LAHORE: The panelists in a session in the LLF were of the view that the fictional stories of any city would preserve its history and help the future generation to know about its streets, buildings, gardens and people.

The session, the City as a Character, featured fiction writer and host of podcast Athens Unpacked Sofka Zinovieff, Pakistani novelists Mohsin Hamid and Osama Siddique, and the author of Lives and Four Apples David Wagner. It was moderated by Portuguese writer Teresa Nicolau. The session drew a large crowd.

Mohsin Hamid talked aboutthe structures of the Lahore city, saying that the most fascinating thing he observed while living in Lahore was the courtyards at the centre of the houses.

Comparing Lahore with Athens, he said that these cities had so much in common like these metropolises had their past. `If you visit the airports of the city, you will see that people are leaving L ahore as it is not giving them much to live currently and also expanding as new people approach it.

Mohsin said although the city was spreading vertically and horizontally and moving around the city one would find it as Venice of their own.

David said that he found Lahore an amazing city. `Thecities also become living beings and continue to exist. I started living in Berlin in 1991 and still remember its temples.

David said that Berlin remained a young city and younger than New York. In thepast, Berlin was divided and he always thought about it and heard stories and felt why he was not in Berlin when it was divided.

Osama Siddiquesaid there were several commonalities in Berlin, Athens and Lahore and these cities had their own distinctiveness also. `I think people not only form the city but the city also forms them.

Siddique said Lahore had amystical figure and tombs of different religious figures were built in separate designs and it had its own spirituality before and after patricians. He said Lahore was plundered by the invaders several times and the invaders also became thenatives of this city.

Replying to a question if fiction writing also preserved history, Sofka Zinovieff said she was talking to her daughter, who was reading a book ofMohsin about Lahore, and she talked about the house mentioned in the book. She said the fiction also preserved the history of a city.

David said the past was invented itself. He missed the Berlin Wall but now felt that hewas present in the 1990s and young people of the city often got astonished after finding that he was present in the 1990s in Berlin.

He said due to war, the city was ruined and later normalised after passing 30 years and now there were no ruins in the city and it was developed.

He said the nature of cities had changed over a passage of time. He loved Athens when he visited it because it`s a walkable city and there were no cars there. `It helps me to feel the city as a part of it.

Siddique said they could not survive without inventing a lot of stuff about cities and the writers created a city on their own in their mind.

`Lahore had a festival called Basant and now it`s banned.We only can use our imagination to think about it. The city looked more colourful while standing on the rooftops of the houses during Basant in the past.` He said as the city expanded, its festivals vanished and they would have to use imagination to write about it.

Sofka Zinovieff said she strongly believed in fiction and non-fiction. `Every writer puts heart and soul into his writing whether it`s a travelogue, memoir. The words go from one heart to another and one mind to another and become history,` she added.

Other writers also stated that they would have to value history and any writing about the city would also become history.