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I was made to go up alone. All her savings were on the table in small piles of fivers with name tags by the piles. The blueish brooch was there with other bits of jewellery and more names on paper slips. Sure enough my auntie's name was written next to the brooch.

Drops of rain stuck to the deck windows of this thick glass with metal bolts round, then the drops moved in wind gusts as it got more daylight. I asked for tea and was given it with no milk or sugar then was too upset to say about its bitter taste.

I sometimes took the foul solutions, more often refused. Then Marian got sick, really sick, and Adora had more important things to do than coaxing me into swallowing wheat-germ extract. Now I had a pang: all those syrups and tablets she proffered, and I rejected. That was the last time I had her full attention as a mother. I suddenly wished I'd been easier.

I tried to imagine other images from my life in Chicago: my cubicle at work, my superintendent who still didn't know my name, the dull green Christmas lights the supermarket had yet to take down. A scattering of friendly acquaintances who probably hadn't noticed noticed I'd been gone.

"I used to work in the meat. You cleaned up each night. Afterwards you smelled of blood and it was under your nails as you lifted the glass near your nose in the pub. You pulled the bleeding plastic bag of gubbins, cut open by bones, to the service lift. Blood spoiled three pairs of shoes. You were expected to supply your own footwear."

". . . we do not expect spring flowers to bloom in a black frost, and I think the chill wind that blows from English publishers, with their black suits and thin umbrellas, and their habit of beginning every sentence with 'We are afraid', has nipped off more promising buds than it has strengthened." (Introduction, xviii)

"My point is that you are all arrogant. All Americans are, really, but people like you especially. I have met many of your type over the last few years, coming here to fulfill some personal conquest, but you never stop to think about how arrogant you are. You seek some enlightenment at the expense of my people. You do not care about Iraq. You do not care about my people."

"Do you know why I am here?"
"No..."
"Because this is my home. Not like you, this is not a journey for me. I will not return home from a far away land and tell my family about the strange and foreign sights."
"What's your point?"

"You ever think, like, what it would be like if Dad went up here for a job? To support us?"
"I do, actually."
"It's just, like, it could have happened so easily. Everyone just comes here for work. Do you wonder if he'd be like those guys because that's what it makes you? That's what it turns them into."
"Yes. I get sad thinking about — I don't like thinking about it. Not just Dad, but anyone else we know."

"Leon, do you think you're different since you came here? Do you think people are different at home than they are here?"
" 'course they are. This is a rat cage."
"Then, are they different forever?"
"What are you getting at?"
"People do things here they wouldn't do at home."
"People are bored and crazy."
"But is that who they really are? Or who they are at home?"

"You know, we're all in two places here. And we can get caught up in that, in our own way."
"Well, I'm not staying."
"That may be. You might think that, and that may be. But people kid themselves if they think the only life they're living is somewhere else."

"Aren't you from there?"
"No. Cape Breton."
"Same thing."
"Excuse me, two different places! *They're* accordions and codfish, *we're* fiddles and lobster."
"For God's sake."

The only message we got about a better future was that we had to leave home to have one. . . there is no knowing Cape Breton without knowing how deeply ingrained two diametrically opposed experiences are: a deep love for home, and the knowledge of how frequently we have to leave it to find work somewhere else.

I learn that I can have opportunity or I can have home. I cannot have both, and either will always hurt.

The only message we got about a better future was that we had to leave home to have one . . . there is no knowing Cape Breton without knowing how deeply ingrained two diametrically opposed experiences are: a deep love for home, and the knowledge of how frequently we have to leave it to find work somewhere else.

The regime had understood that one person leaving her house while asking herself: "Are my trousers long enough? Is my veil in place? Can my makeup be seen? Are they going to whip me?" no longer asks herself: "Where is my freedom of thought? Where is my freedom of speech? My life, is it livable? What's going on in political prisons?"

We can only feel sorry for ourselves when our misfortunes are still supportable. Once this limit is crossed, the only way to bear the unbearable is to laugh at it.

"People don't know anymore why we've had eight years of war. Why their children have died. The entire war was just a big setup to destroy both the Iranian and Iraqi armies. The former the most powerful in the Middle East in 1980, and the latter represented a real danger to Israel. The West sold weapons to both camps and we, we were stupid enough to enter into this cynical game... eight years of war for nothing!"

There were also the streets. Many has changed names. They were now called martyr what's-his-name avenue or martyr something-or-other street. It was very unsettling. I felt as though I were walking through a cemetery, surrounded by the victims of a war I had fled.

"Prosperity consists of two things: tea after a meal, and a cigarette after tea."

Despite the doctor's orders, I bought myself several cartons of cigarettes. I think that I preferred to put myself in serious danger rather than confront my shame. My shame at not having become someone, the shame of not having made my parents proud after all the sacrifices they had made for me. The shame of having become a mediocre nihilist.

Today, in retrospect, I no longer condemn him. Markus had a history, a family, friends. I had no one but him. I wanted him to be at once my boyfriend, my father, my mother, my twin. I had projected everything onto him. It was surely not easy for a boy of nineteen. . . . I didn't have anyone. My entire existence had been planned around Markus. . . . it's a banal story of love that almost carried me away.

"In life you'll meet a lot of jerks. If they hurt you, tell yourself that it's because they're stupid. That will keep you from reacting to their cruelty. Because there is nothing worse than bitterness and vengeance... always keep your dignity and be true to yourself."

Doing myself a favor and abandoning after the last story most Lovecraft buffs deem worthwhile. The rest is period-era pulp.

I saw the lake of Hali, thin and blank, without a ripple or wind to stir it, and I saw the towers of Carcosa behind the moon. Aldebaran, the Hyades, Alar, Hastur, glided through the cloud-rifts which fluttered and flapped as they passed like the scolloped tatters of the King in Yellow.

I thought, too, of the King in Yellow wrapped in the fantastic colours of his tattered mantle, and that bitter cry of Cassilda, "Not upon us, oh King, not upon us!"

Then I drew on the white silk robe, embroidered with the Yellow Sign, and placed the crown upon my head. At last I was King, King by my right in Hastur, King because I knew the mystery of the Hyades, and my mind had sounded the depths of the Lake of Hali. I was King! The first grey pencillings of dawn would raise a tempest which would shake two hemispheres.

Then by degrees he led Vance along the ramifications of the Imperial family, to Uoht and Thale, from Naotalba and Phantom of Truth, to Aldones, and then tossing aside his manuscript and notes, he began the wonderful story of the Last King. Fascinated and thrilled I watched him. He threw up his head, his long arms were stretched out in a magnificent gesture of pride and power, and his eyes blazed deep in their sockets

Mr. Wilde explained the manuscript, using several volumes on Heraldry, to substantiate the result of his researches. He mentioned the establishment of the Dynasty in Carcosa, the lakes which connected Hastur, Aldebaran and the mystery of the Hyades. He spoke of Cassilda and Camilla, and sounded the cloudy depths of Demhe, and the Lake of Hali. "The scolloped tatters of the King in Yellow must hide Yhtill forever."

No definite principles had been violated in those wicked pages, no doctrine promulgated, no convictions outraged. It could not be judged by any known standard, yet, although it was acknowledged that the supreme note of art had been struck in The King in Yellow, all felt that human nature could not bear the strain, nor thrive on words in which the essence of purest poison lurked.

This is the thing that troubles me, for I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear for ever the memory of the Pallid Mask.