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 ]

Everyone's name has a certain ring to it, which releases a scent that entices you and me to respond, every passing sound has a familiar tone. I was being called by the ring of your voice to help clean up the debris. I couldn't respond. I had a raspy throat, and hazed-over eyes. You were gradually emerging from the dust, taking shape. I was gradually coming to, seeing you. I could barely open my mouth, something stuttered out of me, finally asking:

" What's the fatality this time?"

"I don't know, they haven't released the numbers yet. The word is that apparently they don't give out exact stats in times of war. Tell me what happened to your head!"

I ran my hand over my head, held my bloody palm before my eyes. A lock of the hair that was poking out of the wrecked wall was glistening in my hand.

"I banged my head on the wall."

You turned your head (You wanted to escape the disasters!). I wiped my bloody hand under the table. My fingers rubbed the grooves and reliefs of the carved wood. I mindlessly kept rubbing to soften the wood under them, avoiding looking at you, who was flowing inside my suffering body. I watched myself through your eyes to understand how you saw me! My horizon kept expanding through your vision, and I, alone, tasted the pleasure of placing someone other than myself in my inner eye, tasted desire, presence, and the struggle to connect and be free. Thought was in mid-flight, its final destination next to you, in peace. Vis pulled my hand, meaning: Come, come, let's lounge under the sun's streaked shadows, laugh for the light that's penetrating us, warm and hearty, and hang from it like a droplet at the tip of a branch. Let's put every place, this place and that, out of our minds, and hold this very moment, the present as it escapes us. At last! .

I looked under the table at my legs that moved nonstop, never still for a moment. You sat down, you who they call Ramin. I tried to look at your face. I lifted my hand to brush the air off my eyes, to better see you. The index finger, the bony digit, flashed before my eyes, a talking hand that wanted to rest on the copper skin of your shoulder. You pulled your shoulder away, the hand dropped (You were afraid of me!). I didn't know whether to revel in, or shudder from the way you looked at me.

The fish are floating open-eyed on the surface of the water, as if asleep. I am flicking the glass bowl to wake them. They leap and circle around the bowl terrified and disoriented. They keep opening their mouths as if to say: Sea. Sea. I ask, Have you seen the sea? With glaring lash-less eyes they gesture to the glass, as if to say: We haven't, but we've heard, and they spin around themselves and the bowl. Suddenly, the water splashes and one leaps out and lands on the floor. It's panting. I ask: Do you want to die or return to the bowl? It fixes its eyes onto the bowl and opens its mouth: Sea. Sea.

Vis, Vis, tell me what am I to do if all he does is come and go, dilly dally, abandon me in the anxious purgatory of having or not having him. What if he appears everywhere, next to me, on the faces of everyone and everything, what if his image glows and I see nothing but him, then what will I do without him?

Vis pounded on my chest to say: Again, ambivalence, ambivalence. Do away with it, and embrace this completely. Become it! I desire, and I get what I desire, do you understand! You just keep whining, doubting, yo-yoing until you're even more of a captive in a web of delusions. I am daringly slinging arrows of desire at him, and pulling. And you keep and-ifs-or-butsing. Alas, how alien we are to each other. We have co-existed, but in utter isolation. I exist beyond absolute silence, and I will prove my existence, my being me. you'll see how I will make him a captive . I'm that Vis, I'm that Vis, that Vis.

Then she lay a head on your chest and listened between the groove of your shoulders to your thumping heart that ticked like a clock. You smelled of war.

"Are you going to the front?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"Tomorrow."

Again: waiting around, feeling abandoned, cast aside to swallow unshed tears that rip you apart, each shred yearning for union-a union that is mixed with the dread of separation, a presence that is mixed with the pain of absence.

Vis shouted: Enough! Whining only breeds misery. Open your eyes in mine, to see colors and light, to incite rapture, abandon yourself in me, reap the joys of my being so you can forget these changing times. You must come to terms with the entirety of our era! It is what it is!

No, I don't want to. I'm not ashamed of whining.

continue to Part 5 >>

>> back to issue index