Trafika Europe 9/10 - UK in Europe

I stared at thenightof the city

to myself, avoiding every kind of gathering. In both body and soul, I felt it was not I who had written those poems, not I who had drowned in a sea of ghazals at night. There was an estrangement between my self and the peculiar performances that took place in another world. My self, one part of which swam in one world and the other in another, was enslaved to a war in which I knew not on which side I fought, nor on which front I was supposed to stand. For a whole lifetime, lust tore me in one direction, modesty in another; propriety confined me while fantasy let me take flight. Honour imprisoned me in my body, while lust, like a wild beast, dragged me away. Day after day, night after night, I was torn into ever more pieces

... but who among us is not in pieces? Let him who does not contain a double-sided being and a many-headed soul step forward and stone me. We are all two-sided creatures. Many of us see only one side of ourselves because we dare not look at our other side. One night, the other creature within me simply emerged and, boldly and without shame, introduced himself to me. He said, ‘I am you, your self and nothing but your self.’ He was arrogant and self-centred. He was handsome but his beauty bore no resemblance to any other thing. I still wonder why I let him live. Why did I not put him to death? It would not even have been murder or have counted as a crime. Why then did I not do this? Every human being has

207