from Issue #5, Fall 2014 - Spring 2015

an excerpt from Vis & I

by Farideh Razi, translated from Persian by Niloufar Talebi

[ Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 ]

[ continued ]

Was it me standing there so fierce, telling you to go, or was it Vis?

"Go. Maybe, just maybe, you'll have a fresh start, live your life differently over there! Who knows, what you want might actually happen, your expectations of yourself fulfilled. You might become somebody, the person you want, not the one they want, but rather, the one you want. Look at how this slice of life dangling in the wind flits away, passes."

"How? How many times can a person start over again? Again and again from the beginning!"

"Each new beginning intensifies the splendor of becoming. Look at the conical tip of the mountain: suspended above it are vapors condensed to form clusters of clouds, ever-expanding until they cover the mountain's entire sky, biding their time to rain."

"To rain what?"

"Screams!"

"How would a downpour be possible under the shower of shrapnel and death and destruction and wailing!?"

And now I am standing here looking at the mountains, at their snow-capped peaks in the wide heart of the sky, and I see you standing there waiting for a downpour. I can still picture you, you haven't gone so far away that I can't sense your presence around me. I see the haloed contours of your body through the car window in the passing flickering lights that sparkle about you, your neck sinking between the shoulders. You seem to be emerging as a figment of the imagination. You exist, your scent lingers in the air, and invisible webs that press us in their delicate threads are spun between us-you standing, me sitting. I sweep my hand to tear the webs. The downy strands stick to my fingers. Desire flows between us. Words are flung from the edges of our gazes. We are going to blush. You are looking at the spot where I had been, but no longer am, and I, entangled in the webs, am looking at where you are, and never was. I laugh, you laugh, my skin tingles with joy (How happy I am).

I said: "There is light there."

He said: "Darkness too."

I said: "We are arriving."

He said: "We are going."

I said: "One day we will all die (Where are we going?!)"

Where are you going?! It's now 2:20. The body of the car tears through the heart of the wind, its windshield frame tracking row after row of pines, each and every streetlamp and tree passing within the frame of its four walls drawing me closer to you. I'll be standing before you in one hour (Would I be able to stand?). I hear my hoarse and unrecognizable voice that's excusing itself:

"Sir, sir, would you please drive faster, please, if. "

"I am sorry, ma'am, this is a car, not a plane. Maybe you should have left earlier, I can't fly!"

Right about now your scarf is caught in the wind, and you are getting farther away from me. But what would happen if the echo of your beaming laughter resounded off the glass surrounding me one more time, if your face rippled from one window to the other, rendering me speechless (How nice it is being able to extract blocks of time)?. I could see through the window that you were approaching. I impulsively held the book closer to my eyes so I could spy on you from above it! You were approaching, this much was true. One window rippled in another and your figure split in two, half in the window next to me, half in the one across, waiting to fuse together. I could see you one step away. The meteor of whether to desire or not had unleashed its messenger. The battle with the self and Vis had begun.

continue to Part 3 >>

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