ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

BY

HASSAN: Baghdad is early in awakening today.

MOHAMMED: And traffic is already at a standstill.

HASSAN: We can make it from here to Kadimiyah.

MOHAMMED: A long walk from Central Baghdad. All the processions. Just as well we parked the car and walked this far. This could fill up quickly with pilgrims before they continue on to the tombs of the imams.

HASSAN: The day is sacred. Ashura, even by that name the Shiia announce that their rights in Iraq be acknowledged at large, the first pilgrimage allowed since the time of Saddam.

MOHAMMED: It has been made public, freely observed, not only by fragments as before, as if our people were mere specimens, not to be heard among the vast tribes of Islam. This is the people’s garden, here at the Freedom Monument. They make free use of this space. Now we are free to make use of Ashura. You’ll have lots to film on the route to the shrine.

HASSAN: There’s Pasha car. Over there, stuck in the middle of the circle. What a traffic jam. He left these notes about today’s coverage of the festival. Didn’t think we’d see him until later. Here. It’s a journalist’s dream, like finding riches of ore in a mine.

MOHAMMED: Yes, and none of that syrupy coverage on the new American-financed TV network. It’s turban-shaped. I mean their reporting. Cheap and fizzy. More like one of those tulip scandals from the rose garden in Washington than honest reporting.

HASSAN (looking up at the monument): Do you see a journalist up there in the stone reliefs?

MOHAMMED (looking upwards): One who could be a journalist. (Pointing upwards.) The figure on the far right, with his hands clutched over his head, like Arab reporters detained by the Americans here, or in Spain, and where next?

HASSAN: Good they let us begin broadcasting again.

MOHAMMED: It was absurd for the Governing Council to single us out for expulsion from Iraq. The American TV networks routinely air anything we first air about tapes of bin Laden, and no one suggests they censor the evening news from New York.

HASSAN: Decidedly. Isn’t that Hanan?

MOHAMMED: On the bench, yes. Where’s her bodyguard?

HASSAN: Her cousin. Must be in their car. She’s talking with that elderly man. He looks rather slumped over. Can you see him?

MOHAMMED: Yes. Looks like she’s offering him help in getting up. He must be feeling a strain. Do you suppose he’s headed for the shrine?

HASSAN: Somehow, yes. How long a walk do we have left?

MOHAMMED: An hour. We could be there within an hour. Better than two hours driving in all this pollution.

HASSAN: I think I should take some film here, of the crowd, and of Hanan if she sees us. (Waving.)

MOHAMMED: She saw us. (Waving.)

HASSAN: I’ll focus on the pilgrims milling about.

MOHAMMED: Gladly. We’ll turn a phrase or two with that man, if he’s headed our way. Good that I locked my car. We’re all set once you’ve taken your pictures.

HASSAN (pointing to the streetside) : Look, some spring vegetation. The trees are budding.

MOHAMMED: Over by that courtyard.

HASSAN: Not much growing in the desert this time of year. What was there this time last year was burnt in the bombings, plowed under the Coalition tanks, fed to their chickens, or trampled on their twenty-one day hike to Baghdad.

MOHAMMED: We can hope those four-legged creatures from the American plains won’t trample us out of existence, like they have their native peoples.

HASSAN: Heavy-handed and heavy-footed, and they still refuse to take off their shoes when they inspect the mosques in our district.

MOHAMMED: Yes, even the Golden Mosque. A bit lower than heaven with their exalted AK –47’s, passing the qibla and madrasas as if they expect to find one of Saddam’s abandoned thrones to claim and ship back to America on the sly.

HASSAN: They commit sacrilege, degrade our rituals, and turn the Governing Council against artists, actors, all of us.

MOHAMMED: Hassan, for an artist you handle that camera well.

HASSAN: I’m wrapped up in it now. Those dervish Americans in combat gear couldn’t pry it out of my hands.

MOHAMMED: Like a paintbrush. But you’ve told the galleries you don’t need their help.

HASSAN: They’re censoring Iraqi artists to please the CPA. Enough to make a struggling Iraqi artist want to emigrate to Jordan.

MOHAMMED: It’s pure sectarian violence now, and Imam Habib let out a lament yesterday, when I was with him and some scholars, about the council, the demands by the Americans to separate us from our own religion when the constitution is written.

HASSAN: Another four thousand Kurds marched yesterday.

MOHAMMED: Allah heard them uttering their demands. The Chaldean translator I told you about said he wishes an artist would build a giant sculpture devoted to the times: one figure for the Kurds, one for the Sunni, the Shiia, and the Christian.

HASSAN: Where would he display it?

MOHAMMED: At the Fourteenth of Ramadan square.

HASSAN: Humbly I offer my services. I could use a commission.

MOHAMMED: Wouldn’t want to work yourself to exhaustion like Jewad Salim.

HASSAN: No. I would not want my wife to have to finish what I started, if I died before completing my monument.

MOHAMMED: Such an artist would have to be obedient either to his conscience, and portray what he believes, or too reverently he could have his work censored by the CPA and their daily briefings. They constantly monitor the media now, and the arts.

HASSAN: Yes, even the dreams we bring forth at night.

MOHAMMED: The main reason for the block raids after midnight, to deprive us all of sleep. You could use a commission like the mural on the Kadimiyah shrine.

HASSAN: Or these sculptures from after the Revolution.

MOHAMMED: Yes, we could have unemployed artists painting murals all over Iraq. (Waving.) Pasha’s getting out of his car.

HASSAN (waving): Another walking companion. When I was standing there yesterday, beneath the two domes over the tombs, I heard some men talking about the sense of shelter there, inside the walls, which break the cold winter wind. To enter the shrine and not to fear. Epitomizes Iraq today – unchanging from centuries past, the Quran, yet teeming with this nursery, this daily idea that turns Iraq into a temple, a generation after generation temple of fathers and children and wives named out, countless millions, all of us overflowing with nationalism, a race, but the person of Islam transcends it all. At Kadimiyah, something divine stands instead of the chaos – today. Standing inside, I’ve listened to the imams hour after hour, Abdullah at my left side.

MOHAMMED: When we get there, by the wall I will say a word to you. (Calling offstage.) Pasha.

(PASHA ENTERS.)

HASSAN: Good morning, Pasha.

PASHA: Good morning, Mohammed. Hassan. (Embracing MOHAMMED and HASSAN.) Ideal spot for filming the pilgrims, Hassan.

HASSAN: Thank you.

MOHAMMED: Well, managing editor, I told you if you left the bureau, even this early, traffic would be snarled.

PASHA: And you, Mohammed. Nothing phases you.

MOHAMMED: There’s a story everywhere in Baghdad.

PASHA: It could be sunset before we drove another mile. What’s Hanan doing over there?

MOHAMMED: She must have left her cousin out there in the circle.

PASHA: Somewhere out there. You think so? He’s lost to me if he’s out there. This is massive. What a snarl. If I had a satellite dish we could broadcast from here.

MOHAMMED: The virtue of the Internet age. The Arab world, all its virtues, and all its sins, so much so, and a news broadcast wipes away yesterday, pronouncing it history, merely part of the life and actions of the changeless.

PASHA: How is your art, Hassan?

HASSAN: Love and death. I love my art, but it is death before any gallery will show it.

PASHA: Enchanted with other artists.

HASSAN: They’re tempted by money, and the birth of this trend - casting the Coalition and the war last year as the great journey - and when they try to censor my view of the invasion as the night of slaughter, they close the entry, telling me my work is too darkish, too many prickles in the oil, or it would work in another country but not Iraq.

MOHAMMED: If not in this soil, then where?

PASHA: We are left to mourn, when artists are free to express themselves, but the galleries are afraid of offending the CPA.

HASSAN: I mourn not for my art. Nor for my brother artists. But because this venue has been taken from us now by self-censorship.

PASHA: I will look for your work in the most stylish Baghdad venues, the sort frequented by men like the gentleman walking over here beside Hanan. (Calling offstage.) Hanan! Can we help you? (To MOHAMMED and HASSAN.) And she’s not wearing any head cover again.

(HANAN and KHALIL ENTER.)

HANAN (holding KHALIL’s arm gently): Good morning, Pasha. I want you to meet Khalil.

PASHA (embracing KHALIL): Sir, this young lady works for my news network. As do these gentlemen.

KHALIL: Khalil Omar al-Juburi. I am honored to meet you.

PASHA: Pasha Hazim Baqir. This is Hassan Qasim Harbi and Mohammed Samed al-Mutalibi.

HASSAN: Good morning, sir. You were with those pilgrims by that bus.

MOHAMMED: It’s an honor.

KHALIL: Thank you. And for me as well. Yes. Our bus driver gave up. Stalled in traffic and refunded us our fares. I was to go with my daughter and grandson to Kadimiyah. She took him into a shop, over there, to buy him a treat. Now, I’m not sure if I’ll make it, and I so hoped to enter the Golden Mosque at last today.

HANAN (to HASSAN, MOHAMMED, and PASHA): Seldom have I seen or known such a man. He was in exile in Iran for thirty years, returned last year in October to be with his family and to fulfill a vow he once made to his grandfather.

MOHAMMED (to KHALIL): Where do you live now?

KHALIL: In al-Hurriya. I see the logo of your network on your briefcase. My wife and I watch you. (To MOHAMMED.) I saw you interviewing one of the men released from Abu-Ghraib.

MOHAMMED: Yes. One of many such assignments.

KHALIL: Will the Americans prosecute the soldiers who beat him?

MOHAMMED: Too often the only punishment, if you can call it that, is to discharge them from the Army and ship the offenders back to the states.

PASHA: Mohammed has been with our network since its inception.

MOHAMMED (to KHALIL): Our viewers would want to hear of such a soul, your return from exile.

KHALIL: Thank you. I’ve already told Hanan why I headed for the shrine today. She can give you this. That my grandfather was pious-minded and as a worshipper asked me as a boy to make a pilgrimage to the Kadimiyah shrine. It was seventy-five years ago. Today, with peasant and townsmen alike, from all over Iran and Iraq, I wish to pass under the portal and join the observances.

HASSAN: You underwent some grievance, under Saddam? You left Iraq before observing Ashura.

KHALIL: Yes, that was partly it. I was in exile in Iran until after the war last April. Over thirty years away from my homeland. Today, there are so many of the commonweal – men, women, and children free from any woe -come like in a marathon from neighboring lands, and there at last, I want to see the shrine and pray to Allah to unite our land, as I promised I would when I was just a boy. But the main reason for my delay is that we are Sunni.

HASSAN: Oh.

KHALIL: My grandfather wanted me to visit Kadimiyah, the tombs of Imam al-Kazim and Imam al-Jawad, to make peace with the Shiia. (To HASSAN.) Are you from Baghdad?

HASSAN: I grew up in Hillah. I live near the National Theatre.

MOHAMMED: And I, at my newspaper desk.

PASHA: And I, when we aren’t out of the country having offended the Americans with honest reporting, am everywhere – studio, editing in front of my computer, press conferences. And now it seems half my days are spent stuck in Baghdad traffic.

KHALIL (to HASSAN and MOHAMMED): I have dwelt longer upon these plains than the two of you combined. (To PASHA.) You sir, by your greying beard, I would say are much older than my son-in-law, but must have been just a young man when Nasb al-Hurriya was completed.

PASHA: Just entering my first year in college in Egypt. I saw this for the first time during the First Gulf War and marvelled at sculptures six meters high, so massive. Such a tragedy Salim died at age forty-one.

KHALIL: I knew the man.

HANAN: You knew Jewad Salim?

KHALIL: Yes. As did my grandfather. Salim was just a few years older than me. I would visit here, after his masterpiece had begun to take shape, and watch for when another of the fourteen figures had been put in place. Such incredible bronze work. So modern, yet so like the work of an Assyrian or Babylonian master. (To HANAN.) You know my grandfather’s writing.

HANAN: There is a volume of his work in my father’s library.

KHALIL (to HASSAN, MOHAMMED, and PASHA): I am a scion of Shihab al-Juburi.

HASSAN: I know the name.

KHALIL: He was an artist and a poet.

HASSAN: It is an honor to meet you.

PASHA (to KHALIL): Is there anything you need?

KHALIL: Thank you, no. Your network is shaping the Mideast. You should feel proud.

PASHA: We returned here after the war. Our offices were ransacked by American troops in May. They subdued one of our reporters and arranged for his extradition to Saudi Arabia. The Governing Council acts like they have measured out a little dole to us, allowing us to begin broadcasting again, and all the time the sixth column, the Americans, fanning the flames of prejudice against us, expecting us to hide our faces, bow our heads to them.

KHALIL: Quite a sacrifice, every time the regime changes in Iraq.

PASHA (to HANAN): Who are those two women you were speaking with? They’re looking our way as if they need our help.

HANAN: Two women who I met at the Iraqi Women’s Federation. (Waving. Gesturing to come closer.) They felt rather subdued at the news about restrictions on women’s rights in the new constitution. Aminah, she’s an Iraqi who lives in Chicago with her husband. They’re involved with the peace movement. They have a boy just four. Colleen is also a peace activist from Chicago, here on an assignment.

KHALIL (to HANAN): My daughter and grandson are over there now by your friends.

HASSAN: We were to leave for Kadimiyah within the hour, to observe the pilgrimage. Perhaps we could drive you and your family there.

KHALIL: You will have a crowd to contend with.

MOHAMMED: We are to meet some colleagues there. (To HASSAN.) If we can find them.

KHALIL: We inherited the land that in nineteen twenty-four was destined to escape the hold of the British and French. Today, they have us in their grip again, this time the British and the Americans. My daughter Noor is to take my grandson Ali by the hand this morning to the shrine. She wants to give thanks for his return. We were so frantic. He was kidnapped last month.

(AMINAH, COLLEEN, NOOR, and ALI ENTER.)

HANAN: Here they are. (To AMINAH and COLLEEN.) These are the journalists I was telling you about.

AMINAH: Good morning.

HASSAN, MOHAMMED, and PASHA: Good morning.

COLLEEN: Good morning, sirs. I’m Colleen Blair.

PASHA: From Chicago.

COLLEEN: Yes.

PASHA: Pasha Hazim Baqir. I’m director of the Baghdad bureau of our network.

NOOR: Father. I saw you were in good company so treated Ali to another ice cream cone.

ALI: I am glad we went into that store.

KHALIL: I loved ice cream when I was your age.

PASHA: How old is the boy?

ALI: Five.

NOOR: Yes, five.

HASSAN (to AMINAH): I remember you.

AMINAH: Hassan, how nice to see you again.

HANAN (to AMINAH): You know each other?

AMINAH (to HANAN): Yes. We have academic friends in common.

HANAN (to PASHA and MOHAMMED) This is Aminah Inas al-Safey.

AMINAH: Good to meet you. We gave up on the traffic. No matter. (To COLLEEN.) We might as well stay here. (To PASHA.) We’re speaking to Iraqis about the constitution and the handover of power this summer.

COLLEEN: And the upcoming anniversary of the invasion. (To PASHA.) Where were you headed?

PASHA: Kadimiyah. I have half the Baghdad bureau there to report on the Ashura festival. Hassan and Mohammed were to get there ahead of me and handle the logistics.

HASSAN: With Mohammed, who warned me we wouldn’t get much further than this.

MOHAMMED: Beautiful morning. (Shaking hands with COLLEEN and AMINAH.) Mohammed Samed al-Mutalibi. We have just met Mr. Khalil Omar al-Juburi, who had just spoken of the kidnapping of his grandson.

PASHA (to KHALIL): Then would you allow Hanan an interview?

KHALIL (to HANAN): You can have your interview.

HANAN: When? Here?

KHALIL: Why not later today at your office?

HANAN: All right.

KHALIL (to NOOR): Now that you have finished at the shop, will you drive me to Kadimiyah?

NOOR: Yes. We can go by car. It’s not a long walk to our house.

PASHA: All of us pilgrims in the name of the press and peace.

AMINAH: Yes, and peace.

KHALIL: For the sake of my grandson, my dearest wish is that there be peace in our land at last. He’s a dear boy with his eyes wide open.

HASSAN (to KHALIL): Kidnapped?

PASHA (to ALI): Can you talk to us about what happened? (To NOOR.) Is it all right with you?

NOOR: Yes, of course. You’re not afraid so much, Ali?

ALI: No. I’m afraid for all my friends now. I was taken twice.

KHALIL: Twice.

COLLEEN: How sad.

HASSAN: How long were you missing?

ALI: A week.

KHALIL: A week. That was the second time.

HASSAN (to ALI): You’re a brave boy.

ALI: Thank you.

COLLEEN: There’s a vehicle making its way through the traffic jam with no objections.

MOHAMMED: Look at that.

PASHA: Nothing like a tank with a machine gun to part the cars along the al-Jumhourriya Bridge.

COLLEEN: The drivers are sure getting out of its way. Most Iraqis are hoping for a quick divorce.

PASHA: Hmm?

COLLEEN: No one asked you.

HASSAN: No, we didn’t choose those virtuoso princes in army fatigues with their war screams as our lords.

HANAN: They’re pulling up.

KHALIL: This is the rule of the occupation.

HASSAN: Hear their commandments.

PASHA: I’ve seen this one before at the bureau.

(KARL and SIMON ENTER.)

KARL (to PASHA): Sir.

PASHA: Good morning, captain.

KARL: Someone in the crowd threw a rock at my corporal here. He was seated atop the tank.

PASHA: We saw. I didn’t see anything hit your tank. No one here to blame.

KARL: Is blamable. On somebody out there. (To HANAN.) Good morning. (To the others.) We were told to be on our guard here at this square. Informants. You never know what to heed. We got here in haste.

PASHA: It’s been peaceful.

KARL (to HASSAN, gesturing to KHALIL): Is this your father?

HASSAN: Just met this good man today.

NOOR (hugging KHALIL): This is my father.

KARL: So choose to go about your business. We’re to patrol the area. Come on, Simon, over by this. (Pointing to the square.) What is this?

PASHA: Liberation Square.

KARL: I knew that from when one of your ministers spoke to a crowd here last month. What’s that lower level?

MOHAMMED: You can call it the lower level. This wall here is the Nasb al-Hurriya. The Freedom Monument.

KARL: I can see that. Sort of a royal presence, huh?

KHALIL: It was built after the monarchy was deposed in nineteen fifty-eight.

KARL: Wondering if insurgents could hide under the street there, on this lower level, and shoot at us, lying at our feet.

SIMON: Lots of bright new shiny cars out there. Shame all you hear is cursing and shouting and horns honking. We call it road rage back home.

HASSAN: Nothing like the sweet quiet of the As-Safawi mosque.

KARL: Yeah. Sure would be nice to journey through some groves and pleasant woodland towns rather than every spot desert or those palms. We pass from checkpoint to checkpoint.

PASHA: Are you setting up a checkpoint here?

KARL: If we have to. (To SIMON.) Well, mind the pious Brahmans’ feet. They’re off to make some sort of offering.

MOHAMMED: They’re pilgrims. Mullahs, imams; no Brahmans.

KARL: Sure. (To SIMON.) Something else to visit place by place, pass through every haunt and terrorist hideout, and see all these people returning. (To PASHA.) What’s that language they’re speaking? I can handle the Arabic.

KHALIL: Farsi.

KARL: You speak it?

KHALIL: I lived in exile for thirty years in Iran. Yes, I speak Farsi.

SIMON (looking toward the square): What are those women in black doing, bending over, touching the ground with their foreheads?

HANAN: It’s a ritual.

SIMON: From where?

HANAN: Islam.

KARL (to SIMON): I’ll give you time to speak with them later. Better check out if we can even see the whole square from our tank.

PASHA: You’ve made traffic worse, where you parked it.

KARL (to PASHA): Look, you’ve got your freedom, freedom to promote your radical movements.

PASHA: Even for that. We do not sponsor terrorism or the insurgency.

KARL (to PASHA): I hear you’re from the Persian Gulf.

PASHA: Yes.

MOHAMMED: We’re Iraqis.

HANAN: We’re all Iraqis. We work for the network.

KARL (to KHALIL): And you? What do you do?

(KHALIL is silent a moment.)

SIMON (to KHALIL): You’re being bid to speak.

PASHA (to SIMON): Softly. He’s in his eighties.

SIMON: Not blind or deaf.

KHALIL (to SIMON): No. My only son had not come of age when this monument was built. (To KARL.) I am a grandfather.

PASHA (to KARL): You’re abusing his infirmity.

KARL: Oh sad, like we’re the enemy and you’re the betrayed. Come on, corporal. We’re banished from the monument.

SIMON: We can check out what’s beneath the shade of this circular roof.

(KARL and SIMON EXIT.)

PASHA: They fled into the crowd.

HANAN: Our readers and listeners, to them, it’s worth this.

MOHAMMED: Worth that brahman-style captain and his love of horse-play with unarmed civilians, feet of clay, painting the walls of Baghdad with our blood.

KHALIL: This day is of so fair a birth, we must be wise and patient.

COLLEEN: It takes the patience of a liberal mind to go up against the American military.

PASHA (answering his cell phone): Surprised I haven’t had more calls while we were out here. (Speaking into the cell phone.) Pasha Baqir. Control yourself. When?

HASSAN (to MOHAMMED, looking at PASHA): For the love of Allah, there’s passion.

PASHA (over cell phone): How many lives?

COLLEEN: Oh, dear.

PASHA: It must be chaos. (To the others.) There’s been a series of bombings in Karbala.

KHALIL: Oh.

ALI: What is the man saying, grandfather?

KHALIL: It is the world, Ali. Your mother and father will tell you of its faults.

PASHA (over cell phone): I cannot hear you now. What’s that sound? Sirens? Ten minutes ago. Oh, to have been forbidden for thirty-five years, and so many to perish. (To the others.) Several suicide bombings, coordinated, near the Imam Hussein shrine. (Over the phone.) Several huge blasts.

KHALIL (to NOOR): I would this end, this part of Ali’s heritage.

COLLEEN (to HANAN): These things done, are done forever.

HANAN: Forever is becoming a frequent occurrence in Iraq.

PASHA (over phone): Help those who are injured if you can. Were any of our crew injured? Oh! And I chose him for the Karbala post. Has anyone at the shrine spoken to the crowd? What did they say?

KHALIL (to NOOR): This is my mind. We must make our path to Kadimiyah. I once thought it a virtue to wait, since we are Sunni.

NOOR: It would be a long drive. We can walk back home and try the car.

HANAN (to KHALIL and NOOR): My cousin has found an opening in the traffic. That’s him waving.

COLLEEN: That’s where the crowd is trying to cross the road.

HANAN (to NOOR): My cousin and I could try to make it to Kadimiyah for you.

KHALIL (to NOOR): Give your child a hug. (Sighing.) What must be, must be. I will give this day to the memory of my own grandfather, and if we are free to travel onward, I am prepared.

HASSAN (to PASHA): You’re our director. So light out. On a day of Ashura, we can set forth on foot.

PASHA: In the middle of the street, in Karbala, the bodies are like mats woven of grass.

AMINAH: How many have been hurt?

PASHA: The pilgrims were pacing along with slow steps to the spot. Then the bombs. Sayyid thinks over a hundred have been killed. So many from other countries and to be greeted like this.

KHALIL (to NOOR): Allah gave us this day. I can proceed in a minute. First for a bit of rest on the earth, and a seat over there in the square, and some water in a jar.

(Huge explosions heard in the distance.)

COLLEEN: What is this day bringing?

PASHA: It’s from Kadimiyah.

(Another loud explosion from the same direction. Voices of the crowd offstage, cries of alarm.)

MOHAMMED: That tells it all.

HASSAN (filming the crowd): I’ve got to stay fixed on the scene here.

PASHA: This will be an eye full.

(KARL and SIMON ENTER.)

KARL: I’ve got to take it according to regulations now. (To HASSAN.) You know the law. Would you put that down?

PASHA: He’s entitled to film. We have a license.

KARL: There’s been some carnage. I got it over my satellite phone.

PASHA: I saw.

KARL: It’s at the Golden Mosque.

MOHAMMED: That’s at the Kadimiyah Shrine.

KARL: Same place, huh?

MOHAMMED: Yes.

KARL: I don’t want to have to force that camera from your hands.

PASHA: Why would you? Continue filming, Hassan.

KARL: Hermits and country dwellers, all of you?

PASHA: What right do you have to ask us to stop filming here? The crowd is growing mad.

KARL: All right, keep it.

(SIMON raises his rifle.)

PASHA (to HASSAN): All right. Stop filming. (To KARL.) Unfitting. This is the Freedom Monument.

KARL: We can arrange some other housing for you.

COLLEEN: Oh, grief.

PASHA: Seems your corporal could lower his rifle.

KARL: Enough, Simon.

(SIMON lowers his rifle.)

KHALIL (to NOOR): My mind is shaken.

PASHA (to KARL): I won’t deny you the chance, next time.

KARL (to SIMON): Come on. Back to the tank. When I put by an order, I expect civilians to do as I say. You could have incited a disturbance. Crowds react to being on camera. Without it, they’re friendly. Once you foreign reporters start filming, crowds go blind, like a state of anarchy.

PASHA: The crowd, and the pilgrims making their way across the bridge, answer for themselves. (To HASSAN.) I’m sorry we had to forego this. (Looking off stage.) I know this man. He’s with the Coalition.

(JOHANNSEN ENTERS.)

JOHANNSEN: Captain Anderson.

KARL: What have you, Mr. Johanssen?

JOHANNSEN: More insurgents. Coordinated suicide bombings, at the Kadimiyah Shrine, with scores killed and wounded, and almost simultaneous with those in Karbala.

PASHA: Mr. Johannsen. I want to lodge a protest. This captain ordered my associate here to stop filming.

JOHANNSEN (to KARL): Why?

KARL: All the blood. They could incite the crowd.

JOHANNSEN (to KARL): I believe they have the right to film, if they aren’t interfering with the military.

KARL: Oh, let it be.

PASHA: Then Hassan can resume filming?

KARL: So he will.

HASSAN (beginning filming the crowd again): Welcome. You’re our guests.

AMINAH (to JOHANNSEN): I’m Aminah Inas al-Safey.

JOHANNSEN: Peter Johannsen. With the CPA. How can I help you?

AMINAH: I’m from Chicago.

JOHANNSEN: Sounded like flawless English for a local.

AMINAH: I’m Iraqi. Living in America with my husband. He’s from Jordan. When will the Coalition put a stop to the bombings?

COLLEEN: Yes.

KHALIL (to NOOR): I’d be glad to go home now.

JOHANNSEN: When the sires of the terrorists depart the land. We’re up to our neck and arms in detainees.

MOHAMMED: We want self-government.

JOHANNSEN: You’ll have it.

MOHAMMED: And peace.

JOHANNSEN: At your service.

COLLEEN (to AMINAH): I can hardly restrain myself.

KHALIL (to HASSAN and MOHAMMED): I was so mindful to take delight in this holy day. Now the wise words of my grandfather. That while in the deep forest, let this quiet life flow. Be swift in the heart, by day and night, for men of dreadful words and a day of doom are bethinking who should die.

JOHANNSEN (to KHALIL): Sir, I’m sorry for what has happened in Karbala and Baghdad today.

KHALIL: Thank you then. I hope my daughter and grandson will never suffer such a fate.

PASHA: We’ll be foregoing food and sleep for several days, no doubt.

JOHANNSEN (to KARL): Captain, you have the heavy task of crowd control.

PASHA: You should try being a traffic cop. Those we need.

KARL: Hardly what I set myself to do here.

KHALIL: I made a vow. It must be kept.

PASHA (to JOHANNSEN): Before you and your aides move on. Filming is not forbidden here?

JOHANNSEN: That’s a judgment call for the captain. I can’t overrule the military during a riot.

PASHA: It’s bewilderment. Not a riot.

JOHANNSEN (to KARL): If a crowd of the pilgrims gathers over there, I’d like to speak with them.

KHALIL (his palms clasped): Softly the morning prayers.

KARL: A lowly salute to the Coalition from time to time wouldn’t hurt. (To JOHANNSEN.) Don’t know what sort of answer you’ll get if you speak now.

(JOHANNSEN, KARL, and SIMON EXIT.)

KHALIL (to AMINAH and COLLEEN): Be it well with you.

COLLEEN: And with you, Mr. Al-Juburi.

PASHA (to HASSAN): Good work of yours.

HASSAN: I hope it may be well.

MOHAMMED: Fateful hour.

HANAN: What was awaiting us at Kadimiyah, if we hadn’t been delayed?

KHALIL: It was foretold.

NOOR: Come, now, father. We must home to eat something. You can visit the shrine another day.

KHALIL: Not if the sun sinks this evening on my last day. (To PASHA, HASSAN and MOHAMMED, and gesturing toward the monument.) Those figures, to the left, with the loads on their shoulders. Unto whom are they carrying those sacks?

HASSAN: It’s part of the poetry.

MOHAMMED: They go not alone.

KHALIL: That one facing the square. He seems to say, "Let me come too.

I cannot be apart from you today."

HASSAN: Nor any day.

KHALIL: They seem to say, the ones with the burdens, "Will you walk with us? We are not weak or weary."

COLLEEN: It is like the pilgrims of Ashura. All lined up.

AMINAH: The bronzes?

COLLEEN: Yes.

KHALIL: I have so great a heart to go with them. There. You can see some crossing the bridge. They’ll continue on to Kadimiyah to help the injured.

HASSAN: I say the figures with the burdens on their shoulders go to the aid of the one just right of the center, bending low.

KHALIL: Yes. They go straight to him. They have gathered fruits. Like the pilgrims, they take leave of home, that they be with him. He is like Imam Hussein. Sacrificed.

NOOR: Let us go home now, father.

KHALIL: A year has almost rolled by since the invasion. Surely the Americans will go. They do not understand the pilgrimage. Iraq does not bloom under them. They turn Iraq into a chimera. They invent the Sunni Triangle, as if we are outcasts in our own land. The military treat us like a myth, a creature part Shiia, Sunni, Kurdish, that doesn’t even know itself. (To HANAN.) I have the will to speak with you now.

HANAN: The interview?

KHALIL: Yes.

HANAN (to NOOR): Could you bring your father to the news bureau later this afternoon?

NOOR: I don’t mind. I will bring Ali.

KHALIL (to NOOR): Let it be as she asks. (To HANAN.) Have a care. We can be there at four today.

HANAN (to PASHA): If you’ll permit us the use of the recording studio.

PASHA: Yes. I’ll arrange it.

KHALIL: We will go then. The monument. What an aching heart when I think of Salim, all these soaring figures, burned out, never to gaze on it in completion.

HASSAN: He had a great eye.

KHALIL: To look on him, who was to die before he could finish this.

Always in his mind, he was walking about, guarding some new vision.

I think this procession above us is the language of the pilgrims.

PASHA: How the language of the pilgrims?

KHALIL: Never thinking of what hour they must die. Always moving toward Karbala and Najaf and Kadimiyah. Even waiting thirty-five years, and some basket full of explosives waiting for those gathered. Still, they have the sacred day. They creep along, some moaning feebly. Brows burning, too weak for work, their veins throbbing, but their blood runs with fire. It is as if these bronze figures were plunged into my brain. The pilgrims can never lie down. They are always upon their feet, hastening nearer to the shrines. That is their language, whether they speak Farsi, or Arabic, or any tongue. Into your quick arms, Noor. (To HANAN.) This is the day the language of the pilgrims never ends. Ashura, the fixed date, and a dreadful shade is cast, garments red with blood, and the vast body of pilgrims speaks its language – that of motion, the movement of Islam - tremendous. Gaze upon them, Ali.

ALI: I see so many in black, with black flags, and red and green flags.

KHALIL: Heed their movement. They see Allah. It makes them more than mortal, for the day.

PASHA: Back to the office.

KHALIL (to HANAN): I will come for this interview. Even if I am at the point of death.

HANAN: My cousin is waving. I think he could be swept away by the crowd if he tries to get out of the car.

PASHA: Now what?

COLLEEN: The captain looks like taking control.

(KARL and SIMON ENTER.)

KARL: I’ve discussed the matter over my satellite phone with our commanding colonel. He’s overruled the civilian authority. (To HASSAN.) I’m going to confiscate your film. Open it.

HASSAN: No. You’ll ruin it.

KARL (to SIMON): Take the camera from him, corporal.

PASHA: Don’t resist, Hassan. Just hand it to him.

KARL: Thanks. Now. Why were you all here? So many agitators.

PASHA: We’re journalists.

MOHAMMED: We’re free to congregate.

KARL: Why here? The crowd almost stampeded at the bridge. They heard about the bombings at that shrine, Kadimiyah, and are out to get any foreigners they see. I saw some British reporters running scared. Some others, you can see taking cover atop that big white building, looking down like it’s a revolution.

MOHAMMED: We are not inciting the disturbance.

KARL (to MOHAMMED): Do you know anything about the bombings?

MOHAMMED: Today’s?

KARL: I didn’t say today’s. Hmm. Know anything about any insurgents?

(KHALIL, NOOR, and ALI quietly EXIT.)

MOHAMMED: I have sources to protect.

KARL: That’s what I’d expect you do say. Look. I think you should come in and give a statement to the military authorities. You could have useful information about what happened today. There’s been chaos, and it’s all due to the radical press.

PASHA: None of that!

KARL: I think you’re cameraman observed the crowd. He could have seen some insurgents milling about. You come with me too. Take them to the humvee, Simon.

SIMON: It’s over by the bridge.

HASSAN: I can see.

PASHA: I’ll file a protest. You don’t have to take my men.

COLLEEN: Captain. You’re being unreasonable.

KARL: Lady. You’re American. Otherwise, you’d be next.

COLLEEN: No question about that.

KARL (to SIMON): Take your prisoners away. I’ll be over to the humvee in a minute.

SIMON (his rifle pointed at HASSAN and MOHAMMED): Come on, both of you.

PASHA (to HASSAN and MOHAMMED): Better do as they say. I’m sorry.

AMINAH (to HASSAN and MOHAMMED): I’m sorry.

(SIMON, HASSAN, and MOHAMMED EXIT.)

AMINAH: You have witnesses to what happened.

KARL (to AMINAH and COLLEEN): You peace activists. I’ve got family back home who call your type traitors.

COLLEEN: Criticism of the war is not treason, and freedom of expression is not treason. The war in Iraq betrayed America’s legacy and principles, what we had left after Vietnam.

KARL (patting COLLEEN on the back gently): Try loyalty for once.

COLLEEN: Why did you pat me on the back?

KARL (walking away): We’ll settle for these two detainees. If they cooperate, they could be out by sunset.

PASHA: Captain, do you have a serial number?

KARL (turning near offstage): Why?

COLLEEN (to KARL): I think it was inappropriate for you to pat me on the back.

AMINAH: I think so too.

COLLEEN: I wasn’t being familiar.

KARL: I was being friendly.

COLLEEN: I didn’t appreciate it.

AMINAH (to KARL): Haven’t you had any sensitivity training?

KARL (rather angrily, to COLLEEN): I was just being friendly.

COLLEEN: I think it was inappropriate.

KARL (pulling out a type of pager): I’m calling in my commanding officer right now, and we’ll talk about this.

PASHA: You said there’s a riot, and you want us to wait to talk to your colonel about her remark?

COLLEEN: All I did was say the word, "Inappropriate."

KARL (very tense): We’re going to discuss this right here. My colonel is in the area.

PASHA: You’re not going to interrogate her out here for saying your action was inappropriate. There’s nothing threatening about the word inappropriate.

COLLEEN (to KARL): I didn’t do anything wrong. I have the right to use the word "inappropriate" when a man touches me on the back like that. I don’t know you.

HANAN: He’s really angry.

KARL: Back to the tank. (To PASHA.) Like I said. You have a bad influence here in Iraq. (EXITS.)

PASHA: Oh. Back to our cars then.

(KHALIL, NOOR, and ALI ENTER, rather shy in manner.)

AMINAH (to KHALIL): There was a gloom. Your words lifted it. Then this.

COLLEEN: Then that captain put his iron hand on my back. (To NOOR.)

Are you all right?

NOOR: Yes. We saw it all. The crowd was stunned. (To PASHA.) Your men did nothing wrong. We have freedom of the press, but I know of newspapers whose offices have been ransacked by the Americans.

PASHA: It’s living under a military occupation. Anything can happen.

KHALIL (Looking up at the monument): This is meant to be the worker’s garden, this monument to freedom. Until my blood has stopped, and the body’s grace is gone, and all my life to coldness turned, I will bind this stony silent presence to my soul. (To NOOR and ALI.) We must turn away toward home. (To HANAN.) Thank you for your kind offer. We will see you later at your bureau.

HANAN: I’m sorry for the disturbance.

KHALIL: I hope the Americans will not mistreat your men.

PASHA: I’d better get back to the office. Today’s tragedy, and losing two of my best journalists.

COLLEEN: Not lost.

PASHA: I hope not lost.

HANAN: We’ll follow you back to the bureau. My cousin and I. And these ladies from America. I believe they would like a word with you as well.

COLLEEN: Thank you, yes. We’ve come this far.

AMINAH: We feel the new constitution hinders the women of Iraq.

PASHA: You shall see. Have your say. I’d appreciate a chance to interview all of you at the bureau, about that captain and what he’s done to Hassan and Mohammed.

COLLEEN: It won’t be denied.

END OF ACT ONE

David Lawrence Cade Copyright 2004 by