Recent plays -- Joe Martin
FAITH: A Play in Two Pieces
JOE MARTIN
www.joemartin.us
Copyright © 2010 & 2011 by Joe Martin
The Marton Agency
1 Union Square West, Room 815,
New York, NY 10003-3303
Phone (212) 255-1908
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FAITH: A Play in Two Pieces
CHARACTERS
PIECE 1: “MUGHAL TIME WARP”
AURANGZEB, Mughul ruler of India (son of Shah Jahan, builder of the Taj Mahal)
DARA SHIKOOH, his brother, rightful heir to Shah Jahan
JIHANARA, their elder sister, author and spiritual teacher
MUMTEZ MAHAL, their deceased mother, wife of Shah Jahan, enshrined in the Taj.
A SAQI / SCRIBE
PIECE 2: “METROPOLITAN MORALS”
SAADI, a scarf and rug street salesman
JOHN B, Evangelical relief organizer
CHRISTIANE, Catholic lay foreign aid consultant
DARA, a young woman returning from Jerusalem
A WAITRESS
FATIMA, a young woman from Palestine (played by the actress playing the waitress.)
_______________________________
The two “pieces” are autonomous, yet interlocking. The set configuration in each echoes the
other. Three round tables are in the foreground in both. The carpets covering the floor and
cloths on the tables in the first piece are hung on Saadi’s street vendor’s booth in the
second. The “booth” in part two is the wooden frame on which fabrics are hung in part one
to create a throne. Other maneuvers in this spirit are encouraged. The same five actors are
used.
________________________________________
PIECE I: MUGHAL TIME WARP
The Void. With details or artifacts from the a chamber in the Red Fort in Agra India.
The lit part of the stage floor is bedecked with carpets. Three round tables are covered
with classical paisley cloth, with many blues and reds and some gold mixed in Each table has
a hole in the middle, not yet visible In the center a throne with golden silks draped on it.
Two round tables on either side of the throne. They have man-sized holes in the center of
them. If possible, the tables and throne are able to roll or glide–or simply an shift right and
left, up and down in four directions. he characters emerge from the center of the tables and
throne.
A SAQI, a boy who doubles as a scribe (played by the actress playing DARA Part II) sits
at the side with a manuscript scroll and quill, and can pour wine, always returning to cushion
with quill and scroll.
__________________________
A shaft of light on AURANGZEB, who is on the throne.
AURANGZEB
How did it go ...
How did I prevail?
“Aurangzeb—Emperor of Hindustan”
Get this down, the whole vision.
My life is a testimony to faith.
I shall testify. Shall we commence?
The SAQI puts pen to page and head down.
First an anecdote. Concerning a commoner
I met with my entourage while making a grand entry.
I saw a small house in the alley by the mosque
which lies in the Delhi Red Fort,
in which a man sat cobbling shoes.
I walked to the doorway and had my people knock.
“You seem to me a man of faith, humble, and probably a fair dealer” I said.
“What is it like to sit and cobble here all day?
Steadfast in your work as you surely are in your faith?”
He responded:
“Sultan of sunlight, Prince of Mercy,
please don’t address a humble leather man
in that way.” I asked him to dispense with these epithets.
In God’s name, do you think your ruler a vain man?”
He carried on.
“King of the compassionate
who does right by his subjects—.
soul king, angel king, ruler of righteousness.”
“To the point man” I said. “What are your aspirations?”
“I am fixing these shoes so their owner can walk in them.”
I was astonished by his reply.
Its charming simplicity left me stunned.
This is the beauty of the common people
living in accord with the Law and hard work. I said:
“My good man, you impress me.
I rule for the people like you. People with
simple lives with proper regard for what is important.
For what else is the Law but shoes we can walk in
and keep our feet from hurt? How may we help you.”
“Son of our protector Shah Jahan,” the man went on,
“You may help me in one thing ...” He stopped, and considered.
“Speak tell me, so I may hear your need.”
“My lord, because I do ablutions eighteen times a day
my ignorant neighbors mock me – those worshippers of the river –
“What?” I broke in. “Of the river?”
“Yes. They have always mocked me.
But things have gone from bad to worse.
They told some Portuguese traders that my daughters were whores,
and now they have absconded with them both.”
To say I was sickened to hear this
would be putting it mildly.
Admittedly I did not ask if his daughters
had any vocation. Still
I swore then that I would give that man redress
against those who’d spit on him for his piety.
And not him alone, but all our people like him.
If I could not find the Portuguese heathens
why not – I said to myself – take payment out
on the hide of his neighbors.
That is, anyone who worships rivers, stones or statues.
Reflecting further I thought: “Let us put their heads on pikes –
in the grand style we shall reintroduce after my coronation.
The foreigners and our own subjects who use this man’s daughters
to feed the lusts of deviants in our society
to unleash violence and chaos among the people –
let us tan their hides. Those who refuse to wear his shoes
preferring to wade barefoot in supposedly holy rivers,
– no river is “holy” make that an annotation –
deluded as they are in taking bodies of water for gods
Sarasvati, and Ganga, and Besmati and what have you”.
I then came to reflect on the evils of idolatry.
What wouldn’t I do to quiet the secret screaming of their idols
that scour me in my dreams at night
up and down the Indus and the Ganges,
drowning out the pure voice of this simple man’s faith.
The idolaters of Hindustan are everywhere.
“Non-believers must be convinced
or disappear from the face of the earth.”
I quote myself. That is from history.
I actually said that. A footnote please.
It is amazing that I am my best source, is it not?
He rotates upstage on throne and regards the bed
Shah Jahan my father was a good king
but an idolatrous man
an infatuated man.
I have put him in a generous prison.
in this far tower of the Agra fort.
Here he sits every day on his sick bed staring at the river
on which boatmen sway like reeds of grass in the heat
when the humid vapors distort all the images
of men, trees and animals, and miles away
heat waves bend the image of the greatest idol in the world
his glowing white monument to Mumtez …
Mumtez, my mother—who did not favor me.
There he lies and stares out at the distant embankment
at that palace housing nothing but a corpse.
An idol dedicated to an even worse idol.
Pause.
A woman.
Pause. To the SAQI / SCRIBE.
I am not without experience in these matters.
There is nothing in a woman that is not
trickery, trouble, betrayal, lust,
and hard bargaining. When you defy them
they overcook your chapatis with malice.
To the SAQI
Back to the main thread. Why have I acted as I have?
So that millions still think me a great traitor?
Enough was enough! I acted to bring back justice.
Pause.
Let me put it thus. It came to me.
“It is time to draw the line.”
How much of this vast realm of the East
did Shah Jahan plunder for art and gems
for his monument to this woman
paid for by our treasury.
To get his ivory his gold the chiseled stones
the lattice work the arabesques
the honey colored agates
the lapis outlines amethyst cups the gold leaf
the inlaid emerald tiles that glow
when the moon flares its skirts at night.
He depleted the vaults of the empire, and all for love.
Love. That’s a rich word—I find it demonic too.
The SAQI writes, oblivious to the fact that he is being addressed.
He rolls the throne toward the SAQI / SCRIBE.
Scribe? Saqi?
Did we get all that down?
I hope I am articulating my position?
Hell, you fools have no advice to give.
Pause. He summons the SAQI, who approaches him.
Intoxicated. A whole continent intoxicated
that was the logical conclusion of Jahan’s “work for love”.
Decay in the body politic. You agree, I know.
Pause. He grabs the SAQI, holding his face to focus his
attention on the distances
Across the river lies the stump of the next Taj he planned!
This one for himself
for the day he would join his beloved Mumtez Mahal.
The idol-crazed dotard had to be stopped.
It was in the nick of time.
Only the stump of that shrine will remain
on the far side of the river.
He fills out his days staring
at the vista of his bulging idol of material stupidity.
My poor mother.
If Hell wants to take her on judgment day
does he think his great dome will stop the dark angel?
He sits on his bed on the top of this tower,
the breezes from his water conduits coursing around his neck,
looking at his Taj with the misty eyes of love ...
Intoxicated. Stupefied.
Like my brother – the one he would have made his heir.
But I cut him off. Oh … did I cut him off.
Pause. He releases the SAQI’s face.
Turns out.
All this description, you say. Past history.
Where’s the action? Where’s the drama?
This is my action. To make history and morality stay put. Forever.
All great men want to solve the problem
of history’s endless leaking and bleeding.
The flux the Greeks believed in
is just a running wound.
Did you get that?
The SAQI waves his quill in the air.
Write, Saqi. I am here to summon up the past.
Why did I seize the peacock throne from my father?
For posterity. Let it be known.
IT WAS BECAUSE OF THIS GOD FORSAKEN FAMILY!
I asked myself—what is to be done about this family?
And about this rotten slack liberal manner of rule?
Our whole line was defiled by the so-called universal religion
dreamed up by the “Great” Akbar, my ancestor.
That’s it you see— it starts with my great grandfather.
Akbar. Oh, how his great name resonated.
Ak, ak, ak, bar bar bar the mag ni ni ni fi fi cent cent cent..
You know Saqi, how it all ended up
with Jahan. Opulence decay. And worse—
Dara Shikooh was the heir and the eldest son.
My beloved and darling innocent brother.
But alas — he was bent by demons.
And sister Jihanara the book-writer
she studied with men outside of our family,
sitting in meditation prescribed by the Qadiri cult,
chanting all through the night.
What can one say? The scholars say she’s a … I dare not say it.
Worse—all morning long she writes books.
How can this family bear this shame.
A hand slams a book down on a neighboring table top.
JIHANARA in loose hijab made of ascetic muslin emerges from
the center of her table.
AURANGZEB
Look, I’ve summoned her up. She’s back.
She’s spying again for the Qadiris you see.
Now, let’s play it out.
Let’s play it out so you can see these fools
with no interest in the Law —Saqi sit there and get this down.
JIHANARA
Aurangzeb you called my name.
You’re disturbing my writing. What is it.
AURANGZEB
Scribbling away for eternity are you?
There are rumors about you Jihanara.
JIHANARA
Rumours. And you listen? My dear brother, the gossip...
AURANGZEB
You’re my sister. I keep my ears open. That’s all.
JIHANARA
Afraid of something? Why?
Did you not kill your greatest fear? Your own brother?
Like Cain?
AURANGZEB
Dara Shikooh, it was natural, wanted back
the power that was rightfully his.
JIHANARA
My poor brother was never suited for politics.
AURANGZEB
Well you’re coming around. Do you think so too?
JIHANARA
Not Dara Shikooh. I mean you.
Remember how you suspected me. How did you put it … ?
Go ahead, let’s play it out. You began with endearments …
AURANGZEB
Saqi, she wants to run through the events. Get it down.
Pause. Clears his throat.
“Listen sister, my dear one, heart of my heart.
You’re going to be put to the test.
I cannot afford to have disloyalty lodging near me.”
JIHANARA
“I lodge with my Lord. You have a lot of fears.”
AURANGZEB
“I have a right to them. I am the usurper of Hindustan.
I am the keeper of the fundamental Law.
I’ve imprisoned my father.
I have dispatched his heir and both little brothers.
Granted soon most people will understand
it was done for the good of the order.
I’m not a gilded rose.”
JIHANARA
“I’ll give you that. The rose part.”
AURENGZEB
“And I have so much trouble explaining myself.”
JIHANARA (her table rolls toward him.)
You like playing this all out again, don’t you brother?
The same old arguments forever.
Are you so insecure about your role
in bringing down enlightened Mughal rule
that we need these little performances
on and on and on in all this emptiness?
AURANGZEB
Let’s try this. Let’s conspire.
“I would like to have you on my side, Jihanara.”
JIHANARA
I told you then I’d have none of it.
Pause.
Oh God. Do I have to play roles in your little scenes?
AURANGZEB
It was your suggestion, darling sister.
For the sake of your failing memory.
JIHANARA
You say you want to make the world stop moving.
You want to freeze the volution of values.
But you are always making changes in the script,
always editing history for posterity!
Making yourself out as something better and better.
Must I always be a prisoner in your historical revisions?
AURANGZEB
History is on a time table. That means it’s all fixed.
We are all locked in the tables of history.
Perhaps we can improvise a bit
but the essentials are immutable.
JIHANARA
You are immutable. Idiot.
AURANGZEB
Yes. Let’s play it out again.
For the sake of the family. In fact, I said to you:
“It would be better if family hung together.”
JIHANARA
Ah, I recall what I said.
“Will we all be hanging from the east Gate?
Or the west gate?”
AURANGZEB
“What do you want from me, Jihanara?”
JIHANARA
“Aside from freeing Baba?”
AURANGZEB
“Shah Jahan has made his bed and is sleeping in it.”
JIHANARA
“He is a prisoner in his bed.”
Pause.
I tried to appeal to your sense of reason.
“Are you really hell-bent on your course of action?”
AURANGZEB
“I’m not the one who has been bent by hell here.
And Baba is only a prisoner in his bed.
I have been forced to my actions. I am commanded by history.
And so, you must be too.”
JIHANARA
“Listen brother— don’t worry about me.
I will not remain among you here much longer.”
AURANGZEB
“Oh? Lovely. Suicide
for the sake of your dear good-hearted father?”
JIHANARA (laughs)
“You would like to see me extinguished, wouldn’t you?
Oh no, my dear, you have got it all wrong.
My teacher Mullah Shah has given the word
that I qualify to succeed him.
So I shall be leaving you.”
Pause.
AURANGZEB (laughs)
“You? So now you’re going to be a master of mystics?
Or should I say mistress?
Mistress of the masters of mystics—I like that”.
JIHANARA
You were never above slander. I remained firm.
“Reflect on how you talk to me.
I have responsibilities beyond that of any king or politician.”
AURANGZEB (thunders)
“What has happened to motherhood?
What’s wrong with that?
What about setting the example of loyal marriage,
Is this what the people need to see you doing? What about—”
JIHANARA
“What if that is not the path marked out for me?”
AURANGZEB
“—moral examples? The ridiculous notions of these women—”
JIHANARA
“I have been honored by a great master—”
AURANGZEB
“—who think they can change universal laws—”
JIHANARA
“Which universal laws! Who were the first counselors
Of the community of the faith. Khadija—”
AURANGZEB
“It’s set down for all time, immutable, unchangeable—”
JIHANARA
“Khadija and then Aisha, the first counselors were—”
AURANGZEB
“They were wives!”
JIHANARA
“—women!”
DARA SHIKOOH emerges from the center of his table.
He gazes about, a look of astonishment.
ARAUNGZEB
Are these disputes going to go on forever?
Weren’t they resolved and shunted off
into history somewhere?
JIHANARA
I assure you, they will be unending,
as long as people abide in ignorance.
DARA SHIKOOH rises up from the center of his table on the
opposite side.
DARA SHIKOOH
You have awakened me from my meditations.
AURANGZEB
Well. Back from the dead.
Still devoted to your fakir practices? In this abyss?
DARA SHIKOOH
They are healthy exercises of the mind.
AURANGZEB
Hindu exercises.
DARA SHIKOOH
I prefer to call it the yoga of Abraham.
AURANGZEB
You send chills up my spine.
DARA SHIKOOH
Chakras.
AURANGZEB
Chakras! You speak of chakras!
DARA SHIKOOH
Why did you wake me? Or I should say
why did you bring me back to sleep
from my awakeness?
To the SAQI / SCRIBE
I’d like pen and paper please!
The SAQI / SCRIBE brings him quill and paper and
the pitcher.
No wine! I need my mind pristine.
AURANGZEB
So you think you are sleeping when you enter the court?
When you enter here you must come back to the real world.
JIHANARA
Reality! You still think you are at court
But you are floating on the river of history
in a dream.
DARA SHIKOOH
When I enter the rooms of my family’s palace
I am walking into a nightmare.
The sleeper’s consolation is that these things are dreams.
They pass.
AURANGZEB
You think the slightest unpleasantness is a nightmare.
and you expected to run the empire?
DARA SHIKOOH
I had everything I wanted.
AURANGZEB
Don’t bore me with that.
You told your army to fight mine, and you will pay.
“You will pay!” That’s what I said, at the time.
Before the end I had you all under house arrest.
Come, play it out with me now.
“No wish to see Shah Jahan again?”
DARA SHIKOOH
Very well. It was never anything but a great play.
What did I say to your veiled threat?
“I have patience. I am sure to see my father.
Our father that is.”
AURANGZEB
“Well you can’t see him.”
Pause.
That’s how the conversation went.
Or something to the effect.
We’ll skip to the next exchange of significance.
So … I asked:
“Where are your soldiers?”
DARA SHIKOOH
“They are, most of them, away at Hazrat Nizamudin,
celebrating the Saint’s wedding with death.”
AURANGZEB
“You people talk like death is the good life.
Death is the end of all politics and conversation.”
Pause.
Perhaps I was somewhat off the mark on that point.
“Your saint didn’t get married on this day. He died.”
You treat it like it’s his birthday.
DARA SHIKOOH
“You don’t understand.” God you always tested my patience.
“One celebrates it like a marriage.
Going home with one’s bride.
You might call it a homecoming party.”
AURANGZEB
“And what are they doing at the shrine? Dancing to music?”
DARA SHIKOOH
“Dancing on the bones of those who danced before them.”
AURANGZEB
“Have you followed the rulings on men and women together.
Is there partition?”
DARA SHIKOOH (shows mock shock. Then:)
“Not possible. It would not have suited the Hindus
and their families.”
AURANGZEB
“Families? .... HINDOOS? ... The jurists call that unnatural mixing.”
DARA SHIKOOH
“The sitar player is Hindu this year.
Look, Kushru, may have invented the sitar
to sing his love poems to Nizamuddin
but the Hindus have made it their own.
It plays only Indian modes.
The best sitar players now are Hindus.”
AURANGZEB
“Unnatural ...”
DARA SHIKOOH
“I’ll tell you what, you deal with the Law
I’ll deal with the music.”
AURANGZEB
“Finally you grasp it.
Music and the Law are mutually exclusive.”
DARA SHIKOOH (sees Jihanara.)
I have neglected to pay adequate attention to my sister.
Jihanara, are you replaying our arguments
with our brother too?
My dear you are so wan.
JIHANARA
I have died my darling.
AURANGZEB
The two of you always trailed about each other.
What did you talk about all those years?
JIHANARA
Poetry, the divine Beloved, and chess.
AURANGZEB
“Sister,” I said. “I must have a word with you
before you depart to your master.
Let this brother of ours sit here and contemplate
the things he has never accomplished”
JIHANARA
Because you took his head, you mean?
JIHANARA disappears into the table.
AURANGZEB
I am talking about then! Not now!
I mean not in the future.
JIHANARA
Which is now.
AURANGZEB
My brother was always lost in is mind.
So he lost his empire. Okay, let him tell his story.
Saqi. Record his musings for posterity. (Pause.) For eternity.
AURANGZEB descends the throne and leaves.
DARA SHIKOOH (Left alone with the SAQI).
Yes he’s right. You put it down for me.
Dead men don’t compose on paper.
Signals for the SAQI to draw near. Then, whispering.
To begin: I am blessed by the holiest of all things.
I spent my life digging, and what I have uncovered
is light pure light the highest light of the world.
He begins spinning, himself and his table with him.
Or perhaps only in the center of the table.
Periodically he stops when his thoughts sober him.
It is the light upon light of our being
and the light of our non-being as well.
I have had in my possession
the first of all the celestial books
We must praise these People of the Book
among whom we govern. These Hindu subjects.
The saints of their faith predicted our own faith
and even the prophets of the Torah
and the Messiah and saints of the Gospels.
I read these divine texts and at once I heard a voice
crying out: “How could this have happened!”
Well, it was my own voice,
But forced out by the thrust of an inner arrow
of fabulous golden glowing discovery
I read each day, drank the wine
fell over drunk with these words
these calm arguments and logic beyond logic
these pointers paradoxes impossible thoughts
revealing the collapse of this existence
this shadow play of non-being
and I was thrown off the lap of existence itself
until I was nowhere in the midst of All.
These fifty Upanishad books of India —
I call them in Persian the Oupnekhat
How could it be possible that the highest Islam
could have been known millennia before us.
The purpose of surrender lies here
It has always been here.
Did Akbar know this when he created
his all-embracing religion
and brought the gurus into our council?
Did he know that this strange word “Upanishads”
included the lost texts of the divine vision?
I had almost completed translating those fifty books.
I had given orders for a new translation:
The Bhagavad Gita ... though it has been done once.
I don’t know what I shall call it for Muslims.
The Mir’aht al-haqq’iq?
Which of course was used before:
an entirely warped translation that was.
Now that book is
the greatest mystic commentary on the Way.
I shall find a suitable name for it.
Words count.
He spins in his table again. Then:
He descends into his table and vanishes.
The SAQI is disturbed by these last words.
AURANGZEB returns to the throne, looks about.
Is relieved to see that DARA SHIKOOH is gone.
Signals the Saqi to return to his cushion.
AURAUNGZEB
Good. All clear. Get this down.
Time to conclude my justification to history.
I have a certain enduring belief about the future.
“One day on this earth there will be
nothing to look upon but men of my faith.”
I quote myself, my best source.
I said that. Put that in the notes.
No, perhaps I should modify. It pays to think flexibly.
Either we will have that,
or there should be nothing to look upon at all.
Why should anything exist if my Faith does not prevail.
JIHANARA rises from her table..
JIHANARA
Remember the tradition:
I was a hidden treasure and wanted—
AURANGZEB
That’s why true soldiers look on these non-believers
As less than human—
JIHANARA
—to be known, and so I—
AURANGZEB
If we could we would make their ways disappear from view
JIHANARA
—created Creation in order to be known.
AURANGZEB
We took our troops down to the birth place
of their god at Mathura—
JIHANARA
—so God is behind your eyes, their eyes—
AURANGZEB
—this god born as a man—
JIHANARA
The delusion that your enemies are evil
is the creator—
AURANGZEB
—and plowed under the temple—
JIHANARA
—of evil. My master said—
AURANGZEB
—and built a tribute to God
on the mound of the dead idols.
DARA SHIKOOH emerges quickly, like a jack-in-the-box..
DARA SHIKOOH
GOD SHOULD NOT BE BURIED
NOT EVEN UNDER A HOUSE OF WORSHIP!
AURANGZEB
Whose God? What god?
JIHANARA
That is something you cannot describe.
AURANGZEB
Syncretic shit. Tolerance, tolerance! God help me.
Look, our father forced one of the best imams of our time
to translate these epics about barbarian divinities—
Rama and Sita, Krishna and Arjuna—
and the whole pantheon of these obscene fairytales
in which a god or the God descends to earth as a great lover.
This man, purest of souls
had to gag himself and translate kafir books.
Now that pious man’s hatred of Jahan knows no bounds.
He is full of bile and fears he’ll vomit
in the throne room or council chamber.
He has an ulcer that bleeds from his rectum
and through his teeth at the same time.
He has had several strokes and has lost
partial use of his face.
By forcing “tolerance” on a man,
and depriving him of his righteousness
you can make him severely sick.
DARA SHIKOOH
“Paradise is the place where there is no cleric!”
I quote myself. Me too. It’s true! Ha ha ha.
AURANGZEB
Strike that from the record.
DARA SHIKOOH
You can’t strike that. It is real history.
AURANGZEB
If we had true religious law
that would be enough to have you quartered.
DARA SHIKOOH
If we had clerics’ laws, you mean.
And by the way, in case you’ve forgotten
you did do just that.
AURANGZEB
You always trumpet your hatred of the religious rulers.
DARA SHIKOOH
I prefer spiritual souls to religious men.
AURANGZEB
These gnostics. They are women.
Knocking comes from somewhere in the floor, or in the wall, or in
the ceiling. AURANGZEB and JIHANARA look about
perplexed.
DARA SHIKOOH
“Paradise is at the feet of Mothers” I quote the holy ...
AURANGZEB
Would you stop preaching to me
about where heaven is and is not!
DARA SHIKOOH
I thought you liked preachers.
AURANGZEB
The gnostics do nothing.
They flinch at violence.
They have no stomach for holy war.
The holy warriors prove their faith in the highest way.
What is a gnostic anyway!
DARA SHIKOOH
“The gnostic is like a lion
who eats only what she herself has killed,
not like the fox who lives off the scraps of others’ conquests.”
Pause.
I quote myself. I really did say that.
Doesn’t it feel good, brother, that this play we’re in
permits us to cite ourselves for the record?
Put that in the notes, Saqi.
Pause.
Let’s play again: “Listen, wasn’t I supposed to be king?”
AURANGZEB
“You would have been if you’d trained to be king.
Jahan let you off your obligation to study warfare,
So you could immerse yourself in poetry, in meditation.
And you go to seek teachings from that drop-out from existence,
Mian Mir—and his sister! His SISTER!
You sat at the feet of Bibi Jamal, a woman!
You took teaching from a hotbed of evil.
Your seed has been boiled and drained by a vampire woman.”
DARA SHIKOOH
“I took only warriors for teachers.”
AURANGZEB
“One affront after another.”
DARA SHIKOOH
Let’s stop a moment. Nothing I said meant harm.
I never wanted your head ... Well, not very badly.
AURANGZEB
And what about your actions?
DARA SHIKOOH
What actions?
AURANGZEB
Actions. Behavior. Indiscretions.
Example: Do you recall my outrage when I asked.
“Who is this naked Jew
you have wandering around your corridors?”
DARA SHIKOOH
Oh yes … “He is one of the greatest intellects of Persia.”
AURANGZEB
“He lives like a dog.”
DARA SHIKOOH
“He has studied Christianity as a young man,
and our religion profoundly”
AURANGZEB
“That Jew is an animal in my estimation.”
DARA SHIKOOH
“Scripture calls Jews People of the Book.”
AURANGZEB
“You call everyone ‘People of the Book!’
If all people are People of the Book,
then why do we need the true religion?”
DARA SHIKOOH
“To try to keep the standards high?”
AURANGZEB
“If everybody qualifies as ‘people of the book,’
then what idols are there to be torn down?
What heresy is there to combat?
What enemies of God to put down?”
DARA SHIKOOH
I hadn’t thought of that.
AURANGZEB
Listen. If Jews are people of the Book,
and Christians are people of the Book—
DARA SHIKOOH
It’s in the revealed scriptures—
AURANGZEB
—and now Hindus are people of the Book,
what about Zoroastrians?
DARA SHIKOOH
The Avesta is revealed scripture. People of the Book.
AURANGZEB
The Buddhists, whose temples now lie in ruins —
DARA SHIKOOH
Their texts are carved on columns throughout the country,
by the order of Emperor Ashoka two thousand years ago.
Most of their book was transmitted orally
by devoted monks trained in their minds.
AURANGZEB
Ashoka. Akbar and Shah Jahan both wanted to be Ashoka
all over again.
What about the shamanists?
DARA SHIKOOH
Their book is constantly being read,
but never written down.
AURANGZEB
The animists.
DARA SHIKOOH
They read the book of nature.
AURANGZEB
The Franks, with their icons.
DARA SHIKOOH
They are in love with the Messiah.
He is only an idol of their love.
AURANGZEB
People of the Book?
DARA SHIKOOH
Yes.
AURANGZEB
And the Ethiopeans.
DARA SHIKOOH
They are safe-keepers of the ark of the covenant. The book.
AURANGZEB
The followers of Mani?
DARA SHIKOOH
The Book.
AURANGZEB
The Krishna worshippers.
DARA SHIKOOH
The Book. Clearly, the book.
You will see when the fifty books I translated —
AURANGZEB
The followers of Osiris.
DARA SHIKOOH
The book. They resurrect him in drama.
AURANGZEB
The cult of Baal.
DARA SHIKOOH.
Book.
AURANGZEB
Platonists, your favorite.
DARA SHIKOOH
Book. Pure book. Nothing but book.
AURANGZEB
The Chinese alchemists.
DARA SHIKOOH
Taoists. Book. Tao-te-Ching.
AURANGZEB
Book.
DARA SHIKOOH
Book.
AURANGZEB
The Mithraists.
DARA SHIKOOH
Book. Book.
AURANGZEB
Who is left?
DARA SHIKOOH
The Malimatiyah.
AURANGZEB
Book?
DARA SHIKOOH
The same book as us. Blasphemer.
AURANGZEB
Who doesn’t adhere to the Book!
DARA SHIKOOH
Some of those who love to call themselves religious.
AURANGZEB
I beg your pardon?
DARA SHIKOOH
The ones who deny the principle of the People of the Book.
AURANGZEB
Then there are no heretics?
DARA SHIKOOH
Oh no, there are plenty.
AURANGZEB
Good. Because if there weren’t,
what meaning would there be in spreading the religion?
DARA SHIKOOH
I don’t know. Everything’s part of creation.
Are you a dualist?
AURANGZEB
I believe in heaven and hell. Is that dualism?
DARA SHIKOOH
Did you hear about the people who wanted paradise
and the people who dove into the fire?
AURANGZEB
Oh no. God help me, not a parable!
DARA SHIKOOH
There was a great tree.
On one side were burning flames
which could annihilate a man in seconds.
On the other were the cooling waters.
On the one side,
there were people prepared to dive into the flames.
The others thought them crazy
but they jumped in the fire and they popped up
in the cool waters. The others, however, thought
only of getting to the waters of paradise.
They dove in there. They came up on the other side
screaming in the flames.
AURANGZEB
So people should not aspire to paradise?
DARA SHIKOOH
I have nothing against paradise. But it’s a dangerous distraction.
There is a knocking once again from a floor or wall.
The others look about, perplexed. Then:
AURANGZEB
This is beyond my patience. We had this argument before.
It was our definitive falling out.
I am sure you won’t object if our scribe
Gets down the other words we exchanged then.
DARA SHIKOOH
No. But I may have forgotten my lines.
AURANGZEB
Try. “Now I’ll let you in on a secret.
I have been playing the Turkish Sultan.”
DARA SHIKOOH
“How so?”
AURANGZEB
“Out there in the dark room are sitting judges
eavesdropping. Masters of jurisprudence
evaluating every word you have said.”
DARA SHIKOOH
“It doesn’t matter. In my heart
is recorded everything I have done.
and it will play back like music for eternity
where the Truth echoes timelessly
in the radiant emptiness of now.”
Pause.
“Let Samad be my advocate with the judges.”
AURANGZEB
“Who is Samad?”
DARA SHIKOOH
“The naked Jew.”
A silence. Then:
AURANGZEB (long raucous laughter)
“Superb. Have him wear an ironed loin cloth
when he appears in court, for your own sake.
He must pick his fleas before he addresses
the tribunal. Now I must sleep.
I will dream of how I will have you quartered.”
Pause.
Though this all happened long ago
I must relive it as an accurate description of
What was at that time—this man’s future.
It gives me the delightful sensation that I am making
an accurate prophesy.
He—perhaps with the throne—somehow disappears.
JIHANARA emerges, looks about, signals conspiratorially to
the SAQI who also looks about, and stops writing.
JIHANARA (whispers to DARAH SHIKOOH..)
Do you recall the parts we played together?
You were giving up. I asked you ...
“Don’t you want to rule?”
DARA SHIKOOH
“Not possible. It is not to be.”
JIHANARA
“Many people are with you.
You could reestablish the council.”
DARA SHIKOOH
“Right now, opening the Council of All Religions
would bring down the iron heel on all of you.”
JIHANARA
“Among the officers are many who will support you.”
DARA SHIKOOH
“Only until it looks like we might lose.”
JIHANARA
“It can happen. In Istanbul
the Janissaries have brought down a Sultan.”
DARA SHIKOOH
“They made the mistake of letting dervishes
educate the Janissaries. We have no elite guard of that sort.”
The SAQI stands. Signals to JAHANARA.
Holds up a vial.
JAHANARA
“Listen to me. One must act. We have poison.
The Saqi has prepared the wine for your brother.”
DARA SHIKOOH
“I let my men enter into killing. It was a mistake.
Some old Guru taught me this practice of non-harm.”
JIHANARA
“You’re afraid to unleash more blood-letting.
There are some who are steady in their love of India.
Even in a corrupt palace there are sound hearts.
There is one right here with us.
Saqi, prepare the poison cup.”
The SAQI pours a vial into the pitcher.
DARA SHIKOOH
When the heart of a religion freezes for hundreds of years
its body may still live and act
in endless ignorance without that heart.
This is a miracle often performed by religions.
The knocking comes again, louder than the previous times.
The others look about.
MUMTEZ MAHAL bursts through the plaster in the wall, or
the floor down center. Or from the wall.
She drops a chisel and hammer on the floor.
Though she may be a beauty, she has the look of marble and
plaster, including her face.
MUMTEZ MAHAL stares at them, slightly disoriented, but
intense. They stare back.
MUMTEZ MAHAL
Oh my children. Oh! So much wind up here.
JIHANARA
Mother.
The SAQI rises with the beaker.
Not her. Don’t poison her. She’s dead.
That is, even before we were dead
she was our dead mother.
DARA SHIKOOH
Mother, we weren’t expecting you.
MUMTEZ MAHAL
The earth is shaking, history is shaking.
Where is oh! where is that younger brother of yours
Call him up here because oh! I must talk him down.
This bickering must stop. Where’s your father?
JIHANARA
He is love sick for you
he has lost himself.
Aurangzeb has put him under house arrest
in a bed looking out on your Taj.
MUMTEZ
You uh well you may say your father’s incapacitated
but it’s not— no its not due to love.
In this earthbound life
Oh, I was your father’s beloved.
And he offered to knot the Himalayas into a string of pearls
and conquer them only for the sake of making me jewels.
Yes he was attendant on me every waking day.
His love knew no limits.
The waters of the river flowed through our veins
and oh the singing of boatmen hummed in our ears.
Though he pushed out the borders of empire in his youth
all reasons for conquest had vanished
because you see those boatmen could sing so well.
Imams, Brahmins and yogis blessed you and all
his children. We were fortunate.
The banyan trees put down roots in the fortress
and oh we planted gardens of every kind.
I am having the hardest time talking …
MUMTEZ MAHAL goes into a freeze. A silence.
DARA and JIHANAARA look at one another, and back to her.
She revives.
MUMTEZ MAHAL
Your Saqi has not served me
or recorded a single one of my words.
The SAQI raises his pitcher questioningly.
JIHANARA
The Saqi will not be serving you.
The Saqi was alive at the time of the events.
You were not. You were a tomb.
You’ve always been known as a tomb.
A great big beautiful tomb.
MUMTEZ MAHAL
I don’t exist on the same plane as these people here?
JIHANARA
You are memorialized forever. They will be forgotten.
MUMTEZ MAHAL
Oh. Memorialized. Oh.
And now that I am gone, I see him over there
the emperor too sentimental and so sick.
He should raise an army for love
but instead he gazes out at the Taj where I rest.
He is stuck yes I see that he is stuck.
JIHANARA
He should raise an army against egotism and greed
and conquest and ambition
and sycophancy and idolatry
and the animal soul and the compulsive self.
But he himself suffered from all those maladies.
MUMTEZ MAHAL
Yes but yes he should ride in the chariot against
our pious priestly power-mad son
But oh! he will not I can assure you
for he has lost the discipline of love which
raised the Taj from the soil of chaos.
But to be stuck ...
She goes into a freeze.
AURANGZEB (reappears on the throne.)
Dear imperial royal mother.
You were once young with a ripe womb.
But you are known in history as a dead woman.
You are a tomb.
JIHANARA
Womb, tomb. One leads to the other.
She whispers.
Saqi!
The SAQI rises with the wine pitcher.
MUMTEZ MAHAL (unfreezes. The SAQI sits.)
Aurangzeb! You like building your house of worship
on the temples of your enemies!
Your imagined enemies!
That is not what our religion means.
In five hundred years your enemies will therefore
continue to exist to attack your structures
and your structures will be treated without mercy
and their protectors too.
You have tapped into the energies of destruction
using the most beautiful forms
the architecture of the house of God.
AURANGZEB
The voice of architecture herself speaks!
When your name is uttered all people see is marble.
MUMTEZ MAHAL
Ho ho you think ah your actions are definitive
And after time they do no harm,
but they exist and exist and will never go away.
For hundreds of years to come
These dark energies will savage us all
like dogs around the liver of a burned Ganges carcass.
This is oh no! not a curse or prediction
just—well— profound common sense
All my visions come from common sense.
AURANGZEB
None of that will happen
if every soul who follows in my footsteps
stays on the true and narrow path of the one true faith..
MUMTEZ MAHAL
What is that faith.
AURANGZEB
Mine.
MUMTEZ MAHAL
The real name of our faith is “surrender” and you have forgotten.
When will you stop your bellyaching.
To the SAQI/SCRIBE
Get that down, Saqi. Write. Oh ho, you write that now!
She goes into a freeze.
The SAQI returns to his pen.
DARA SHIKOOH
The dead can see in all directions
past and future too.
AURANGZEB
There is no vision in the female species.
He begins coughing.
JIHANARA
Saqi! My brother can’t take so much annoyance.
Quench his thirst.
The SAQI rises with the pitcher and goblet.
MUMTEZ MAHAL comes out of her freeze.
MUMTEZ MAHAL
Oh! And one more thing.
Dara Shikooh’s work will never end
he will die and it will take on life
and his fifty mystic books will spread
through Islam in Persian
and Annequon Duperron
a French scholar of the Avestas
will read them and translate them to Latin
and the first Europeans will encounter
the mind of the East
and some Shaikh named Schopenhauer will keep
the fifty books in Latin by his bed
to go to sleep by each night
“They have been the solace of my life
and they will be the solace of my death”
he will say as his maid turns off his lamp
and oh the light will stay on
and melancholy Germans will write mystic plays
and one day a famous swami will be invited to speak on
the living Upanishads at a parliament of religions
in a— my God— city called ... Chicago? ...
What kind of language is that!
To the SAQI, pours a goblet for Auranngzeb.
Stands.
Would you sit down, I am talking! Oh!!
SAQI returns to his place.
And oh and then a pipe-smoking Englishman
will write a book on perennial philosophy
citing the fifty books from India and Jihanara’s teachers
and oh and then some skinny Englishman
—after the English have given up the empire
that will destroy your own my dear devastating son—
will pick up a sitar and make strange sounds
with his famous quartet who play on a rock
—am I getting this right? My vision is blurry—
Suddenly all the children in the lands to the west
will grow their hair long and wear Hindustani clothes
and look for gurus and oh and ultimate things
And the Japanese will get into it
and go west with their Buddha monks
and there will be dancing and long boring sitting
Phillip Glass will compose many arpeggios
and everyone will be searching
and trying to define consciousness
getting over illusion and dying in harmony.
She goes in a freeze. Pause. She revives.
That’s it. That’s all my common sense
tells me today. I am tired in my tomb
I have blown out my spirit fire with all this talk.
She goes into a freeze.
AURANGZEB
Look at her. All the world was obsessed with her.
JIHANARA
I have my own beloved.
AURANGZEB
Yes. Your motherly concerns with the Sultan are suspect.
JIHANARA
That’s not what I ... What do you mean?
AURANGZEB
I mean they are more motherly than filial
and more wifely than motherly.
JIHANARA
You don’t think such things of me
you just say them.
AURANGZEB
I have not only said it to you.
I have said it to a great many other people.
And a great many other people have said it back to me.
Now there will always be people who whisper about you.
I win.
JIHANARA
What are you trying to do?
AURANGZEB (to SAQI)
Tear that last part out. I didn’t know you were still writing.
Tear it out you simpleminded dog!
JIHANARA
Saqi. A drink for your Shah Aurengzeb, he’s dry.
The SAQI rises.
AURANGZEB (to JIHANARA)
I created history before I could be judged.
I seized control and carried out my will. For I said
“I will place Dara’s head streaming blood
in the portals of Agra for his heresy
while jackals chew his bones in the dump.”
DARA SHIKOOH (spins in his table.)
Saqi! Sit down! Never stand for such men.
Glory be to Truth! Glory, glory!
The SAQI returns to his cushion.
AURANGZEB
Listen to that! Will you listen to that?
DARA SHIKOOH (spinning.)
Oh Truth. Oh God. Oh Truth!
JIHANARA
He is content. To be content is to live eternally.
AURANGZEB
Those who are content do not make history.
MUMTEZ MAHAL (unfreezing)
Those who serve nothing but history dwell in –
She goes back into a freeze.
JIHANARA
Hell.
AURANGZEB
Look around you. Where do you think we are?
JIHANARA
I am not where you are. You cannot touch me.
AURANGZEB
And where are you?
JIHANARA
Where? I will be anywhere – where you are not.
AURANGZEB
Look at our brother. Do you see the blood where his head came off.
DARA SHIKOOH (spinning.)
Look up there. What a beautiful moon.
In this light you can dance.
A saber descends over the head of DARA SHIKOOH.
He spins.
*
PART 2: METROPOLITAN MORALS
SAADI, a street vendor of rugs, hats and scarves
JOHN B, evangelical relief organizer
CHRISTIANE, a Catholic disaster relief consultant
DARA, a young woman returning from Jerusalem
A WAITRESS
___________________________________________________
The present. An eastern American city.
The set is empty except for round outdoor cafe tables in the foreground at left, one with a
sun umbrella passing up through the large hole in the center, the other with no umbrella (The
tables from part one, re-dressed with white tablecloths.) There is a large wooden framed
structure, with nothing on it for the moment, at center (The throne from part one, redressed
with merchants goods). It serves as a sidewalk merchant’s booth during the day. Next to it
a large pile of old blankets and kilims, rugs, shawls.
SCENE 1.
DARA enters, a dark-haired young woman wearing a backpack and pulling a roll-on
suitcase. She appears lost, and more than that, disoriented. She pulls out a map.
DARA
Union Street. It’s supposed to be here. Let’s see ... Right on fortieth ... Left on thirty ninth.
Pause.
Right on fortieth, left on thirty ninth? Oh God, this is useless. Directions from a dimwit.
The blankets begin moving. Slowly a figure emerges. Bit by bit
SAADI GULSHAN emerges, takes out a bottle of water. He is
bearded, with Himalayan wool cap, long shirt and long grey
woolen vest, sandals. He might just as well be from the 14th
century. He splashes water from the bottle on his face. Goes off
stage. CHRISTIANE stops when she sees DARA looking
at her map.
CHRISTIANE
Can I help you find something?
DARA
Oh yes. Thank-you. I’m looking for Union Street.
CHRISTIANE
Union Street. If you just continue straight ahead, you’ll make a right on fortieth, and then
make a left on thirty ninth.
DARA (startled)
Really? ... Right on fortieth, then left on forty-ninth ... ?
CHRISTIANE
Yes ... What’s the problem?
DARA
I just thought the layout of the city would ... have a normal logic to it. So then I guess I take
another right on thirty eighth and another on thirty seventh?
CHRISTIANE
But ... then you’d be going in a circle.
DARA
That’s what I’m doing. This city has no center to it. How can you have a city with no
center.
CHRISTIANE
It’s just that thirty ninth veers north. It’s not straight. Are you all right?
DARA
Oh, it’s my head. That is, jet lag. I just landed.
CHRISTIANE
You’ve never been here before?
DARA
Long ago. I booked a stopover on the East coast before I go home to New Mexico.
CHRISTIANE
Where are you coming from?
DARA
Israel.
CHRISTIANE
I was in Israel.
DARA
Really?
CHRISTIANE
Eight years ago. One of the great experiences of my life. I walked the Via Dolorosa.
SAADI returns with a few more folded rugs, kilims, and silk
shawls which he begins to hang at his sale stand. He goes in and
out until he has set up his entire booth, with hats, scarves, silks,
etc. As a final touch he puts a big American flag across the top.
DARA and CHRISTIANE continue during this time.
DARA
Do you live here?
CHRISTIANE
No. I come to here for conferences. It’s part of my job to attend conferences.
DARA
That’s your job?
CHRISTIANE
Half of it. This week I’m here for the interfaith aid conference. It’s going on in the Hilton.
Over there.
DARA
Right there? God. Have they got rooms? I don’t have the energy to find this address.
CHRISTIANE
I’m sure they do. Do you want me to go with you to the desk? You look exhausted.
DARA
What am I thinking. The Hilton’s way too expensive. I’ll find this place. (Pause.) You’re a
missionary?
CHRISTIANE
I work in disaster relief.
DARA
Ah, does that mean you ... What kind of disasters?
CHRISTIANE
Yes. You know. In developing countries. There are many kinds.
DARA
Yes. That’s very true.
She looks dazed again.
So I go this way? Right on thirty ninth?
CHRISTIANE
That’s right.
DARA
Well, thanks. Goodbye.
CHRISTIANE
Goodbye. Very nice to meet you.
DARA goes.
CHRISTIANE looks at her watch. Then she looks at Saadi’s stand.
He looks at her. She at him. She looks away. Looks at her watch.
JOHN B enters.
JOHN B
There you are. Sorry to keep you waiting.
CHRISTIANE
Finally. Well, shall we have our lunch?
JOHN B (looks at his watch)
Not now. That is, not if we want to catch the plenary session.
CHRISTIANE
Not now then.
JOHN B
No. Not now. Later, okay?
CHRISTIANE
No. I don’t think so.
JOHN B
Christiane.
CHRISTIANE
It’s a mistake to even try this.
JOHN B
We’re at the same conference for Chrissake.
CHRISTIANE
Right John B, an interfaith conference. Like the old days.
JOHN B
That’s right
CHRISTIANE
But it’s not like before, is it. It can’t ever be like before.
JOHN B
Listen, reasonable people like you and I, they can reach a certain understanding. That
understanding is not at the mercy of petty derangements like missing a lunch.
CHRISTIANE
Petty derangements.
Pause.
If you really believe that I can talk to you after the years of petrified relations, and all those
broken emotional ribs you gave me—that’s fine. If it’s possible for you to get past the
“derangements” to focus only on a profound understanding, then go ahead. But sometimes,
I’ve got to say ... the most abominable person to hang out with is someone with whom you
have the most in common. It feels like a curse. When two people are too alike. But just
enough unlike, that the difference arouses an intense loathing and the wish to blow the birds
out of the sky and crash a car. We are so alike that I don’t know if having lunch even is
possible, even if you didn’t, typically for you, decide to throw obstacles in the way. Instead,
I feel like beating your head in with that “No Parking or Standing” sign behind your shoulder.
Or perhaps you could do it to me. You’ve done it before. Metaphorically. Would that be
more satisfying than lunch? A little mutual bludgeoning? What do you say.
A silence.
JOHN B
We’re out on the street Christiane.
CHRISTIANE
On the street.
JOHN B
I mean, if people heard you talking this way out of context they would—
CHRISTIANE
Oh. So we are on the street. How rude of me. You turned me down for lunch on the street,
did you not. Just now?
JOHN B
Calm down. I mean, we can’t have a therapy session out here. This is the street.
CHRISTIANE
You’re not the least bit interested in talking honestly. That’s what you’re afraid of. There’s
always some excuse. Go to the plenary John B. Get lost. God bless you.
DARA returns.
DARA
Oh I’m glad you’re still here. I decided maybe I should take a room in the Hilton you were
talking about. Just one night. My head is exploding. I’ve got jet lag.
CHRISTIANE
Sure, come along with me. I have a plenary session.
Pause.
Listen, you can share my room, if you like. We have three beds, there’s an extra.
JOHN B
Who’s this?
CHRISTIANE
A girl from the Holy Land. We just met.
DARA
I’m Dara.
JOHN B
Happy to meet you. I am John B. Christiane and I are attending the same conference. You
have a curious name. What faction are you with?
DARA
Oh, I am not part of the conference.
JOHN B
I mean, in the Holy Land.
DARA
I’m not with a faction.
JOHN B
Jewish, Muslim, Orthodox, Coptic, Catholic?
DARA
Kabbalist.
Pause.
Behind them SAADI puts his hand in the air. It’s starting to rain.
He produces some umbrellas for sale.
JOHN B
Do you live over there?
DARA
I have been. Living there. Until .... yesterday.
JOHN B
Then you’ve been witness to the ... unfortunate recent events.
DARA
Witness. Yes.
JOHN B
So much evil is done in the name of religions. A great paradox. I mean, you would know.
CHRISTIANE
John B, I’m going to take Ilana to the hotel and check her into my room.
JOHN B
She’s Jewish, Christiane.
CHRISTIANE has taken DARA’s roll-on luggage and starts to go.
Perhaps you didn’t understand me. She is Jewish.
CHRISTIANE (stops)
I have no idea what you mean to say. It’s starting to rain. Let’s go, Dara.
DARA
Wait a minute. What the hell does that mean. Where does he get off making an observation
like that.
JOHN B
I didn’t say anything. Except that you are Jewish. You are Jewish, I’d guess?
DARA
And, so …?
JOHN B
Well then, that’s all.
CHRISTIANE
Dara, this man helps shepherd an evangelical flock, somewhere out in the midlands.They find
Jewish people fascinating. They see so few exotic and different types of people in their lives.
SAADI
Hello. Do you want to buy an umbrella? The rain is starting.
JOHN B
Christiane, there’s no need—
CHRISTIANE
John B, don’t start your stuff. Don’t say another word. Keep your mouth shut, and speak
no evil!
JOHN B
We can have lunch tomorrow Christiane.
CHRISTIANE
Screw you and go to hell, you goddamned stuck up shit-faced evangelical pharisee!
SAADI steps forward, holds out his hands.
SAADI
Everything is fine. Everything is fine. Lady ... don’t worry.
CHRISTIANE
Everything is not fine. How the hell would you know. (Thinking better of it.)
Sorry. Sir, I did not mean to take my problems out on you. This is a friendly fight.
SAADI
Friendly fight? You see, everything is fine.
CHRISTIANE
I imagine you’ve seen some fighting in your time.
SAADI
I have seen fights. Not friendly.
JOHN B
Who is he?
CHRISTIANE
Buy a kilim John. This man is one of mine.
DARA
I’m still here. I want to know. What was this “Jewish” observation about?
JOHN B
I made no “Jewish” observation. I mean, I didn’t mean to make an observation.
DARA
You’re supposed to be at some interfaith conference, and you are commenting on who is
Jewish?
JOHN B
I made no comment.
Pause.
Listen. My attitude is ... The Jews are not wayward religion, as some would have us
believe. It’s not true that they don’t embrace the same God. It is not true that they
murdered our Lord. They are people of God. They only need to be perfected.
DARA
What’s new, right?
JOHN B
You’ve misunderstood me. This was my point. Christiane is already sharing her room. The
other bed is—never mind the trundle bed—is occupied by a woman from Palestine.
CHRISTIANE
John B. I had forgotten how relentlessly you appall me.
To DARA.
I apologize for my mindless, supposedly “interfaith” friend.
To JOHN B.
Do you live in the same century as the rest of us?
JOHN B
I am not being understood here. Jews are good people. But a Palestinian might ask — living
under the guns of the Jewish state day in day out – I’m searching for the right words here —
what does Judaism currently have to offer anybody?
DARA
I don’t know. Moses?
JOHN B
Sorry. That came out wrong. But, now Moses. My understanding is that – that wasn’t the
Jews. Those were the Hebrews. If you check your history, the rabbinical religion we call
Judaism came later.
DARA
Really.
SAADI begins singing in a Persian mode. The others turn to look at
him.
Once he has their attention:
SAADI
Moses is the stem. Jesus is the bud. Muhammad is the flower. Peace upon them. You
could use an umbrella.
A silence.
CHRISTIANE
The keynote speech is in half an hour.
JOHN B
I’ll meet you there. I’d like to talk more with Ms Dara. It seems I’ve fouled things up here.
It’s not my intention. I ...
CHRISTIANE
Enough John. So you don’t do any more damage. See you at dinner.
JOHN
Where is dinner?
CHRISTIANE
Same place as breakfast. Unless you want to meet at the café there. If you do – maybe I’ll
see you then.
______________________________________________
SCENE 2
Later, at the same street corner, at a Cafe table, outside.DARA has invited SAADI to lunch.
A WAITRESS approaches.
DARA
What would you like. It’s on me.
SAADI
It’s very kind of you, Miss, to invite me.
DARA
It’s nothing. I’m having culture shock. You’re the first person I’ve met who seems normal to
me. What would you like?
DARA
Chai.
DARA
Is that all?
SAADI
Is okay if I smoke?
DARA
Go ahead. We’re outside.
To the WAITRESS
A Turkish coffee please. And a chai ... tea.
WAITRESS
Milk for the tea?
DARA
No, thank you. He just takes sugar. And the menu.
WAITRESS
She knows what you take?
SAADI
She knows my habits. Somehow.
WAITRESS
I’ll be right back.
She goes.
SAADI
How you know I take sugar.
DARA
What?
SAADI
That I take just sugar. No milk.
DARA
Don’t be silly. Of course I know. Would you excuse me for a moment. Can you watch my
stuff?
She goes off. SAADI pulls out tobacco and rolls a cigarette. He
hums.
Then he gets up from the table. He stands, and gazes at something
in the sky.
He checks his sales stand, a few yards away. Returns to the cafe
table. Looks at the sky again.
The WAITRESS returns. She hands SAADI two leather bound
menus. She sees him looking up at the sky.
SAADI
A strange thing.
WAITRESS
What?
SAADI
That plane is doing what?
WAITRESS
It’s clearly sky writing.
SAADI
Is that what it is.
WAITRESS
Call me when you’re ready to order.
Pause.
She’s not your type you know.
SAADI
She knows I don’t take milk in tea.
WAITRESS
The best thing for tea is honey and lemon. Listen to me. I know.
SAADI makes a sour face. She goes. DARA returns.
DARA
What is it?
SAADI
Sky writing.
DARA
What’s it say.
SAADI
I don’t know yet. He’s not finished.
They sit.
DARA
Where are you from actually?
SAADI
Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India.
DARA
All three?
SAADI
That’s how my family is spread out. And one in China.
DARA
Aren’t you a citizen of a specific country?
SAADI
The silk road.
Pause. He laughs. They both laugh.
DARA
Where’s your wife.
SAADI
They are asleep in the van. Over there.
DARA
They?
SAADI
And the kids.
DARA
You brought your wife—wives—over?
SAADI
Oh no. All my family are Americans.
DARA
Your children have citizenship.
SAADI
Of course. But their mothers are American.
DARA
American to start with?
SAADI
From birth, Americans. One is Jewish. She’s good at sewing. The other is a good Muslim.
She’s Irish.
Pause.
DARA
I’m sorry?
SAADI
The Muslim one is Irish. Her family that is. She was born here.
DARA
Let me get this straight. One wife is Jewish, and she hasn’t converted?
SAADI
In some small towns in China, Islam and Jews—it’s considered the same religion.
DARA
Really?
SAADI
Where my brother lives in China, the mosque is also a synagogue.
DARA
Hold on. I am trying to make sense of this.
SAADI
My American wife is Jewish.
DARA
And she sews.
SAADI
That’s right. And the Irish one’s American. Naturalized. She converted before I met her.
Rebellion against her parents.
DARA
And you’re married to both of them?
SAADI (stands, shocked.)
What are you saying! (Whispers.) Of course not. That’s illegal. This is America. The first
one I have divorced.
DARA
Right. So which one are you currently married to?
SAADI
I have confused you. Sorry. One wife was before. The other is now. You know, Irish
woman is impossible to live with.
DARA
Where are they now?
SAADI
Usually they are at the stall. One is with the kids in the van. Making some shirts. The other
one is at convention. “One Ireland” convention. At the Hilton.
DARA
Wow. There are two conventions at that Hilton.
Gazing upward.
That’s it. That’s what it says.
SAADI (gazing up.)
Ah yes. Okay. That’s it.
DARA
“One Ireland.”
SAADI
Are you married?
DARA
No.
SAADI
Do you want to get married?
DARA
Not this minute.
SAADI
You should consider it.
Pause.
What do you do?
DARA
I am a journalist.
SAADI
What do you write about?
DARA
I’ve been in Israel for two years, writing about children and war.
SAADI
Both?
DARA
It’s all one subject. About the way the children are affected by war. Trauma. It affects their
ability to have hope. And recently, it has gotten ...
SAADI
It’s those Muslims and those Jews again.
DARA
What do you mean? I am a Jew, and you’re a Muslim.
SAADI
What’s that got to do with price of tea in China?
DARA
Okay, okay. Say—how much is the tea in China these days.
SAADI
Per gram, four yuan.
____________________________________________________________
SCENE 3
JOHN B and CHRISTIANE return to the cafe.
DARA and SAADI are still sitting at their table. SAADI is reading a newspaper in Persian
and DARA is reading one in Hebrew.
CHRISTIANE and DARA nod to each other in greeting. She and JOHN B sit at another
table.
JOHN B
Well, it’s nice to get out of that hotel.
CHRISTIANE
Yes, isn’t it.
JOHN B
We’re going to be living and breathing the air in there for the next three days. You look
upset, sister.
CHRISTIANE
Me upset? What for? Why would I be upset. Are you implying I might have any reason to
be disturbed in any way?
JOHN B
I hope it wasn’t the ...
CHRISTIANE
Wasn’t the ...
JOHN
You know. The seminar. I think you’re ticked off. I didn’t mean any offense. I am always
messing up, aren’t I.
CHRISTIANE
I don’t think an interfaith conference is a place to use “Catholic” as a pejorative word.
JOHN B
Did I do that?
CHRISTIANE
You said that thing, about Mexico.
JOHN B
About Cholula being the town of a thousand temples.
CHRISTIANE
And that the Catholics turned it into the town of the thousand Churches.
JOHN B
That’s history. Catholics built their Churches on the temples they destroyed. I mean, it was
the Inquisition in those days.
CHRISTIANE
And you use that to justify what your people are doing down there now?
JOHN B
We are giving all we have to turn to Christ. Without needing priests to intercede for them.
CHRISTIANE
Those people, John, are Catholics. That means Christians, you understand.
JOHN B
I know. Okay. That’s good. Fine. It means they have the right foundation. But the process
isn’t complete. We have to build on it.
CHRISTIANE
So … they aren’t perfected?
JOHN B
That’s the idea. But they are people full of potential.
CHRISTIANE
Your missionary girls and boys outnumber Catholic priests six to one in Latin America now.
JOHN B
It’s the momentum, Christiane. Look who has the momentum. And why is that?
CHRISTIANE
Your people have no sensitivity to local traditions.
JOHN B
They are ready to move away from all these earth mothers and incense ceremonies and corn
goddesses which so-called Christian opportunists have nurtured in order to buy them off.
They bought them off for the sake of adding souls to their membership roles. You call that
principled?
CHRISTIANE
Will you excuse me while I meander to the powder room. Order me tea and scones,
please. Darjeeling. I hope you can ignore the Hindu implications.
She goes out.
DARA goes over to John’s table.
DARA
Do you want to join us.
JOHN
Us?
DARA
Me and the rug man. Mr Gulestan?
JOHN
No. Thank you very much. My friend and I are having a ... difficult discussion.
DARA
Oh, I am sorry.
JOHN
We’re sorting some things out.
DARA
Is it sort of an old history or something?
JOHN B
An ancient one.
DARA
I see.
JOHN B
Listen, I am sorry about my comments early today. At events like this here, when I get into
public speaking and press conferences, I get up on my high horse. Things come out of my
mouth and ... I don’t know where they come from.
DARA
It’s all right.
JOHN B
Would you like to meet for breakfast tomorrow. Perhaps we can have a more meaningful
talk. What would you think of that?
DARA
I could do that. But I’m ... you know ... down and out.
JOHN B
That’s why I suggested it. It’s on me. (Pause.) I mean, don’t be afraid of me, I’m not a
Bedouin from Sinai ...
CHRISTIANE returns and takes her seat.
CHRISTIANE
Hello. Did you book in?
DARA
Yes. I’m afraid I can’t afford more than one night.
CHRISTIANE
You don’t have to pay dear. We’ll cover you tonight. Tomorrow I’m sure we can find you
something more reasonable. But not that flea bag your friends were sending you to. I know
someone at the Irish Cultural Center, they have some rooms. Shared baths, you know.
DARA
That sounds great. I don’t even know if I can afford that. It’s not a religious place, is it?
As the following conversation takes place, DARA appears more
and more transfixed, as if put in a trance by a snake, until she begins
trembling.
CHRISTIANE
My lord, no. It’s the kind of place that gathers up all the Irish folk singers for nightly
concerts. There’s a pub next door. I like it quite a bit.
JOHN B
It’s a politicized place.
CHRISTIANE
Politicized. What does that mean, politicized?
JOHN B
Fundraisers for the Catholics in Ulster.
CHRISTIANE
They raise funds for the peace initiative. And what’s wrong with Catholics in Ulster
anyway?
JOHN B
Well, the Catholics I understand, that is, in Ireland, in the north, are sort of, you know, a
dubious bunch. I mean, they’ve been engaged in dubious activities for decades. (Pause.)
Sorry. I can’t seem to stop myself.
CHRISTIANE
What makes you conclude that?
JOHN B
What?
CHRISTIANE
That the Irish are a dubious bunch?
JOHN B
Not the Irish. The Catholic Irish. That is, not in Ireland, in the North. Well, everybody
knows it. Dammit, how did I get myself into this. I mean, they are not as upwardly mobile as
the Protestants there. They have no work ethic. Most of them are on welfare. They don’t
have a life. The men drink. I mean, one can understand them. They are stewing in their
juices. They’re always in a state of unrest.
CHRISTIANE
You don’t suppose the unrest came from those ostentatious Orange Protestant marches
through their neighborhoods each year?
JOHN
You have to face reality, Christiane. The whole point is, that those people want simply to
assert their freedom to walk wherever they want to in their own country.
CHRISTIANE
As for the Catholics, it’s not their country then?
JOHN B
It’s not a Catholic country. But as individuals, of course it’s theirs.
CHRISTIANE
It was once a Catholic country. In fact, eighty percent of Ireland still is.
JOHN B
But they are two different countries. Two different cultures. One was built by the British.
One was dominated by rebels for the last three centuries. Damn it, I didn’t mean it to come
out like that.
Pause.
DARA (trembling)
Uh, listen. I am going to get back to Mr Gulestan. Please come join us if you like.
Pause.CHRISTIANE and JOHN B are staring at the table,
smouldering.
DARA
I will see you later, then.
She returns to the other table.
CHRISTIANE
Let’s change the subject.
Pause.
How is Elaine doing?
JOHN
She’s doing very well.
CHRISTIANE
Is she back to work yet? After that ... What was it. They extracted her duodenal—
JOHN
Intestine. Part of it. Ulcers are an occupational hazard with missionary work. The doctors
want her to rest up a bit longer.
CHRISTIANE
And the kids?
JOHN B
Into trouble quite a bit. That is, more so since their mother was laid up. How’s Tom?
CHRISTIANE
He works hard. I barely see him.
JOHN B
Well ... so. That’s how it is.
A silence.
CHRISTIANE
Have you ever met two people who have blown it like we two have blown it?
JOHN B
So what are you trying to say? That you miss me?
CHRISTIANE
I’m saying nothing. Nothing in particular. Just a free-floating perception. (Pause.) You
know, we were crazy. It was reckless.
JOHN B
Are you saying now that we did something wrong. That I did something wrong?
CHRISTIANE
Well, if you reflect, what do you think?
JOHN B
It came from a pure place. It was a normal relationship. I mean we’re not talking about men
of the cloth going after young boys here, are we. We’re talking about good old fashioned
love between a man and woman, moving in the direction of a contractual foundation.
CHRISTIANE
In a manner contradicting the commandments, eh John?
JOHN B
One could hardly say you were really married then. I mean, you yourself said that you were
out of your marriage.
CHRISTIANE
Then you took off one day and poof—I’ve been thrown back into it ever since.
JOHN B
I didn’t just take off, Chrissy girl. I didn’t just take off.
CHRISTIANE
No?
JOHN B
I can’t talk about this. You know I can’t talk about it with you Chrissy. You know how we
get.
CHRISTIANE
How do we get?
JOHN B
We lose perspective. We need an ... arbitrator.
CHRISTIANE
One day I’d like to—to really talk. Time has elapsed. Why don’t we really, you and me, set
about to sorting things out between us. Why don’t we do that, John B. Why don’t we finally
talk it out.
Pause.
JOHN B
It’s not safe. It’s explosive. Maybe. If we had an outside ear. Someone to help us navigate
the rocks and shoals, so we don’t end up in a wreck all over again. Someone who knows
about conflict.
CHRISTIANE
You want an arbitrator? Okay then. Talk is cheap. Let’s do it.
______________________________________
SCENE 4
DARA and JOHN B and CHRISTIANE together at a table in the street cafe. DARA is
focusing with increasing concern on the other two.
SAADI is sitting in his booth. The WAITRESS is looking at his scarf collection.
CHRISTIANE
Ilana. It is really so good of you to sit down with us. The two of us need a neutral ... An
outside ear. A sounding board.
DARA
How did you two meet?
CHRISTIANE
We were both Christian aid workers in Sudan.
JOHN B
It was a good time in our lives. We were all united in one good cause.
DARA
Was it missionary work?
JOHN B
Well, it was the work of service.
CHRISTIANE
Not all Christian activities spring from the impulse to convert people.
JOHN B
We were kind of like two people serving in the same army, same platoon. That kind of bond.
CHRISTIANE
It all seemed completely natural. Nothing to think about really.
JOHN B
Well, except that one of us was married.
DARA
Okay, so what is it. What is this thing you want me to hear?
JOHN B
It’s all so hard. It’s hard to explain, or even understand, how it went.
CHRISTIANE
You know very well how it went.
JOHN B
What I believe and what you believe. The twain shall never meet.
CHRISTIANE
You gave away my daughter.
Pause.
JOHN B
YOU gave away your daughter.
DARA
Wait a minute—
CHRISTIANE
—And she is out there somewhere—
JOHN B
She is gone. She is just gone. She’s becoming another—
CHRISTIANE
She is mine, John B. Always she’ll be mine!
JOHN B
—person. We would never recognize her.
CHRISTIANE
I would recognize her! I would.
JOHN B
We decided to split. You could never have—
CHRISTIANE
How do you know I couldn’t have—
JOHN B
Outside of a family setting?
CHRISTIANE
Yes.
JOHN B
You had some principles once upon—
CHRISTIANE
I have them now! What do you think this is—
JOHN B
Growing up with you she would have looked like our mistake!
CHRISTIANE
Mistake! You call it OUR—
JOHN B
Exactly, if we couldn’t keep our commitment to each other.
CHRISTIANE
mistake? You admit your mistakes and go on.
JOHN B
You mean “confess” don’t you? You confess your mistakes and—
CHRISTIANE
Yeah! Confess them. And then live as best you can. And to hell with what others think.It
was after all MY MISTAKE.
JOHN B
And the man who robs the store. And the gangs that kill school children in their crossfire?
Oh yes, I almost forgot, the priest who takes his comfort in young boys? And Mussolini
could have confessed his mistakes, and gone on? Why not? And the mother who drowns
her children in the bathtub? All is forgivable. Oh yes. Confess— forgiven. Terrorists and
bombers in Belfast and Karachi. Confess— forgiven. In the end you would forgive every
whore and pimp, and killer, and bomber and extortionist and pederast and torturer.
Confess—forgiven. You are their friend in their hour of need. So what does that make you?
Some would say, complicit with criminals! You don’t recognize evil for what it is. Poor little
lamb, just confess and everything’s just dandy!
During his tirade the WAITRESS has turned her attention to their table. SAADI as well.
JOHN B looks up and sees her. The WAITRESS goes back in the restaurant. DARA has
been straining to take it all in.
CHRISTIANE
You have the nerve—
JOHN B
You rigged the whole thing and that’s the problem.
CHRISTIANE
Rigged?
JOHN B
You know – that surprise pregnancy? I’ve never felt it was a complete surprise—for you.
CHRISTIANE
I did not rig it. I just got pregnant. If it was rigged it was the good Lord’s rigging.
DARA
Hey, you two—
JOHN B
People need to take responsibility—
CHRISTIANE
Responsibility?—
JOHN
— for their actions—
CHRISTIANE
—Is that what happened here? Taking responsibility?
DARA
People ...
JOHN
Darn right it—
CHRISTIANE
Responsibility is raising your own—
JOHN
—is! Responsibility is putting a child in a morally uncompromised situation. Morally
uncompromised. Your sense of morals is from the church of the old days, the church of
penitents and individual seekers. The church of our time is the church of the family.
CHRISTIANE (softly, intimately)
John , you are trying to build your church on top of mine.
DARA (to John B)
I can’t believe that you would force such a thing on someone.
JOHN B
If you’re referring to me, I am not the one that forced the crisis into our lives.
DARA
But she didn’t—
JOHN B
Whoa, just a minute, you listened to us for all of five minutes, and you are saying you
disapprove —
DARA
You didn’t let her decide for herself —
JOHN B
I have to say, you know nothing about this—
DARA
I do know something about this—
JOHN B
—you’re still just a girl really, and —
DARA
As long as you make each other out as criminals, how do you expect to talk—
JOHN B
—and you’re also not a Christian!
Pause.
DARA
Ah.
JOHN B
Damn. I mean, you have a somewhat different code to live by.
DARA
Wait a minute. Does anybody know where this child is?
Pause
.
So there is an adoptive parent with a confidentiality pledge? That is, no one knows where
the child is. Is that it? That’s a disappearance. That’s a disappeared child.
JOHN B
You can’t possibly understand this. You are an outsider. These problems go way back.
Years back.
DARA
Look, it’s common sense. You asked for my opinion. You two have a disappeared child.
No wonder there can’t be any peace between you. (To CHRISTIANE) And you. That’s
great isn’t it. You were pretty damn willing to give in to the pressure. You gave in.
CHRISTIANE
Wait a minute. Aren’t you being just a bit presumptuous? You weren’t there, were you. You
can’t understand how difficult it was ...
DARA
That’s great. You sat me down here. You asked me to listen. As an outside eye or ear. To
be impartial. Wasn’t that the idea?
CHRISTIANE
This is way too complex, Ilana. You can’t possibly know.
JOHN B
It’s a long history. There are so many twists and turns.
CHRISTIANE
Because this man is so full of twists and turns and false promises and deviance—
JOHN B
Deviance! You sit here before a pure outsider, a stranger, and make innuendo about my—
CHRISTIANE
It’s not innuendo. Have a child by one woman, move onto the next—
JOHN B
—morality when you try to trap a man by having a child. You laid that trap.
CHRISTIANE
I never thought of such a thing and you—
JOHN B
If you look deep into your soul, I mean I don’t care if it was calculated or semi-unconscious,
or calculatedly unconscious, but you—
DARA
How can you possibly make claims about somebody’s unconscious?
JOHN B (to DARA)
Shut up, will you!
CHRISTIANE
Yes. Be quiet. You understand nothing!
JOHN B
Go fuck off.
CHRISTIANE
You better leave. It’s too complicated for an outsider.
JOHN B
Naive do-gooders.
____________________________________________
SCENE 5
DARA is in SAADI’s booth, preparing to help him sell items. He is seated in a chair next to
the booth, which gives him perspective on his whole business operation, so that potential
thieves will not be able to get their hands on merchandise.
SAADI
It’s been an hour. You haven’t sold anything.
DARA
You picked a bad intersection. But we’ll sell something. I need to be able to pay for a room.
SAADI
You have bad luck.
DARA
I once thought I was blessed. What’s happened to me?
SAADI
Two questions: Your closest family member is who? And your closest friend is who?
DARA
My uncle is my family. He’s my teacher, in a way. He lives out on the New Mexico desert
in an adobe house. His house is in the middle of his land. It stands in the middle of a
spiraling road that goes round and round and closer and closer to his house, until you get
there, at the center. I go there, and he teaches me Kabbalah. We do headstands in the
morning, and then we do Kabbalah, and then I walk in the countryside.
The temple mount is the same in Jerusalem. In terms of energy. It starts far distant from the
place of the temple and the wall. But if you walk around it, it pulls you into the middle so that
you are drawn into a tighter and tighter circle. Of course walking such a circle in time of
strife is very hard, passing through Arab and Jewish quarters over and over again. The
spiral has been broken by all the ... events. But the vortex of energy is there. You can feel it.
These delicate currents created by the human mind—many human minds—over millennia still
hold. But every time it heals, people wound it again.
SAADI
And my second question?
DARA (pulling some rugs off of something.)
What’s this for?
SAADI
What?
She holds up a long knife with a bend in the middle, pulling it from
its case.
DARA
What’s it for?
SAADI
What do you think? That’s not for sale. Sometimes in the city – those kids. They attack you.
DARA
You planning on fighting off kids with guns—with this?
SAADI
It’s very effective. Ghurkan knife. Given to my grandfather during time of the British Raj.
DARA
The blade is still shiny.
SAADI
Which means the police can see it. Please wrap my baby in its blanket again.
DARA
Okay. Sure. Bye bye baby.
SAADI
My second question. You have not answered my second question.
Pause.
Your closest friend.
DARA
After my first six months in Jerusalem, I found my closest friend. She was an Arab day-care
worker. She was great with children. With a big heart. Then a new uprising started. And so
she crossed the chekpints and volunteered to treat the wounded during fights with the army.
But she had to keep doing it and doing it. She bound wounds, and more wounds would
bleed. She bound those wounds, and more wounds would open. She found that boys she
was treating on the ground were no longer living boys but dead men. Day after day after
day. People could see what was happening to her mind. And then some people saw she
was ripe for their plans.
And so one bright shiny spring day, she tied a bundle of wires around her waist and over her
shoulders, put a pack on her back, and walked into a crowded street in the midst of the
spiral of force I told you about. She looked at the people, made sure she was among them.
She knew what she was doing. She pushed a small button. She tore herself to many small
shreds, and everything and everyone fell down around the place where she had been
standing. She came down as a kind of rain. They told me, the witnesses I spoke to, that you
could breathe the fear in the air. You could smell it. But her pain was completely gone. Now
it was transferred from her nerves to the nerves of other people.
Later I walked through that square. I looked at the blood on the stones. Some was that of
her victims, mixed in with her own. And at that instant, I wanted desperately to find the
spiral trail to the center. I could not find my way to the wall or the Temple Mount. No map
would have helped me. The tissue of the spiral had been torn. There was no path to the
center.
All cities should have a center. Or everyone is lost.
SAADI
And your friend?
DARA
What about her?
SAADI
I mean, what did you do?
DARA
Do what? I HATE HER.
Pulls out the Ghurkan saber and begins hitting the
posts of the booth with it.
I HATE HER. YOU CAN’T TRUST AN ARAB!
_________________________________________________
SCENE 6
Hours later.
SAADI is in his stall this time. DARA standing in the middle of the donut-shaped table,
coming through the large parasol hole. (There is no parasol in it.) She reads a newspaper.
Alternatively, she looks at it to read, then puts it back over her head. Her hair hangs loose,
she has scarf wrapped around her head and a shawl around her shoulders.
The WAITRESS enters with a coffee. Sees DARA in the middle
of the table. Stops.
DARA
It’s okay. Just put it right there.
WAITRESS
You all right?
DARA
And the sugar, thanks.
The WAITRESS puts them down in front of her. Looking at
DARA, wipes down the other tables.
DARA reads the paper. To SAADI
DARA
Do you see this? I think the Kashmir conflict is actually bigger than ours.
SAADI
The countries involved are bigger.
DARA
They beat us. They beat us. They are worse than us. Bigger countries ...
SAADI
It’s not just countries. Communal riots in India. All the time. From what?
DARA
The same old same old.
SAADI
If I build my temple on yours, I win.
DARA
No one builds on my temple, Buster
SAADI
Ha ha ha ha. Everybody has built on top of your temple. Ha ha ha!
Pause.
Do you know what. You were out here half a day. You didn’t sell anything.
DARA
No one is coming by. It’s not a good intersection.
Yells to WAITRESS
Hey. This is not a very good intersection for business, is it?
THE WAITRESS looks at her with alarm. Then chooses to
ignore the comment, and goes back to her work.
WAITRESS
You know, I think you’re losing your head.
SAADI (to the WAITRESS)
Is true. It’s because of the look on this girl’s face. That’s why no one buys.
DARA
I’m sorry. Maybe I’ve been wasting your time by trying this street vendor thing.
Something’s wrong with me. Not just me. Look at this paper! Look at this. It’s covered
with disease.
SAADI
I tell you to take a break. So what do you do? Read the news. That’s no break.
The WAITRESS goes back inside.
DARA
You’re right ... Everyone has built on my temple. Or torn it down. And built again.
SAADI
Where I was born mosques had been built on top of Mazdean temples. The Zoroaster fires
still burn in a few desert towns. They stuffed down the fire. So then people were sitting in the
mosques built on the fire temples stones. No fires allowed. So they would recite poetry
about fire. And they would sit at the tombs of saints and sing songs of fire until they danced.
Danced on fire.
DARA
Danced no matter what.
SAADI
In Sind and the Indus and the Ganges the great men built mosques on the temples of the
river gods and woman gods and moon god and so forth. The great conquerors had taken
the land, but they wanted the souls. Big kings built on the ruins. Temple ruins.
Not long ago, in Gujurat, people are burning each other up in train cars. Mobs on the streets
are burning up whole families because somebody threatened to build a temple on top of a
mosque which was built on a temple. This all because four hundred years ago a man,
Aurangzeb, almost the last big king of Mughals tore down a temple on the spot where, some
India people say, God was born on this earth. This great man buried the god birth place, and
and built a new temple to his religion. He did this everywhere he went.
Those places, with the temple on the mosque on the temple or the mosque on the church on
the temple, or the church on the temple on the mosque — they bring storms of darkness.
DARA
“Mathalu nūrihi kamishkātin fihā misbāhun, almisbāhu
fi zujāhjatin, ͗azzujājatu kaʾannahā
kawkabun durriyyun yūqadu min shajaratim mubūrakatin
zaytūnatil lā sharqiyyatin wa lā gharbiyyatin
yakādu zaytuhā yudzeeʾu
wa law lam tamsas-hu naar.
Nūrun ͗alā nuur.”
SAADI
How do you know that?
Pause.
How do you know that!
DARA
I had to memorize it. For my Uncle’s lessons.
SAADI
I can translate that.
“His light appears like a niche
in which there is a lamp, the flame within a glass ...
DARA
“the glass as if it were a glittering star, lit with the oil
of a blessed tree ...”
SAADI
“whose oil appears to light up
though the fire doesn’t touch it—light upon light”
That’s scripture. But not yours.
DARA
My uncle taught me to use it for Kabbalah.
SAADI
You understand it?
DARA
I am supposed to contemplate it for seven years. And then I will see. That’s what he said.
SAADI
Seven years, really? Then you will see – something.
____________________________________________
SCENE 7
Lights down on the set. A hotel room chair and coffee table and lamp are in the light.
Pillows and blankets from the bed are on the floor.
DARA is sitting on a pillow, head down.
FATIMA, wearing headscarf and stylish jeans, is sitting across
from her in the chair
Looking directly at DARA.
DARA looks up at her. They gaze at one another.
They are, for now, sitting in silence. Then DARA looks at the
at the floor again.
FATIMA
So?
DARA
Yes?
FATIMA
It’s your turn.
DARA
No. It’s yours.
Pause.
FATIMA
You’re right. It’s mine.
Pause.
Is this all right?
DARA
What do you mean all right?
FATIMA
I am just curious. We have been sitting this way for two hours and fifteen.
DARA
Yeah. I like doing this. If you don’t mind.
FATIMA
Why should I mind?
DARA
People are so hard to make out, don’t you think?
FATIMA
People are without logic. You never know when they’ll attack.
DARA
And me?
FATIMA
You? You seem fine, anyway. I mean, you listen.
DARA
Is that all?
FATIMA
You’re troubled. People like you give me hope.
DARA
Because I am troubled? But I want peace of mind.
FATIMA
Too much peace of mind is a sign of dead nerves.
DARA
What’s wrong with wanting to be at peace.
FATIMA
People who look at this world, who really look, they are a little bit broken.
DARA
I don’t want to be broken. I want to be happy.
FATIMA
You want a room. “A room of one’s own.”
DARA
I wouldn’t mind that.
FATIMA
And no one else gets to come in?
DARA
Is that so bad?
FATIMA
You talk like that, the next minute you’ll turn and attack.
Pause.
DARA
I’m not going to—
FATIMA
Peace, what a word.
DARA
What’s wrong with it.
FATIMA
What it means is fine. But experience shows that people who say it “peace, peace, peace”
-- cannot be trusted.
DARA
People do terrible things to words.
FATIMA
Yes. Poor words. People take the life out of them.
DARA
I know what you mean. Some big leader once said “I have procured peace in our time.”
Then forty million died.
FATIMA
When they say people should “live in peace and security”—it is followed by six rockets.
DARA
Or they say “a peaceful future”—
FATIMA
Or they say “We hold out the promise of peace”—
DARA
They say, “Our hand is extended in peace.”
FATIMA
“We are waiting for a real proposal for peace. But our partners in this dialogue”—
DARA
We want peace, but THEY turn down every offer—
FATIMA
“I am sorry sir. Your papers don’t allow entry.”
DARA
“But I have worked in this orchard for decades.”
FATIMA
“Since the violence, all previous arrangements have been revoked.”
DARA
“This orchard is now on the other side of the new segment of the wall.”
FATIMA
“Let me go and work in peace.”
DARA
“Peace sir? You can have that.”
FATIMA
“But not in your old olive grove.”
DARA
“When our enemy shuts up, that’s peace.”
FATIMA
“Peace, sure. As soon as we break both your hands.”
DARA
Poor words.
FATIMA
Poor words. We have tortured them.
A silence.
DARA
Can I ask you a question?
FATIMA
Of course. Just don’t attack me if I answer.
DARA
Look at me. I have lost all attack. All verve. All resistance.
FATIMA
Good. Please ask.
DARA
You don’t live in Israel anymore?
FATIMA
I had more privileges there. I was invited by family members.
DARA
But not anymore?
FATIMA
I wanted to go back to my village near Tulkarm. It’s a poor place. But it’s my mother and
my father’s home. We’re quite cut off in many ways. But we have some things of beauty. A
very old Christian church. A mosque built by Saladin. And we are excavating some Roman
ruins.
DARA
Not so bad then?
FATIMA
Well, the children must walk two hours to school.
DARA
Two hours?
FATIMA
The great Wall—you know.
DARA
The great wall…
FATIMA
The wall to keep the peace. It used to take them fifteen minutes to get to school.
DARA
Oh.
Pause.
FATIMA
Are you from Jerusalem? Or are you American?
DARA
Oh come on. Listen to my accent.
FATIMA
I have to tell you—there are so many settlers near our farm with American accents – We
can’t really tell the difference, you know?
DARA
I wonder – I wonder if I could ever see where you live?
FATIMA
These are not easy times. (Pause.) Would you like to make a sort of secret journey?
DARA
Yes. You know I wonder if one day—
FATIMA
Would you really like to do that?
DARA
Yes. Now that I’m thinking, I’d really like to do that.
A long silence.
CHRISTIANE enters with purse and portfolio.
She is heading for the shower but stops when she sees the two
the two looking at one another.
CHRISTIANE
Well! You two seem to seem to inhabit the same space pretty well.
No response.
Well, I don’t mean to interrupt. I just need to use the shower. Talk to you later.
She puts down her things and goes off to the shower.
FATIMA
Some people hope to be open-minded. They make friends with you. Then something
broken in their heart says, “It’s not worth the effort. So maybe I should just kill her.”
CHRISTIANE
You said the broken brings the good.
FATIMA
Yes. The broken part’s where the good comes from.
___________________________________________
SCENE 8
JOHN B, CHRISTIANE & DARA. CHRISTIANE is examining the goods in SAADI’s
booth. JOHN B is examining rugs. DARA is sitting on top of one of the cafe tables
wrapped in a rug. ( SAADI is away.)
CHRISTIANE
Dara. I wanted to mention, I am sorry about my outburst at you the other day. You were
trying to help. Me and John B together are like a land mine. And you’ve been shaken by
your – experiences.
DARA
Don’t worry about it. You know about those rugs. You know how to talk about them. Sell
one. I want to see you. I want to see you do it.
CHRISTIANE
I appreciate the introduction to Mr Gulshan. He has interesting stories to tell.
DARA
You can sell his stuff. I really need to lie down.
She lies on her side in the rug.
JOHN B
We understand, Dara. The news from the holy land was upsetting this morning.
Pause.
I support your country, which represents an outpost of our civilization. One simply has to
support them. Remarkable the colors in these rugs.
CHRISTIANE
It’s only in the Mideast and central Asia that one finds such symbolism in rugs.
DARA (distant and weakly, to John B)
Thank you for supporting us.
JOHN B
These natural dyes are so brilliant.
To DARA.
But you know, here some people think your people have gone a bit overboard with
surrounding cities, invading refugee camps, bombarding targets in populated areas—taking
out leaders and assassinating them? Then again, the Pastor of our church—and it’s a mega
church, did I tell you?—says we must all be Zionists now. Any action by your country is
righteous, of course. Even though it doesn’t get you much sympathy.
DARA (eyes closed.)
You always talk out of both sides of your mouth …
CHRISTIANE (to JOHN.)
I think you have to differentiate between what her people want, and what their leaders
want. Both you and your Grand Pastor.
DARA
I ... I don’t know. I mean, this goes so many decades back ... The things that have been
done . . . have been done.
JOHN B
It’s just hard to see why the people on both sides—and the leaders—don’t see that this sort
of ... revenge cycle has to stop somewhere. (Pause. Perplexed again.) Unless ... this is
supposed to take us to the final days, as the Pastor says.
DARA
You’re an outsider. You can’t understand.
CHRISTIANE
She might be right.
JOHN B
Most people would say it’s precisely the insiders who have lost all common sense.
DARA (sits up as she speaks, till she is erect)
I think I understand why you talk out of both sides of your mouth. I think I get it. You
know … I feel I am doing that almost all the time. But common sense … Common sense is
not common in some places. One day I was came from a meeting with our settlers in the
territories. They wanted us to understand their position. They wanted our support. But
down in the town the army was on the move.
I saw a man trapped against a vast stone wall. An ancient stone wall. He was holding his
boy. Not more than six or seven. He was taking shelter from the soldiers firing on the kids
with the rocks and slingshots. They were in a corner but not out of view. And so the father
grabs his boy, and puts him between himself and the wall. But the boy has been shot by the
first rake of machine gun fire. He is dying. There the father sits crouched, with nothing but his
own body to protect his boy. And then the father’s body starts to slide down. It’s the blasts
of fire pushing him down. And the boy’s position has not changed for a couple of minutes. I
doubt very much he survived … in any way or condition. But the raking bullets go on and on
and on.
What is common sense. These are our enemies.
CHRISTIANE
When you talk, you sound like you are inside your enemy.
DARA
My “enemy” is inside me. Like a dybbuk.
She rips open her jacket. Her white blouse underneath has
developed a red blotch under her left breast. As she speaks the
following she seems in delirium.
I studied Arabic. I learned about that culture. With my knowledge I could have chosen the
secret services, or I could have chosen to live among them. I had an Arab boyfriend for
almost a year.
None of that matters, because a deep logic tells you “Our enemies must pay a price.” There
is no other way.
No other way out. I must stay with my people. It’s what I was taught. One has to attend to
the survival of one’s people.
I am in the street watching the men and boys falling like wheat in the harvest.
I am hiding behind the walls with the soldiers fearing every moment for my life, and believing
each blow they strike is for my family.
The red has spread through the front of her white
shirt, and slowly saturates the front of it.
On the streets two traitors are hung by their feet on a lamppost.
Next the soldiers have located the house of the killers of the traitor and enter.
The killers of the traitors are later found dead with shots to the back of the head.
Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers wail incessantly on our side of the border.
Their side of the border.
I want to destroy those who refuse to stop this pain.
No. It’s my people who bulldoze their houses, where families are huddling.
Their headquarters are bombed with suspects inside.
No. It’s my people who crawl over the borders and make their way to the enemy’s hotels
with their bombs strapped to their bodies. They want to balance the agony out by
annihilating everyone. Evem themselves.
I have to take sides or I’d be strung up I have to take sides or I’ll be jailed I’d be vilified by
my people the moment I cry out loud at the tortures inflicted on the other side.
I have lost pity for the others.
No room for pity mercy compassion.
The sentiments of treason.
I destroy for my people and I suffer.
If I cry out in pity I am stifled suppressed smothered.
I am living with my heart in a flak jacket.
I need to kill my killer. My wanting to kill takes me over.
Killing my killer is my suicide.
CHRISTIANE opens the rug and ILANA’s shirt and is looking
carefully. The red has spread and drenched the front of her shirt.
The Ghurkhan knife clatters to the floor.
CHRISTIANE
What is this? John, call emergency. Call 911.
She holds DARA.
Do it John – Now!
JOHN takes out his cell phone and walks upstage.
SAADI sits on the ground next to the two women.
SAADI (recites close to DARA.)
Listen:
“If any man thinks he slays
and if another thinks he is slain
neither knows the ways of truth
The Self cannot kill
The Self cannot die
It is never born, and never dies ...”
Is from a Persian classic.
DARA
Upanishads ... It’s the fucking Upanishads ... translated by some Mughal. My uncle told me
about it …
SAADI
I was sure it was—
CHRISTIANE
The ambulance is coming.
DARA (to SAADI)
I need to stay here. Please.
CHRISTIANE
We need to take care of this first.
DARA
When we come back then. I need to stay here.
SAADI
My van is full.
DARA
It’s a caravan. It’s a CARA-VAN.
________________________________________
SCENE 9
JOHN B and CHRISTIANE with suitcases, waiting for cabs.
DARA is sleeping, sitting upright propped against the rug backing of SAADI’s stand. We
see bandages around her chest. She is wrapped in shawls and a rug, with the silk tied
around her head.
JOHN B
You know, I don’t think anyone, really, would understand.
CHRISTIANE
It makes you feel kind of raw, doesn’t it.
JOHN B
It was rash, opening everything up again.
CHRISTIANE
We made a mistake opening up to a stranger that way. We confused ourselves.
JOHN B
I am always confused. Christiane.
CHRISTIANE
Yes, you are.
JOHN B
So then ... I will be seeing you at the next conference.
CHRISTIANE
Yes. The next go-round.
JOHN B (referring to DARA)
What’s she doing over there? She’s sleeping in his booth.
CHRISTIANE
She’s got free lodgings, in the van with the others.
JOHN B
She’s staying?
CHRISTIANE
For now, it seems. Hold on a minute.
CHRISTIANE goes up to DARA and quietly leaves a letter on her
lap.
JOHN B
What’s that?
CHRISTIANE
A letter to her from my roommate from Palestine. They hit it off … I think. It looked to me
as if they’d known each other all their lives. I felt like I was interrupting some secret
conference each time I entered the room. I felt quite left out. It was like they were
conferring in codes that I wouldn’t understand. Once I came in, and they were sitting on the
floor together. In silence.
Pause.
In any case, she seemed quite anxious to talk with Dara again. She made me promise to
deliver her letter.
Pause.
Should we say goodbye?
JOHN B
Let her sleep. That girl is troubled right now.
They begin to walk away. CHRISTIANE stops, goes back to
DARA. She picks up the letter. She gently wakes her
CHRISTIANE
Dara. This letter is from Fatima. I want to make sure you read it. Can you understand me?
Do you want me to read it to you?
DARA nods.
FATIMA is lit on the other side of the stage.
“My … friend. I will be staying here a few more weeks. Will you be traveling back? I
would like to travel back with you. Of course, it will be a help to me at the security in the
airport. But in exchange, I would like you to visit my village. Our family can keep you safe.
And let me tempt you. There is that ancient church and the Saladin mosque, and Roman
ruins, just ;ike I told you. If you can’t travel back with me, please come to see me. Nothing
is easy. I will wait for you to join me ...”
CHRISTIANE hands it back to her, fixes DARA’s hair. She
walks back to JOHN B.
JOHN B
Christiane. You have a good heart. And that just makes me wonder. Why can’t you and I
talk? Wht is wrong that nobody can talk.
CHRISTIANE
I’ll see you at the June conference, John B.
JOHN B
Doesn’t this thing ever end.
CHRISTIANE
We keep going round and round. What can you do.
They turn to look at DARA, wrapped in her rug in the booth.
DARA is looking across the stage at FATIMA.
JOHN B and CHRISTIANE walk off in separate directions.
As the lights dim around her, a brighter shaft of light comes up on
booth, and DARA begins to look eerily regal, echoing Dara
Shikooh in Part One, wrapped in her rug, bandages round her
chest, with the silk head wrap coming down from her hair. The
booth now has taken the look of the throne again.
DARA
Caravan.
An Indian plum pipe wails. SAADI approaches, observes her.
DARA’s eyes open. She unfolds the letter, and reads.
FATIMA
“This will be our secret journey. I wait for you.”
FATIMA slowly vanishes.
DARA lifts the letter, with both hands, higher, higher – she begins
to tremble, her eyes are wide open.
DARA
Caravan.
END