"So I say: It is you then?
He responds: You and I are two masked authors and two masked
witnesses
I say: How is this my concern? I'm a spectator
He says: No spectator's at chasm's door . . . and no
one is neutral here. And you must choose
your part in the end"
Torn between a desire to resolve the conflict and the integrity of his non-involvement, the narrator is confronted by the author of this play. The author implicates the narrator alongside himself, forcing the narrator to become involved in the escape. Suddenly the play has drawn the narrator deep into its plot and required him to write the ending.
"Our weight has become light like our houses in the faraway winds. We have become two friends of the strange creatures in the clouds . . . and we are now loosened from the gravity of identity's land."
Darwish muses about the strange anonymity which his exile offers. He is torn between two identities, but neither of them is compulsive it seems. At once, he is reminded of past affiliations and separated from those images.
"Take me to our early
years -- my first girlfriend says. Leave
the windows open for the house sparrow to enter
your dream -- I say . . . then I awaken, and no city is in
the city. No 'here' except 'there.'"
The narrator is dreaming a dream that's all too real about his past life with his ex. Their time was sweet, but once he hears her speak he's waking up again. The vast distance between himself and his unconscious is reflected in the otherness which he feels within the city, as if distance were an illusion.
"I cry for no clear reason, and I love you
as you are, not as a strut
nor in vain
and from my shoulders a morning rises onto you
and falls into you, when I embrace you, a night.'
The woman is the one encompassing her lover. Her days and nights are full of him, complete, but she identifies with neither state. She's an ambiguous figure defined by her love and her internal experience of external people.
