YASMINE RANA

Kabul Revisited, from The War Zone is My Bed

Characters:
DAHLIA: A journalist from Sarajevo in her thirties.

ASH: A native of Kabul in his twenties. A newly released prisoner and former member of the Taliban’s “Religious Police.”

Setting:
The remnants of an apartment in Kabul.

Time:
Winter 2005

“Kabul Revisited” is a one-act play taken from the fuller play, The War Zone is My Bed. In this moment, Dahlia is interviewing Ash for her book on women and war. Dahlia’s focus on Afghanistan is Laila, a prostitute from Kabul with whom Ash fell in love during the Taliban regime. When Laila’s means of survival were discovered due to Ash’s participation in the regime, she was executed in the city’s football stadium. Ash was eventually arrested for his participation in the Taliban. At this point of the play, Ash has been released and has agreed to speak with Dahlia.

(Kabul, winter 2005. A bombed apartment. The stage is stark with two chairs facing the audience. ASH occupies one. He has aged and appears very disconcerted.)

ASH
What do I remember? I remember . . . black. Black walls . . . no light . . . no sunlight. Nothing to tell me if it was day or night. I had seen that darkness once before. So that stays with me . . . that feeling . . . that lack of . . . everything but that feeling. Dates . . . times . . . are very distant from me. I apologize if I can’t be clearer for you, but I can’t. Everything is very far away, except that darkness. It’s like a dream . . . but not a good one . . . so you don’t want to remember it, even though you’re told you should remember it. You tell yourself and others tell it to you. But why try? What would matter now? It’s already happened . . . that very dreamlike, strange, time in that very brutally strange place. I’m not sure what I said before. I can’t be certain . . . but I am certain of her. She was there, with me. You see, I put her there. Different hands controlled the puppet strings, but it was the same place and the same feeling, and that same brutality. Mine came from . . . them, and hers came from me. I was part of the . . . whole . . . what do we call it now? Regime? Event? Whatever that was . . . that kept her hidden . . . silenced . . . restrained. And now I was too. I kept thinking, “This is what she knew. This was her entire being. This is what she felt, and now I feel it too. She got me back.” My payback. But the really bizarre thing was, I was imprisoned those months for the wrong reason, I think. I don’t think they knew about . . . her . . . or truly understood what I had done to her, and to others like her, maybe like you. So it’s a bit funny now isn’t it? All for the wrong reason. I thought I was right, maybe, or maybe . . . it was all I knew, really knew. So how could it be wrong, if no one told me it was. I don’t justify my actions, but I know that’s how it sounds, doesn’t it? What am I trying to tell you . . . I was . . . the police . . . the religious police . . . I thought it was good and moral and right. No, wait. I don’t think I ever did . . . because I found her and let her in. She was a widow, who taught me the English I speak to you today. Who taught me how to blacken windows so no one knew if it was day or night. She was the one I saved and killed at the same time. I never put a rope around anyone’s neck . . . I promise you, I never did that. But what I did to her was worse than that, because I led her to feel that having that rope put around her neck in the football field would be better . . . than this. 

(Lights up on DAHLIA, taking notes. She sits next to ASH.)

DAHLIA
Maybe it was.

DAHLIA
Do you want to stop?

ASH
Why are you interviewing me? 

ASH
But you’re not telling my story. Your work is supposedly about women and war, women who lived in this place . . . during . . . that time.

DAHLIA
We have trouble identifying exactly what “that time” should be called.

ASH
So why interview me?

DAHLIA
Why agree?

ASH
When I say the words aloud, when I repeat whatever it is that I can remember, how little, how much, how clear, how vague . . . it stays real, like this really did happen, even though sometimes I can’t believe it did.

DAHLIA
And what about what you did to her? Your widow? And the others? Can you believe that?

ASH
That’s never distant. Despite those months that could have created enough fright and emptiness and forgetfulness, those actions, never left me. Even now. Even these few years later, they’re very new . . . very real.

DAHLIA
If she were here, I’d speak to her and to the others like her, but they’re not. You’re the closest I have to them.

ASH
I wonder what you see right now.

DAHLIA (Uneasy)
I don’t agree . . . support . . . torture. If that’s what you’re wondering. I suppose if you really were such a threat, you wouldn’t be here, outside, here, free, to speak with me, to stay, to go. I suppose that’s what they realized, though it took several months to come to that realization.      

ASH
That’s not what I wonder. I don’t give a shit about your views on torture or politics or war or any other fucking thing like that.

DAHLIA
I know what you wonder.

ASH
So tell me.

DAHLIA
It doesn’t matter what I think.

ASH
I’m giving you my time . . . my words . . . so the least you can do is give me what’s inside your head.

DAHLIA
She taught you well.

ASH
I never needed a translator.

DAHLIA
Congratulations.

ASH
It made me better off than most.

DAHLIA
If that’s possible.

ASH
It was. (Pause) You despise me.

DAHLIA
I don’t know you well enough to.

ASH
Is that an offer?

DAHLIA
She did this to you.

ASH
What?

DAHLIA
She made you feel and laugh even at something like this, now. She gave you . . . joy.

ASH
Is that what this is?

DAHLIA
I don’t know, but it’s something.

ASH
But she didn’t have any to give.

DAHLIA
That’s what I wonder, about her and others like her. Was it possible to still . . . love . . . under such restrictions, and allow yourself to be loved.

ASH
You could answer that. You know war.

DAHLIA
Not behind burkahs or blackened windows.

ASH
Did you love?

DAHLIA
It wasn’t the same.

ASH
Did you?

DAHLIA
Yes. But not enough.

ASH
I loved her.

DAHLIA
But not enough.

ASH (Reflective)
No.

DAHLIA
Could you have saved her, when she was found out for whatever moral crime she had committed?

ASH
I could have tried.

DAHLIA
You knew what would happen to her?

ASH
Yes.

DAHLIA
Though you did nothing to stop it.

ASH
Not enough.

DAHLIA
You must have been scared.

ASH
More justification. You’re too kind.

DAHLIA
I’m trying to understand.

ASH
I don’t think we ever will. I don’t think we can.

DAHLIA
You are different.  

ASH
I’m the nice fundamentalist.
      
DAHLIA
That’s not what I meant.       

ASH
You want to attribute everything to her . . . Laila.

DAHLIA
That was her name? It sounds like mine.

ASH
You want to give her the credit for making me different. Love, but not enough, protect, but not enough, feel, but not enough.

DAHLIA
If it weren’t for her, you would never have been able to speak to me like this.

ASH
And so I can. So now what?

DAHLIA
She pierced you.

ASH
And what did I give her in return? Nothing.

DAHLIA
Companionship? Friendship? I wasn’t there. Only you would know.

ASH
I gave her . . . the absolute power to give up. That deep down sinking pit that tells you it’s over. You’ve lost, so let it be done with as quickly as possible. That’s your dignity, the only piece you have left, because you decided when it would happen, rather than losing sleep and breath waiting for it. You’ve told it when to come for you.

DAHLIA
It was her doing . . . to give up.

ASH
I was the catalyst.

DAHLIA
So you’re a believer in collective responsibility, then.

ASH
Whatever that is . . . whatever that does. I think there was so little left to believe in . . . when she found out about me and what I did, that was it.

DAHLIA
I think it was possible for her . . . to feel something, to love, even under this . . . vacuum of any emotion or thought.

ASH
You couldn’t have?

DAHLIA
I’m writing about these women, not myself.

ASH
You’re so separate from them? Isn’t it the same? Women? War? Religion? All that?

DAHLIA
It isn’t.

ASH
So she’s the better person. Better than me . . . better than you. She wins. And we’re left, here. Good for her! Maybe I did her a favor.

DAHLIA
Maybe you’ll find someone else . . . someone like her.

ASH
Never. There was no one before Laila and the possibility of there being one now, doesn’t exist. I’m stripped, you see. A shell. You think there’s something more, something left. There isn’t. I have nothing to give. I don’t even know if I want to give to anyone, or let anyone in. You’re the first person I’ve spoken to like this, since her. I don’t know why, but I let you be here and listen to me. I don’t know why. She left with her dignity. I have none, because of what put me in prison and because of what happened once I was imprisoned. So, she is the winner.

DAHLIA
Yes, your story is very sad. But you can’t call her a winner! Look at the life she and the others had! Look at how she died! You say it was with dignity? But how could something so horrible and so public for something so fucking bizarre and incomprehensibly illegal be dignified? It can’t. 

ASH
You sit in front of me and look at me with my head lowered to see if I’ve learned some lesson, haven’t you? You think, “He has no right to have an opinion, to say it aloud. He should be meek and sorry. He’s not sorry enough. He thinks he is, but it’s not enough. He says he’s a shell, but he should be less than that. There’s too much here. Oh he looks bad and old and a bit confused, without much to look forward to, but it should be worse.” Even though you say how you don’t agree with this or that, you still see me as your enemy.

DAHLIA
You can’t make that judgment.

ASH
I can! I’ve spent enough time watching people watch me, waiting for me to say what they want me to say. I know what they think.

DAHLIA
You can’t place me with your interrogators.

ASH
That’s where you are now. The only difference is, I’ve accepted your invitation.

DAHLIA
Why?

ASH
Because it’s all I know now. Maybe it’s all I’ve ever known. Maybe I never had a mind of my own and that’s what led me to this moment. Perhaps that’s why I was able to follow, without protest, and do what I did and not think it wrong; until someone without fear told me, yes, it was wrong. Maybe that’s why I’ve let you in.

DAHLIA
And if she hadn’t told you different, you would never have thought . . . .

ASH
Thought?

DAHLIA
Felt. (Pause) I think I wanted to despise you.

ASH
It would have given you something to feel.

DAHLIA
Why did you just say that? 

ASH
You didn’t need torture to become . . . this . . . like me.

DAHLIA
I am not like you.

ASH
Without . . . I’m left without her, and you’re without . . . something . . . someone.   That’s what drives you to do this, relieve pain. You want to find something that will make you . . . come alive again. 

DAHLIA
I thought I was, with, not devoid of feeling, or life, or . . . joy. 

ASH
I’m sorry. I don’t know you. I don’t know anyone anymore. It’s not my right to say those things, I suppose.

(DAHLIA collects her bag and papers from the floor by her chair. ASH remains seated, in reflection.)

DAHLIA
I’m truly sorry for you, for what you’ve been through. It was . . . a terrible . . . mess.

ASH
For you too.

DAHLIA
Despite what you were before this . . . I don’t think she . . . Laila would have wanted you to go through what you did.

ASH
Me? Before this? What exactly was before this? Aren’t I the same person? I can’t remember anything . . . good. Not anything. In my recollection, my earliest recollection, there were always football stadiums to hang people, and very heavy veils, and blackened windows . . . things like that, that never allowed us to see . . . the other. To see . . . you. To look at her and see what she was thinking or feeling. So I never knew. 

DAHLIA (Referring to notes)
Now I don’t know what I should do with all this. This was all on my own. I don’t have a publisher, yet. But, now, I don’t know what to do. It’s very unclear to me.

ASH
What you intended to do. Write about her. Write about them.

DAHLIA
And you, now.

ASH
Not me. She’s the one who needs to be remembered. I don’t want to be.

DAHLIA
Of course not by name. I would maintain your privacy . . . .

ASH
Why would I need to be included? I was a small person in this entire . . . mess . . . that you like to call it. I was . . . no one, you see.

DAHLIA
I don’t know what I see, anymore.

ASH
So you’ve caught what I have. It’s very . . . unclear. Except, I see how much we stay the same. Our interrogators’ names change, but the questions . . . are all the same. 

DAHLIA
I wish I could have spoken to her. 

ASH
Then she would have been like anyone else. 

DAHLIA
Why do we think death makes us greater?

ASH
Because it does.

DAHLIA
That’s frightening.

ASH
That’s all there’s left.        

DAHLIA
Then what was everything for? 

ASH
I was hoping you could tell me, because I’m having a very hard time trying to understand this myself.

DAHLIA
It led you to her, to knowing her, in the way you did. 

ASH
Then I think the price was too great.

DAHLIA
Do you start again?

ASH
From where? Here? 

DAHLIA
It could be better.

ASH
Not for a very long time. That’s what people don’t understand. 

DAHLIA
Thank you for your help . . . for your time . . . your words. 

ASH
Whatever you do with them, know I am sorry, for my silence in hurting her.

(DAHLIA heads to the door.)

DAHLIA
She surrendered . . . everything. That’s all she did.

ASH
Not in despair.

DAHLIA
No. Not despair.

(DAHLIA Exits. Lights dim on ASH.)  

   Contributor’s notes
   Introduction