Another curtain has appeared in the Open Dictionary over the Christmas period, this time the tortilla curtain. A few weeks ago we had the mojito curtain, and of course there’s long been the Iron Curtain (although it’s faded considerably since the end of the Cold War).
It’s interesting to think of all these imaginary dividing lines that exist in the world, though it’s sad that they exist at all. I suppose the fact that we use curtain imagery – something soft that can be easily drawn aside – is at least a slight positive (although obviously not in the case of the Iron Curtain – hardly flexible); if we talked about the mojito wall or the tortilla fence though, these barriers would feel even more daunting than they already do.
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