quite a procedure given that I don’t really understand phones and wasn’t too clear on how I’d downloaded the app and acquired a user account. My competence ebbs and flows—the truth is I’m too … let’s say “old” for telephones. I shouldn’t use them. I should get a secretary. Hey, I’d like that: a secretary.

But back to my … what can I call this: An apologia? A defense? An excuse? Certainly not an explanation. The act of baring the soul has unpleasant connotations for me—mostly thanks to mallets wielded by bullies of the Catholic and Communist variety. And if only all the bullies were foreigners. Once they’re gone you’re still left with the homegrown zealots and chancers …

Well, all that’s for me to handle, not you. I’ve thought about pleading special circumstances for the behavior I read about in that WhatsApp group. “Consider the exceptional latitude and longitude of this place” and “Give yourself a bit of time to really notice the way this city touches the stars, trust me, it’s archetypal stuff …”—I could say things like that. Even if you were prepared to go along with such an idea, it entails comparative exercises I’m not equipped for. I mean, first of all I’d have to manufacture the impression that there’s any such thing as an ordinary city, that there are any cities that don’t incorporate some degree of optical illusion. (As for those mirages, be they repellent or alluring, don’t they all reflect a refusal to be known “like the back of” some human hand?)

No—Paris wouldn’t look askance at Prague. Istanbul would engage in a round of jocular and affectionate hair tousling; it would be like watching two bros completely secure in their insurmountable handsomeness. Shanghai would probably flirt a little bit … Athens would immediately agree to an impromptu fishing trip. And so on. In the eyes of its counterparts across the world, Prague has not broken any of the laws that the truly great cities abide by. What else do these places share? That’s a tough one … we can quite clearly see that plenty is left to the discretion of geography, faith, history, economics. Perhaps when all’s said and done the only non-negotiable feature is urban swagger. Audacity combined with a certain remoteness from reason. That’s the temperament that qualifies cities to play the most extreme games of Truth or Dare with their rulers; games that end in catastrophe. Or revolution. Or both.

It’s not that surprising, then, that a capital city so rarely channels the atmosphere of the rest of the country. When members of the populace outside the capital say, “But really that place is like another country,” that’s only to be expected. The tone of such remarks is envious, disgusted, mystified, forlorn, anxious … now that I’m thinking about it, someone once told me this: The capital is the part of the country that most openly belongs to the world as well as to the nation. It’s a way in for the stranger who can’t or won’t abandon their strangeness. And it’s a last chance for the native who would otherwise rebel …

I don’t remember anything about the person who said this to me, except that I was very fond of that person, and I believed that they meant what they were saying, and I—well, adored the gaze that matched their words. Me and my rubbish memory, leaving me stranded with contusions that softly, so softly, glow.

I don’t disparage towns or villages. You won’t hear me claim that a city is a more stimulating or even more complex environment than a stable settlement that’s faithful to its limits.

However.

The temperament of a town or a village is quite significantly linked to the expectation that between one year and the next, that town or the village will continue to exist. Cities—especially capital cities, have never been able to count on that. They test their footing from the moment they’re founded to the moment they fall. So much has happened. So much that it can never be told. I feel stupid reminding you of that. You already know that about your own experience.

Also—also … speaking now without reference to other cities, or to your life, indeed, simply taking a statistical view, isn’t it all right for a city to pull a leg or two when the mood is upon it? Prague already has a host of character references. For every single one of those WhatsApp complaints, millions of other observers have been permitted to come and go without anything too unusual by way of impediment. I’m talking about anything from holidays, conferences, concerts, and student residencies to entire lives lived out in this place, from birth to death. None of those people would recognize witness accounts of a city on the rampage. If you choose to, there isn’t much to stop you from viewing the nature of this place as sedate, stoic, perhaps even shy. Home to souls that eat, sleep, and breathe reverie even as the bodies that accompany them gruffly get on with things.

Some—the deathless Dr. Ripellino among them—say that Prague will never not be. They say that Prague will glide along the banks of the Vltava for eternity, the heart of a nation that is itself the restless heart of a continent. Well yes, please. That would of course be my wish: unchanging change.

Even so … I say that if Prague never fails to be, then it was never a city in the first place.

And if it was never a city, then what is it?

Whatever (Whoever?) Prague is, its acts tend to be committed without warning.

You shall have examples. Not from WhatsApp—from my short-term memory. I’ll tell you...