Cornered

A play in two acts

List of main characters

Rufus

Aziyah

Jamel

Aboriginal woman

Act I

Scene 1

At the police station

POLICE OFFICER: Name?

JAMEL: Jamel

POLICE OFFICER: Surname?

JAMEL: Reda

POLICE OFFICER: Where do ya live?

JAMEL: Trappe

POLICE OFFICER : Do ya know the two kids?

JAMEL: humph

POLICE OFFICER: Speak up.

JAMEL: You killed ‘em.

POLICE OFFICER: Now, that’s not what happened, you know that.

JAMEL: What I know doesn’t matter.

POLICE OFFICER: It does to us. Now, don’t go around saying we killed ‘em. Do you know why you here?

JAMEL: Nope.

POLICE OFFICER: You here because you need to know the truth. You here because you and your little friends are burning cars and raising hell all around the city right now. That’s why you here, right? Pretending we murdered the two kids, it will lead you nowhere.

JAMEL: I don’t care much about your truth, as much as you don’t care much about mine. You pigs killed ‘em and we know that. Only you’ve got the law with you.

POLICE OFFICER: You’ll stay with us tonight, alright? Need to do a bit of thinking.

Jamel is brought into a cell.

Exeunt

Scene 2

Knocking at the door

JAMEL’S MOTHER: Jamel, son! Are you here?

JAMEL: what mum?

JAMEL’S MOTHER: I was dead worried! Oh, where were you last night? Paris is burning, oh, Paris is burning. Where were you?

JAMEL: I spent the night in jail.

JAMEL’S MOTHER: In jail! What did you do?

JAMEL: You’ve said it, Paris is burning. Burning with anger, our anger. Two kids died electrocuted, mum. They didn’t do nothing. Got scared, like cornered rabbits they were, and ran away from the police to hide in a power plant, that is the truth.

JAMEL’S MOTHER: The police must have had good reasons.

JAMEL: You know they didn’t. Go and tell this to the families of the two kids. Go and tell them, your sons had no reason to be scared.

JAMEL’S MOTHER: I have reasons to be scared for you if you don’t leave it as it is.

JAMEL: And let the fire die? But mum, the fire, it’s in us all, and it will always be, there is no way out of it. I must go.

JAME’S MOTHER: Jamel, son! Where are you going now? Think of your father…

JAMEL: My father, for all I care. Where is he now? Back in Algeria, left us behind. My father is a coward. I need to go now.

Exit JAMEL

JAMEL’S MOTHER: Paris burning, and my son in the streets. [She cries]. Tears won’t do, the fire is too big, and it is contagious. Oh, my tears are dry. Oh, Jamel, I understand your grievances. This nation never cared for you or me or your father and all the likes of us. Arabs we are in France, but France is your country, my son. You was born here and I was not. It is your fight, not mine. But be careful, son, please, I wouldn’t loose you too.

Exit JAMEL’S MOTHER

Scene 3

As he goes out, Jamel sees a young woman. She is sitting on the stairs of his hallway and is crying in silence.

JAMEL: Hey, you live next door, right?

The woman does not answer.

JAMEL: Hey, what’s wrong?

Still no answer. Jamel kneels down beside her. The woman is rocking herself, her arms clutched to her legs in a fetal position.

WOMAN: He… I…. I cannot come back….

JAMEL: Hey, my name’s Jamel. Will you tell me yours?

WOMAN: I… I… I wish… I… I wish… I was never born…. a woman. Not a man either… neither an animal… somewhere else… something else… Where am I? Who am I?

She tries to get up and faints. Jamel prevents her from falling.

She is lying down now.

WOMAN: Where am I?

JAMEL: You’re safe.

WOMAN: Who are you?

JAMEL: Your neighbor. I’m Jamel, ‘member?

WOMAN: Where are we?

JAMEL: This, is a disaffected warehouse where I sometimes go. When I feel lost. You lost? When I saw you, you seemed so lost.

She startles at his touch.

JAMEL: Hey, don’t you worry, won’t bite, I only thought you needed some help. I’m no rapist.

She startles at the word rapist.

JAMEL: What happened, then? Don’t worry, just make yourself at ease, crash here if you like. I’ll roll a joint and speak instead. Let me guess, your name’s Aziyah and you’re from Iran.

AZIYAH: How…

JAMEL: It says it on your passport. Here… [He hands it back to her]. Don’t get angry, I just like to know who I’m talking to. After all, I could get into trouble for bringing you here.

AZIYAH: And that makes you think you know who you’re talking to.

JAMEL: If I was a cop, yes. Tell me your story, or don’t. Leave if you want to, it’s no jail here. If I was you I’d stay. Not safe outside. Here, listen?

AZIYAH: What?

JAMEL: All the yelling and thrashing. Cars. Buses. Shop windows. And the sirens of the police.

AZIYAH: I don’t hear anything. Oh, bring me home, Jamel. Oh, I wish I could disappear. I can hear them now. They’re not human sounds, they’re not really real, are they?

They hear a gunshot, and long, yelling, more like yelping.

AZIYAH: My uncle.

JAMEL: M’sieur Pezeshki. He’s your uncle?

AZIYAH: Yes.

JAMEL: Never liked him a lot. In fact, hardly know him. Always mumbling his Koran and don’t seem to speak a word of French. Only time he spoke to me, I didn’t get a single thing what he said, more like grunting. And his look. Like I was the devil himself. So what’s with him?

AZIYAH: Nothing. I remember now. I forgot but now I remember.

JAMEL: What?

AZIYAH: He wants me to marry one of his sons, so he can own me. He watches me in my sleep. Last night, I was awake, I saw him in the dark, his eyes glaring at me like a beast. Groping into the dark, crawling into my bed, and all the time I feign sleeping. He lies next to me, his hands on mine, warm, viscous hands pressing on my body. I let him do. I feel frozen. I can’t move. He wants me to marry his son so he can marry me. I can’t… come back.

JAMEL: What ‘d he do?

Aziyah remains silent for a while.

AZIYAH: I can’t come back. And I can’t come back to Iran either. I don’t want my family to know.

JAMEL: But they will, eventually!

AZIYAH: They’d be shattered if they know. They’d ask me to come home. But I won’t go back to Iran. It is no place for a woman there either.

JAMEL: So what will you do?

AZIYAH: I don’t know… I want to kill him, him and his sons. All so pious, and all so corrupted. They can’t accept the fact that I study medicine. They burned my books, and locked me up. And forgot about me. They locked me up for three days, with no food, no water. Till they let me out, telling me Allah has punished me for all my sins, telling me I am to marry Houmen straight away, without my father’s consent. My father’s in jail, an enemy of the State. My mother, she has no right, no say, and I don’t have any brother.

JAMEL: Hey, your father’s in jail?

AZIYAH: Or dead. I don’t know. We haven’t had any signs from him since he got arrested.

JAMEL: How long has it been?

AZIYAH: 8 years.

JAMEL: And you think he’s still alive?

AZIYAH: I pray. And I sing. Pass me that joint.

Arabic music follows, slowing rising, superimposed with the distant sound of a didgeridoo. The Arabic music recedes and stops, and only the didgeridoo remains, superimposed with the screeching sound of police sirens.

Exeunt.

Scene 4

The sound of the didgeridoo and of police sirens is heard in the background.

ABORIGINAL WOMAN: Little Tommy was on his bike, little Tommy was on his bike to his girlfriend, back from his mum. Little Tommy was on his bike and felt the air whipping on his skin. Little Tommy so fast, so smooth, cutting through the mid-afternoon air, like his ass was on fire. Little Tommy pedals so fast, his knees almost came up right to his chin. Probably thinks he’s cycling for Le Tour de France. Crosses the park now, swallowing up the slope, his whole body propelled forward. He’s crossed that park so many times, he knows its curves by heart, every single inclination of it. His heart’s beating fast, the wheels of his bike turning churning flowing floating now. Probably thinks he’s ET flying over the moon, flying to his girlfriend, who’s waiting, timing the time it takes for him to reach her place from his Ma. 10 mns, she thinks. 5, he thinks, if I can beat the cops. Little Tommy was on his bike, and he sees the police, parked at the other end of the park, waiting for him. It goes so fast, he’s not sure. Has he seen the police, or is it his imagination? The sound of the sirens is always there in his head, and the didgeridoo his father used to play to put him to sleep. Rocking sound of the ‘ridoo, screeching sound of the police tires, after him, chasing him. If only little Tommy could turn around now, maybe he’d realize no one’s after him, but little Tommy’s so fast, so smooth, he feels so big on his bike. One day when he’s grown up, he’ll be a F1 pilot or something, would feel good he thinks to do laps around and around forever, rocking laps, his father’s laps, as he slaloms around the cars of his neighborhood. Now’s a little race with the police, one more, it’s all part of a game and he knows the rules perfectly. Everything’s a blur, colors, shapes, noises, and the sound of the police sirens could well be his mother’s singing to him softly, and little Tommy doesn’t feel his body anymore, he’s flying alright by now. Little Tommy was on his bike, when he fell down and hit the ragged fence and impaled himself to death. Little Tommy was on his bike, little Tommy was on his bike to his girlfriend. It’s past the 10 mns now, he’s never been that long, she thinks. Something wrong, you just hope he didn’t get pinched by the coppers. Little Tommy’s got a warrant on him, she remembers, for assaulting a woman at Redfern Station and stealing her bag. Little Tommy was carrying cannabis too that day. It doesn’t matter much, now, what she or he was carrying. It’s late and she’s scared something’s happened to him. Anything could have happened, but the worst is still to come. The coppers might have got him, she’s certain now, but cannot be more wrong. Little Tommy used to say, if I can beat the coppers, I can beat anyone. Today he won again, little Tommy crossed over the finish line first, and the coppers came too late, so slow, as usual, and little Tommy so fast. Unbeatable.

Scene 5

AZIYAH: It stopped.

JAMEL: What?

AZIYAH: The yelling. It’s funny.

JAMEL: What?

AZIYAH: Us here. I could stay here, just like this, lying down, and the rest wouldn’t matter. Tell me about you, Jamel.

JAMEL: What do ya wanna know?

AZIYAH: Well, why are you here now? Don’t you have better things to do? You should be in the streets like the rest.

JAMEL: Don’t know. Just feels good being here, you said it. The restlessness, the shouting and yelling, all that, stops for a while… Have you read The Window, by that writer? Can’t remember his name. It’s about that guy who sees the world through the window of his room; spends his life staring from the window of his room, and there’s a war raging outside, people dying, people fighting, and he just stares…

AZIYAH: Is France at war?

JAMEL: Two kids I knew from our neighborhood died. Electrocuted. The cops chased them for no reason, or they saw the cops, got scared and ran away for no reason, and the cops chased them. One way or another, they ended up hiding in a power plant. Why, don’t ask me, maybe they didn’t know it was a power plant and it was dangerous. Maybe they were cornered and had nowhere else to go. Maybe they thought they were in for another manhunt, a lot of them kids around here play manhunt with the cops. It’s the desire to escape, you feel free while the cops are chasing you, you’re the one choosing where to go, and you keep on the move, and this whole place turns to a giant maze with endless possibilities. Rest of the time you just feel trapped. I know what I’m talking about, I was born here. It’s the Kafka effect, or like in that movie, Catch Me If You Can.

AZIYAH: The Kafka… effect?

JAMEL: Kafka’s a writer.

AZIYAH: So you like literature?

JAMEL: Why yes, does it surprise you from an Arab? Hate school but I know my classics.

AZIYAH: Why no. As far as I know I’m an Arab too. My dad even used to teach literature at uni.

JAMEL: Arab doesn’t mean the same here as in Iran or Algeria.

AZIYAH: What it means?

JAMEL: Sort of an insult, more a plague than a blessing, ‘though if you ask me, I’m proud of my origins.

AZIYAH: So what’s that Kafka effect?

JAMEL: Well, Kafka was Jewish you see, so he knew what it is to be part of a minority, in France or elsewhere. To be part of the minority means to be branded. The Jewish Greed, the Arab Thief, the Funny Smiley Black.

ABORIGINAL WOMAN: The Drunken Aboriginal.

JAMEL: If you read The Metamorphosis, where that bureaucrat guy turns into a giant cockroach for the better, or read some of his other stuffs, with all these doors leading to other doors, these roads and corridors leading to other roads, you kinda see what he was aiming at. To escape from meaning, not wander for meaning. Saying the Jewish wandered is wrong, like Israel is wrong. The true Jewish has no home, but is not homeless. Kafka liked animals, he liked children and dumb people too, because they don’t go after arresting the world by vying to make sense of it, they are the world. Same for minorities, and that’s what Kafka’s writing was all about. Destroying meaning. Why do you think Arabs and Blacks in France are now destroying their homes, their own neighborhoods? Paris is burning because they feel caged in. This place is a ghetto.

ABORIGINAL WOMAN: A zoo.

JAMEL: The other night, when I got arrested, I wish I could have turned into a magpie, like that bureaucrat in the Metamorphosis, and rob these bloody pigs of their soul, like they robbed mine, and fly away.

AZIYAH: Why a magpie?

JAMEL: Because the magpie steals, like the Arab, like the bureaucrat is a cockroach in Kafka.

ABORIGINAL WOMAN: A camel, because a camel never feels thirsty, he always has enough to drink stored in its bump, like us Abos in our bumpy bellies.

AZIYAH: Or a chameleon

JAMEL/ ABORIGINAL WOMAN: Or a chameleon.
JAMEL: Ever seen a cat or a dog, how it sometimes stops midway, jerkily, then bifurcates in another direction, almost deliberately it seems to us. That’s because animals, even if they could, don’t try to make sense of their actions. They are pure bodies, driven by desire.

AZIYAH: I used to belly dance back in Iran, and it just felt like you said, Jamel. Dancing doesn’t make sense, just like singing, it out-absurds life.

JAMEL: Used to? Mean you don’t now?

AZIYAH: Maybe one day, but not in Iran, not here either, they think it’s debasing.

JAMEL: Your uncle?

AZIYAH: yes.

JAMEL: Is it?

AZIYAH: What?

JAMEL: Debasing?

AZIYAH: In Iran, to be a woman is debasing. We have to cover ourselves and wear black because black is not a color. It is absence of color. Absence of life. Absence altogether. Belly dance is pure body too, pure feminine body, it is extra sensual yet doesn’t make any sense. It calls upon perceptions, not images, upon our extrasensory qualities as humans, but the mind in Iran is corrupt and perverse. It is absence of color, it is black, lest we get lost and carried away in the meanders of our emotions, like a cat or a dog. So we image, we represent, we signify, and get to be called prostitutes, whores, sluts, in the West and in the East alike. I wish I was a cat, belly dancing is so feline.

JAMEL: I wish I could be a rap singer. Used to make songs and stuff, but I stopped.

AZIYAH: Why did you stop?

JAMEL: I’ve come to think… Why is it that I want to become a rap singer? Is it ‘coz I’m Arab? Lots of them Blacks and Arabs here make a living of it. In fact, I don’t know of any Whites who does rap. So I’ve come to think… Maybe I could be something else, like a writer.

AZIYAH: You sure could, telling me about the Kafka effect and all these stuff.

JAMEL: Now you’re mocking me.

AZIYAH: No I’m not. Why are you so defensive?

JAMEL: I’m just me... I don’t know. I’ll roll another joint.

Exeunt.

Scene 6

ABORIGINAL WOMAN: The day Little Tommy died, a little bit of us died too. Little Tommy was our brother, and his killing followed a long history of mass murdering in this country. History seems to repeat itself for Aboriginals, and I searched for a culprit. Instead, I only found sorrow, anger, and shame, and hatred, raw bones of emotions gnawed by time till there is no culprit anymore. I put into canvas what I couldn’t put into words, and the more abstract the better. I was in a quest to destroy meaning, and my paintings would bear the holes of my frustrations at failing to find a culprit. While my fellas threw bricks and bottles at the cops on the night following Tommy’s death, I used a knife to draw big scars across my canvases. I decided to use red color and red only, not as a symbol of my neighborhood, Redfern, where I was born and grew up, not the red of blood either. Not the red of the Australian earth. Not the red of the Aboriginal flag. Not the red of the derelict brick houses that grow rampant like weed in our neighborhood. Not a symbol color, but a necessity, a move for survival. I transferred my anger into the canvas, as others do with alcohol or drugs around here. In the end, my anger diluted into the paint, and disappeared altogether. My red and my scars soon became meaningless in my eyes, as I wanted them to be. The final act of destruction was offered to me when my paintings were selected to be exhibited at the Opening of Le Quai Branly Museum of Indigenous Arts in Paris. They were put on the line, and I grew out of them. I put myself on the line, too, and let people think whatever they want. Inside me, for the first time in many years, I had found quietude that no definition, no color could ever encapsulate. The anger was still there, but I had displaced it and transformed it, I had killed my own self and made myself anew. A new life was there for me in Paris. I arrived by the end of 2005 and for a whole year worked my way through to the exhibition. What drew me to leave Redfern, in the end, is the feeling of being cornered, a desire to escape. When you feel cornered, there are only two ways. You must retrace your steps or break whatever wall you are facing. I broke free, I climbed the many walls and stepped on other sides, and there was no way I could ever retrace my steps again. And around the corner, at the end of the road, lied other corners, and other walls to break. But this time, I felt ready to bear the scars and red of blood from that breaking on my body. I would throw bricks and would break walls, not to feel cornered again.

ACT 2

Scene 1

AZIYAH: Jamel! Jamel! Are you here? Ah, thank God…

They kiss.

JAMEL: What is wrong? You look so worried.

AZIYAH: France is at war again. Universities are closed and students are in the streets demonstrating.

JAMEL: I heard. Just a bunch of bourgeois sons of the well-off having a bit of fun, if you ask me.

AZIYAH: You don’t approve of their fight? Not all of them are from a privileged background. There are students, students like me, in fact, who might never find a job if this law is passed.

JAMEL: And what about us, the underprivileged from the Paris ghettoes? 30 to 40 per cent unemployment, and an education system that has long rejected us. Moliere, Racine, Corneille, but who the fuck are they, how are they going to help us in our lives? Did they ever think we would embrace these great emblems of French culture and history when all we seem to be good at Blacks and Arabs is sports and rap and comedy? You think they’d care.

AZIYAH: You’ve given up literature…

JAMEL: You think they’d care. Four months ago, we burned ourselves and our ghettoes and we achieved nothing. The only job my Ma’s ever found is housecleaning for the rich. My Pa’s better off where he’s at now. Called me the other day, said there’s plenty of work for me in Algeria. Said I should start thinking ‘bout my future. Said I’d soon end up on the streets dealing drugs like everyone else around here if I stay.

AZIYAH: You stereotype. Not everyone deal drugs…

JAMEL: Of course not! But they are the ones you see, and they are everywhere, on your doorstep, in schools, and they drive Mercedes and have all the women they want.

AZIYAH: And that’d make you happy?

JAMEL: No, what would make me happy is get a decent job and make my old man proud. Perhaps I should go. I’d be long gone if it was not for my Ma and for you.

Jamel turns and kisses her.

AZIYAH: You never told me about your dad.

JAMEL: Ya know, when I first met you on my hallway, crying and looking so lost, I felt like protecting you. You gave me some purpose. Otherwise I would’ve kept with that cycle of violence that comes from hopelessness and helplessness and been sent straight back to jail. When my father left us, I believe it’s when I started to fuck up. He shouldn’t have left us the way he did. Packed his things up while we was kids, packed his things while we kids were asleep and next morning he was gone. Back to Algeria, back to the starting point. Ma told us he’d be back soon when he got enough money, coz here he would have just slowly died away, doing nothing all day, just watching TV and living on welfare money. Oh Yes, for that, France is generous, France is fine, the best welfare system on this earth, and they’re proud, too, and many flock to our shores in search of an Eldorado, and French call them parasites, bloodsuckers, welfare dependents. They wouldn’t care to know, or perhaps they’re just too dumb to understand, that my father’s never been happier when he would be toiling all day on a construction site after the war. Back then, there was plenty of jobs, and though it was hard it was good, and my Pa had a purpose. They don’t know, they don’t hear my father crying some nights, and shouting at Ma and pacing across our cramped flat like a lion in cage…Pa telling me when he’d first come by boat from Algeria looking for work and fleeing poverty. And the vision he remembers: the port of Marseille and its majestic church perched at the top of a hill; his heart beating fast with trepidation and optimism at the sight of the church. And me, his son, a no-hoper…Please, Aziyah, don’t go into the streets demonstrating, you don’t belong with them students from posh families…

AZIYAH: You should hear yourself, speaking like my uncle. Do I belong to you? Is that what you mean? You don’t know me, Jamel. I never said I was going to join the movement. In Iran, education’s a luxury, especially for women, and I want to study.

JAMEL: Study, huh? What for?

AZIYAH: What for?! So I can be financially independent and get the hell out here, so I can help my mum back in Iran, so my father, wherever he is, can be proud of me, just like yours should be ashamed if you ever give up writing. You know my uncle wants me to marry his son, he’s even fixed the wedding date and you’re asking me what for!

JAMEL: When?

AZIYAH: At the end of the year.

JAMEL: And you will let him do?

AZIYAH: Of course not. I will leave. A friend of mine from university has decided to help me find a flat.

JAMEL: A friend from university, huh? I bet you will soon leave me too for one of these red-scarf philosophers from La Sorbonne. I seen the way they look at me when I’m with you. I seen how they look at you, too.

AZIYAH: Don’t be stupid. I will not leave you.

Aziyah turns and kisses him.

AZIYAH: Now shush, I hear my friend coming.

JAMEL: I will leave now.

Exit JAMEL

AZIYAH: Wait!

Aziyah runs after him.

Exit AZIYAH

Scene 2

RUFUS: Is this the warehouse? Aziyah, where are you? What a place to meet! I can barely see anything. What am I doing here? Streets so empty, so dead, a few youths squatting on benches, in front of apartment blocks, in kids’ playgrounds, killing time, doing time, eyes peeping at you through invisible bars, making you feel like an intruder. A jail.

ABORIGINAL WOMAN: A ditch, a dump, a vault for the living dead.

RUFUS: This cannot be the place. It reminds me too much of the Harlem of my father’s youth. Only then I could relate to his stories, for they were mine too. Here, I am an intruder, a foreigner, too quick to judge and keep this place at a safe distance. I am their jailer, as much as in their defiance they imprison themselves. If only I held the key, but I am left with locked-up words and images. When I speak with you, Aziyah, I feel I understand, but being here reminds me how displaced I am. From the Harlem boy to the Harvard law graduate, I have been whitened, whitewashed, brainwashed, no matter how black I am. How corrupt! How presumptuous of me to ever imagine that I would be able to see through them the way they saw through me and found out the imposter in me!

ABORIGINAL WOMAN: A spy, a double-agent, a wanderer between two worlds.

RUFUS: And in the name of what, I ask, did I seek Aziyah’s company? In the name of color? Because we don’t fit in, because she and I stood out of the crowd. How naïve this all appears to me now! For I am not her kin, even as I must share her skin. The truth is that we live in worlds apart. And out of my comfort zone, within the coziness of my university surroundings, in the heart of Paris where I live, to reach through the distance I must cry out loud, and yet my voice might just as well never be heard. Aziyah, Aziyah, where are you?

Rufus paces around and stops in front of a scarf lying on the ground. He picks it up.

RUFUS: This is hers. What happened, what did that rogue do? Jamel is his name. She praises him, and all the time I must compose myself not to appear jealous. Jealous of him! A rogue, a rascal and a thug. Surely he’s that type. I’ve heard how they rape young girls around here.

ABORIGINAL WOMAN: A pedophile.

RUFUS: And how no one dares to speak up, for everyone is terrorized.

All along Rufus is pacing around.

ABORIGINAL WOMAN: Close your eyes.

RUFUS: Father! Is that you?

RUFUS’S FATHER: Son, if I sent you to France, this was not for you to fray with such people, and in particular this girl you are so fond of.

RUFUS: Aziyah? How do you know her? We haven’t talked for years you and me. You did not send me to France, I went of my own will, that day I won a scholarship to study law in Paris. What is wrong with her?

RUFUS’S FATHER: You study law, Rufus, then you should know what’s wrong. She is to marry someone else. Let her be. She’s not for you, anyway.

RUFUS: Not for me? You think I am too good for her? But Pa, have you forgotten what you fought for? Equality, freedom, these are not just words, are they? Are they?

RUFUS’S FATHER: You do not belong with her.

RUFUS: I do not belong anywhere. I see the way other students look at me, the way they rate me, in Harvard or elsewhere. No matter how rich I am, I feel different. At dinners, in Parisian circles, I am cornered, compelled to justify myself, to compensate for the incongruity of my skin, for the embarrassment it might cause them. The gaps and silences, you’d think I do not hear them? And today, coming here to this multiethnic neighborhood where they want me to belong, I felt cornered again. I thought leaving for France would make me a new person, a better person, the same way you thought sending me to Harvard would, but it ain’t different. It just ain’t. I’m still a bloody nigger in them eyes.

ABORIGINAL WOMAN: A wog.

RUFUS: Don’t summon me again, Father, I do not want to become you. How ironical, and how cynical! Prejudiced as you were, and the bully you have become. The oppressed turned into the oppressor, a sad story. This is your mode of survival, not mine. I will live in exile if I have to. I will escape, and run away again, if I have to.

ABORIGINAL WOMAN: An outlaw.

RUFUS: Father? Are you here?

ABORIGINAL WOMAN: Open your eyes.

RUFUS: Now, what kind of vision was that? My father had a dream but fell short of it. He closed his eyes and turned the other way. He accepted his fate for his was better than most of other Black Americans. Blinded with illusions that he was the equal of Whites, and that his son would surpass them. He might even one day become the first Black President of the United States.

AZIYAH: Rufus! Here you are! Let me introduce you to Jamel. Jamel is a writer.

RUFUS: [scanning JAMEL] What do you write about?

JAMEL: Stuff.

AZIYAH: As a matter of fact, Jamel hasn’t written anything lately.

JAMEL: Lost faith in the power of the pen. My fist is more effective.

AZIYAH: He’s only joking.

RUFUS: I used to write. Now that I’m studying, I don’t have much time.

JAMEL: What’d you study?

RUFUS: Law.

JAMEL: I wished I’d study law, it might help to shut them coppers’s big mouths sometimes.

RUFUS: You have the right to remain silent and only speak in the presence of a lawyer.

JAMEL: Ahah, damn right. You could be my lawyer.

AZIYAH: Jamel’s a troublemaker. The French Riots, it’s him!

JAMEL: I’m flattered.

RUFUS: Well, proud to meet you, troublemaker.

JAMEL: Now if you really want trouble…

AZIYAH: Oh-oh, calm down.

RUFUS: I’m not looking for trouble. I just wish you could show me around.

JAMEL: show ya around, huh?

RUFUS: damn right.

AZIYAH: All right, guys, I’ll leave you two know each other. I must really go. My uncle probably called the cops searching for me by now. It’s funny, him and the cops are like best friends. Must feel nostalgic of the time he served in the Bassij back in Iran.

RUFUS: Your uncle served in the Bassij?

AZIYAH: damn right.

JAMEL: What’s the Bassij?

AZIYAH: A State’s militia. People like you and me can volunteer, good decent people with families and kids, given batons and motorbikes, turned into murderers at the first upheaval. My father got arrested by a Bassij. We believe my uncle denounced him. Even if he didn’t, he’s always borne a grudge to my father for marrying my mum. They loved the same woman, and now he wants to see me marry one of his sons as an act of revenge, I don’t know.

JAMEL: This is sick.

AZIYAH: I must go now. Or else he might lock me up again with the Koran for only company. Farewell, my friends!

Exit AZIYAH.

JAMEL: Aziyah told me about the students demonstrations. She seemed so passionate about the whole thing, I never seen her like this. What do you guys are on about? Did you indoctrinate her, you and your little bunch of bourgeois bohemians?

RUFUS: Me? Aha-ha, you think I’m one of them. How do I look to you? I wouldn’t know what they’re on about. I only came a while ago. It’s weird. I just saw my father and talked to him. Only he lives in New York and I in Paris, an ocean separates us. Him and I have never been on good terms, and here he comes up, creeping inside my mind, taking the piss out of me because I’m hanging out with little delinquents like you. I’ll tell you what, Jamel. I guess you can’t deny your origins. A Harlem boy I was, a Harlem boy I will always be. From the cradle to the grave.

JAMEL: No offense, but you don’t really look like one. Now, what makes you think we’re delinquents?

RUFUS: I know better, but the medias don’t. They say the Riots that happened last year had no political agenda, no other aim but to foment more hatred and violence. They think you guys’re too dumb to think before you act. Now, what do you say to that?

JAMEL: I’ll tell you what I think. Marx said that for a revolution to succeed, what we don't need is smart-ass dudes like you to lead the herd and take over. Now, the French Revolution is one such case. People angry like me, saw their cause taken up by deep thinkers -Diderot, Montesquieu, Robespierre, Danton. Only ten years after, Napoleon comes over and proclaims himself Emperor, and the Revolution’s a failure. Two hundred years later, we’re still in a monarchy, politicians live like kings and the peasants that we are have no say. Sometimes, a dude will come from the city and say he’ll speak for us, but we don’t need no help.

RUFUS: A riot’s not the same as a revolution. What’s your point?

JAMEL: A riot is sporadic and spontaneous. Medias were right, in many ways they’re wrong, stirring up the fire as they do, stereotyping, cataloguing us like animals, but they were right on one thing, you just said it yourself. We had no political agenda, if you consider that an act of violence is apolitical. A revolution when led by good-meaning philanthropists, people from your own class of évolué, means coming back full circle with the same power structures. The top class is dethroned, the middle class takes over, and the lower class gets nothing. So my point is, for my voice to be heard, there is nothing but the fist, nothing but the fist to act as a spokesman. D’ya think they’d listen to what we have to say? For your voice to be heard, you must speak their language, believe me, I know it from experience. And their language, as refined as it sounds, speaks only of disdain and contempt.

RUFUS: So you were not joking earlier? Is this why you gave up writing?

JAMEL: I don’t wanna become one of them. Jean-Paul Sartre was wrong in a sense. L’écrivain engagé, the politically engaged writer, must disengage himself and loose touch with his own people. That’s a sad paradox, isn’t it, Rufus? You must know what I’m talking about, coming from Harlem and living on the other side as you do. Aziyah’s been telling me all about you, how your old man used to march along with Martin Luther King and how he is now richer than Crassus himself. Tell me Rufus, what did you gain, his son, in that border-crossing, coz you sure look damn lost to me?

RUFUS: I guess seeing your father’s ghost would disorientate anyone. Crossing borders, as you put it, has set me free somehow. This great man, my father, whose path I should follow, is but a ghost to me really.

JAMEL: Which side are you, then?

RUFUS: I’m just like you, I disengaged. You think You’re giving up writing because this would only fall back into the hands of the powerful, so you embraced violence because only violence you found escapes society’s rules. The same way I’ve decided to live in exile, in infinite flight, that way I will not be cornered, by you or by them, or by anyone else’s standards.

JAMEL: You can’t. You can’t run away.

RUFUS: Did I ever say I was going to? In fact, I came here to ask you something: to forget Aziyah, for she does not belong to anyone but herself. You protect her, but what you mostly do is stifle her. You are no guardian angel, Jamel, this here is a living hell. By clinging onto her you might have thought that she would pull you up, that she would set you free from your ghetto. But you’ve probably realized it is not that easy. I’ve seen you hang around by the university, waiting for her, looking out of place, out of touch, feeling unwanted, feeling threatened, feeling frightened, and what you have only achieved is drag her down to your prison house. You’ve said it, in crossing borders you loose yourself. I’ve done it, Aziyah’s done it, by coming out of Iran and putting herself on the line. You should see the way they look at her, she’s a real curiosity, an exotic thrill for these Frenchmen from long-established Parisian families. Generations and generations have passed through them without a ripple. A grandfather might have died in the war, they might even be the descendents of some Louis, Louis the XIV if they’re lucky, the greatest king in French history, but nothing substantial to make the earth tremble with frisson. So imagine, a woman from Iran, the Axis of Evil! Where terrorists lurk and women hide behind veils. And happening now, not hundreds years ago, not sixty years ago but now! The question is, Jamel, what are you going to do with yourself? If you want to sit on your ass and watch the world go by, fine, but don’t involve Aziyah. As soon as I find her an apartment, I will disappear. I am ready to do so, only you must promise to let her go.

JAMEL: You sicken me. You and your kind. Only coz you’ve got money you think you can have it all. You fucking Yankees think you can rule the world! You wanna live in exile, huh? Set your own standards, did you say? Of course, that’s easy for you to say so. What am I gonna do, wait for you to steal her from me? Why do you think I sit on my dumb ass all day long? Out of pleasure, perhaps, coz I like it? You can go anywhere you want, even if you’re Black you can, you got education, you got money, they will tolerate you, they will even praise you coz you’re fucking Yankee. Me, I’m stuck here, for better or for worse, I belong here. A Harlem boy, huh? Just another trophy you raise to find your way around. A transvestite, a prostitute, that’s all you are. My father couldn’t stand it here anymore, he would have been buried alive if he’d stayed. It’s guys like you that makes this place a living hell, stealing the little joy we draw from it. You got no right to come here and think you’ll have your way. This here is my country, and as rotten as it is, it’s all I have. Now listen. I will not leave, you will.

RUFUS: I will, if you promise me to forget Aziyah.

JAMEL: You fucking hypocritical bastard! Ya think I don’t see your dirty little scheme. You love her, you just can’t accept she’s with a guy like me. It fucks you up, does it? Makes you feel worse than the worst of nigger. Go back to Harlem, go back and find your own folks, and you’d better follow my advice.

RUFUS: Maybe I will. Till then, stay out of her way. I’ll leave now.

Exit RUFUS.

JAMEL: I must go and find Aziyah, who knows what the bastard’s next move will be.

Exit JAMEL.

Scene 3

ABORIGINAL WOMAN: It is judgment that defeats us, judgment that incarcerates us, judgment that divides us, judgment that kills us. Call me a beast, a barbarian, an animal, and I will soon enough become one. But you need not say anything, I see the way you look at me, gauge me, and reassure yourself, thinking that you and I are perfect opposites. Look at them Abos, drinking in public parks, and they want us to help them! My father was one heavy drinker, this is as much as I can remember of him, for he would spend more time in jail than he would with his family, and when he’d come out, my mother would be pregnant with a new baby. This is the way it goes for my people. The more baby one has, and the more chance that one or two out of ten will make it to the next round. We have the life expectancy, and the birth rate of a Third World country, you probably know this, but these are just figures to you. As far as my father’s drinking was concerned, he was never ashamed and held his bottle high and tight at the inquisitive passer-by. My father was a philosopher, too, when it came to drinking. He’d say, what’s the difference between drinking out of a bottle and in the open air, and drinking out of the glass and in private, in bars or at home, the way them white fellas do? This, is a matter of taste, he would’ve said, not of judgment, for one is no better or worse than the other. One drinks goon straight from the casket, beer cans crushed in your fist, the other fancy champagne and expensive cocktails, in delicate mannerism. One privileges quantity, the other quality, because he/she can afford to live a qualitative life, with few babies and a glass of wine, and only one, because two might kill you! But in the end, alcohol’s alcohol, and drinking’s drinking, and we’ll all be soon dead. But what I remember from my father were his stories, and he was full of stories and anecdotes, funny ones, sad ones, funny sad ones, profoundly human ones. When James-whatever-his-name-was approached Botany Bay, my father’d say, he proudly stood at the prow of his boat and held a telescope which he used to peer at the shore. Aboriginals hiding in the bush saw a man thinking he could play didgeridoo off his eye and had one hell of a laugh. Or the story of Albert Namatjira, the first Aboriginal artist, Australia’s first black pin-up boy, who reached fame but not freedom, had met the Queen of England and hoped that he could have what white folks had, money, and the right to be his own man, but was punished, and severely for that. He died a broken man, lost in failed transactions, between white booze and brown violence, indebted and embittered, because he’d dared to cross the Great Divide. Brown skin, brown shit, dripping right down your ass, no matter how many times you pull the flush, it will always come back. My father’s stories were about resistance, making you proud of these forty-thousand odd years of being in this land. As my exhibition in Paris drew to a close, I filled my red-scarred canvasses with eyes, blank, empty, fathomless pupil-less eyes that would look down at you from the heights of forty-thousand years of history. Forty-thousand eyes, not judging eyes, not ghostly eyes, not imperial eyes either, but eyes whose power to signify and to judge, has long been stolen and effaced. Eyes in the making, pupil-less eyes, eyes waiting for someone, something, somewhere to define them and fill them with meaning, eyes that escape definition. Otherworldly eyes, my eyes, like my paintings, were still figurative, yet fundamentally abstract, removed from history, the way Aboriginals are. But my eyes, so fathomless as they looked, deprived of their orbits, represented a threatening invitation for the viewer, an abysmal voyage into the crevices of the human condition. What I wanted from these eyes, was to bridge across the multiple scars of my paintings, furious testimonials of the many divides that mark us all. As my year in Paris flew by, I became scared that I was slowly loosing touch with my origins, that I would end up like Albert Namatjira, a wanderer between two worlds. In some of my paintings, I’d use stencil and placard a face of my father in black and white, like a Che Guevara or a Mao icon. My father was a great storyteller, he understood the power of words better than anyone and dictated through his stories his own version of the truth. If Aboriginals have brown skins, he’d say, that’s because of the sun, because we’re not afraid of the elements. Be proud of your skin, he’d say, it was burned once and for all and will never burn again. But when in Paris, I knew it would not be easy to trade my skin the way he’d wanted me to. With the opening of a museum of Indigenous arts, brown had become chic, but I still felt like frozen shit exposed on canvas, an artifact of difference. My final escape, I couldn’t think of anything else, as the exhibition closed upon me, would have to be a clever one.

Scene 4

JAMEL: Aziyah? Now where is she? We were supposed to meet. I have a bad presentiment. Aziyah? My old man called again yesterday, he found a job for me in Algeria. They are building a new road network over there, and they need men, there is plenty of job, maybe I should go. Mum has agreed, what is there to retain me? All these moments I spent with Aziyah, what do they mean? Maybe Rufus is right, I cling to her more than she clings to me now. I’ve always hated this place anyway, and I’ve never got to see my father’s country. Oh Aziyah, I wish you were here, I wish you could relieve me of an awful feeling I have, of being a burden to you, and then I’d go, knowing that you are fine. I’ve been a big brother more than a boyfriend, haven’t I? While you brought me temporary escape, the hope I could be more than what I am. If anything happens to you now, I couldn’t help blaming myself.

A Voice is heard in the background.

VOICE: Jamel! Jamel!

JAMEL: now what? Do I know you? Are you that preacher who goes from door to door to sell the Koran?

PREACHER: Me indeed!

JAMEL: How do you know my name, and how did you hear about this place?

PREACHER: Jamel, son. At the very moment I am speaking to you, hundreds of us, from all the ghettoes of Paris, are in the streets who came to disrupt the student movement and give them a lesson that they’ll never learn in them universities, to show their pseudo fight against the government is nothing but a teenage crisis, some sort of coming-to-age rite of passage into adulthood. Once they’ll get a degree, no matter how hard it is for them to find a job, they’ll be swallowed by the system. But us, Jamel, what about us? We’ll never find a job, we’ll never get a degree, we will end up like our folks, wasting our lives away, except our folks at least when they were young could raise a family, have kids and stuff, coz they were part of the system, even loosely. They felt welcomed in this country, now do you Jamel? Do you hear how the Algerian community boos the national anthem every time France has a soccer game in Marseille or elsewhere? What disgusts me, you know, is that these students will achieve more than we ever could when we rioted last year, but what will they make of that success? I’ve heard the Prime Minister is about to resign, and the job law removed, but I’m asking you again, what will they make out of that success? You should be in the streets, now, with your fellow brothers.

JAMEL: Why are you telling me all this? You should be preaching your Koran instead of preaching me.

PREACHER: You’ve never liked the Islam much, but you are a Muslim Jamel, you can’t deny your roots.

JAMEL: I know what your Islam is about. Full of disillusioned people like Aziyah’s uncle, fanatics who stir up hatred and give my people a bad name. I agree with what you say, but I don’t need your Islam. Now, have you seen Aziyah, you must know her, she is M’sieur Pezeshki’s niece, one of your friends, I suppose?

PREACHER: I saw her just a moment ago, with a black man, they seemed to be flirting outrageously with each other, and she’s to be married soon. I’ll pray for her sins, she’s a Muslim too.

JAMEL: A black man, did you say? Describe him to me. What did they say to each other?

PREACHER: They were talking of going to the demonstration. She said his name’s Rufus. I’ve never seen him around before.

JAMEL: That bastard!

PREACHER: Do you know him?

JAMEL: Which way did they go?

PREACHER: They went to the Champs de Mars, where the students demonstrations are to be held. They have plans to do a sit-in there and block the traffic.

JAMEL: I must go.

PREACHER: I will pray for you too. This here is a crusade we are living, a war. Anyone who is part of the system is our enemy, even a bad Muslim like you understands that.

JAMEL: Don’t pray for me. Pray that I do not ever see you again. You and your Koran stink of rot, don’t you dare come near my folks. I must find Aziyah. That bastard betrayed me, he said he’d disappear soon enough, but all the time he’s been trying to put himself between us. This won’t do, I’d rather kill myself than see her go out with such a traitor. I must give the traitor a lesson of savoir-vivre.

Exeunt.

Scene 5

Police sirens are heard in the background, and voices chanting in unison.

JAMEL: This is it, this is the place. How will I ever find her within this crowd? Like searching for a needle in a haystack. Police’s here, students, and my fellow brothers, a weird mariage à trois. My brothers will strike first, because violence is our only means of communication, more an escape than anything, really. Oh, how tempting is the fist when unleashed, which nothing can stop. To wreck havoc, like a bulldog trained to kill who one day will turn on its master. I feel that leash on my neck, like an itch it gnaws me, it tells me to break free. Funny how I never feel anything, the way I live in the ghetto. Here I feel lost, disoriented, I want to growl and bite, I want to silence these students the way I was silenced myself, I want to share my pain with them, my only means of communication. They seem happy, they seem free, how I envy them! My brothers, on the other hand: a horde of hyenas we are, party poopers because we were not invited. And the police, impassible iron masks, representing the great harsh law, something you cannot touch. Are these real people behind the club and the shield and the helmet? What is their ways of escaping from this great comedy? Theirs is the fist, too, they must enjoy striking, they understand its magnetic power and the relief one draws from it, if they’re doing this job they must. Maybe we’ve got more in common than I thought. And these students, they must feel cornered too if they’re here, parading in the streets. Only it’s a different level, a different degree, a different life altogether, humans nonetheless. If only I could reach them, I’d reach Aziyah too. I must stop my brothers, they’ll kill someone for sure, or the cops, or the students, and Aziyah in there! I’ll climb on that streetlight, maybe I’ll get a better view. Here she is! Standing on a police car! Mad she looks, she can’t even see me, her eyes are directed somewhere beyond. Aziyah!

AZIYAH: Jamel?

JAMEL: She heard me! She sees me now, and is laughing.

AZIYAH: Jamel, is that you? I feel the wind of madness blowing all over me, I feel carried away, I feel free! Come and join me, Jamel, I feel free! Too long I have been encaged behind enemy lines, and here I am, exposed, vulnerable, in the midst of it all. If only my uncle could see me, then he would disown me, call me a nut case, and I’d be free, I would not have to run away.

JAMEL: Are you mad!

AZIYAH: Oh, I am mad, I am indeed. Mad at you for hinting, even only hinting, that you could be like my uncle, mad at myself for enjoying the safety of this lair you brought me into. All along you’ve only thought of raping me, of ripping me out of myself. You Muslims are all the same, you’re no better than my uncle!

JAMEL: I only wished to protect you!

AZIYAH: You only wished to exploit me! The Kafka effect, you said, and I believed you! That great line of escape, turned into an impasse. The Kafka defect, I call it! For once I will show you the way, come and take me!

Aziyah removes her clothes.

JAMEL: This is grotesque. You are truly mad.

AZIYAH: In madness I am free, I clear the path for us, for us I phrase the unspeakable. For you I put my body on the line, I clear the dirt, I am the dirt!

ABORIGINAL WOMAN: A whore.

AZIYAH: Hit me if you like, I know you want to. Hit me once and for all!

ABORIGINAL WOMAN: A mad woman, bringer of woes to men. A woe-man.

AZIYAH: Jamel the rapist! Jamel the boor! Jamel the Arab! Jamel the Muslim! Jamel the drug dealer! Jamel the rap singer! Jamel the Rebel without a Cause!

ABORIGINAL WOMAN: All names, yet nameless is human grief.

AZIYAH: Aziyah the prostitute! Aziyah the femme fatale! Aziyah the passive wife! Aziyah the obliging mother!

Enters PREACHER.

PREACHER: Insanities! The sins of the West must have led her astray! I will pray for you, woman. Someone, take her away! If no one is, I will.

JAMEL: Leave her! You and your Koran have done enough harm!

AZIYAH: I hear the voice of a child singing in my head. Lullaby, soothing lullaby. The phantom limbs of the past are on me, I am frozen, I cannot move. My body doesn’t ache anymore. The soothing voice is mine, used to be mine and mine only, until I was made plural and told to become a woman's body, a husband’s wife and a mother.

ABORIGINAL WOMAN: A body flesh, flesh and meat sent to rot.

AZIYAH: The ghostly child’s in me, still, I never mourned its death. I must dissect myself, the way I learned to in my medicine class, see what’s inside and free the voice, it is begging for air!

Aziyah draws a knife.

AZIYAH: Oh, mortal grief, is this the end? What lies beyond? The singing voice is louder in my head, telling me that what I once was, I can become again. Little child, is that true? My body, my broken body, sullied from the eyes of dirty men like my uncle, a built-in cage from where there shall be no escape but death, commands me to put an end to it all. If I come back to my uncle now, I will kill him, him and his sons, I will commit an atrocious murder, for theirs have become everyone’s eyes, that follow me around and haunt me. Oh Jamel, I know you are more than the things they say about you, but in this corrupt world, we shall be no different from the rest. I ask you to pursue your dreams, become a writer, leave a mark on this world the way they branded us like sheep. As for me, well, someone has got to die for the others to live. Grieve me, remember me, write about me, in my absence I will become at last real to you. Let me free, says the child, sings the child, let me free! No pasaran!

Jamel runs to Aziyah, but too late. She digs a knife in her belly and slices it open, and falls. In place of Aziyah now lies the body of a child. Rufus enters as Jamel carries away the child.

Enters RUFUS.

RUFUS: What happened, and who is this? Where’s Aziyah? We went to the demonstration together, I couldn’t stop her from going. I don’t understand why she wished to go, I and her were never close from any of these students. But she laughed, and said that it didn’t matter, and I couldn’t stop her. I tried to, but she seemed possessed somehow. She’d been hearing the voice of a child in her head, and said she had to go.

JAMEL: And you let her? This here is Aziyah, the child you’ve just mentioned. She drew a knife on her and killed herself.

RUFUS: What are you saying? Oh, Aziyah, is this you? It cannot be, and yet again, oh, I understand now! A tragedy, a real tragedy!

JAMEL: Now what, speak! What else did she say?

RUFUS: She spoke in riddles, her speech was unintelligible. But she mentioned a baby, and I kept asking, what baby, but she wouldn’t tell me. Seeing this here child now I understand. I fear Aziyah’s been pregnant all along and hiding it to us.

JAMEL: Pregnant! But who is the child’s father?

RUFUS: This, my friend, is to the law to determine who’s the father. Now, where is she?

JAMEL: Who? Aziyah? I told you, she drew a knife and in place of her body I found this child. The child is dead, it is not breathing.

RUFUS: Are you mad? Come now. We must bring the child to the police, I’ll come along with you.

Exeunt.

Scene 6

ABORIGINAL WOMAN: The day of the exhibition, I did not go. Not that I couldn’t go, I simply made the choice that I wouldn’t. I hoped, and if not, in the end, I couldn’t care less, that my paintings would speak for themselves, that my presence would only be redundant, and even worse, that it risked overshadowing their meaning. My paintings were meant to be on display, I didn’t need to be on display too, I’d been on display all my life. As a minority it’s all you got, publicity, bad or good, although most of the time you live in sheer darkness, but publicity in any form is shallow. I wouldn’t say I snubbed them, I just couldn’t care less. All my life I got to be called names, good or bad, you probably know most of them, and I won’t mention them, not out of political correctness, of course not, after all, I stand for the mouthful Abo, but because we shouldn’t pay too much attention to names. I didn’t start painting to be called names, I paint because this is my outlet, an antidote against the dystopian existence of my people, and when the job was done, I just went my own way. I took the next plane to Sydney, back to Redfern and my people. Soon after, I received a letter from a woman who I later learned had died in the strangest of ways. Her body was nowhere to be found, yet there had been plenty of witnesses to testify the murder that she had committed upon herself, taking her life away in one blow of a blade. She must have seen my paintings exposed on the fringes of the exhibition in some art gallery in Paris, and had taken the pen just a few days before she took a knife upon herself to write to me about the way she felt about my eyes and my scars. She sent the letter to Australia, not knowing my address, not knowing where I was, and the very fact that it eventually made it to my doorstep is certainly not incidental, given its content. I thought I would read it to you, because her story has haunted me ever since. She’s my first and best critic and yet she became my first victim. After that, I realized a pen, or a brushstroke, is as lethal as any other weapon. A pen or a brushstroke can kill, but it also and most certainly opens up new horizons, new lines of escape through which the mind travels all the distance across cultures and beliefs. I am no judge, but surely I do not feel responsible for her death, I do not even think that it was ever me who had pulled the triggered in some way or another. She took her own life and that only is a fact of life that goes far beyond human understanding or the narrow context of my paintings. She took her own life and no one else did, so that no one else would, that is how I see it.

When I look at your eyes, these eyes in your paintings, it brings me oblivion and forgetfulness. I feel like diving into them, I feel stranded and abandoned, to some country of my imagination, a place untouched, preserved, intact, that cannot be conceived in words, and it would be trivial and vain to do so, nevertheless I’ve tried. These eyes, they are not really eyes, aren’t they? What are they? And these red scars. The scars, on the other hand, are a painful reminder of the limitations imposed on my body. I feel heavy when I look at them, I want to move away from them but I cannot, their presence freezes me. But what mostly strikes me is this very detail I have noticed, which brings me hope and a space to breathe. In each of your paintings, you’ve left the four corners of the canvas empty. When my eyes revert to these corners, these blank spaces, your paintings disappear, as if by magic. The scars, the eyes, disappear, and only whiteness, milky, hazy whiteness remains and prevails. I’ve heard this is how we feel when we’re about to die; bright, blinding light enveloping our whole being, from which at last, there is no urge to escape. When I look at these corners, I feel that I can die in peace.


Your greatest admirer,


Aziyah Pezeshki

THE END