Chapter Thirteen, Peter Brook

The actors were able to convey through the same grotesque behaviors described in The Mountain People, a sense of the Ik as a people struggling to keep their culture and their families in the face of tragedy. Through the play, Colin began to respect the Ik, the same people he had left in disgust and hatred so many years earlier. For Peter Brook, that was successful, transformative theater.

Chapter Fourteen, Virgina

Joe begged him for it . . . Years later Colin hurled it into Payne's Creek and his mind flashed back in pain to Joe's pathetic face pleading for the gun

Chapter Fifteen, Withdrawal

"Professor Turnbull," Kamal says, "was the greatest person I ever met" . . . "He prepared me for death, but he also prepared me for how I felt when my death sentence was overturned. Having the death order signed and having your death order thrown out are both pretty emotional experiences . . . He was a friend and my brother."

From Chapter Sixteen, Death Sentence

Colin had often compared his and Joe's love to a full glass of sweet wine, a small taste of which could wash down the dirt and dregs and bitterness of life. It was a glass of wine they indulged in until one day there was only a drop left, and instead of drinking it all and detroying the glass, they clung to the last drop even as it turned sour. Colin did not have the strength to break the glass, even though it looked as if it was nothing but an empty shell. But in staying with Joe, Colin would find that there was sweetness in both life and death and that the emptiness was just an illusion. Though Joe might seem to be disappearing, Colin's love for him was as strong as ever, a vapor easily kindled, a telling silence.

From Chapter Seventeen, Together at Last

Colin sensed that many of his friends thought Joe was a spoiled brat who needed immediate gratification, that he was tempestuous and irrational, but that was their illusion. That is what the villagers always said about the Pygmies. Colin would find the same pleasure in praising Joe as he found in showing that the Pygmies were smarter and better than the villagers. With Joe's death, it became clear that Colin had fashioned his marriage into a metaphor for the Pygmy-villager relationship.

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