Copyright 2008 by David Lawrence Cade
All rights reserved
THE CURE
A NOVEL BY DAVID LAWRENCE CADE
CHAPTER SIX
Louis was driving home the following Friday afternoon, December 19th, from GWU in his newly repaired car and had tuned to the daily broadcast of Hudson Elsmere Pembroke, who had just begun.
“Friends, humans, and those who are headed for the hills,” Pembroke began, “and do you wonder why I address your faithful ears as such? Friends, surely, as we are among friends on the airwaves, and who’s to tell if I’m glib or not, other than my trusted friends the technicians who make this every broadcast come true and not one of them as yet has thrown his or her shoes at me in rebuttal for any of this remarkably protected free speech they call a radio show.
“And humans? If you’re not my friend, we’re all still human. Or are we? And we learn that many people believe their cats and dogs can understand their every other word. Now in any language that spells Fido and pussycat over there on the mantel or the sofa are also among my faithful listeners, and so they should be as I am a devoted pet owner myself and only do these broadcasts when my cat has given me permission to leave her presence at the royal cushion atop which she sleeps night and day other than to run nibble the tidbits we set out for her on the place mat reserved only for her highness of feline nobility.
“Christmas makes us do strange things, you know?
“And thirdly those who are headed for the hills, as in, ‘abandon ship, the repo man is coming.’ What’s a failure like Wall Street doing in a country like this? Are you proud of your new responsibilities? We’re all now part-owners, or about to be, in two of those three mind-boggling ulcer-exacerbating icons of American folklore - you know who I mean? Yes, it’s nationalize the old jalopy makers of Detroit until they grow up enough to learn you don’t joy ride all across the economy trying to sell junk to a down-and-out consumer.
“Yes, we’re the bosses now. I say, put more purple cars on the road, Detroit. I own you now. Give the gay people something to enjoy since they’re soon to be taunted on inauguration day by someone less than vocal about their lifestyles.
“You’re the boss now, my friends, humans, and those who have headed for the hills, and only in an off-the-road gas guzzler for which OPEC hopes no one will have enough petrol to keep going another mile.
“You’re about to become owners of banks, auto giants (or auto dwarfs from what some are saying), mortgage lenders, and anything else that according to modern economic market theory should have been left to die, but ouch, not if it means Wall Street gets a purple eye.
“No shoes please, from my brokerage friends in those office towers feverishly emailing their resumes far and wide in the hopes they’ll land another job before the next guy starts jumping out the window.
“And thus, we come to another episode in the saga of MIGHTY MOUSE - Yes, in fact, I do mean that click clicking clickity clack black thing wired or wireless that you have in your kind gently grasping fingers all day and night. For those of us who can remember what it was to learn to read and write without computers, ever think you’d be spending half your life grasping a…. ‘eeek’ says the girl in the pink dress at the coffee shop. ‘A mouse!’
“Now in today’s episode, we watch mighty mouse denounce the purveyors of recessionary gloom left and right, blogging, slogging out one email after another, click clicking the clique of despair that tells us next year will be worse than this. Mighty mouse will not have this. This is an outrage to the world created by all the mice who have clicked and double-clicked since time immemorial, meaning before the personal computer.
“’No‘, says mighty mouse, ‘we will not have a world without demand for,…. Yes, for more mighty mice.’ It’s wireless, it’s ergonomic, it’s the miracle that fits into your evolutionary paw and tells you that your fingers can think faster than your brain.
“Mighty mouse to the rescue. That’s the cure for this weekend’s blues if you’re without power but have the blessing of a wireless laptop with half its battery power left. Let your fingers do the thinking and let mighty mouse tell the world how to cure all this chaos, for mighty mouse wants the world to buy up every one of those cute little black, and now pink, blue, what have you, point and click symbols of a bygone era when people actually made money on their stocks.
“And now a word from today’s sponsor….”
Louis had grown up in New York City with his mother Catherine and her husband Daniel O’Connor who had married her just months before she gave birth to Louis, whose real father was Omar Hamid Aboudi, an immigrant from Iraq who had had a brief affair with Catherine late in 1980 before he moved to Chicago to pursue his college education in Middle Eastern languages. Omar had only learned that he had a son by Catherine in 2003 when he returned to his homeland and met Louis in Mosul at a rendezvous prearranged by members of the anti-globalization movement who at the time conceived of Omar as a possible leader of the anti-war movement given his dual American and Iraqi citizenships.
Louis had been aware since early childhood, in part due his rather dark complexion and dark brown hair, that he was not the son of the reddish-brown haired Irish/American Daniel O’Connor, who had treated Louis as a son and with whom he had had relationship of mutual trust; both got along well and Louis was accepted by all in the family including his half brother and half sister. Catherine had only been willing to tell Louis that his father was from a foreign country.
The name on his birth certificate was Louis Malcolm O’Toole; Daniel had adopted Louis when he was two and with Catherine’s consent had had his last name legally changed to O’Connor before Louis entered pre-school
Catherine had never told Louis who his real father was, in part due to an incident in Manhattan in 1980 at an athletic club in which Daniel, out of jealousy, had threatened Omar while the affair was still going on.
While still in his late teens, before being allowed to emigrate to the U.S. by the Iraqi authorities, Omar had also fathered another son in Baghdad in 1979 during another short-lived affair with a young woman, Aminah, who also had insisted to her Iraqi family - out of fear Omar would try to return to Iraq to help raise the boy and risk arrest by Saddam - that they conceal from Omar that they had a son, whose name was Habib and who had also been adopted by his mother’s first husband Mr. Al-Fatat after their marriage in 1980 and whose full name was Habib Rahman al-Fatat.
That same summer of 2003, Omar had returned to his homeland only then to be informed by his former lover Aminah, still married to al-Fatah, that they had a son who was a student of archeology and a follower of one of the radical imams who had become vocal that first summer after the invasion.
Louis had met Habib in 2003 on the same trip which had been conducted under the auspices of the anti-war group Q.U.E.S.T.I.O.N. - International (Quest Universal for Earthly Serenity Terrorism Indicted Openness Now). With Omar, Louis had traveled from Mosul to Baghdad where he had been introduced to his Iraqi cousins.
Habib - who was working in environmental engineering - now had a wife, Noor, and infant son Hassan. He kept in touch with his American half-brother Louis by email and the occasional international phone call, often to update Louis about what their father Omar, now a semi-retired professor still with tenure at the University of Michigan, was doing in Basrah where his efforts to help the poor were becoming legendary.
After arriving home that Friday afternoon in December 2008, Louis had begun sorting through his email and found one from Habib with subject: can’t keep your shoes on?
It read in part:
Have you ever felt you were inside a canyon? Remember being in a deep canyon in your American west?
When I visited Petra, there is the sensation at times of being deep down between some of the walls, looking up at the ribbon of sky above, so far above.
That is how many of us feel today about Iraq and the shoe incident. It’s as if a ribbon of sky has finally opened up in the sky, and Bush is shown up for a bumbling fool who has to dodge an irate reporter’s shoes, and an entire movement gets an impetus from a daring protest that has landed the reporter in trouble none of us should have to endure for our beliefs.
Louis began wondering at the improvement in Habib’s English, which had been marginal for some time. He must be studying with Omar when they meet in Basrah, Louis thought.
Habib’s email continued:
Father Omar does not know what people will do next to exploit his reputation. He found himself in a video of Veterans Against the War, which is a good cause, and it showed him in a crowd of activists in Basrah with a few British troops nearby who likely had no idea who father is (or do they all know who he is, since we know he’s still being watched by the Basrah authorities on suspicion of supporting anti-government sentiment?) - and no doubt some who saw it on the Internet think he’s an Iraqi-American war veteran against the war!
And we get such contradiction in the press here, a free press - unless you throw your shoes at the wrong war-monger - yet a press that gets subjected to threats and even that one journalist in Mosul who has been imprisoned for writing about homosexuals and the Mosul authorities sentenced him to prison for writing that they said would encourage homosexuality. So where is press freedom there?
Our friends at the Ad-Dunya newspaper in Basrah still write what they believe, and so far they have not been shut down by the radical imams or the British or the Iraqi government, but they walk a fine line between freedom and disaster.
On the bright side, Noor and I want to wish you and Larry and your American families a Happy Holiday season.
Seems like so much there waits until after the first of the year before the world stirs again, everything on hold for your Christmas and New Years.
Since Omar and Melinda are both Muslims, they are happy to have enjoyed the recent Al-Adhaa Feast, as we did also in Baghdad. Sad the arson at that French mosque. We are all trying to stop the Islamophobia that leads the West, or at least the more suspicious and narrow-minded in the West, to view Islam as a form of terrorism, which it is not.
Best wishes on your doctoral work.
At least Baghdad is not so prone to violence and murders now. The authorities have tortured to death, detained, and otherwise murdered off most of the thousands of men who were part of the rebellion, the crime, the kidnappings. It’s hard still to believe it isn’t all a bad dream.
Your brother Habib.
While he was enjoying some fresh fruit as a snack, Louis turned on the zine broadcast on Nicholas III for that Friday, apparently going out live at that moment from the same skyscraper in lower Manhattan, one that Louis was certain as to the address having seen the skyline so many times over the years.
Nicholas III began:
Today is feast day on Wall Street. No more sacrifice. Holy cow, it’s mentioned up and down the street in connection with the father of all frauds, let us all be moneyed and then some.
Yes, I, Nicholas III, believe I saw it in a dream as I was sacrificing my last million on Wall Street for the good of the market. It was a vision and I was moved to sacrifice my money, my precious cash, and the Dollar blessed my obedience and redeemed my investment at a premium. This is my idea of selling the losers and keeping the winners.
Yes, it’s time to praise the Dollar and thank it for the blessings it bestows upon us. The sweetest thing you hear on Wall Street today is: Money is great; Money is Great; Money is Great; there is no money but the Dollar; Dollar is great and praise be unto the American dollar.
You hear it in a collective voice like pilgrims on their way to the hometown shrine of a great billionaire we need not name at this point.
And people are praying that the Dollar be strong wherever they are in this city.
When I was young, I used to think that money is only for new clothes, candy, and visiting a funfair. And until a short time ago, I kept thinking that money is only for worldly rituals, like tidying the million-dollar apartment on the upper East side, buying stock in chocolate and candy makers, going to swank hairdressers to have my tonsure tonsured, and buying new clothes for the whole family.
Now I smile at my naïveté; I used not to comprehend the spiritual meaning of the Dollar and what is the spiritual meaning of money in general.
Now I have come to see the stock markets as occasions to ask the Dollar’s forgiveness, to praise the Dollar and to thank it for its blessings, countless, innumerable.
Louis turned off the stereo, wondering for a moment if he had been dreaming.
If I listen to anymore of that I could ruin the rest of the day.
At the Free Language Institute, Dimitrije and others were seated around a conference table taking a simple fifty-question test in English while listening to the rest of the zine broadcast, as Nicholas III continued:
Here high above Manhattan, I feel nearer to the Dollar; you can feel the happiness of its nearness, the warmth of its nearness. Any idea how many billions are stashed in the vaults and safe deposit boxes of all the banks in New York?
I do not care much now for chocolates, or for visiting the beautician (guys, ever think you’d be going to a beautician instead of a barber as a man?)
I do not care much for the gossip about the collapse of this or that economy, the empty talk about the world, the gains of life, or this or that gossip about this or that financier.
I see now in my greedy little heart that these stories are empty; now I busy myself with matters like this zine broadcast that not all the people in this corporation around me understand.
I do this because I wonder how do people change? How do they think and evaluate money around them? Sometimes a certain shock will cause a change in the mind and direction, like the collapse of the mortgage giants. Sometimes, a slow persistent walk towards your financial goals can confirm the wish to keep going in that direction and that conviction increases day by day.
These questions cross my mind when I meet people from my generation: the money generation, men or women who become fathers and mothers now; I watch the way they think about money and how they guide their children to money. When the mother is unaware of what money is, unaware that it is her identity, or of her attitude toward profit and loss? What is her stance from dollars and sense? How does she evaluate money, according to what?
So if the mother or the father is lost in this way, how can they raise a new generation conscious of money at all times, as an identity with principle and value?
When the parents are without money as an anchor stone, what will they teach their children?
Dimitrije and the others sat quietly after finishing their tests listening to the end of the zine broadcast. Their teacher came in and asked what they thought of it.
Dimitrije said he still felt uncomfortable with the focus on money, since there was much more to learning English than money, “but how nice to have a lot of it would be.” To which the other students laughed.
He had been in contact with Larry regarding the stalking incident and had gone to the city police station to file a complaint, giving the name and phone number that Michael had provided. The police sergeant who had taken the report had just gotten back with Dimitrije that morning on his cell phone to say that Michael considered it all a big misunderstanding, but that the police could turn the matter over to the county district attorney, “but there is a backlog and it could be weeks before this is resolved.”
Dimitrije had said he stood by his report and that he and his attorney, Larry McIntire, felt the authorities should pursue the matter.
“All right, sir,” the sergeant had said. “We’ll forward it on to the county. That’s all we can do, since the police were not called in at the time it happened, so it’s just your word against the other driver’s at this time.”
“I understand,” Dimitrije had said. “Thank you sir.”
He imagined the entire matter would come to nothing and had called and left a voice mail for Larry on his cell phone regarding the news from the sergeant.
Larry had called back late that morning to the effect they should be prepared to go to court in case the district attorney decided to file an indictment. “We can talk again at that time and you decide if you want your day in court,” Larry had said, with Michael thanking him.
Louis spent the rest of the afternoon at the house studying, continuing his doctoral research online, and writing on his dissertation.
Around four p.m., Larry arrived home, eager to have an early dinner as they were to attend the premiere at the Bright Star Repertory Theatre in Alexandria of the American premiere of THE CURE, a new play, originally written in Arabic and translated into English by the playwright, Karim al-Din Muhammad, whose earlier works had been performed in Mosul, Baghdad, and by 2004 in major American cities including the Washington area.
They arrived around 7:30 p.m. at the theatre, which was housed in a converted department store in a fashionable retail district of Alexandria.
There was a full house. The performers were onstage, and the drama underway precisely at eight p.m.
The program described the play thusly:
THE CURE
BY KARIM AD-DIN MUHAMMED
SCENE: Saudi Arabia, an old movie theatre not used in over thirty years
TIME: 2008
CAST OF CHARACTERS:
EVE RIVERS - a correspondent for an American newspaper
MICHEL - a chef recently returned from hajj
RASIL RAJA - (whose names mean: messenger of hope), owner of the theatre
ABDUL-GHANI (whose names mean: servant of the self-sufficient) - a member of the Saudi authorities
QAMAR SULAFAH (whose names mean: full moon, choicest) - an educated Saudi woman
CINEMATOGRAPHER - a man from Hollywood
THERESE OCEANE - a French woman on a human rights mission
RENE - A Frenchman from Lebanon, whose name means reborn
TRISTAN - a friend of RENE
EVE RIVERS, RASIL RAJA, AND MICHEL ENTER:
EVE RIVERS: Is that the sound of a freighter in the Gulf?
RASIL RAJA: It has that solemn groan of majesty open the waters.
EVE RIVERS: A glimmer of light. There, the sky is turning velvet-colored pastels. It’s dawn; I love the clouds here over the desert and to the east in morning. I looked out from my hotel high up yesterday morning, looking out toward the sea and thought of how like that ribbon of dawn it would be to have the cinema again in Saudi Arabia.
RASIL RAJA: Then came news that our technologies in the theatre were painfully out of date, unable to run the new reels, something to do with millimeters, centimeters.
MICHEL: No, not centimeters. That would be a measure of distance, not celluloid.
EVE RIVERS: There is that sound again only now like a staccato of the ship’s fog horn blasting a warning, and none can resist it in the silence of the desert morning. (To MICHEL) You were at the hajj; I was told.
MICHEL: Great the sacrifice, the throng of pilgrims like a tide from the past, a tsunami of its own overwhelming the world, the distances, from around the world not unlike an upswelling of the sea of believers who walked in peace through Mecca and as a Frenchman who came to Riyadh to make his fortune at a fine hotel, to a Muslim convert who found an imam whose mere wave of the hand sent me to Mecca, yes, I have returned fulfilled in that passage.
EVE RIVERS: But your feet. Where are your shoes?
ABDUL-GHANI ENTERS:
ABDUL-GHANI: That question - perhaps best to utter it as in interrogatory in the stadia outside Athens - requires a duo of answers.
EVE RIVERS: A digamma of answers?
ABDUL-GHANI: You can say that if you wish. You can believe this if you wish, for you are always free to believe what you want. First, whose were the shoes in the first place: his or another’s? Second, where would the shoes be if not on Michel’s feet?
MICHEL: On the portico of Athens where they want more than ever to throw something at the government, and anyone can see from the Acropolis to Mecca in a matter of a few thousand years and not want to miss the first cinema in Arabia in a generation.
ABDUL-GHANI: It is a controversy of digamma proportions, this film festival. Ancient, the restrictions on film were based on ancient texts. There was a gamma; it never sufficed.
EVE RIVERS: No? never sufficed the Greeks?
ABDUL-GHANI: Just look at the mess, the uproar. They need two gammas now - two digammas - like they need two governments, one past, and one omnipresent.
EVE RIVERS: But as a reporter of the free press of America, it concerns me that you threatened last night to close the cinema before it could open.
ABDUL-GHANI: We’re not sure if the films are the comedies that Michel and his innovators claim.
MICHEL: I left my shoes as testimony that we intend to conform to your tastes, your code of suitable content.
EVE RIVERS: But where again were the shoes when you last saw them?
MICHEL: On my feet.
RASIL RAJA: Where else could they have been?
ABDUL-GHANI: Exactly. A pair of shoes destined to be reproduced in the thousands, the demand is so high. So it concerns us this cinema, if appreciated.
RASIL RAJA: I am sure the Saudi people will appreciate seeing the cinema for the first time in their lives.
ABDUL-GHANI: As I was saying, if appreciated, it could be reproduced.
MICHEL: Yes. (Dreamily) In Panavision, multivision. Then we will find a vision in which I at last find my shoes and no longer must walk the world like this. It is not good for my socks.
EVE RIVERS: But good for the sock manufacturers who also watch for the new gamma in Greece, or at least another pair of socks on your feet.
MICHEL: I think I threw away my chef’s hat as well.
QAMAR SULAFAH ENTERS:
QAMAR SULAFAH: Not thrown, dropped. It was found on the floor of the kitchen at your hotel and everyone cried out it was like an ocean upon the horizon that no one has time to sail because they have broken a leg or worse, their cell phone battery is dead.
EVE RIVERS: Need for alarm indeed, as I talk on my cell phone all night from midnight until dawn and it is free.
RASIL RAJA: I thought that was why you were late watching the ribbon of light and its promise today of the first cinema to be seen in years in this nation.
EVE RIVERS: Yes. So sorry if it is like a child, but it is free to call around the world all night and a cure for boredom lying in a hotel bed in a place as divine and rare of Riyadh.
CINEMTOGRAPHER ENTERS.
CINEMATOGRAPHER (To EVE RIVERS): But you could have done better.
EVE RIVERS: How so?
CINEMATOGRAPHER: You could have made it semi-divine and then you would have not spoken all night, you would have found a need to talk only half the night away.
EVE RIVERS: But would that not be a refluctuation of all that Michal hoped to find today, and if he only has one pair of shoes, is that not a semi-pair as well?
MICHEL: How I think I see them flowing back to me just now.
RASIL RAJA AND QAMAR SULAFAH: Where? Your hopes? Are your hopes flowing back to you at last, Michel?
MICHEL: No, I meant my shoes. I thought I saw them out there in the square, so beautiful, austere, yet almost empty save for those men in white robes. But it was another man’s shoes. I’ll never see them again unless Allah or the cinematographer intervene.
CINEMATOGRAPHER: I cannot speak for Him, as you know. As for myself, I will include scenes in every film for ages to come in which your shoes are, if not thrown in the proper light, at least seen for an instant on some actor’s feet who I’m sure would just as soon give an interview to Eve Rivers here as have to search for his shoes around the world like you, and only you know what they meant to you in your heart.
MICHEL: I saw Rene and Tristan and who else.
EVE RIVERS: Yes, who else?
QAMAR SULAFAH: You must tell us now. You have awakened our curiosity and that is akin to sin in some parts of the Saudi kingdom which I won’t mention in polite company.
MICHEL: I must tell you?
CINEMATOGRAPHER AND RASIL RAJA (alternating): Yes, I believe you have no choice now. You spoke too much. You gave away too much that time. Imagine, admitting you had seen those two men and someone else. Who then? Please, before the clerics learn of this indiscretion, no, I mean this discordance against our interpretation of the shoes that you threw away, or that were stolen, who knows? So who was it else?
MICHEL: It was Therese Oceane.
ABDUL-GHANI: Allah forbid. We thought she had disappeared into the crowd at hajj and no one could find her in the multitude until the last day, and by then she had joined up with a group of pilgrims from Tehran and they would have nothing to do with us, saying we have offended them in showing a cinema and that they thought we should set a better example, and that Tehran was running riotous with Western influence and to be sure to close the theatre or else there would be cultural efflorescence, and that was enough for me to call in the clerics who bade me wait until they had interpreted the Hadith and that ages ago, or was it only yesterday afternoon and only seems ages ago?
QAMAR SULAFAH AND THERESE OCEANE: (To Michael): If Rasil Raja and his technicians can obtain the new equipment needed, are there ruffians in these films you brought?
MICHEL: Are you speaking to me?
THERESE OCEANE: And who else?
MICHEL: You and who else?
THERESE OCEANE: No, I am who else. It’s a role I picked up after session after session with a psychologist in Bordeaux who tried to calm my anxiety attacks with hypnosis, even a prescription that more than one religion would frown on as an abandonment of faith. Finally, he told me to try an alter ego, at least when I wasn’t on my cell phone all night taking advantage of all the free minutes. So I decided I would be who else, and everyone in the world is talking about me from time to time and my ego flew up into the clouds and I feel like an ocean of anonymity because everyone calls upon me, but I am always else where.
MICHEL: So you were talking to me? I see you are the proverbial else who was where, but not if you were speaking to me or someone else.
QAMAR SULAFAH: And to whom else? You created this epoch of shoe-throwing and now I request to know if there are ruffians in the films and if so I decline to view them as unsuitable for Qamar Sulafah, as I am the choicest full moon.
MICHEL: That was what I thought when I first saw you, what a beautiful full moon, even with your veil and robes covering you. You then are among the choicest of all lunar…
ABDUL-GHANI: And semi-lunar, just so you’ll know…
MICHEL (To QAMAR SALUFAH): …and of course I will answer you.
EVE RIVERS: And how will you answer Qamar when you have not seen the films yourself Michel? My readers will want to know, just so you’ll know.
RENE AND TRISTAN ENTER:
ABDUL-GHANI: Then as the authority of the government here, I cannot arrest you for importing cinema that you have not seen, Michel. Not seen them? Is that true?
MICHEL: Yes. (Shaking his head in dejection.) Don’t vilify me, please. I was not trying to create a pyramid of deception to lure Qamar or any Saudi into viewing a film with ruffians that I had not seen, although I’m sure the ruffians would be pangless, like an afternoon soaking up the rays of the sunshine on a warm winter afternoon. Like taking the cure, actually.
QAMAR SULAFAH: In that case, no, Abdul-Ghani, you must not arrest Michel.
ABDUL-GHANI: But who then? Arrests are flowering all over the world. Pluriflorous, to say the least, this flowering of arrests.
RENE: And here I thought he was merely a panjandrum.
ABDUL-GHANI: Excuse me!
TRISTAN: Oh, wrong choice of words. Off to a Saudi prison for a year to contemplate your poor choice of words.
RENE: And if in my heart I do not desire to go to a Saudi prison for that careless…
ABDUL-GHANI: You could say hapless…
RENE: ….choice of words?
ABDUL-GHANI: Your request is extreme. It will not be granted. You must be imprisoned, since Michel escapes on a technicality and this cinema could cause a semi-lunar break in the tradition of austerity in our kingdom. One step forward and a millennium backward, if you ask me and I’m only paid to do what I’m told, or so say I when the Feds aren’t listening on my home phone. Know what I mean?
RENE: Then I wish to make a statement.
EVE RIVERS: Please though, not by taking off your shoes.
RENE: I meant a semi-lunar statement, since Therese Oceane is standing over there by that fountain wondering why the water has not thrown itself in a frenzy onto poor Michel in view of his refusal to watch his own imported foreign cinemas.
MICHEL: Not refused.
TRISTAN: Then why not, Michel?
EVE RIVERS: Yes, Michel. You still have not told us why you did not watch the cinema yourself, to protect Qamar and the innocent from ruffians on the screen.
MICHEL: I was told it would gorgonize the audience to watch that film.
RASIL RAJA: Turn them to stone? What could be in any film so shocking as to gorgonize anyone but a fool who wants to be gorgonized on any account?
MICHEL: If I tell you, you must promise to pray for me on my helical journey in search of my lost shoes.
THERESE OCEANE ENTERS:
THERESE OCEANE: I pray for you always, Michel. Anyone who returns from hajj to work in a hotel restaurant when he has no shoes on his feet deserves all our prayers.
EVE RIVERS: Yes, we will all pray for you, Michel. So then, your reply? My readers will want to know the answer.
ABDUL-GHANI: Yes, the authorities will arrest you now if you do not tell us. No technicality can get you free of the system if you know something in that film could gorgonize the audience. What is it?
MICHEL: It is the cure itself.
ABDUL-GHANI: The cure? What cure? When does a cure turn an audience to stone?
MICHEL: When they want the cure to find another man’s shoes, but not their own.
EVE RIVERS: Oh! I think I see. Your film shows what happened to your shoes, but no one wants to find their own?
MICHEL: All over the world, since the beginning of recorded frauds like unto no others on earth, the audience has been throwing away its own shoes and shuns the cure, the cure that shows them where to find them.
EVE RIVERS: Else they will be barefoot or worse, wearing out socks to enrich the sock manufacturers around the world who also shun the cure.
QAMAR SULAFAH: I see. That would gorgonize the most hardened of viewers, to see in a cinema the answer, the cure that they do not seek for what ails them, because they cherish what ails them?
MICHEL: Like a paralysis of the entire body of mankind by lies and frauds and illegal wars that left me on the run from the authorities who said I must find my shoes or be taken to prison this very day.
ABDUL-GHANI: I can get you a pardon from the prince if you can only find your shoes in time.
EVE RIVERS: That is not too extreme a request, Michel. Think. Where are your shoes? Did you leave them in a mosque?
QAMAR SULAFAH: Yes, Michel. You must have taken them off before going into the mosque and forgot you had left them at the entrance.
MICHEL: I remember going to the mosque only yesterday when my heart was troubled by my dreams and I feared that no one would find a cure. My heart is in the search, but I’d never dream of telling anyone if Therese Oceane were to object.
THERESE OCEANE: How could you possibly have known I object to finding your shoes? They are your shoes, not mine. I have mine on. I will not step on anyone’s toes to make a point. Yes, I would just as soon see the entire body of the Saudi kingdom paralyzed by censorship than to see your shoes on my feet. I’m so sorry, Michel, but that’s how I see it. Still, I have the ocean within me and I will bring your shoes back to you if you truly desire.
EVE RIVERS (To THERESE OCEANE): You have his shoes within your ocean?
THERESE OCEANE: Within my ocean of time. It makes no difference if you are in Riyadh or a three-star restaurant in Paris making Christmas confections for the children of the well at ease. I asked you about your shoes just before they built the last pyramid, and I mean the ones along the Nile, and you said, “No, why not wait? Who has time for shoes when everyone is in a paralysis about that mad dog time?”
EVE RIVERS: If my request is not too extreme, then yes I ask that you bring back Michel’s shoes. He has too long trod the earth and walked in a hajj with no shoes.
QAMAR SULAFAH: Do as dreamers do, Michel. Take your shoes. Therese Oceane says she can bring them back to you.
MICHEL: And if I do? Will I be allowed to pass through this corridor of time and find the cure for what afflicts me, and Iraq, and the helpless in the world.
QAMAR SULAFAH (aside to RENE AND TRISTAN): There, that was it. Now it’s coming out. Did you hear him? It’s to do with the helpless in the world. He’s trying to say that is the cure. Begin with those who have the least, not with those who had the most and lost it rather than help and use their gifts from Allah to ease the suffering all over the world.
ABDUL-GHANI (To MICHEL): I can only say you will be allowed to pass through Arabia to and from your hotel. As to the world, Rasil Raja is a messenger of hope. Ask him.
MICHEL (To RASIL RAJA): Will I be allowed to pass through this corridor of time a free man?
RASIL RAJA: If I have anything to do with it, you’ll at least have time to watch the first cinema.
EVE RIVERS: And with your shoes on. Surely that is better than nothing.
MICHEL: I would have preferred to pass through this staccato movement of belief against belief, will against will, epoch against epoch, a free man - with or without my shoes. But as you will. Yes, I will watch the cinema myself. I do not know what the ruffians will say or do in the film, but I’m sure it will be pangless compared to the ocean of shoes Therese has brought with her, and no one dreams of how many more are being cobbled out and made piecemeal around the world now, so many demand their own way of showing disrespect when cinemas are banned and illegal wars waged.
EVE RIVERS: Be sure to duck when the ruffians try to gorgonize the audience.
RENE: At least close your eyes a moment and imagine your shoes are on another man’s feet.
TRISTAN: Then you’ll know what it is to be in his shoes, at least while the cinema is shown for the first time in Riyadh.
MICHEL: I am reborn. I want my shoes back. They are history itself. What man doesn’t want to wear history on his feet?
END OF ACT ONE
After enjoying the intermission of about twenty minutes, Louis and Larry sat with a rapt audience through the second act, with the characters sitting for a time as if watching a movie being shown on a large screen, at times calling out criticism, even abuse toward the action of the film, at times discussing among themselves what the film meant. Near the end, Michel and Therese Oceane appear to wade off into an imaginary flood bidding the cast farewell, with Michel telling them:
MICHEL: This is a masquerade. We have been sabotaged by a plot to steal an innocent pair of shoes and the cure escapes into another void.
You must have your microphones ready to hear what the cure has to say next. It is a life-saving experience. It is a rescue on the molecular level, one atom at a time, which could drive one to the brink of sailing around the world in a costume appropriate only for the holidays.
It is the southern hemisphere calling out to the northern “…come to the party for the cure will be here next year, or at least the next after that!”
EVE RIVERS: But if you fall into the ocean of time again?
ABDUL-GHANI: It’s the hour of accounting. The hour is grave.
MICHEL: Rare indeed. I will call out to my shoes to save me, for the water could be cold and the cure lasts only until the tide goes out at night.
END OF ACT TWO
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