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I didn’t know where I could go on to. I didn’t think—after what I had seen of Indar and other people in the Domain—that I had the talent or the skills to survive in another country […] My panic grew, and my guilt, and my feeling that I was provoking my own destruction […] I began to question myself. Was I possessed by Yvette? Or was I—like Mahesh […] possessed by myself, the man I thought I was with Yvette? [...] She gave me the idea of my manliness I had grown to need. Wasn’t my attachment to her an attachment to that idea? And oddly involved with this idea of myself, and myself and Yvette, was the town itself—the flat, the house in the Domain, the way both our lives were arranged, the absence of a community, the isolation in which we both lived.

Explanation and Analysis:

In this passage, Salim laments his condition as a diasporic outcast, fearing that the various performances he has taken part in within the town and the Domain have trapped him, robbing him of what little power and freedom he had left. Without a...

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Original

Romeo

(aside) She speaks.
O, speak again, bright angel! For thou art
As glorious to this night, being o’er my head,
As is a winged messenger of heaven
Unto the white, upturnèd, wondering eyes
Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him
When he bestrides the lazy-puffing clouds
And sails upon the bosom of the air.

Juliet

O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art though Romeo?
Deny they father and refuse they name.
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.

Modern

Romeo

(to himself) She speaks. Speak again, bright angel! For tonight you are as glorious, there up above me, as a winged messenger of heaven who makes mortals fall onto their backs to gaze up with awestruck eyes as he strides across the lazy clouds and sails through the air.

Juliet

O Romeo, Romeo! Why must you be Romeo? Deny your father and give up your name. Or, if you won’t change your name, just swear your love to me and I’ll give up being a Capulet.

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