And sometimes it's just darkness. Where do the children play? I can't be sure if it's Yusuf asking or if it's Cat, but it doesn't matter because I don't have an answer for either one. I think Yusuf was much more at peace so it doesn't seem right that such a thing would torment him but maybe he just put on a good face. Will you keep on building higher til there's no more room up there? I think Yusuf found the answers to the questions Cat asked over and over again before realizing that there weren't any. Answers, I mean. Until he realized that he had to be what he was not, he had to become the other, and only then could he breathe easy. In the end it was never about finding a hard-headed woman. Salvation lay, apparently, in an arranged marriage. Who would've thought? Certainly not Cat.

But I was talking about the darkness. In one quick motion the lights are shut off, the curtains are drawn, the sun sets and for a brief terrifying moment that drags for hours and hours it seems as if the darkness is forever. Is this self-indulgence or just simple truth? Is it just me, or is it all quite stultifying? Am I getting tired of the sound of my own voice? Are you?

Sometimes people take things you didn't give, and they just win, simple as that. It doesn't seem fair, but that's what happens when you're naïve, a bit reckless, and follow the rules. Cat knew this, and so he joined a different game. He didn't try to rewrite the rules, he just left. It's courageous as hell, if not revolutionary. Oooh baby baby it's a wild world, it's hard to get by just upon a smile. Ooh baby baby it's a wild world, and I'll always remember you like a child girl. But suddenly I'm offended because I never was a child and anyway it's all his fault.

How does it happen? One minute you're easing comfortably along, nodding in acknowledgement to the familiar boredom, and the next you hardly recognize your own reflection in the mirror. Was your mouth always so drawn, cheeks so sallow, eyes flecked with such dull gray tones?

And why do they dart, from left to right and back again, so many times in the course of such a short space, as if they know? As if they sense him? That intruder with thick eyebrows and shuffling feet, who just now raises his hand to the knocker before thinking better of it and throwing his shoulder with all his weight behind it against the door.

Longer boats are coming to win us, they're coming to win us. Longer boats are coming to win us. Hold on to the shore, they'll be taking the key from the door.