David Lawrence Cade

THE RIDDLE

By David Lawrence Cade

CHAPTER ONE

The Translation

Louis O’Connor and Larry McIntire were at the Bright Star experimental theater in Alexandria, Virginia for the premiere of THE RIDDLE, a new play by Karim al-Din Muhammed. It was the evening of July 3, 2007.

The Bright Star had been set up the previous summer by a group consisting of three graduate students of drama from George Mason University and the University of Maryland, two semi-retired repertory theater directors – Sherman Bond and Derek Palmer - who had worked in Connecticut and New York before relocating to Fairfax County, VA to pursue their dream of establishing an artists colony in the woodlands south of the capital complex, as well as several volunteer theater patrons who ranged in age from twenty-two to fifty-nine and who brought an array of talents including acting, stagecraft, and – to the delight of Bond and Palmer - fund-raising.

The theater occupied the lower floor of a late-nineteenth century three-story department store building located near the Potomac that had fallen into disuse being under code, the owners having decided not to invest in the upgrading necessary to make the facility attractive to the few buyers who had expressed an interest in renovating the entire space, which occupied a half city block in an area of small upscale clothing stores, pricey restaurants, and gift boutiques.

“If only it weren’t so dim in here,” Larry whispered to Louis as they made their way through the old glass-paned double doors painted a deep sea-green. “What a huge lobby.”

“It’s light over there by the bar and reception area,” Louis said, looking up at the twenty-foot high ceiling with original ornate ceiling tiles and molding made of yellowing plaster that added a glow to the interior. “Don’t you like it?”

“I do,” Larry said. “I like it. Quite a location they found for themselves.”

“The owners are letting them have it for the cost of utilities. This way the insurer keeps it insured for much less.”

“How nice for Bond and Palmer,” Larry said.

The two artistic directors were wearing khaki slacks with cuffs, brown leather belts, dark gray suede shoes, black socks, and light blue (Bond) and light green (Palmer) knit shirts, and were standing by the refreshment counter. They nodded to Larry and Louis to come over and say hello.

“Would you like something to drink?” Larry asked.

“Tea perhaps,” Louis said. “And you?”

“Herbal tea if they have some.”

At the bar they shook hands with Bond and Palmer, who had been married in Massachusetts just months after the law was changed allowing same sex unions.

“What can we get for you?” Bond asked Larry. “White wine? It’s chilled.”

“No thanks,” Larry said.

“Larry doesn’t drink,” Louis said.

“Forgot, oh I forgot,” Bond said taking a deep breath.

Palmer asked the young woman behind the bar counter – wearing a rose red velvet dress, her light brown hair immaculately set with gold butterfly pin - to pour several iced tea drinks.

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“On the house,” Palmer told her. “They’re among our biggest donors.”

“For a good cause,” Larry said.

“I saw the premiere of THE POOR MAN FROM LARSA at the Nineveh site,” Louis said.

Larry smiled. “Quite an occasion as it turned out also, for Louis as well as for Karim.”

“How’s this?” Bond asked.

“You didn’t know?” Larry said.

“Know? What did we not know?” Turning to Louis he asked, “Did you enjoy the performance?”

“All that and more,” Louis said. He took a gulp of tea, cleared his throat lightly, and said, “I met my father Omar that night for the first time.”

“Now that sounds prearranged,” Palmer said.

“Oh, we learned afterwards how much father was being manipulated by everyone from covert agents at the NSA to anti-globalization cloud-gazers who fashioned they would be able to drown out the sounds of war if father were in their control.”

“I heard something about that,” Bond said.

“You did?” Louis said.

“Something told to me on another theater night in Boston a couple years ago when the war was dragging on and on and the despair that is now an utter hell over there was crawling up America’s pant leg and we were still not quite ready to admit we were about to be bitten by a nightmare without end.”

“That would be how father would sum it up,” Louis said.

“And actually the man who spoke with me about it also was somehow mixed up in it all,” Bond said. “A professor from the Boston area who said he too had been confronted by agents from the NSA about his trip to Iraq that first summer after the invasion. But how then was the premiere of THE POOR MAN FROM LARSA unusual?”

“Well,” Louis said, “in addition to meeting my father and learning I’m half Arab – and mother always nodded when I would ask why I’m rather dark-complexioned and would only say my father was from abroad – we were assaulted by Satanics who were stopped by my own uncle with the FBI just moments before one of them was about to….”

Larry’s eyes widened and he mumbled “uh, Louis….”

“What?” Louis said. “Let’s not start. It did happen, Larry.”

“I know it did,” Larry said.

“What?” Palmer said.

“What?” Bond said.

“What?” Janet Coopers, one of the volunteers, age forty-seven and who had performed in small repertory since the age of twelve in everything from Macbeth to Winterset, asked coming up and hugging Bond and then Palmer.

“Larry!” she said, holding his right hand gently between her slender fingers. “How good to see you again.” Then holding Louis’s right arm gently and leaving her left hand resting gently on his right hand while she continued to talk. “Louis, thank you for coming.”

“Wouldn’t have missed it for anything,” Louis said.

“And Louis was about to tell us more of the evening in Mosul at the premiere of THE POOR MAN FROM LARSA,” Bond said. “The Arabic version.”

“I’ve seen the English translation performed in Manhattan,” Janet said. “Fascinating. So evocative of the ziggurats one feels they are rising behind the stage in a cloud of sienna-tinted dust. Karim’s back stage and will want to hear this. What happened that night, Louis? Karim’s often looked as if it were a riddle, a secret that one only whispers in private about what happened outside the amphitheater that night.”

“Something to do with the FBI,” Bond said. “He was just telling us.”

“When Larry got professional anxiety about political ramifications if I said something the Bush administration were to overhear,” Louis said.

“Louis, that’s not it at all,” Larry said. “I’m just not sure they would want to hear that you were almost poked with an AIDS-tipped needle by that woman they said was a witch from L.A.”

“A witch from L.A.,” Janet said. “Now you’ve lost me.”

“See,” Larry said.

“It sounds more confusing when you tell it,” Louis said. “To make it short, while Karim and the actors were waiting for the electricity to come on again inside the amphitheater, I narrowly escaped being attacked by Satanics and learned the story of my father’s ill-fated romance with mother, while uncle Ron laid out the ground rules why he and father would never meet at a cordial family picnic on Long Island.”

“I bet we could get Omar and Ron together for a reunion if the timing were right,” Larry said, sipping the last of his iced tea.

“He and father don’t get along,” Louis said. “I think he could have done more for father the last year or two now that he’s set up that rescue center in Basrah.”

“This is all getting so involved,” Janet said.

Just then, Karim al-Din Muhammed came around a corner, walked up to the group, and shook hands with Bond and Palmer.　 He pointed over to the main stage, as the entire theater facility had been constructed within the one huge lobby of the old building:　 two hundred sixty padded folding chairs set atop four rising tiers specifically designed for the center and built using the latest materials to ensure safety and to minimize any creaking sound in the wooden platforms, thus creating four long rows with an aisle down the center; the stage area approximately twenty feet deep and forty feet wide set back into an alcove area on one side of the lobby;　 the entrance area with coat racks and the bar;　 even a reception area at the other end of the lobby where after-theater press interviews could be held.

“This is so unreal,” Muhammed said.　 “How did you get that much water into the reservoir area?　　 And are you sure it will not flood your floors?”

The setting was a flooded area in southern France and the set designer had obtained permission from the building owners to create an artificial estuary about ten by ten feet wide with murky water, sedge, grasses, even a submerged tree branch to give the effect of a flood plain.

“We’re sure,” Bond said.　 “We managed to get a prefab artificial pond about the size we needed from one of our patrons who is redoing their yard landscaping and who needed to scrap an old marlex pond that had been on their property with gold fish and even a frog or two swimming about all the time.”

Muhammed recognized Louis and Larry and shook their hands.　 “I even see a few snails crawling over that log, and the waves, the waves make it look like it is alive, part of a real flood area.”

“And that half-submerged road sign,” Larry said, pointing to the stage.

“Everything, everything anyone could think of,” Muhammed said.　 “But no snakes.”

“That’s right,” Palmer said.　 “No snakes.　 Since you objected.　 A harmless water garter would have perfected the illusion.”

“But snakes would upstage the actors,” Muhammed said. “So that would not work.”

“Louis was telling us about the night outside Mosul when he saw the premiere of your first blank verse play,” Janet said.

“That night,” Muhammed said.　 “What a night with the electricity going out.”　 To Louis he said, “I never did learn just what transpired outside the amphitheater, but we all heard the commotion, the shouting, then the crowd made its way back to hear the rest of the play and we heard rumors of some sort of arrest being made, terrorists.”

Louis gave a few more details of the confrontation with the two Satanists – “who disappeared the next day from the Mosul jail and for all we know have disappeared for good” and the verbal exchange between Omar and Ronald O’Toole about privacy rights.

“That,” Muhammed said, “brings us to tonight.”

There were now over one hundred theater guests milling about the center, greeting Bond and Palmer, wishing Muhammed good luck with the evening.　 A junior reporter with the Washington Post was in attendance, covering for the drama critic who had seen Muhammed’s other plays off-Broadway the previous year.

“And were there actually elements in THE POOR MAN FROM LARSA based in part on my father’s life?” Louis asked.

Larry’s eyes widened;　 then he smiled as they waited for Muhammed to reply.

“Everyone in Iraq had heard of your father’s surrealistic return to his homeland,” Muhammed said. “All I can tell you is that yes, some of the elements in the play were based in part of Omar’s odyssey through Iraq and of course it was also symbolic of the war.”

“And tonight,” said a tall slender young blonde-haired woman dressed in white slacks, floral short-sleeved blouse, holding her program in her left hand, and who had just walked up, “what is the riddle?”

“That you must wait to hear the performers tell you,” Muhammed said.

“And the answer to the riddle?” Janet asked.

“Find the meaning of the flood and you will know where to find the answer,” Muhammed said.

“Oh how cryptic, how intriguing,” Janet said, turning to greet other theater-goers.

Within another twenty minutes, with Larry and Louis finding their reserved seats on the front row beside some other donors, the first act began.　 Louis looked down at his program, which read in part:

THE RIDDLE

By Karim al-Din Muhammed

A two-act drama set in southern France

Time:　 2007

CAST OF CHARACTERS:

JEAN-LUC – a relief worker

COSMOPOLITE – a stranded tourist, a young woman from

America

MARIE – a France 2 TV reporter

HENRI – a displaced villager

MONIQUE – his wife

BERNARD – a boatman

CLAUDE – a bureaucrat with the French government

The play began with Jean-Luc and Marie – both dressed in blue jeans and rather damp t-shirts with BUSH LIED and THEY DIED on opposite sides – entering.

“Why the publicity?” Larry whispered to Louis.　 “Do they really sell those shirts in France?”

“Larry, please,” Louis said.　 “And yes, they do.”

The first act began:

JEAN-LUC, COSMOPOLITE, MARIE, and HENRI ENTER.

JEAN-LUC:　 We hear rumors in multiplicity. O sistema inteligente, le systeme intelligent, el sistema inteligente

MARIE:　 and hysterics in multiformity

The characters begin laughing in voices at times bordering on despair, then affecting a superior attitude, then defiant laughter.

JEAN-LUC:　 And we close our minds to this rise and fall, and laugh off the riddle of this flood.

MARIE: What is brown on green and with an oil slick wash?

COSMOPOLITE: An impressionist landscape painted near Arles?

JEAN-LUC: A small town poisoned by crude oil spilling into a flood, a refinery overtaken by the waters, then a contaminated water supply such that mother and father must take their little ones to another city lest the children try washing in the filthy tap water. That is brown on green with an oil slick wash. But this riddle is not awash with oil.

HENRI: When is a riddle not awash with oil?

JEAN-LUC: When it is the French riddle – la devinette –

COSMOPOLITE: Or a German – Ein Ratsel, better yet, una adivinanza

MARIE: Um enigma.

JEAN-LUC: A multiplicity of enigmas – in any language, spells disaster. Hence, we came from Lyons to help with this disaster. The brooks and rivers so swollen, people cut off from their homes, roads washed out, and only a few on this high ground.

COSMOPOLITE: How deep?

HENRI: As deep as the riddle we found bubbling up from the flood, murmuring of an enigma that rises until it is perceived, then falls to an abject depth, is swollen until it bursts with an insane sign, madness, mad Ness, the legendary riddle of the flood.

MARIE: And the driving force behind this riddle?

JEAN-LUC: The flood, the weather. Il pleut. Il a plu des devinettes sur les devinettes. Il a plu.

MARIE: It has rained riddles upon the riddles in Iraq as well.

COSMOPOLITE: And if we solve the riddle, then we will no longer be cut off from the rest of humanity.

MONIQUE ENTERS.

MONIQUE: Cut off like those at Abu Ghraib – before and after the news flooded in – Cut off like those held in secret, in America or elsewhere – mesmerized, stalked by the authorities for questioning the war on terror. So yes, solve this riddle, and there is more. What rises and falls, bursts with an insane sigh, is felt but never seen, controls the world and is controlled by the world.

JEAN-LUC: In the flood but not of the flood?

COSMOPOLITE (to Monique): Do you know the answer?

MONIQUE: We are cut off from the answer, and the secret of where it is written down a forgotten secret lost when the world turned its back on the sanctity of rights, and locked itself up in a sanctuary of terror alerts.

BERNARD ENTERS.

BERNARD: But if we cannot solve the question of what rises and falls like a flood, but is never seen, we could discover the hiding place – yet it is beneath this flood, or so I was just told by a form that appeared in the water beneath my boat – told that it is hidden out there beneath the flood.

MARIE: A form, that appeared as what?

BERNARD: As a shimmer of light while the murky water danced beneath my boat and I heard a murmur so like the voice of an old man.

JEAN-LUC: When is a splashing in water not unlike the voice of a trouble old man?

BERNARD: Yet the ebbing and flowing swirling about convinced me I had imagined it all, but the vision danced again, like a bird floods in upon the surface, and unless we find the answer the agents of every sinister regime in the world -

JEAN-LUC: And when are they not all sinister, the regimes of the modern flood – from language to language, elected or stolen from the people – sinister indeed for those who risk asking when the flood of detentions will end?

MONIQUE: But this is madness, a flood that cannot recede until it is seen, but is never seen.

COSMOPOLITE: So out of character, a flood that will not recede.

MARIE: So out of character, a riddle that cannot be filmed for our viewers to solve.

JEAN-LUC: Will this be on the Huit Heures? Douze Heures?

COSMOPOLITE: Vingt Heures, and then it will burst and disappear into the flood of old news, yesterday being as murky as the bottom of this flood in the minds of many.

HENRI: So convenient for the elected, the select who say, “Guantanamo will be shut down. Let’s shut it down now –“

JEAN-LUC: And take the flood victims –

COSMOPOLITE: The Guantanamo victims?

BERNARD: The flood being terror – the terror of governments running amuck around the world rounding up suspects –

MONIQUE: Leaving them in the muck of filthy prisons not even the Red Cross would venture to inspect.

HENRI: “And off with them to Pakistan.”

COSMOPOLITE: Oh freedom – Pakistan – such a reprieve. Back home to Pakistan and a prison there so secret no one will ever find it.

MARIE: Then we must climb and climb higher to safe ground to escape the riddle that no one can answer –

JEAN-LUC: That no one dare answer for fear of intelligence services –

HENRI: Yes, that intelligent system again,

COSMOPOLITE: O sistema inteligente

JEAN-LUC: Le systeme intelligent

MONIQUE: Is that what you meant?

JEAN-LUC: What is le bureau fédéral d'investigation in Russian?

MONIQUE: Федеральное бюро расследований

JEAN-LUC: and in Chinese?

MARIE: Simplified or traditional?

JEAN-LUC: Simplified.

BERNARD: 调查的联邦局

MARIE: And the traditional?

JEAN-LUC: As in… the American tradition of illegal war that the citizens back home like to think of – at its worst – the youthful transgression of a very nice, very nice country that must be forgiven for terrorizing detainees around the world, and for bombing mosques in Iraq and cursing Iraqis for continuing to put up a rebellion against illegal occupations that at their best are seen as saving the world, glad, oh how glad so many Americans are that all those bombings are happening in Baghdad and not Palm Beach.

HENRI: And we have Het intelligente systeem recording at the CIA, or London, Paris, Beijing – every

MONIQUE: and he means every –

COSMOPOLITE: Every?

MARIE: yes, every multiplicity of phone call – innocent or ….questionable

JEAN-LUC: You don’t mean…. Islamic?

MONIQUE: She means – terrorist…

CLAUDE ENTERS.

CLAUDE: She means Islamic – equate that with Islam.

JEAN-LUC: In the minds of bureaucrats. Can I help you?

CLAUDE: No. I was merely inspecting the flood area before our helicopter takes me back to Paris. Such a major disaster again for this region. I just need a map.

COSMOPOLITE (aside to Monique): Is that the answer to the riddle?

CLAUDE (holding a cell phone up to his ear, to Cosmopolite): No, that is the answer to the national office, who will not allow this flood to recede unless they set it up first.

COSMOPOLITE: How could he hear me?

HENRI (aside to Monique): Were those her words?

MONIQUE: The answer to the riddle? Yes, her words, not mine.

COSMOPOLITE: It is clouding over again.

JEAN-LUC (to Claude): Yes, I happen to have a map of the region, with the major roads. The back roads that were washed out are not on it.

CLAUDE (taking the map): Do I have to pay for this?

MONIQUE: Why, did you plan the flood?

CLAUDE (laughing): The dam will not burst. (Looking at the map.) You’ve marked it all up.

JEAN-LUC: I highlighted the roads that are closed.

CLAUDE: So many closings –

JEAN-LUC: More to come, they say, unless we solve the riddle.

CLAUDE: (reading the map): The high way to the left - closed.

JEAN-LUC: Yes. It was known as the right of expression.

CLAUDE: So long as you do not threaten to use terrorism.

BERNARD: And who is to say if an expression – a mere expression –

MONIQUE: bare et uttrykk

MARIE: un'espressione semplice

JEAN-LUC: If it is a threat,

CLAUDE: Or could be interpreted as a threat –

COSMOPOLITE: o potrebbe essere come interpretato una minaccia

MONIQUE: Menacing indeed, when interpretations of others’ expressions threaten the authorities in the war on human rights – otherwise know as the post 9/11 world of global politics.

MARIE: To you, Claude, are the interpretations of others’ rights a threat?

BERNARD: And if we were to non-violently occupy this flood plain until the innocent in political prisons around the world are freed?

CLAUDE: The consequences of that would be a very long wait out in the muck.

JEAN-LUC: And would you monitor our every word? Our every movement?

CLAUDE: We have every movement of everyone who hasn’t just crawled out of the mud, on file.

JEAN-LUC: On file. So do we become like that snail if we want privacy? Do we venture out only upon a flooded land with our shell – our helpless shell not enough to stop the terror of governments run amuck trampling on the rights of humanity?

CLAUDE: We merely want to coordinate funding for the relief effort for this flood –

MARIE: You want a blank check to continue helping the victims?

CLAUDE: No. But enough to ensure they can rebuild once the flood has abated.

COSMOPOLITE: But they say we are stranded and it cannot abate unless a riddle is solved.

CLAUDE: Perhaps Paris will defund the riddle. I will publicly pledge to defund the riddle. Then you need not search any further for its answer.

JEAN-LUC: But what if we need to know the answer? If it means more than this flood on the plains of southern France, more than the chaos of water seeping into homes, cars abandoned in high water.

MARIE: And you will speak further about defunding the riddle at the press conference?

CLAUDE: Then Operation Silence will commence.

JEAN-LUC: Operation Silence.

The characters remain still, very quiet with pauses of five to ten seconds between each others’ lines for a minute.

HENRI: Operation silencio

MARIE & COSMOPOLITE: silenzio di operazione, silenzio di operazione

BERNARD: driftsstillhet, driftsstillhet

MONIQUE: Why Norwegian?

BERNARD: In any language, we cannot be silent any longer about the global intelligence services terrorizing the innocent – or the guilty – of the world in the name of security.

JEAN-LUC: The riddle will commence immediately following the silence. A never-ending riddle for a never-ending betrayal of others’ rights. Occupy a mosque in Pakistan and the mosque lasts no longer than that branch tossed about by a flood.

CLAUDE (to Monique): Your viewers will want to donate to help once they see the footage of this flood. Chaos. But more help is coming. Religious groups, non-governmental organizations, the EU. Unbelievable how high the waters rose, so fast, faster than had been predicted.

JEAN-LUC: Your viewers will concur that this flood is a riddle, and no one sees the answer.

MARIE:　 They will answer in multiplicity.

JEAN-LUC:　 Everything is mutliplicity now:

The waters,

The destruction,

The bubble bursts, the flood disappears, but the riddle does not recede.

MARIE:　 That branch.　 I saw a child playing at the side of the flood. The child said the road was blocked, that everything was blocked now. Blockage, not multiplicity.

HENRI: Denial then, propelled by willful men and women who know what it is to lie, and not to lie.

COSMOPOLITE: And I have lain on the floor of the flood and breathed with the breathing of a helpless detainee.

MARIE: We filmed it.　 The censors blocked it, but we kept the film. Then the child tossed the branch back into the flood. But it bobbed up and back into the child’s hands. I asked the child – a boy named Andre – what he thought of the flood. “I do not know what to think,” he said. “They have not taught me what to think of this flood at the schools.”

CLAUDE: We will teach them all that. The schools will reopen. The old red school houses.

JEAN-LUC: But not the old red mosques bombed in Pakistan, women and children inside, because they rebelled again the blocking of human rights.

MONIQUE: Blockage, and the walls of the red mosque collapse.

MARIE: De verstopping en de muren van de rode moskee instorting

JEAN-LUC & HENRI: Blockade, und die Wände vom roten Moscheenzusammenbruch

La obstrucción, y las paredes del desplome rojo de mezquita

MARIE: Surely someone will understand and stop the flood before it destroys the riddle.

CLAUDE: Whatever the riddle, or its answer, I have the only map now.

MONIQUE: Then we will get a new map. Entonces conseguiremos un nuevo mapa.

BERNARD: 以及我们将得到一张新的地图

What the character portraying Bernard had intentionally spoken in Chinese – having been prompted by an anti-war member of the Chinese embassy with whom he had corresponded by email for over a year - did not mean: “Then we will get a new map.” – that having been spoken also in Spanish - but rather, “Then Bush must be replaced at all costs.”

There was an exchange student from China, a young woman age twenty there with her boyfriend, also from the mainland, whose eyebrows raised in mild shock and who exchanged knowing looks with her companion.

Lloyd and Craig, two tall white men in their late twenties, FBI agents, both with light brown hair, dressed in long sleeve shirts, ties, gray and navy slacks, dress shoes, seated in the back row near the center aisle, had been taking notes on small legal pads since the play began.

Lloyd noticed the reaction of the two Chinese students and made some notes on his keypad, his continued hyper-activity at last causing such dismay for the couple seated to his right that the husband – an elderly man with white hair - whispered, “This is a play, not a lecture… Please turn that off…” which Lloyd promptly did, having himself been an aspiring repertory volunteer during his years with the FBI in Seattle not long after the anti-globalization riots, his venture into the theatre world having consisted of two small parts in Othello as well as assistant director of a revival of Saint Joan, which had led him to question in private discussions with his wife whether the interrogation and indefinite detention of terrorist suspects was not dissimilar to the medieval Catholic Church’s arrest and trial of Joan, that hypothesis having been firmly countered by his wife’s sharp rebuke and refusal to prepare his breakfast the next morning (excusing herself with an early morning jog with a friend just a Lloyd was waking up), the verbal rebuke consisting simply of: “Do you mean you’re trying to get yourself fired?”

The play continued.

BERNARD: And my boat will carry you back across the flood. The blockage from forces secret, cowardly, evil – lurking to destroy freedom in the name of security – will not hold us back.

JEAN-LUC:　 And Henri here will concur. Just like that branch, there is no holding back until you answer the riddle.

HENRI:　 They have my signature.

JEAN-LUC:　 Who?

HENRI:　 The meddlers and peddlers of aid to exhaustion

JEAN-LUC:　 We came from many kilometers to help the valley.

HENRI:　 There are no longer any valleys, only regions that appear more or less than what is above, or below, but there is no valley except in the mind of a riddle.

MARIE:　 What then?　 Does you wife answer a call for aid? The shelter opened, less than a phone call away and you did not move to the high ground.

HENRI:　 The high ground is dead to this flood.　 Because high ground also does not exist in this multiplicity of lives trapped in prisons secret and not so secret.

CLAUDE: All the better to warn those who dare to answer this riddle?

HENRI & JEAN-LUC: To warn us of what?

CLAUDE:　 Of what rises and falls and lets no one escape.

HENRI & JEAN-LUC: The doors to political prisons – the most secure places on earth.

MARIE:　 A political empire never so secure as when thousands, many thousands, are held beneath a flood of disappearances. But you did not take the right map, Claude.

CLAUDE: No.

MARIE: No. (Reading from a paper.) What is perfection until its perfection is perceived? What rises high and collapses without being touched? What is impossible but real, then vanishes like ground beneath this flood?

COSMOPOLITE:　 And if we solve the riddle? I saw a sphinx beside the flood and she bade me wade in. I told her I was afraid of what lurked beneath the flood. She told me that if I asked more questions, I would be detained, locked up for asking questions and taking pictures of sensitive areas.

MARIE:　 I saw you up to your knees taking pictures.

COSMOPOLITE:　 Many of them.　 So many I stored them on a disk and then tossed it into the flood, and it came back to me.

HENRI:　 It was not yours.　 That was mine. It happens.　 I won’t tell you what happens, but it happens. Less than a phone call away – anxiety, then nothing.

MARIE:　 The phones are dead.

JEAN-LUC:　 And it is to crest later today.

MONIQUE:　 The main road.　 We will be stranded here, perhaps for a day or two.　 You will have quite a story to tell your viewers.

HENRI:　 Cut off from the outside world.

JEAN-LUC:　 They say even the way back through the hills is cut off now.　 The stretch through the valley is under water.

MARIE:　　 Our helicopter crew could make several trips to get you out.

JEAN-LUC:　 No need.

CLAUDE: Yes, no need. I think you all merit investigation and for now, consider yourselves detained, a la prima, an impromptu abduction by authorities virtual.

JEAN-LUC: But you have no authority to detain us.

CLAUDE: Even now, the new government in Paris is revising the regulations. Allowing for more… persuasive methods of interrogation. You see, we also want to know the answer to the riddle. And like a fool, Marie told me all I needed to know. The map, a slight of hand. Now to begin giving us the answers the authorities expect. Time for softening up?

MONIQUE: We spoke too much.

MARIE: No. We had the right.

CLAUDE: But you are all suspect now.

JEAN-LUC: Suspected of what?

CLAUDE: Of plotting to overthrow the answer to the riddle.

As the first act continued, with many patrons looking perplexed but fascinated by the cryptic dialogue, Louis glanced over his left shoulder and noticed Lloyd and Craig again taking notes on yellow legal pads.

How rude, Louis thought. He made eye contact with both men who looked back at him with rather challenging defiance in their faces. He looked back several times and realized they were not so much focusing on the play as looking one by one at each member of the audience, even comparing notes, showing their legal pads to each other while nodding toward this or that person seated watching the play unfold.

One of the stage hands, seated just to the left of the two men, was looking rather put out and disagreeable at their behavior.

Then Louis closed his eyes a moment and thought, Oh no, they must be FBI. Outrageous. He was about to look back at the men taking notes when his attention was caught by a line spoken by Henri.

HENRI: What does silence mean?

HENRI & MONIQUE: Что означает тишина?

CLAUDE: Che fa tacere non significa?

MARIE: 何が意味を静めますか？

A young Japanese exchange student studying at The University of Virginia gasped, having understood the question spoken by Marie: What silences meaning?

MONIQUE: ¿Qué es que calla el significado.

JEAN-LUC: What silences meaning?

CLAUDE: A protest wouldn’t be a protest if it couldn’t be flooded and silenced by the authorities.

BERNARD: If I could take you across the flood in my canoe, and all you heard was the silence of the open sky above, you could find the meaning of the riddle, even if you could not find its answer.

MARIE: But surely its meaning is its answer, Bernard.

BERNARD: Not if the meaning is to ask the riddle, rather than to answer it before interrogators such as Claude here, who as a boy who went to school with me was never the most honest of our class, nor the brightest.

CLAUDE: It takes little knowledge to trample on the rights of others.

COSMOPOLITE: Is that what they pay you to do, Claude? To trample on the rights of others?

CLAUDE: Something like that. We’ve been known to incite controversy when the public is too full of contentment with immigrants and foreign doctors who silently plot to blow up an airport.

And the drama continued for another half an hour before the end of act one.

During the intermission, Louis mentioned to Larry what he had noticed about the FBI agents taking notes.

“Not your typical experimental theater audience tonight,” Larry said. “I wouldn’t worry about it, Louis. We already know there’s an NSA file on you, and probably one on me by now.”

“I know,” Louis said, “but it bothers me they’re here spying on a constitutionally-protected expression of Muhammed’s ideas.”

“No chance in that being subverted – not here or anywhere in the U.S. so long as he doesn’t advocate terrorism,” Larry said.

The second act saw the characters interrupting the dialogue at times with exaggerated stylized postures similar to Falun Gong.

The last lines of Act Two, which saw Bernard agreeing to ferry Claude back to the mainland after Marie, Jean-Luc and the Cosmopolite had exited by walking out across the shallow flood as if able to walk upon the waters, defying Claude to pursue them “…into a riddle that not even repression can answer…”

MARIE: Au revoir, Henir and Monique. We disappear into a riddle that none of us could answer. Let Claude and his security services answer for our disappearances - if they dare.

HENRI: Nous disparaissons dans une devinette qui aucun de nous pourrait répondre. Laisser Claude et ses services de sécurité répondent pour nos disparition - s'ils osent.

MONIQUE: We were not born to suffer in political prisons, and take heed, Claude, the world will not allow your flood of detentions to escape notice.

MARIE: Nous n'étions pas nés pour souffrir dans les prisons politiques, et prendre faire attention à, Claude, le monde ne permettra pas à votre inondation de détentions pour échapper la notification.

JEAN-LUC: Behold. Look. The riddle is the flood, but the flood will never be the riddle. Contempler. Regard. La devinette est l'inondation, mais l'inondation ne sera jamais la devinette.

The crowd applauded gratefully for two minutes after the final lines, standing and smiling warmly as Muhammed stepped to the stage and took a bow with the actors. A press conference with journalists from several small DC area arts magazines and newspapers took place in the reception area while a hundred of the audience stayed for close to an hour talking about the play.

“What did it mean to you?” Louis asked Larry as they drove back to their home around 11 p.m. in Larry’s SUV.

“I’m not sure I understood why all the foreign phrases, but I liked it,” Larry said, driving.

“But didn’t you notice that at times the mere sounds of the foreign parts seemed to have meaning, the flow, the phrasing?” Louis said. “This is something we learn in linguistics, that you understand a language to a great extent not by individual words, but by the phrasing of the sounds, the context.”

“And the answer to the riddle?” Larry asked.

“Muhammed never tells us the answer.”

“I know.”

“What do you think it is?” Louis asked.

“A mood.”

“A mood?

“A perfect mood,” Larry said, “or rather, a secure mood, when you have done everything and for a while you feel that all is secure, you’re in control of a situation, and then, like now….”

Suddenly a newer model white Envoy pulled in front of Larry’s vehicle, moved haphazardly to an exit lane, thus causing Larry to hit the brakes and slow down.

“One moment you move along peacefully,” Larry said. “The next, reality hits. A secure mood rises until you perceive it, and it bursts like a bubble. That’s what it meant to me.”

Back at their one-story ranch-style home - which they had first rented and then purchased in 2006 after the owners (long-time residents of Loudoun County, the husband having worked for the U.S. Mint until retirement) had decided to sell their two Virginia rental homes (both previous residences) and move to California to take advantage of one of the sub-prime markets where foreclosures were highest, an area not far from where one of their grown daughters and son-in-law and three grandkids lived - Louis and Larry began to prepare for bed.

They had two personal computers in their library, each set up with cable Internet connections and a network.

Louis undressed except for his navy blue briefs and sat down in his black leather executive desk chair – a gift from Omar - and began using the online translators with the English sentence:

Bush is a war criminal and to be despised

He tried Spanish, Portuguese, German, Norwegian, Russian, and Japanese:

El arbusto es un criminal de la guerra y para ser despreciado

A mata é um criminoso de guerra e ser desprezado

Busch ist ein Kriegsverbrecher und verachtet zu werden

Busk er en krigforbryter og til å bli foraktet

Буш - военный преступник и презираться

ブッシュが戦争犯罪人でそして軽べつされるために

He then tried a Spanish to French translation of the same sentence.

L'arbuste est un criminel de la guerre et pour être méprisé

And then Spanish to Russian and compared the two: English to Russian, or English to Spanish to Russian:

Куст - преступник войны и чтобы презираться

Буш - военный преступник и презираться

Then Russian to German and compared the two: English to German, or English to Spanish to Russian to German:

Den Busch - der Verbrecher des Krieges und, um verachtet zu werden

Busch ist ein Kriegsverbrecher und verachtet zu werden

And the back to English from the German:

Bush is despised a war criminal and

And yes, Louis thought, Bush is despised now.

He thought back to other memorable lines from the play, which was already being proposed for an early October opening off-off Broadway.

“We hear rumors in multiplicity.”

He tried English to Russian,

Мы слышим слухи в разнообразии.

then Russian to Spanish:

Oímos los oídos en una variedad.

Then Spanish to French:

Nous entendons les oreilles dans une variété.

Then French back into English:

We hear ears in a variety.

Something lost in the translation that time, Louis thought.

He then tried the line:

“but the vision danced again, like a bird floods in upon the surface,”

First into Spanish:

pero la visión bailó otra vez, como unas inundaciones de ave en sobre la superficie,

Then Spanish into Russian:

но взгляд танцевал снова, как наводнения птицы в на поверхности,

Then Russian into German:

Aber der Blick tanzte wieder, wie die Überschwemmungen den Vogel in auf die Oberfläche,

Then German back into English, using two different .com free online translators:

But the view danced again, like the inundations the bird in on the surface

The second rendering into English:

But the look danced again, like the floods the bird in on the surface,

Fabulous, Louis thought, all the means of communicating in the world today, and still we have corruption throughout the world, the evils of repressive regimes, torture rampant, human rights denigrated by cowardly governments.

He opened his copy of SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE, the book of anti-war poetry published by peaceforiraq.net to the poem entitled “Resurrection” by his father’s friend, Nabih Fadhil Hunarfar and noticed the line: “Peace never forgets a friend,” which he entered into the translator English to Italian and found:

La pace non dimentica mai un amico

Larry walked naked into the study, having just finished a shower, stood behind Louis’s chair, put his hands on Louis’s shoulders, and said, “What are you doing?”

“Studying translations.”

“You love it, don’t you?”

“Must have inherited it from my father.”

Larry put a thick blue bath towel on the seat of his own black leather desk chair – which was somewhat larger than the one in which Louis sat and more deeply padded – sat down, and began checking email.

“We’re invited to the Chincoteague Island Pony Swim later this month,” Larry said, “by the Congressman himself.”

“I don’t know, Larry. It seems kind of harsh, making all those little ponies take a swim and then to auction them off.”

“Hmmm,” Larry said. “How about the Blueberry Festival, same time.”

“On the island. Sure. I’m just not interested in watching the pony swim.”

“Then I can confirm we’ll be there?”

“You’re sure you can get away? What if there’s some debate?”

“Then the Congressman will be in the Capital and so will I, no doubt.”

Louis began checking his email and saw two in the inbox from his father Omar.

The first one began saying, “There’s been another disappearance of one of my workmen.”

“Oh no,” Louis said. “Another of the men helping father has been abducted.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Larry said, looking over at Louis and pulling their chairs closer together.

“One of father’s favorites, one he was sure was loyal to him. Larry, isn’t there more you can do to persuade the Congressman to oppose the war?”

“Not again, Louis. We’ve been all over that.”

“If we don’t get peace in Iraq soon we could have nothing but terrorist attacks and nation invading nation as long as humankind is around.”

“We can hope Iraq is the last of the modern American wars,” Larry said. “You know I share you view on Iraq now. But I have to support the Congressman and he still sides with the administration.”

“Since he’s a Republican. And now a second email from father, that Nabih Hunarfar hasn’t heard from his brother Kamel in over three years now.”

“Good for Nabih, since his brother is a known terrorist and better out of the U.S. for his sake and for ours.”

“Nabih doesn’t know where Kamel is now, but he’s sure Kamel has never been directly involved in a terrorist attack.”

“You’re known by the company you keep, Louis.”

“I know. I know.”

“We can hope Kamel never manages to fulfill one of his involuted plots to blow up an airport.”

“What are you talking about, blow up an airport?” Louis asked. Louis looked over at Larry’s bodybuilder physique, his own tanned, shaved, powerful arms propped up on his desk, and asked again, “What did you mean by that? What do you know? Do you know if Kamel is alive?”

“I don’t, Louis. But I’ve been shown an NSA file from last March that details emails believed to have been sent by Kamel or his partner Ramesh trying to coordinate some sort of bombing of an East Coast airport.”

“Oh man, why didn’t you tell me? Can’t you tell Nabih?”

“No, and neither can you. I wasn’t supposed to tell you.”

“I can’t tell father?”

“You shouldn’t.”

“Shouldn’t?”

“Mustn’t,” Larry said.

“Does the NSA have this room bugged?”

“Not to worry.”

“How about our computers? Why do you always unplug the speaker jacks, the video cam, when you’re in here naked?”

“Hackers can listen over any computer in the world if you’re not careful, Louis, as well as turn on remote video cams.”

“So you won’t let me tell father that Kamel is still alive?”

“I wish you wouldn’t. You know I don’t try to control you, Louis.”

“I know. I love you for that.”

“Could end up getting us both investigated by the FBI but no, I don’t try to control you, do I?”

“No. You really liked the play?”

“Loved it. Muhammed is a genius.”

“I think so too.” Looking at the computer screen, Louis remarked, “Here’s another report on the sex abuse scandal in the church.”

“Also quite convoluted, how that was suppressed for so many years,” Larry said.

“A lot of children were persecuted – treated shamelessly - by the dioceses if they claimed to have been abused.”

“Yes,” Larry said, “quite sad.”

“Larry, you know, I’ve never told you or anybody this, but I think our priest when I was thirteen molested me.”

Chapter One THE RIDDLE

David Lawrence Cade

1208 S. Delaware

Bartlesville, OK 74003

(918) 336-6418

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