e-mail: [email protected] David Lawrence Cade

Posting of this playscript online by the author on his personal web page is intended only for the personal use and enjoyment of visitors to the website: www.geocities.com/dlcehg unless permission is obtained from the playwright, David Lawrence Cade, for use of any of the material for either professional or academic use.

Theater groups who are interested in using all or part of BEFORE THE SKIES WERE NAMED for staged readings or full productions should contact David at [email protected] regarding contractual arrangements to be made. Preferences will be made to groups wishing to produce the play to help raise funds for the arts in Iraq, and for humanitarian aid there. Thank you for your consideration.

CREDIT TO WWW.HISTORY-WORLD.ORG AND THEIR INTERNATIONAL HISTORY PROJECT FOR INVALUABLE MATERIAL ABOUT SUMERIAN LANGUAGE, HISTORY, AND THE SUMERIAN LEGEND OF CREATION.

BEFORE THE SKIES WERE NAMED

A DRAMA IN TWO ACTS

BY DAVID LAWRENCE CADE

ACT TWO, SCENE ONE

It is now dusk on the same day as Act One. There is the glow of sunset in the distance. As Scene One of Act Two progresses, the lighting is to be dimmed gradually until there are only spotlights on the actors. MELINDA is seated on one of the overturned canoes, drinking from a coffee cup. AMAL ENTERS from the roadside area. She is wearing her black chador.

AMAL: There is to be a proclamation.

MELINDA: By the military? What sort?

AMAL: That no one is allowed on the road after nine p.m. tonight. They fear another bomb attack.

MELINDA: We’ve invested too much in your village and the marsh to let this happen. How are your children?

AMAL: Well-fed again, thanks to your agency’s help. I left my elder son in charge. Their father is at the meeting hut.

MELINDA: The mudhif.

AMAL: Yes. We fear the Americans will come after midnight now and cordon off the villages and search every hut and tear our lives apart. They could cut off the life of our village, and who will tell the world?

MELINDA: There are those willing on the path of peace to be disobedient, and we will tell.

(CATHERINE ENTERS.)

CATHERINE: Hello, Amal. Melinda. I managed to get to Nasiriyah before they closed the bureau. I filed my report. I learned that the unit stationed nearby has a fearsome reputation. Their Major Roberts loves conflict. Likes to knock down every Iraqi he contends with.

AMAL: I must tell you then that I saw that American lieutenant shooting at the car two days ago.

CATHERINE: The one with the civilians who were killed? You saw it as well.

AMAL: I did, from my canoe, right over there. No one was firing at the American troops. They drove too fast, and I think it angered the lieutenant.

CATHERINE: Do you mean Lieutenant Rolland?

AMAL: I think that is his name, yes. I told the Major Roberts this afternoon. He said he would record my statement. I wanted to tell you also. The men in the car were not threatening the soldiers.

MELINDA: It’s becoming a tradition. Thank you for telling us.

AMAL: You know then what I know. I hope this does not put you in danger.

CATHERINE: No. I heard of this as well. Abdul put me in touch with two others who knew the dead men. But no one who was so close as over there.

AMAL: Yes, just over there in the marsh. I saw it all.

CATHERINE: There will be a probe.

AMAL: That is what the major said.

MELINDA: I’m glad you came out this evening to share this with us. I didn’t know you had seen it.

AMAL: Tonight I am also looking for something from above. I am looking for a constellation I saw for the first time last night, fashioned like a bow. It was there above the marsh. So beautiful. It was gone by nine p.m. My husband had been showing our sons how to feather an arrow, set it in the string.
He lifted it up toward the sky. I looked. But when I looked back to the bow in the sky, it had been carried off.

MELINDA: In the evening haze perhaps.

AMAL: It was too cold. I began to quiver. My husband made me come inside. Tonight, rumor is that one of the young men will put lightning in front of the Americans. There could be flames.

MELINDA: The war has brought an ever-blazing net to Iraq. I feel encircled within it.

AMAL: You could escape. You could marshal the four winds: south, east, west, north. But we are kept close to the net. For us it is an evil wind.

MELINDA: A tempest. Four winds, seven winds, we call them tornadoes in Texas.

AMAL: Can you face it like our sand storms?

MELINDA: Unfaceable. You cannot face a tornado. You have to run for cover. You cannot face your sand storms. When the winds have been released, no one can advance in the turmoil.

AMAL: We can make the marsh our weapon. We hide in the marsh. It is pitiless how the Americans and the bombers race about, fly about, slaying Iraqis. Their lips drawn back, their teeth carrying poison.

MELINDA: They appear inexhaustible. And can only devastate. (Looking up.) Awesome.

CATHERINE: Yes, terrible.

MELINDA: I meant the heavens tonight. Fouad told me it is known as an. That the Sumerian word anunnaki means "those who from heaven to earth came."

CATHERINE: Anunnaki. Beautiful.

MELINDA: Tomorrow, I plan to arise, even if there is a curfew, and step outside to see the house of the rising sun – ebabbar. Ebabbar is Sumerian for "house of the rising sun."

AMAL: I think that must be the constellation I saw yesterday evening. It was there. I think that is it now at the horizon, shaped like a bow or a crescent.

MELINDA: But you said you lost sight of it.

AMAL: Because I had to go inside the hut. Tomorrow at dawn, I will look as well. If we both see it, we will know it is the ebabbar, "the house of the rising sun."

MELINDA: We’ll step outside early and take the road of the celestial horizon – anur.

CATHERINE: The celestial horizon.

MELINDA: Fouad said that anur means "celestial horizon" in Sumerian.

AMAL: We will work together this way. It will be setting in the west by dawn. I will grasp at this. We will be working together then to save this memory of the stars.

(ABDUL and FOUAD ENTER.)

ABDUL: They thronged about uncle Fahd after he was released.

FOUAD: But only for a minute, as he had to be taken to hospital.

CATHERINE: Your uncle was hurt?

ABDUL: He was tortured by the Americans in the detention center.

MELINDA: How dreadful.

ABDUL: The men drew near and when we saw the bruises and cuts on his feet, and he told us what had happened, there was a strategy then.

FOUAD: His mind was confused. He looked crumpled, and his words were muddled. We helped him into a car and to the clinic. Men marched at the side of the car, their looks strained. The lieutenant who handled the release did not even turn his neck once to look at the anger in the crowd.

ABDUL: The Americans began brandishing their weapons, but there was a flood of men around Sheikh Hammad’s car. He is hiding now in the hospital.

CATHERINE: Hiding?

ABDUL: He fears to leave the hospital now.

FOUAD: That American major and his lieutenant only feign goodwill. Why are they so friendly on the surface, when in their depths they conspire to destroy our fathers, our sheikhs?

CATHERINE: You saw Sheikh Fahd’s feet?

ABDUL: I did. I was one of those who helped him into the hospital. The doctors there, just three of them, are afraid the soldiers will come and tear that apart next.

CATHERINE: I saw a man in Fallujah last month. His name is Rayid Turkli al-Awadi. His sons took me to him. I had to see for myself. He is in his sixties and in a coma since being detained. His sons insisted that their father had been tortured by Americans, that they had beaten his feet so severely. I could still see the bruises. Rayid had had a heart attack or a stroke, and his captors did not give him medical attention. He fell into a coma. His sons don’t believe he will ever come out of it.

ABDUL: Yes, American are using torture on Iraqis.

MELINDA: Wrongful. Bush sought out this evil.

ABDUL: The people in America compound the wickedness.

FOUAD: There is a host of men prepared to die to protect uncle Fahd now. We have weapons.

AMAL: The army has heard this. They could go wild tonight and raid the villages here.

FOUAD: I will lose my temper.

AMAL: The women will be screaming aloud in a passion.

ABDUL: I feel myself shaking now to think of what they did to our uncle.

AMAL: "He will make you to surge upon the earth like a plant. He will return to you there and therein leave you anew." From Surah Seventy-One.

MELINDA: "…Then the sun will give way,

such that the stars will fall,

such that the mountains will be put in movement,

such that the women of the camels will be abandoned,

such that the savage beasts will be reunited in herds,

such that the seas will evaporate,

such that the souls will be coupled."

From Surah Eighty-One.

FOUAD: You know the Quran?

MELINDA: I’m a Muslim, Fouad.

FOUAD: I did not know.

MELINDA: I converted to Islam five years ago, after my divorce. My husband and I were Christian. I was raised a Christian.

ABDUL: You came face to face with some sharp criticism; you told me this morning.

MELINDA: My father could not accept my conversion. He disowned me.

CATHERINE: Oh, how sad.

MELINDA: He died last year. We had not spoken in three years. I could hardly close my lips for crying when I learned he had passed away without coming to peace with me.

ABDUL: Forgiving you for converting to our religion?

MELINDA: I did not understand why he would hold it against me that I converted to a religion of peace. I feel a great peace and love of Allah and found myself through the Quran. I went on hajj two years ago. Since I’m divorced, I had to get the signature of a male relative to satisfy the Saudi government. I have two college degrees and a profession, but I had to get a male relative to grant me permission to go on hajj. My mother said my father would hear nothing of it. So I had to ask my teenage son.

ABDUL: And he gave you his consent.

MELINDA: He did. Isn’t that a scream? There’s nothing in the Quran that says a woman has to obtain permission from a male relative to go on hajj. But since the Saudi government requires this before letting a divorced woman to go to the Kabba, my son agreed to sign their document. He’s in his sophomore year in college now.

(ROBERTS and ROLLAND ENTER.)

This could split Iraq apart.

ROBERTS (throwing down his cap on top of a canoe): On top of the world tonight.

ROLLAND (to ABDUL and FOUAD especially): There were three more American soldiers killed near Ramedi today.

ABDUL: We’ve been in Nasiriyah.

ROLLAND: Breaks me up. Breaks me and the regiment up all the assembled marchers in Baghdad when I was stationed there last year. Our platoon marches in; the rioters begin to panic and turn tail.

ROBERTS: Rolland, enough.

ROLLAND: We’re going to allow you to stay out until nine this evening.

ABDUL: You’ll spare our lives if we don’t flee after nine?

FOUAD (to ROBERTS): Our uncle was tied up, and American soldiers smashed their weapons upon soles of his feet.

ROBERTS: This whole land is a snare. If what your uncle claims is true, it will be investigated.

ABDUL: It is true.

ROBERTS: If it can be proved, the soldiers responsible will be court-martialed.

FOUAD: Confined to prison?

ROLLAND: Discharged and sent back to live in the states.

FOUAD: That sort of punishment.

ROBERTS: Quite a gang you had marching around the clinic. We could be trampled if we went in to check up on your uncle.

ABDUL: What happened to my uncle is beneath you. Some of our tribe counted themselves among the friends of the Americans. No more.

CATHERINE: Will there be another inquiry?

ROBERTS: I’ll put my seal on it.

ABDUL: The tribe will not be submissive after this.

ROLLAND: Quite a foe we have.

ABDUL: We’re not your slaves.

ROLLAND: A captive foe.

ROBERTS: They’re not our captives either, Rolland. How are you this evening, Ms. Carlisle? And you, Mrs. Kramer?

CATHERINE: I carry a can of mace wherever I go these days. I’ve had another day when I was so carried off by the news. My editors called to say that they liked what they saw in my report.

ROBERTS: Where did you report from, if you don’t mind my asking?

CATHERINE: From in front of the clinic in Nasiriyah where Mr. Fahd Hammad is recuperating.

ROLLAND: Greetings. (Aside.) We’ll have to find some presents, gifts. Bribe the journalists.

ROBERTS (to ROLLAND): Give it a rest.

CATHERINE: I marvel at it. How the entire complexion of the marsh has changed since this morning.

ROBERTS (to AMAL): Good evening, ma’am.

AMAL: Good evening, Major Roberts.

ROBERTS: Pleasant evening. The skies. Have you all dined?

AMAL: We had fish. I left some drying by our hut.

CATHERINE: I had kibbe hammoud at a restaurant in Nasiriyah.

ROBERTS (to AMAL): Is this your roof?

AMAL: What?

ROBERTS: The sky?

AMAL: God is holding it up, guarding it for us tonight.

ROBERTS: We do ask that all persons seek out shelter by nine p.m. We could come across another suicide bomber, and my units are bolt upright.

ABDUL: Trigger-happy.

ROBERTS: No escaping that in Iraq.

AMAL: Our dwelling is not far from here. (To CATHERINE and MELINDA.) I have sought out our shrine. (Pointing to the heavens.) There it is. That is the constellation. The one shaped like a crescent.

CATHERINE: Yes, the dimensions are like a crescent.

AMAL: I need to look in on my children now. It is good night to you.

MELINDA: I enjoyed speaking with you this evening, Amal.

AMAL: Rest well.

CATHERINE: Good evening. You too. Rest well.

MELINDA: Good evening.

ABDUL: Good night.

FOUAD: Good night, Amal.

AMAL: Good night to my friends.

(AMAL EXITS.)

ROBERTS: Come along then, lieutenant. (To MELINDA, CATHERINE, FOUAD, and ABDUL.) My enlisted men are eager for the rotation to begin. Come next month, half of us have finished our year in Iraq.

ROLLAND: I have two weeks left. Then it’s home to the states.

ROBERTS: Good night, then. The curfew has to be enforced. Regulations.

MELINDA: Thank you, major.

CATHERINE: Good night, Major Roberts.

ROBERTS: We’ll be leaving then.

ROLLAND: Back to the tents. How I wish we’d stayed at one of the palaces on the Tigris.

ROBERTS: You’ll have to put in for another year and stipulate that as a condition.

ROLLAND: Can you arrange a palace?

ROBERTS: I’m headed to one next week myself.

(ROBERTS and ROLLAND EXIT.)

ABDUL: The heavens are like a large temple that Allah built in his image. Infinite.

FOUAD: Why did Amal refer to a shrine?

MELINDA: I’m not sure. We were talking about the sky, anunnaki.

FOUAD: "Those who from heaven to earth came." Ilu – a god. This night is a shrine created by ilu. A great shrine created by a god who created the sky.

ABDUL: You speak again of the cult centers. You still think this could become the fashion, Sumerian mysticism, what stands for the great gods.

FOUAD: Just that every night in Iraq now is like a shrine. As for the stars, Allah set them up. But the nights and their constellations are like shrines.

MELINDA: What plans have you made for tomorrow, Abdul?

ABDUL: I am still Catherine’s translator, if she still has a need.

CATHERINE: I do indeed, Abdul. I have much yet to learn about the marsh and the controversy surrounding the incident here on the road two days ago and the mistreatment of your uncle.

ABDUL: I will drive with you back to your inn if you like.

CATHERINE: I’d appreciate the escort, yes. Melinda, will you be all right for the night in the guest house in the village?

MELINDA: I have been for over a month. Somehow I feel nothing will go wrong there, nothing astray.

FOUAD: I will walk you back to the guest house, Mrs. Kramer.

MELINDA: Thank you, Fouad. I will be honored. (Sound of gun fire in the distance.)

CATHERINE: Oh, dear. I sounds like it’s coming from the main highway. Do you think we’ll be safe, Abdul?

ABDUL: Let’s call ahead on your satellite phone.

CATHERINE: I think it still works. It’s in the trunk. Melinda, you said you needed to call Austin. Would you like to use it now?

MELINDA: Thank you, yes. The battery on mine gave out last week. Small matter. All the media attention you’re giving us. (To FOAUD.) I’ll be right back, Fouad.

FOUAD: I’ll rest a bit. I think I saw our father building this old canoe when we were just boys.

ABDUL: I will see you later tonight, Fouad. Ms. Carlisle will have quite a story for her listeners.

CATHERINE: Thank you, Abdul.

(ABDUL, CATHERINE and MELINDA EXIT.)

FOUAD (Fixing a stare toward the distance. He opens up his jacket.) I’ll fix one over both ribs. Made of strong bolts, left and right, with the liver to be located at the zenith. I trust you now, Allah, who made the crescent moon appear tonight. You are entrusting my night to my soul. I will designate this the jewel of night, to mark out the days of my past. I will go forth in a corona, make a glow over the land. Some of those American devils with horns will mark out their last night tonight. On the seventh day, or the mid-point, look from the horizon. The stars begin to wane. I am swept along its path, the signs, the bow stars above, the crescent. It is displeasing that the soldiers kill and rob us of our homeland. At the New Year’s Festival, Abdul and mother and father will recall from the days past, the watches of night and day, and why I made my exit in this way. (EXITS.)

ACT TWO, SCENE TWO

The lighting grows rather quickly as the scene progresses, much faster than the lighting was dimmed in Scene One.

MELINDA ENTERS.

MELINDA: Those clouds look like some scud bomb, a dud. Must be jet exhaust. The winds will raise up. The true clouds will billow up, collect above Tell Senkeret. Let His own hand control it.

(AMAL ENTERS.)

I can still see it. Our constellation.

AMAL: I kept my promise to myself. Before dawn. It is still there, our crescent constellation. We had things heaped up from the floor, afraid there would be a raid last night, but none came.

MELINDA: I thank God for the rest I had.

AMAL: The starlight is dimming now. Like when we opened the dikes. At first, like from a spring, the waters gushed out. I could hardly believe me eyes when the men reopened the marshes last year. But they say there is little left behind the dams now. That Syria and Turkey and Iran have dammed up the great rivers.

MELINDA: You have your waterholes at last.

AMAL: I hope no one will again drain off the catchwater. The madan lived off the swamps and fish since before the skies were named.

MELINDA: Look, that fish. Its tail, as it jumped out of the water to catch that fly. Like a cosmic bond with the crescent, the way its body was arching.

AMAL: I must make fast this image of the sky, in my mind.

MELINDA: It is a lovely morning.

AMAL: It will soon be half over, with fixing breakfast and all I have to do. So, our work inside the heavens, in this shrine of the rising sun, extends completely. There it is. The crescent lasted until dawn.

MELINDA: It is like a net spread by Allah, to net heaven and earth. And no knots or coils, or designs by preemptive liars, or rituals created by those who have thrown down the reins against Truth will separate the heaven and earth of God.

AMAL: My husband says that Allah has a tablet of destinies for us. That the war last year was the will of Allah.

MELINDA: Yes, the Arabs have that saying.

AMAL: I will have to go fetch some fresh well water for the children for the cooking. My youngest is on her first reading. She is to go to school. She will have what I could not as a girl.

MELINDA: Thank you for coming over. I must also go to the food relief depot by foot, and it is ten minutes from here.

AMAL: Don’t become ensnared in any foot patrols.

MELINDA: God will disentangle me if I do.

AMAL: Yes. Thank you, Melinda.

MELINDA: Thank you, Amal. (AMAL EXITS.)

MELINDA: Oh, to be led captive in front of the entire village. The poor man. If only they’d all smash their weapons into the ground. (CATHERINE and ABDUL ENTER.)

MELINDA (sounding a bit surprised): Good morning, Catherine and Abdul.

CATHERINE: The BBC is sending a film crew out early. They called me around five a.m. and asked me to be here with Abdul.

MELINDA: When are they to arrive?

CATHERINE: Within the hour. They want to have on camera footage of villagers who had relatives killed in the car that was fired upon. The U.S. army still insists that it could have been resistance fighters from among the desert brush, or behind those mounds, firing on the car.

MELINDA: Did you tell your director about Amal?

CATHERINE: I did.

MELINDA: She was just here.

CATHERINE: I see her over by their hut. It’s not too far. We can call for her after the film crew get here.

MELINDA: She said she was about to make breakfast. (To ABDUL.) How will your tribe feel about seeing images of themselves in television? Fouad says he has a satellite TV.

ABDUL: He does. And a video recorder. In fact, he left me this before going out this morning. (Holds a video cassette in one hand.) I’m not sure what it is. It looks blank. (To CATHERINE.) With this documentation by the BBC, what happened here at this spot will never be forgotten in the future.

CATHERINE: You think they’ll have a positive reception from the villagers?

ABDUL: Yes. The freedom you enjoyed all your life, freedom of the press. We all want that now in Iraq. One of the few freedoms the Americans allow us.

MELINDA: Oh look. That army jeep. It’s Major Roberts. Does he know about the filming?

CATHERINE: Not from me. I hope he doesn’t try to further intimidate the witnesses.

(Sounds of a jeep driving up on a dirt road offstage, gears grinding, brakes, doors slamming.)

Just the two of them. Where’s Lieutenant Rolland?

ROBERTS (offstage): Stay by the jeep. This won’t take long. (ENTERS.)

MELINDA: Good morning.

ROBERTS: Good morning, Mrs. Kramer. Ms. Carlisle. Mr. Hammad, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.

ABDUL: Not my uncle?

ROBERTS: I’m not aware of any change there. No. It’s my duty to inform you that within the last hour, before dawn, your brother walked up to a guard house at our desert outpost and blew himself up.

ABDUL: Oh!

CATHERINE: This is a nightmare.

ROBERTS: It was observed by some of our men under an electric lamp we have set up. He took his own life and Lieutenant Rolland’s. Several other soldiers were injured.

ABDUL: I’m sorry.

ROBERTS: Yes. So am I. I’m sorry to have been to one to have to tell you.

CATHERINE: What sort of bomb?

ROBERTS: Not sure. Highly explosive material. There’s not much left of the two dead.

ABDUL: Must I come with you?

ROBERTS: We’re not set up to chauffeur you over there.

ABDUL: Exactly where was this?

ROBERTS: Like I said, at our outpost. With all the tents.

ABDUL: I know where it is.

MELINDA: So do I.

CATHERINE: You can borrow my car, Abdul, to get there.

MELINDA: I’ll go with you.

ABDUL: No, but I must tell mother and father. They will want to go.

MELINDA: This is so sad. How sad.

ABDUL: Will you have to question me or my parents?

ROBERTS: Not at this time. You’re free to go about your business. We don’t blow up the huts of relatives of suicide bombers.

ABDUL: Thank you.

ROBERTS: Good bye then. I’ll put in my report that I informed you today in front of these witnesses.

CATHERINE: Of course.

MELINDA: Thank you, Major Roberts.

ROBERTS: Good bye. (EXITS. Sound of the jeep starting offstage.)

ABDUL (collapsing to his knees and crying): We would kneel together in the mosque in Nasiriyah, our feet touching. The whole assembly of Muslims collected together would prostrate themselves, and then stand, and he would bow, saying in a whisper, "Yes, Allah is merciful indeed."

CATHERINE (aside): This day will be enveloped in dust.

MELINDA (crying, bending over ABDUL): What do your tribe wear when there is a death in the family?

ABDUL: Whatever garments we have.

MELINDA: I would like to go with you to your parents home, to the inner chamber.

ABDUL: He did not tell me. Fouad was at peace with himself last night. He said, his last words, that he was at Allah’s side, full of obedience. It is too like a sacrificial bull. There was a place for him in all that exists of God. (Standing. TO CATHERNE.) They will make their voices heard, the beloved of the madan. Now Allah is indeed Fouad’s king.

CATHERINE: Trust in Him.

ABDUL: Now I must be the provider for the madan. These bombed out craters will not be the only shrines of us.

MELINDA: It’s dawn at last. The waters look sea-green.

CATHERINE: You must go to your parent’s private quarters, Abdul. Will you let me know how they take learning of what Fouad did, please?

ABDUL: Yes. He has found his night’s resting place. In the heart of the marshlands. We will find here our night’s resting place forever.

END OF ACT TWO

BEFORE THE SKIES WERE NAMED

A DRAMA IN TWO ACTS

BY DAVID LAWRENCE CADE

e-mail: [email protected] David Lawrence Cade

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