The authorities, however, have come up with one game plan after another, the latest being a plan to flood the streets with enforcers who break up gatherings ahead of time.
"This July 2013 policy was conceived as a mechanism to break the gathering momentum of the people-smuggling industry," he wrote.
For all the (largely male) characterisation of Theresa May as headmistress trying to impose some discipline on staff and students who have gone a bit wild over the summer break, this gathering needs to do much more.
Photograph by Newsha Tavakolian / Magnum for The New Yorker A worker on Hormuz takes a break from gathering red ochre, an earth pigment that has been used for dyeing fabric and as an ingredient in makeup.
The police have been breaking up gatherings of as few as five people.
"Well, why don't we see for ourselves?" Comic-Con gave the actor a rare standing ovation as the entire stadium-sized convention hall broke the gathering's strict no-standing rule in unison.
But he has not wooed back breakaway hardliners or dumped the Second Vatican Council's ecumenical, modernist legacy.Worse, he has even agreed to join (but not pray with) leaders of other faiths in Assisi in October at an event commemorating a ground-breaking interfaith gathering in 1986.
Secret police terrify peasants into not talking politics and threaten to break up public gatherings of more than five people.
