Irem
"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."
Irem is an archipelago east of Avid Horizon. It appears to be very close to that dream world Londoners call Parabola. They say it always was, always is, always will be. It is a place where time is confused and collides with itself. The people here talk in riddles, and Irem and Whither are locked in an intense rivalry of rhetoric.
Maybe's Daughter thinks of Irem as her home, as she was conceived in Parabola.
Origins of Irem
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 reference to a lost city, a country or an area mentioned in the Quran. Iram became known to Western literature with the translation of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights.
As the Quran said, 1400 years ago (before the Quran's creations)
7: [With] Iram – who had lofty pillars, 8: The likes of whom had never been created in the lands 9: And [with] Thamud, who carved out the rocks in the valley? 10: And [with] Pharaoh, owner of the stakes? – 11: [All of] whom oppressed within the lands 12: And increased therein the corruption. 13: So your Lord poured upon them a scourge of punishment.
The city, or tribe as some interpreted, angered God and was smote, driven into the sands and never to be seen again. The city if often associated with Ubar, the "Atlantis of the Sands." This could mean Irem is dated around the fall of the 2nd city, although it could be as old as the First.
