THE REALM OF LOVE

A Play

by

MAHMOOD KAVIR

Translated

by

Bahiyeh Afnan Shahid

Layout by Ono Damon

First Published in the UK

January, 2001

Cast of Characters

Rasha: A quiet, dignified young woman (also doubles as Shebli).

Changi: A female daf player. A wild, purple gypsy.

Hussein Mansour Hallaj (also doubles as the Caliph).

Happening One

(With a fearful cry, the sound of rolling drums and crimson lightning, a hatchet flashes in the sky and falls on an anchor wrapped in fishing nets. The cry of seagulls. A clutch of feathers falls from the sky. A large, blue, silk flag falls to the ground. Hussein is chained to the anchor. Rasha and Changi dance wildly around him.)

CHANGI: The sky, look at the sky!… a burgundy sky… wine-red burgundy. He is up in the clouds!… No, he is here, right here among the stones, the earth, the grass, between the flaming, cherry-kissed lobes of my ears, between my warm breasts, in the purple heat of my body! (She screams in a drunken fashion and runs around the anchor.)

RASHA: Thunder, thunder crashing! (Hussein cries out.)

CHANGI: It’s him! It’s him calling! The lost joy of my soul! The lost half of my very being!

RASHA: Lightning! Lightning!

CHANGI: It’s his sword, it’s his sword that blazes away!

RASHA: Tell me, tell me what happened! What happened to that flaming goal of all my desires?

CHANGI: I can’t! My blood boils with rage! The Tigris, boiling, agitated, refused to accept his ashes. It was roaring as if all the rivers of the world had run wildly, madly into each other… Rousing song and dance of the waves… riotous waves… and my whole being on fire! Leave me, I want to be alone with him!

RASHA: And then what happened?

CHANGI: On the third day: Fire and phoenix! Body and flames!

(With the story of each day, a drumbeat, and a handful of feathers scattered from the sky.)

RASHA: And on the second day?

CHANGI: On that day, that knight in shining armour sat at the executioner’s bloc, by a tub full of blood.

RASHA: What happened, what did he do?

CHANGI: I asked him… of ishq. “What is this ishq? Tell me and set me on fire!?

HUSSEIN: That you shall see today, and you shall see it tomorrow and on the day after that.

CHANGI: That day: the sword. The next day: burning by fire. The third day: his ashes scattered on the Tigris.

RASHA: And before that?

CHANGI: They cut off his two hands. (Hussein cries out.)

RASHA: (To Hussein) What are you doing? You who are I!

HUSSEIN: Performing my ablutions, for ishq has prayers that require ablutions in blood!

RASHA: (To Changi) And before that, what did he do?

CHANGI: He was saying “Aye ishq, Aye ishq, I can no longer see your compassionate face!? Wine! I can’t stand it any more! Wine! “Scourge him three hundred times.?

RASHA: And while they scourged him what did he do?

HUSSEIN: Have no fear! Have no fear, son of Mansour.

RASHA: And before that?

CHANGI: He was calling me… calling you. He was calling you. You must hide, Rasha, you must hide!

RASHA: Why?

CHANGI: They are coming to fling you from the rocks; and me to stone to death! The rocks for you and the stones for me!

RASHA: Don’t be afraid! That is him! He is alive! He sails down the Tigris – his body his boat, his white shirt his sail! Where were you my lion, that you fell prey to the jackals? And what befell you in that trap? (she claps her hands) What befell you in the Caliph’s palace – at the altar of blood and sword?

HUSSEIN: (As Caliph) These women love you greatly, Hussein – and, strange to say, while the sun has never seen the naked body of one of them, the other’s has been lit up by the candle of every lonely man in Baghdad. One, you love dearly. The other loves you greatly. If you choose this doe and save her from the hunter’s bow and arrow, maybe you will save yourself as well. At any rate, one of these two must die! This is the edict of the story!

HUSSEIN: Are you testing me?

HUSSEIN: (As Caliph) The people are testing you. I have placed a mirror before them.

HUSSEIN: If you are telling the truth, let these two choose. Their choice shall be exactly the same as mine!

RASHA: Choose me Hussein! I would rather die than see you humiliated!

CHANGI: I, I do not want to die. I want to live. For the first time in my life I have fallen in love – and with this man that you have placed in chains. If he wants me to live, then he must die! This is a horrendous choice!

RASHA: She is right! Kill me and save her!

HUSSEIN: (As Caliph) Silence!

HUSSEIN: No, this is exactly my choice.

HUSSEIN: (As Caliph) No, this is not love, this is hatred and spite!

RASHA: And that which the Caliph knows as love is nothing but the desire of a hyena for carrion!

HUSSEIN: (As Caliph) They have chosen exactly what Hussein wanted! Since Hussein has chosen, the voting has come to an end. Release this daf player, but before Hussein’s death, this other woman (pointing to Rasha) must die.

CHANGI: But not him! Not him!

HUSSEIN: (As Caliph) And so, before your death from those high rocks, Rasha, before you hurl yourself like a panther into the lap of the moon – you who preferred the rocks to the Caliph’s bed – I shall humiliate you, drag you down, to a miserable death! A dishonourable death! (He claps his hands – drum roll.) The virginity and body of Rasha are granted to the guards in our service!

RASHA: Hussein, you know me. Help me! (In the dark, she struggles. Her torn clothing get scattered in the air.)

HUSSEIN: Rasha! Rasha! Rasha, you shall rise again. As a plant, a thorn, a flower. Rasha, my own Rasha!

CHANGI: (Playing the daf, dancing and singing by the torn clothing)

You are enamoured O heart, may your pining be a blessing

Saved from place and space, may that other be a blessing

RASHA: (Screaming) But what have we done to deserve this? Tell me… have you not seen my Reera?

Happening Two

HUSSEIN: (He is wounded, chained to the anchor. Someone dressed in black holds a lamp before him and circles around him.) Who are you? What do you want?

RASHA: (As Shebli) The least of your disciples.

HUSSEIN: I guessed! You are Shebli. What do you want?

RASHA: (As Shebli) Your permission to get your pardon from the Caliph – your safe passage, the governorship of Basra and the life of Rasha.

HUSSEIN: Don’t torment me! You have come to demean and debase me in the eyes of both Rasha and the people of Basra. If I want Basra, I will govern Basra without the Caliph’s edict. You are the one who has no way but to obey the command of the Caliph. If the edict of the Caliph grants Basra then you are welcome to it.

RASHA: (As Shebli) You are signing your own death sentence.

HUSSEIN: Before they hang me I shall kiss the foot of the gallows. For it is at the gallows that the ascension of lovers occurs!

RASHA: (As Shebli) You are asking for death because you have abandoned your faith. We, we kept the secrets of ishq, but you, you divulged them to all and sundry; and since the secrets of ishq do not belong in that company, you created havoc. Both heaven and earth are shaken. Exactly as it was in the case of Adam. He ate from the wheat of heaven and understood what he was not meant to understand. This was the sin that drove him from Paradise. Don’t be the snake that goaded Adam on to eat that wheat. Hussein, I can foretell that one day after the resurrection, they will bring you chained, to Arasat, for if you come free and unhindered, you will create havoc and set fire to both Heaven and Hell!

HUSSEIN: That Paradise of which you speak was based on the desolation of ignorance; and that wheat was the wheat of Wisdom that got scattered everywhere. I am not a snake, but in me a dragon breathes fire!

RASHA: (As Shebli) You drive people to their destruction. Leave them to live their lives in peace.

HUSSEIN: I love life passionately, but will not abandon myself to abject servitude. There is a mad passion in me, in my soul… as it is in stones, in plants, in animals. I have rediscovered this long-lost gem, and I will not let go of it… or it will not let go of me.

RASHA: (As Shebli) In an effort to break you, they are going to torture you. (Offering a dagger) With one stroke you can save yourself the agony!

HUSSEIN: You don’t want to spare me the agony! You want to cut short my enjoyment of life! Get away from me!

RASHA: (As Shebli) Forgive me!

HUSSEIN: Never! You have been put to shame. The punishment, that you shall remain alone and that people shall point the finger at you, is sufficient for you. The day will come when without the Caliph’s help and protection, you will not dare show your face in the bazaar.

RASHA: (As Shebli) That is a punishment that I cannot bear. That will be an injustice I cannot stand… and to save my honour and the honour of people like me, I shall throw myself into the arms of death (plunging a dagger into himself). I can see that fighting destiny with force does not lie within the power of either the wise or the learned man.

HUSSEIN: You demean yourself Shebli, for historical circumstances can defeat the forces of destiny. You, I love, and I have never praised death to speak well of what you are doing. (Pause) Ishq, where are you? For I can no longer see your blue and compassionate face!

RASHA: Yours was a call about light and illumination. This was the ‘sin’ that committed you to the darkest, blackest pit of the world, chained with the heaviest of bonds. And I… I have been kept alive to witness your death.

HUSSEIN: My death is life itself! My blood shall permeate and flow in people’s veins! But for you, this is the reward of someone who, in the heat of summer, drinks wine with the dragon!

RASHA: How refreshing is that wine. May I never drink it in mourning for you.

HUSSEIN: Whoever walks with me shall not mourn my death. Mourning is the way of those whose thoughts are deathly. Joyful celebration is our way. Joyful celebration with people, for people. Sing my Rasha, my wild doe. Sing when they kill me, and when they fling you from the rocks! Sing until, like a passionate female leopard, you draw the moon into your arms! Sing, my moon-leopard, sing.

HUSSEIN & RASHA: (In a passionate dance)

You are enamoured O heart

May your pining be a blessing, be a blessing, be a blessing.

Saved from space and place

May that other be a blessing.

Your blasphemy became belief

Your bitterness turned sweet.

You are manna through and through

May that too be a blessing.

In the khanegah of the breast

Tumult assails the ascetic.

O guileless breast

May your tumult be a blessing.

HUSSEIN: In places of confinement and constraint, horses are silent and dejected, but once in the open spaces, they neigh, rear up, stamp their hooves and toss their manes. Release the horses into the open plains – let them go – hey, hey, hey!

RASHA: Hussein, you make the leopard in my soul pine for the moon.

HUSSEIN & RASHA:

If you’re the moon on high, a leopard I’ll be

If you are the deepest ocean, a whale I’ll be.

Morning of freedom, shine on my rooftop

For in the darkness of the night, I do battle with the night.

Happening Three

HUSSEIN: (Darkness. By the light of a candle) The Caliph was angry. He had found my letters (holding letters). He had drawn his sword (draws sword). He attacked on every side, tearing open a belly here, chopping off a head there...

HUSSEIN: (As Caliph) Wine! Wine! This wine has no effect anymore! Blood! Red and flaming blood! Hot blood! (He strikes at an imaginary guard behind a curtain and presses his cup into the man’s blood.) The might and the foundation of the Caliphate are disintegrating! Woe betide me! One day the tinsmiths of Sistan are rioting. On another day the fishermen of Tabarestan create havoc. On yet another, the mat makers and ragged mob of Bahrein attack the sacred house of God, tear down the covering of the Ka’ba, raid the money, gold and goods of the servants of God. And now, this so-called poet! …Maybe the day of Resurrection is upon us. (Fearful, he runs from side to side.) This bastard Ghermati dares to issue an edict that is a call to arms …Burn his books! Harness the horses of spite and hatred and kill these blackguards and ruffians! Their blood shall flow and wash the horses’ stirrups. Blood! Thirst! Thirst! Satiate me with fresh, hot blood! Wine servers, plunge your cups in blood! A cup! A cup! I am dying of thirst! Death and destruction! Perdition! Total ruin! (Breathing heavily, as if from some passion spent, he sits, depressed and thoughtful. Suddenly he cries out.) Shebli, Shebli, where are you? (Slowly, an imaginary fear takes hold of him.) Who is here? Hey, you, who are you in my sanctuary? Guard! …No, stay away! No! You! What do you want of me? …Have mercy! Have mercy on me. …No, kill him, kill him! A sword, bring me a sword! He is here! Arrest him! I know this household dog! Arrest him! (He lunges at a curtain… and catches a mouse.) I killed this plotting traitor! Infidel! Spy! Die! Die!

RASHA: (As Shebli) Commander of the Faithful.

HUSSEIN: (As Caliph) You, you Shebli, you are the death of Hallaj!

RASHA: (As Shebli) Commander of the Faithful I am at your service, but I must say I love Hallaj dearly.

HUSSEIN: (As Caliph) I know! His knowledge, his piety, his dealings with the people, have all attracted and bewitched you. But you are one of us. You will not sell your faith and your God to ruffians and rogues. I know.

RASHA: (As Shebli) I do not approve of the death of Hallaj, although…

HUSSEIN: (As Caliph) I know. There is no need to soil your hands with the blood of that foolish nobody of a Hallaj. When you are on our side what need is there for you to soil your hands? Shebli, you, your very existence, is the death of Hallaj. It is your silence, not my sword, that will kill Hallaj. He is enamoured, enthralled and captivated! Asheq! And it is precisely that which I shall put to shame. It is this rapture that has made him divulge secrets that should have been kept secret. You and I, what a great number of secrets we have, wrapped up, curtained off, locked away, in the deep recesses… recesses… hiss… hiss… (Hissing like a snake, he circles round him) hiss… wrapped up under lock and key! Recesses, full of apprehensions, suspicions, obsessions! Hiss!

RASHA: (As Shebli) I have faith in Hallaj’s sincerity. You cannot break this thousand-year old plane tree.

HUSSEIN: (As Caliph) It will burn from within! You have faith in his sincerity and ours as well. Are you with Hallaj or against him?

RASHA: (As Shebli) I am with the truth.

HUSSEIN: (As Caliph) Meaning with Hallaj but not against the Caliph. I like that! I like that! You and I need each other. (Looking out of the window) From this upper room in the palace I looked out on the street and the surrounding area. We had paid the ruffians to stone him. They shouted, “The farman and the fatwa of the Commander of the Faithful must prevail.? We issued no fatwa until… until we saw what we had to see. We saw your hands, Shebli, stretched towards… mud! You did not throw stones at Hallaj, but mud… just to show that you are not against the Caliph. It was then that I cried, “Beat this foolish nobody of a Hallaj!? I knew then that his fate was sealed. Yes, my brother, stones, swords and silver will not kill Hallaj! The mud that you threw will kill him! Hiss! Hiss! Stones, swords and silver. Hiss!

RASHA: (As Shebli) If this is what you believe then order that we should both be killed.

HUSSEIN: (As Caliph) Hiss! Hiss! No! Not you! Though your life and death are all the same to me. But with Hussein… I fear him dead more than I fear him alive. Fear, dread! Why? Because he is a hero. Because he has become a legend. Woe betide me! Woe betide you!

RASHA: (As Shebli) Woe indeed. Hussein threw off the sufi garb and, wearing normal clothes, enjoyed associating with ordinary people. There he stirred up great trouble, mixing learning with state matters and political struggles; all the while raising the flag of ishq.

HUSSEIN: (As Caliph) Which means that he has turned his back on God, the representative of God and the successor of the Imam. And he has drawn a mob of ruffians and villains into politics and rebellion.

RASHA: (As Shebli) I said that he created turmoil among the people and I believe…

HUSSEIN: (As Caliph) At just one signal, these so-called virtuous (Ha!), gluttonous (indicating his belly and balls) and deceitful jurists will issue the fatwa condemning him to death… these same people who are the breeders of debauchery and depravity, and whose hands are dyed in blood! At another signal, they will become known as the jurists of their age! Shebli, go to the prison. See him alone. Offer him this last opportunity: give up this passion for rebellion, and Rasha and the governorship of Basra will be his! What do you think of this plan Shebli?

RASHA: (As Shebli) He will refuse – I know.

HUSSEIN: (As Caliph) There is no other way. If you love him then hurry, for a firestorm is brewing! Hurry, and place the emerald talisman of life, wealth and the woman before the eyes of that dragon, before we are burned to cinders in the furnace of his fire. Before he becomes a hero, a legend! Possessions, obsessions, dread! (Darkness, shout of the Caliph) Rasha… I want Rasha now!

(Lights, Rasha is before the Caliph)

RASHA: I will not exchange the least of Hussein’s possessions for all the Caliph’s wealth.

HUSSEIN: (As Caliph) What do you see in him?

RASHA: What Hussein has in his heart cannot be found in the Caliph’s court.

HUSSEIN: (As Caliph) What does he have? Nothing! If it is things of this world that you desire I shall immerse you in gold, and if it is the things of the other world, paradise is in our hands. Believe and you will gain paradise.

RASHA: Hussein’s paradise is right here on earth.

HUSSEIN: (As Caliph) Paradise in Hussein’s hands? Paradise is here! Gold, power! (crying in a loud voice he runs from side to side.)

RASHA: This power and gold smells of blood. That is why you and those around you have your snouts buried in it. Hussein’s paradise is far beyond that.

HUSSEIN: (As Caliph – going round Rasha, sword in hand) With the reaper’s scythe we shall mow him down!

RASHA: It will not matter! Look around you. Can you see? Desolate streets. People weary of the poison of oppression. Look! Thousands upon thousands of hungry, homeless, frightened, browbeaten mothers – suckling Husseins. Thousands upon thousands of Husseins, riding wooden sticks for horses, playing the game of life. From China to Basra.

HUSSEIN: (As Caliph – writhing in fear and anger) I found his letters. From far and wide scoundrels and despicable people write him long letters. Who is this Hussein? (carrying letters that he reads, tears and throws in every direction) The people of India call him Father of the helpless! In China they call him Father of those in need. In Khouzestan, Guardian of the secrets of the heart! Those in Khurasan, Compassionate Father! In Baghdad, Saviour! In Basra, Teacher! And so on. Who is he? Who is this Hussein?

RASHA: How strange that the world knows him and the Caliph of Islam does not recognize him.

HUSSEIN: (As Caliph) A snake, curled up and ready to strike! But Hussein is not bread. He is not dates. We shall keep you hungry until you forget both your honour and virtue. Poverty kills many a virtue.

RASHA: It is when we are hungry that we brandish his name and honour him. There, there is bread. There, there are dates.

HUSSEIN: (As Caliph) How did my agents allow this bare-footed non-entity to become such a legendary figure? For him, I have to find a way other than death!! As to you, I know that for me you have nothing but hatred in your heart and insults behind gritted teeth.

RASHA: I have much more than hatred in my heart for the Caliph. (Moving forward, she draws a dagger from her breast and tries to plunge it into him. They struggle. He takes the dagger from her. With the dagger, he draws a candle towards himself, lighting the scene. He claps his hands.)

HUSSEIN: (As Caliph) First I shall keep you. I shall make a foolproof trap and will wait for Hussein to come in search of the bait. When the stag is caught, I shall hurl you from the rocks! (The call to prayer is heard, becoming louder and then subsiding, while he stands to pray.)

Happening Four

(Call of the night guards. Drum of curfew. Hussein places a candle before Rasha. They are face to face.)

HUSSEIN: All I want to do is look into your beautiful eyes. They contain the magic of the universe, my Rasha.

RASHA: But first listen, listen to me. My parents are being held hostage against my return.

HUSSEIN: What inauspicious thing is it that has clutched at your parents’ hearts?

RASHA: Nine winters I waited for you but you did not come. The Caliph sent a message ordering that I be pledged to him. They take me to the palace tonight.

HUSSEIN: How can it be! The most beautiful and most noble lady of the city pledged to the Caliph! A wild doe the prey of an old hyena! I must do something! I must save you!

RASHA: How? And from that palace of darkness turned into a prison?

HUSSEIN: The wild doe must be snatched from the dogs, the traps and the hunters. At dawn, on a young, white-haired camel, I shall come to the tower. On that camel we shall escape to the desert, toward Basra. There the slaves are in rebellion!

RASHA: Do you know what you are saying? Hundreds of guards and watchmen are after you!

HUSSEIN: Ishq will sustain me! I shall come while it is still dark. By daybreak we shall be a long way off. Look, my heart is already beating in Basra!

RASHA: Your life is not yours alone. You must not endanger your life and your work for me. Run away. Run away to Basra.

HUSSEIN: Don’t speak to me in this way. How can I show my face in front of people when I have abandoned my love in the dark corners of my fear?

RASHA: What if we are caught?

HUSSEIN: (Tying his red kerchief around Rasha’s head) You tell me!

RASHA: We shall turn the leather square of the Caliph’s executioner into a bridal chamber!

HUSSEIN: We shall rock both prison and place of execution with cries of joy and happiness! Laugh, heroine of my stories, laugh!

RASHA: (Frightened, agitated, throws herself into Hussein’s arms) Hussein, take me. Set me on fire. I am burning, I am on fire! Water, some water!

(they circle round, dance and sing)

HUSSEIN & RASHA:

The passionate asheq I need

Creates fiery havoc each time he comes.

A fiery heart on fire we need

To out-burn hell itself.

Undaunted by waves and water

Though washed in two hundred seas.

Happening Five

(Hussein sits thoughtfully. Changi, sometimes as herself and other times as a guard, circles round him.)

CHANGI: I fell in love with you one night… what night was it that you set my heart and my life on fire? I don’t know – maybe it was the night that the guards came and broke my lute and my wine pitcher! They slashed my daf! You broke everything, you bastards!

In the city of the Commander of the Faithful you drink wine, play the daf and sell your body?!

Get your hands off me, you bastards! I’ll give you more money than you can earn in a whole month!

I won’t accept less than one hundred dinars. The other guards want a share. The night watchman wants his share. Those higher up want their share.

Don’t break them – shame on you – don’t break them! I’ll give you eighty dinars!

You shall get your just reward. You put Islam to shame! Hey, Muslims, hey!

HUSSEIN: Let this woman be!

CHANGI: I can’t. The law requires it!

HUSSEIN: The difference between the one hundred dinars and eighty dinars of the legal requirement, I shall pay (tosses a purse towards him). Off with you. My comrades are coming (he pursues him, shouting aloud while the guard runs away. (To Changi) What happened to you that you have blood running down your arm?

CHANGI: Where do you live? Tonight I shall be your guest. It has cost you twenty dinars.

HUSSEIN: (Wraps the kerchief from his head on her arm. The woman in disbelief, offers herself.) I have no home.

CHANGI: Am I not worth twenty dinars? Maybe you regret it now… but my breasts are orange blossoms! My nipples like fresh dates, you thief!

HUSSEIN: Your sacred anger and your wild eyes cannot be measured in derhems and dinars.

CHANGI: Of whom are you talking… like a magician… like a prophet… of me?

HUSSEIN: God dwells in beautiful people. That is why, before a thing of beauty, you must prostrate yourself. Beauty is related to the holy.

CHANGI: Me? Holy? You must be making fun of me!

HUSSEIN: I say it with absolute certainty. What is your name?

CHANGI: My name?

HUSSEIN: Yes, your name. Calm down. Have a drink and tell me your name. My comrades are coming and no one will hurt you.

CHANGI: My name I no longer remember. At different times and in different districts, I had different names… lute player, daf player, dancer… Daf player, daf, daf, daf… my daf sang songs… it mourned when they came to buy me. Drunk they came to raid the pleasures of my body – for one dinar! Jackals, come to plunder the garden. At dawn – dawn which scattered blood over the sky – in that house of darkness, crumpled, dishevelled women, women torn and full of pain – now freed from the hold of the hyenas – drenched, crushed, exhausted and desolate, would gather around me – like thirsty does around a spring – to listen to my daf shout out their pain. It was pain upon pain, anger upon anger, that ploughed the parched earth of their breasts. Wounds and the daf. Tears and the daf. Hopes long-lost, and the daf. Youth turned to dust, and the daf. Daf, daf, daf, daf. The dafdaf of plunder, the plunder of bodies. The dafdaf of love, the plunder of love. A multitude of the accursed rose to dance. A downpour of ishq, and the daf. Angels come to watch. Daf, daf, daf! (she stamps her feet and dances, then suddenly, she falls into Hussein’s arms – silence) What a cold and dark night it is! Set me on fire! (stricken with fear, in the arms of Hussein, to the audience) Do you know me that you invite me to the other side of the road? I have done nothing wrong. Only, from among all the names, I do not know why I have not forgotten the name of Reera. How dark and impassable the night. Wine, give me wine!

HUSSEIN: Day is breaking. I must go. My comrades are waiting.

CHANGI: Your comrades?

HUSSEIN: People ready to set hearts on fire; to set the whole world on fire! To set fire to those places of oppression that chain you… so that you and those who have been used and abused in that house of sorrows, can become free and blithe spirits, in pursuit of their aspirations and of ishq, singing songs of praise to Ishq and to Beauty.

CHANGI: Who are you? A poet? A magician?

HUSSEIN: Hussein Mansour Hallaj.

CHANGI: Woe betide me! I was with Hussein and I did not know! Hussein, the leader of the rebels, the bravest and wisest of men!

HUSSEIN: Not so. Wisdom and bravery are to be found everywhere. I am only a drop from the ocean of humanity.

CHANGI: Will you remain true to these people, or will you, once you are in power, dip your promises in the salt and poison of injustice and vengeance?

HUSSEIN: It is the oppressed ones that breed oppressors. The day will come when the inextricable knot of oppression, power and ignorance will be untied. I must go now.

CHANGI: You have cast a spell over me! I shall go with you! I shall stay with you!

HUSSEIN: I am an itinerant. A wood pigeon that builds no nests.

CHANGI: I shall not tie you down. I’ll ride on your wings! I’ll fly with you! What have you done to me tonight?

(Call of the night watchman: “Curfew, curfew. Fifth watch. Bab al Taq. All quiet and peaceful… quiet and peaceful everywhere. Curfew, curfew.? Hussein gets up to go. Suddenly, the woman plays her daf. Hussein turns around.)

HUSSEIN: Is this the sound of the daf or the song of the feet of angels? The daf or the throbbing of ishq? The song of the daf, or that of all the lovers of this world?

(Hussein and Changi in a wild dance in each other’s arms)

HUSSEIN: In a blue fire, my body is aflame!

CHANGI: Come, with my body let me hold you close – like a seed in the earth, and like love in the heart.

HUSSEIN: I wonder if you have the courage to share my flaming fire!

CHANGI: I wonder if you have the courage to take me!

HUSSEIN: I am apprehensive… the price may be having to put down roots.

CHANGI: Clouds don’t ask the earth for payment for the rain. Come, I have set you free.

HUSSEIN: Together we shall flow into a blue sea of secret mysteries!

(The stage is darkened. Their clothes fall to the front of the stage in a medley of song, dance and light.)

CHANGI: Aye Abi-jan, my blue love. Blue I have become. Blue

Happening Six

(Same as the first scene. Rasha and Changi, lantern in hand, by the shore.)

RASHA: Who was the winner of that game?

CHANGI: There are no winners. Only games. And playing actually means losing. Like falling in love, like self-sacrifice. Winning, too, is a kind of losing. And yet, every loss is another kind of winning.

RASHA: Had you fallen in love with him?

CHANGI: He too had fallen in love with me, with my daf playing. I found him, with no expectations of holding him. I had him without possessing him.

RASHA: He was born of ishq.

CHANGI: He was a being of fire and water.

RASHA: Half whirlwind and half ashes.

CHANGI: Wherever a precious human being’s suffering drags him through fire and flames, he will be there, like redeeming rain.

RASHA: You had suffered, and he came. What happened?

CHANGI: No tongue can ever express it. (Pause) Listen to silence!… Smell nothingness!… Taste non-existence!… The turmoil of silence!… The scent of nothingness!… The rainbow colours of being and non-being!… Was it blue or red, green or black, this ishq? Whatever it was, it was him! He was there!

RASHA: Will he ever return?

CHANGI: Even if no one believes it, he is here, right here. And, one day, across the breadth of this sky and the width of this earth, he will appear. He will appear like a seedling, from the earth. He will pour, like rain, from the sky. He is here! In me!

RASHA: It is a thousand autumns and a thousand winters since he has gone, and here I am, his thousand-year old memories of Leili.

CHANGI: From your sleep of a thousand years, when will you rise in my sky, my bright sun? When will you come?

(Call of seagulls. They swing their lanterns. Sound of daf. Cheerful and fervent daf. They lift the blue flag from the ground and wave it in the sky.)

RASHA & CHANGI: Ahoy, ahoy, they have raised a sail!

Travellers on a becalmed ship;

Favourable winds, blow

Perchance, once more to see

An encounter with a friend.

GLOSSARY

Ishq: That passionate mystical desire for the beloved.

Daf: An ancient percussion instrument that is still in use in Iran and other countries. It has a circular wooden frame, covered on one side by goat, sheep or antelope skin. It sometimes has small metal rings, small cymbals, chain links or small bells fixed to the inside of the wooden frame. It is played held up in the palm of one hand while the fingers of both hands beat upon it. Daf playing was and is standard in some of the meeting places of the sufis, and was greatly appreciated for the spiritually charged music it could produce. Together with other musical instruments, it often provides the accompaniment to epics set to music and sung.

Wheat

of Heaven: In the Quran, Adam eats of the wheat of heaven, instead of the Biblical apple.

Arasat: The plain of Arasat, where the Last Judgement will take place.

The leopard

& the moon: Persian mythology has it that at the time of the full moon, leopards climb to the highest place they can find, and in a moment of abandon, hurl themselves toward the moon.

Khanegah: Place of retreat, prayer and fasting, alongside monastic-style teaching and spiritual practices of sufi masters and adepts.