IN SEARCH OF...

IN SEARCH OF                                                                                                             

Not to be photocopied, distributed or used without the permission of the Authour.

IN SEARCH OF...

By S. R. Shalabi. Translated from the Arabic by Peter Clark, 6/8/2001.

SCENE ONE

Darkness. A pale shadow of a pale night covers the scene reflecting specters that gradually merge into the black shadow of a group of palm trees. A human ghost-like figure clad in black is sitting hidden in the darkness. He is listening to the sound of waves on the shore. Moments pass before a spot of light fragments into melancholy colours on the sand, revealing the frail frame of person who is chaotic in appearance.

The Ghost: Who's there?

The Newcomer: Bad question.

The Ghost: Are you teasing me?

The Newcomer: No, but I believe you, whoever or whatever you are, are here running away from the naming of things; in search of something that has neither form nor name.

The Ghost: You talk as if you were that.

The Newcomer: (a long laugh) I'm nothing. I’m nobody. Otherwise I wouldn't have landed up here.

The Ghost: (mockingly) That's fine then...

 The Newcomer steels himself to speak, while the Ghost goes back to what he was doing. Then the Ghost is surprised by something that comes up to him. He suddenly

jumps up.

The Newcomer: Why are you running away?

The Ghost: Is this your way of revealing yourself?

The Newcomer: Have I said something about myself?

The Ghost: This colour ...

The Newcomer: I don't see any colour ...

The Ghost: Are you blind? (He points to the spot of shapeless light, that begins to give out a violet colour.)

The Newcomer: No, I'm not blind. But I don't see the world in the same way as you.

The Ghost: Who are you?

The Newcomer: Can't someone take a single step without constantly having to identify oneself.

The Ghost: (He turns to what he had been looking at, and tosses a pebble into the water.) You won't succeed in being nothing. Non-existence in the end is something.

The Newcomer: So we've got something in common. We're both on the run from things.

The Ghost: At least I realise my limitations...

(The Newcomer laughs as the feeble colours are reflected the sand.)

The light that you are trying to be is physical matter. You will be unable to overcome your limitations...

The Newcomer: Unless through chaos...

The Ghost: O’ so you’re Chaos.  

The Newcomer: Why are you inclined to give things names?

The Ghost: Nothing exists without a name. What's ironic is that nothing in the world can be named precisely.

The Newcomer: What's most ironic is that naming something itself is unnecessary.

The Ghost: It made the angels bow down to Adam...

The Newcomer: You know that angels cannot fool themselves like us, believing

things and things’ names are one and the same, The light that they are does not absorb  

names as the earth that we are does. It cannot lay siege to things. It cannot therefore be besieged by names.

The Ghost: Light is also physical, you know.

The Newcomer: Yes, under certain conditions, but under others it can break free.

The Ghost: Not by itself. Something else has to help it to deconstruct.

The Newcomer: That's the problem.

The Ghost: Is chaos the answer?

The Newcomer: Yes. As long as I always see something else in every image.

The Ghost: Can you see someone who has been killed in front of you as anything other than mortal flesh and blood? (He throws another pebble into the water.)

The Newcomer: (He sits next to him. He throws a pebble he has not picked up off the ground into the water, but it does not create a sound.) I've seen blood before now. I've seen it lots of times. Once I stood before such a scene as you describe, but I didn't see what others said they saw. I saw a crimson colour. Dark crimson spreading in small pools of light on the ground. I asked myself what was it that was upsetting me. Was it because he was one of those who fall every day, and have their pictures pasted on the wall for a while before being forgotten? Was it because he died for nothing, or for the sake of something I do not understand? Or was it the sight of blood? But I have seen blood before. It wasn't like that. Was it its dark crimson colour? But again it may have been a trick of the earth that gave it this colour. The scene left me depressed about the fate of a young man whose face I did not know, and whose picture I had no desire to see pasted on some wall.

The Ghost: Your problem is with colours, it seems ...

The Newcomer: What would you have seen in it?

The Ghost: I would’ve seen that the blood spilt in courage, honour and nobility by the heroes of mythology was nothing but loathsome pain, a liquid that stank within minutes, leaving a corpse for the mourners. Slugs and worms fighting over it. A pitiful embarrassment, nauseating those who don't like to dirty their hands. Perhaps inspiring wonder for a while. But I don't know. Really...

The Newcomer: You are feeling sorry for yourself.

The Ghost: Well, what makes you feel sorry?

The Newcomer: The sight drove me out of myself. I no longer belonged to any time or place. For hours in the darkness I walked the land. The fields brought back the same scene. It was not the sight of someone who was killed, and the blood did not have the same colour. There was in that blood something of those fields spreading out in a wild darkness. Darkness that had the stamp of thousands of ghosts lying in wait everywhere for other ghosts yet to enter. I felt freedoom. I saw in the young man a colour that rejoiced in itself. Could it be that there was freedom in fear?

The Ghost: That is the strangest question anyone could ask.

The Newcomer: It is what I felt that day. The intensity of the fear made me feel freedom.

The Ghost: And how did you see Death then?

The Newcomer: A Kingdom; Not that realm of untamed darkness, haunted by djinns. Rather, there was unity with the absolute. Unending. Eternal. Where everything that could exist does exist. In every atom. Without shape or colour. Fear became illogical for what we call logic did not exist then. It was no longer reasonable when it was not necessary.

The Ghost: And the silence?

The Newcomer: It was a silence that spoke like nothing else. It was a musical silence. So sublime it made me weep.

The Ghost: Why was that?

 The Newcomer: For the sake of what I had lost, both imaginary and real. Because

I was not worthy of either. (The voice fades away.) (The Ghost at his side turns to find that his companion has disappeared. He gets up and looks around him, but does not find anything. A chortling comes from a spot at the back. A circle of falls on neatly dressed Person who is sitting cross-legged on an upturned cylinder.)

The Ghost: (He hesitates before he speaks.) What's that? Who's there?

The Person: Is that any way to address a gentleman? I won't answer you.

The Ghost: You’ve already answered (He lowers his voice.) But I'm not sure I believe you.

The Person: What did you say?

The Ghost: I didn't say anything. (The Person appears disappointed.) What brings

you here?

The Person: I didn't come to listen to that fool who claims he lost himself. I have a heartache. I can't stand heartache.

The Ghost: Even though you're the type who won't let anything affect their heart.

 The Person: Really? Ah, this is true. I’ve always withdrawn from any issues that gave me a headache until they were over, but this present situation now gives me an intolerable heartache, a strong desire to quit this world. I am particularly sensitive to the vulgarity of things. Such a life is not worth living for.

The Ghost: A splendid resignation.

The Person: Maybe I'm the only one affected by this feeling. But I don't even want the matter raised.

The Ghost: Maybe you're afraid...

The Person: (He casts his head down and then looks up.) Why are you dressed

like that? Is there something wrong with your face?

The Ghost: Maybe.

The Person: An injury?

The Ghost: What has it got to do with you?

The Person: Do I know you? What's your name?

The Ghost: I no longer have a name.

The Person: That's strange, your voice is familiar, as if we’ve more than once met in the past... Perhaps you need to conceal your name. Perhaps you're wanted for them…

The Ghost: Do I have to be on the wanted list in order to be nameless?

The Person: That's not the issue here. I know because I've been on the wanted list in the past. (He sighs.)( The Ghost snorts) In those days I wasn't frightened of anything. But things were different then. We weren't afraid of death because we believed in something.

The Ghost: And now you don't believe.

The Person: That's right. I'm an unbeliever, but I don't say that in front of other people. The Ghost: Because you're afraid of them?

The Person: I've never been afraid of anything or anybody. But I can no longer tolerate… It's sad to have had a glorious past, when the present is so vulgar.

The Ghost: So vulgar that one has to conceal one's convictions.

The Person: Or conceal one’s face! Don't make fun of me. I did not make fun of you, and I won't ask any questions. Anyway, it's an honour to be on the wanted list.

The Ghost: Honour, like debauchery, can be pursued as a profession

The Person: What do you mean?

The Ghost: What makes you think I mean something?

The Person: Do you know why the Arabs were defeated? Why we have been placed on the margins of history? Why we feel as if we are pygmies in the presence of others? Why –in short- we are unhappy?

The Ghost: In the days of defeats there was so much talk of victory that I couldn't tell the difference between laurel and parsley. I don't know whether we won or lost. But as far as I'm concerned these matters have nothing to do with happiness.

The Person: You refuse to understand me. No one understands each other in this wretched community, because no one talks frankly, or listens heartedly, or dare ask for what one really wants. They will not face up to themselves.

The Ghost: Well, I'm trying.

The Person: You're making fun of me. You know, you remind me of someone I knew in those days of that past long gone… but I guess he's dead.

The Ghost: (in a matter-of-fact way) Dead...?

The Person: He disappeared. I tried to get in touch with him. I managed to obtain his phone number, but then, Ah me ... (with a sigh) I don't have anything to do with him. That's all over.

The Ghost: (sarcastically) May Allah have mercy on him.

The Person: It’s useless. They can't work together. Every day I bump into frightful clannishness. Behaviour that was set down a million years ago. Suppressed attitudes of suppressed individuals who force you to cheat like them, and declare your allegiance to religious and social systems that have always been deficient because they did not change with the times.

(He leaps from the barrel, kicking it. A hollow sound is heard.)

The Ghost: What did you fight for then? You and ... and your late friend?

The Person: (mockingly) For the sake of tribes with nothing in common except being trapped in a cycle of hypocritical injunctions and prohibitions. I have overcome that and broken out of the cycle, but I haven't found anyone else who has. Perhaps they have to perish before we can change.

The Ghost: Do you think so?

The Person: The most annoying thing in this community of traditionalist manure is that

they do not possess an atom of imagination. I'm stuck here, don't you understand?

The Ghost: I understand you are living an illusion in some fantasy world; in some frozen state full of self-pity.  (He whispers to himself) You are you. You will never change.

The Person: You're mocking me. See? To belong anywhere else would be better.

(He moves away. The Ghost notices that the Person's shadow has frozen in his place. The Ghost stands up and looks now at the Person who has moved away, now

at the Shadow.)

The Shadow: (to Ghost) I don't believe he ever knew what it means to be alive.

The Ghost: Perhaps he tried to leap between too many worlds?

The Shadow: So much so that I have slipped right off him. But life is still bearable.

The Ghost: There was a poet who cried out his name in a house of mirrors trying to steal a self-realisation that Time was not ready to give to him.

The Shadow: Perhaps it is still too soon to realise anything.

The Ghost: Perhaps. Perhaps not.

The Shadow: You know the hallucinatory drugs that hope injects us with? Their effects wears off and turn to bitterness as you get older. Now, let me try to catch up with him before he enters another world. It is dangerous for any man when his shadow slips away from him.

(He withdraws swiftly over the sands.)

SCENE TWO

A large field in the dark. The sound of the wind stirring the leaves of the olive-trees and bushes that are scattered around. From afar can be heard the echo of gunfire and cannon fire. The Ghost appears. It is as If he has not heard anything.

The Ghost: Where are you? (He shouts.) YOU! You formless one! (He looks around for the movement, appearing suddenly from among the trees, and stops stock still.) Is that you?

A Young Woman: (She whispers.) Keep your voice down!

The Ghost: (He heads in the direction of the voice. He finds the Young Woman is dragging something between the trees.) What's that you've got?

The Young Woman: Shut up and help me to bury this wretched person, before anyone sees.

The Ghost: A soldier? They'll reduce the city to rubble.

The Young Woman: They'll reduce it to rubble regardless. Can't you hear the shelling? Well then -it's not a soldier. More's the pity.

The Ghost: Have you killed him?

The Young Woman: It doesn't matter who killed him. The fact of the matter is that he's dead, and we've got to bury him.

The Ghost: (With bitter sarcasm) Leave him to the vultures.

The Young Woman: I'd get more benefit from him if I buried him.

The Ghost: You're destroying many innocent people by what you're doing.

The Young Woman: He would have destroyed them had he lived. No human beyond his allotted age would survive.

The Ghost: There must be some way… some way better than this.

The Young Woman: You've got to sacrifice some of the body before the cancer takes over. Hey! Let’s leave this nonsense. I can hear people coming. (He moves towards her and bends over to give her a hand. But he jumps up suddenly.) What's the matter?

The Ghost: Impossible

The Young Woman: You seem to know him.

The Ghost: I used to…

The Young Woman: It's a small world.

The Ghost: He was never a collaborator in the old days.

The Young Woman: But he became one afterwards.

The Ghost: Impossible..!

The Young Woman: When used you to know him?

The Ghost: I don't suppose you have time for us to go into that. Let me just move him. The Young Woman: I'll listen to you. But I want you to understand that he was not just killed. None of them are killed like that any more, without evidence, the way they used to do it in the past. We know what to do. The latest information he handed over to them led to a bomb coming through the window, not missing its target by a centimetre. I expect you saw the result of the explosion.

The Ghost: I saw, I'm not sure whether I saw anything from all that I was looking at. The Young Woman: When did you know him?

The Ghost: Many many years ago.

The Young Woman: This is a period long enough for a man forget his own shadow.

(The Ghost gives a long, pained laugh.) You're all mad.

The Ghost: For long we so examined ourselves through words until we became incapable of using words. We created piles of books on symbolism and the abstract. We wrote poetry that no longer had either form or rhythm. In the end we no longer understood anything at all.

The Young Woman: Perhaps because there was too much ink. They produced vast amounts of it without any difficulty. They produced thousands of copies of what was written and said. And there was always so much said, so much that people like me thought there was nothing left to say.

 The Ghost: This was because –in all this flood of words- nothing was said of what ought to have been said. This is one of the features of the age. Was it not better not to understand anything about ourselves at all?

The Young Woman: Don't mislead me. Language in philosophy is an over-dose for me, and is a bloody huge trap- damn, they're coming closer.

The Ghost: They won't come in here.

The Young Woman: As if! They may fire in our direction. These bastards have frightful ammunition they think is better to use before it expires. Let's leave and find some place to hide. Basically they won't negotiate with us. I know these Israelis. They're awful with their collaborators.

(The shriek of a shell goes over their heads).l

The Ghost: Run for your life. I'll deal with the corpse.

The Young Woman: It won't rot here. We'll come back for it.

The Ghost: I'll stay here.

The Young Woman: To die? Other people will be able to retrieve it.

The Ghost: I won't die. (To himself) I’m dead already… (Then louder) They don't want me. But you may die. Here! There's a whole world waiting for you.

(The young woman runs off looking back at him from time to time).

SCENE THREE

The same beach as in Scene one, but the sound of the waves seems somewhat louder. The wind stirs the small palm trees, and the silvery shine of the moon appears clearly fragmented on the sand. A sharply defined Shadow appears by the barrel that has been turned over on one  side at the foot of a boulder on the sand.

The Shadow: One year. Two years. Three. Ten. Twenty. Fifty. A thousand and more. It's nothing. (There is a sound coming from the empty barrel.) It's nothing. (The sound is repeated.) In two days. Ten- in a hundred! - The best and worst things can be forgotten. Or we can pretend to forget them. It's of no importance, you loser. None at all.

The Ghost: (He turns up from somewhere, carrying the corpse.) And then there are things that are not to be forgotten or forgiven. (He places the corpse before the Shadow.)

The Shadow: Because they cannot be forgotten, or forgiven. He has lived his life looking back, thinking he deserved the world. We went through his worlds, mourning our life, as we leapt from one world to another, from a time that I can no longer remember. I used not to want this end, and I will not forgive him.

The Ghost: Every person has his allotted Harmatia that is special to him, that lies in wait for him in a place within some dark comer of his soul. She has taken her share of him, and you are consequently in no position to condemn him… Forgive.

The Shadow: Are you able to?

 The Ghost: I am able to reach a state of peace with this question.

The Shadow: Are you able to forgive me?

The Ghost: (A wry, acrid laugh) Who am I to forgive or not forgive?

The Shadow: Spit on me then. “What heart hast thee to bear the passion of the world

and not perish. What heart…” (He returns to the position by the body. Silence prevails.)

Why!? We were to die in the trench. Was it not more fitting if we had both died in the trench? But that is past and over. No. We had to die there. (He wipes the corpse’s face) We were meant to. But you threw yourself to the dogs. (He casts his head over him and weeps.) You’ve killed me. You know that, don’t you? You know how often you have done it, don’t you?

(The voice of the Newcomer who appeared in Scene One.)

The Newcomer: I know.

The Ghost: Damn! Who's that speaking?

The Newcomer: Do you still believe that everyone is tied to the thread of a resolution that will never happen? What was the view of the youths who are still throwing stones at the checkpoints and barricades? What did they believe in?

The Ghost: You. You. (Silence, and then.) Who are you?

The Newcomer: (He chortles with laughter.) We have come back. (He appears out of nowhere.)

The Ghost: (He picks up a stone and lobs it in the Newcomer's direction. A crimson apparition changes on the sand in moments, before resuming his normal colour.) Who are you?

The Newcomer: I am you, and him. (He comes nearer.) Didn't you know? You were right when you were talking about words. The more one spoke, the less the words meant anything. We don't mean anything any more. We no longer know who we are.

The Ghost: I’ve been searching for… you?

The Newcomer: You were not to see me. You were not gone to the fields so you could see me. Didn’t you understand? Didn’t you see anything?

The Ghost: (Shouting) I don’t want to understand anything. I don’t want to see any meaning in anything else.

The Newcomer: You’re making progress. The moment you arrived over there you will not be able to see me, because you will have lost the illusion.

The Ghost: (Sadly) I’ve reached the final threshold, haven’t I? I’m imagining things, (Shouting) aren’t I?

The Newcomer: There is a threshold…

The Ghost: I will die. I'm bound to die. Basically there's no justification for me to exist. This age is no longer ours. We have tried and failed. It's theirs. It's the youngsters’ age. We have abandoned them just as we abandoned them the first time when we were failed by a great nation that extended from the Atlantic to the Gulf. And when we returned we didn't defend them.

The Newcomer: The land belongs to you and to them. This is the last ditch. It is a state of chaos in which you must not be aware of more than whatever is in front of you.

The Ghost: Tell me who you are.

The Newcomer: I am Adam of the Two Paradises.

The Ghost: What two Paradises?

The Newcomer: Which I lost twice. (The voice fades away.)

(A noise approaches, announcing the arrival of the Young Woman who is wearing a kuffiyya.)

The Young Woman: Who were you talking to?

The Ghost: (Pointing to the Newcomer, but it seems the young woman cannot see him)

The Young Woman: Ah, you educated types talk a lot to yourselves.

The Ghost: (Whispering to himself) "... more than whatever is in front of you …”

The Young Woman: Who did you abandon?

The Ghost: The dream of the people for whose sake I have wandered the seas. I have now returned and can no longer cherish the dream from the . . . Is it an awakening, I wonder.

The Young Woman: You've rescued us from a tight spot. If it was like that, then it is an awakening indeed.

The Ghost: And the dream?

The Young Woman: What's the use of a dream that you cannot make real? I am able to dream that we have become free, but this vanishes as soon as the first bullet smashes through the window.

The Ghost: Are you able to see anything else in a bullet that came through the window? The Young Woman: I can see that they've got to return what they have plundered to us, or the bullets will break their windows. That night, in the field, they came forward and entered. Fire was returned. Do you think they would have retreated otherwise?

(The Ghost shakes his head.)

 How did you withdraw?

The Ghost: I simply walked away.

The Young Woman: I knew who you were. This is yours at any rate. You dropped it. (She gives him a revolver.) Those men, you knew them. (Two men come forward. The Ghost withdraws for a moment.) They were there.

Young Man: Don’t let them get between us.

The Ghost: Who are you talking about?

The Young Woman: Who? Them Israelis of course. They want to turn us into a thousand small groups. It is as if this is one revolution, and that is another. These are revolutionaries and those are others. The names they call us haven’t “revolutionaries” among them anyway.

Man: I knew who you were that night. You saved me as in the past.

The Ghost: The past. The present. The future.

Man: “Between the sunset and sunrise of one solitary day you have to have a candle, because it is still night-time”. Wasn't it you who said that?

The Ghost: (He gives no answer. He concentrates his gaze on the spot where the Newcomer had been standing. He gazes but he doesn't see anyone. He raises the mask from his face, without changing the direction of his gaze.)

The Young Woman: He's finally come back to life again. God, he was like a ghost!

The Ghost (To himself): Where's Adam.

The Young Woman: (Ironically) In his Paradise.

The Ghost: I can't see him any more.

The Young Woman: Aren't you looking for someone contemporary? Adam!

The Ghost: I was going to tell him something.

The Young Woman: What about?

The Ghost: About what I saw in the fields.

Curtain