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Category:
Drama
Copyright: 2003
"Death of the Birds" describes a spiritual journey seeking to penetrate to the roots of spiritual, intellectual and political stagnation centred on the teachings of the great Sufi master Hallaj whose execution with its devastating, mutening effect on his disciples and on the social movement whose symbol he had become, provides the frame of the story.
Mansur and Najaf, each an emanation and condition of the other, flee from province to province in order to escape persecution only to find themselves face to face with the Sultan who is the cause of their flight on the island that constitutes their last resort.
The Sultan, too, is on the run from his persecutors whom he perceives to be embodied in Mansur and Najaf after having been overthrown during an incognito-excursion.
The result of this encounter is thorough resignation on both sides but soon it becomes clear that a solution to the conflict is an inevitable neccessity.
This motif provides the frame for a number of mutually interwoven stories such as that of the Sultan's encounter with Maimuna which in itself is the frame for the story of Hadra who is an expression of Maimuna's inner identity following a story-line in the style of Arabian Nights plus One: The Sultan (always spelled in capitals), caught in his own net, becomes unable to lift his disguise and needs to seek shelter with Maimuna, a woman unknown to him before who lives in a wooden shack and who relates to him the story of Hadra, the slave girl who refused to surrender herself to the malice of the mighty and thereby breaks their power. While listening to the story, the Sultan is overthrown and asks Maimuna to arrange his flight. In response to his request, she hands him over to an old ferryman who is none other than Iblis called to ferry him "over to the other shore" where he encounters his victims.
Between the episodes Mansur and Najaf take on a number of incarnations by means of which they establish a link to contemporary, day-to-day reality.
(Copyright with the author)
Maimuna hands her lover, the Sultan, over to Iblis who appears in the guise of an old ferryman.
The second crossing of River Tigris.
This sequence illustrates the different levels of language employed in the play and gives an idea of its atmosphere.
(The verses used in the conversation betweeen Maimuna and the Sultan, as will be obvious, are quotations from the Rub'ayat of 'Omar Khayyam and the initial part of the monologue of Iblis bases on texts by Hussain Ibn Mansour Al Hallaj [r.a.]).
Sultan: Are you leaving me, Maimuna?
Maimuna: You are not my child, Sultan.
Sultan: You are leaving me.
Maimuna: Is it not rather you who is leaving me?
Sultan: Because I must. Because I have no choice.
Maimuna: Yes.
Sultan: This child of yours, Maimuna, could have been our child, the fruit of our love.
Maimuna: No, Sultan.
Sultan: I don't want to lose you. Therefore, please, don't allow me to leave you! Don't go away!
Maimuna: Not I am going away.
Sultan: Help me, Maimuna! Do something!
Maimuna: O Love, could I and you with fate conspire
To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire
Would not we shatter it to bits-- and then
Remould it nearer to the heart's desire
Sultan: Why don't you come with me, for what is left for you there?!
Maimuna: Maimuna shall always find her way.
Sultan: And if it is the way to the gallows?
Maimuna: My time is not yet up. The mighty and the wise are the ones to fall first. They are the ones who invented the gallows and they are the ones who die on it, for they cannot change their nature.
Sultan: Yet, power and wisdom shall not leave you behind.
Maimuna: Power has left you and wisdom you never possessed-- but you do not want to leave me behind.
Sultan: The mighty and the wise are the architects of the house whose foundations you are because it is built on your backs.
Maimuna: This is why the architects are the ones whose heads fall when the building crushes down. Its foundations may still be the fundament of another house to be built.
Sultan: I would have wished to spend one more night with you. I would have wished so many things...
Maimuna: The night has reached its darkest point. It is time for you to go if you don't want to miss the time for your departure. The ferryman has come and expects you.
Sultan: Make you go with me some last steps!
Maimuna: I no go go with you, Sultan. I done what I fit do.
The Sultan looks at the ferryman who steps out of the dark. In the distance his features become recognisable. It is the old man from sequence 6.
Sultan: That be the ferryman 'e go take me?
Maimuna: 'e dey wait you.
Sultan: That no be the man I see 'em when I come meet you first?
Maimuna: 'e dey wait you. You dey talk too much. (The Sultan hesitates. It is felt that Maimuna, too, is not at ease with him leaving.) Make you go!
Sultan (approaching the ferryman): As-Salamu 'alaikum!
Ferryman: Salam, Habibi, Salam!
Sultan: It is you.
Ferryman: Yes, Sultan.
Sultan: Why did you refuse to ferry me over last and why are you ready now?
Ferryman: Now I know you are the Sultan.
Sultan: And you know of the prize that has been put on my head.
Ferryman: O yes, Sultan. I'm not after money.
Sultan: Don't you have every reason to hate me? You were complaining about my tax system. You only needed to deliver me and the prize could refund all the money you spent on tax during the recent years. Haven't you heard of the height of the amount?
Ferryman: Money is not what I am after.
Sultan: What is it you are after?
Ferryman: Why do you tempt me, Sultan?
Sultan: I have never seen somebody who was not after money.
Ferryman: But I am one who is not.
Sultan: That is what makes me fear you.
Ferryman: It is for Maimuna's sake I am here as you know.
Sultan: What are you after?
Ferryman: I'm after ferrying you to the other shore. And time is progressing, Sultan.
Sultan: Then let's go! I have no choice.
Ferryman: Did I ask you to set over to the other shore or did you ask me to be ferried?
Sultan: No offence, uncle! I'm indebted to your kindness and I'm not here for fun.
Ferryman: Me neither, Sultan. You may enter my boat if you please.
The Sultan and the Ferryman enter the boat.
Ferryman(as he sets the boat in motion): Bismillah!
Sultan: When we have reached the shore, who is the one to bring me across the border?
Ferryman: This task is on me, too, for wherever we are going, we are going by sea.
Sultan: It is this sea who is the eternal guarian of our secrets, the sea we are crossing and the sea that is carrying us, hopefully mercifully.
Ferryman: The sea is one but every fish has its colour.
Sultan: And I wish I had drowned in Maimuna's colour, ya 'am, and I wish I had drowned in her sea.
Ferryman(laughs): Maimuna! Are you still thinking of her? That is a thing of the past. What can that be to somebody like you?! Nothing but a gloomy set of fleshless memories with which you are wasting your time.
Sultan(passionately): No, ya 'am, for it is my flesh too in which these memories live. It is my flesh these memories are carved in.
Ferryman: Yet, she shouldn't hold you, Sultan. You exhaust yourself in words. You are deceiving yourself. You cannot be united with Layla unless you have become Layla yourself, Sultan. But what the hell do you and Layla have in common? What you and Hadra, you and Shukriya, you and Allah!? Do you think in the day you shall be questioned, you will have anything to answer?
Sultan: Who are you? And who or what is putting these words in your mouth?
Ferryman: It is Allah WHO is putting these words in my mouth, for I am HIS most fervent and consequent servant, HIS most devoted creature. HE has given me knowledge of the thousand shortcomings your hypocritic heart conceals which is the most corrupt of your organs, cause of all your organs' corruptness--: and you dare speak of Allah?!
Sultan: Who are you?
Ferryman: Who if not you should know me?
Sultan: Who are you, 'ammi?
Ferryman: I am Allah's servant Iblis.
Sultan: So you are the one Maimuna has sent to my rescue.
Ferryman: Let not the phantoms deceive you! Or have you ever heard of Iblis coming to any mortal's recscue?
Sultan: I bloody knew it.
Ferryman: What is wrong with you, Sultan? Or do you have anything to accuse me of? You wanted to get across the border and I am bringing you across the border.
Sultan: You knew all along I was the Sultan.
Ferryman: What I know is what my Lord has revealed to me.
Sultan: And you also know what I shall meet at the other side of the border.
Ferryman: You shall meet what you have been steering at since, throughout all the days of your life, for you knew what you did and I am doing your will. Doing your will is what I am commanded. I bear witness that there is no God but the ONE WHO created us, the ONE to WHOSE judgement we are bound, the ESSENCE WHOSE reflection we are and WHO reflects us.
HE has singled me out and forsaken me. O YOU WHO has distracted me so as to go astray and banished me so as not to mingle with the faithful! YOU have separated me from the zealous because of my zeal. YOU have altered my state on account of my distraction, having distracted me on account of my alienation, forbidden me because of my closeness, reviled me on account of my blessed deed, ostracised me on account of my renunciation and left me because of having shown YOURSELF to me, abandoning me for the bond of my devotion. HE said to me: "The choice is MINE, not yours." but I responded: "All possibilities of choice and even my choice itself are YOURS. YOU have choosen for me, o UNIQUE ONE. If YOU are preventing me from bowing before him, then it is YOU WHO has refused it. If it was YOUR wish that I bow before him, YOU would have found me YOUR obedient servant."
You think yourself to be of high birth, Sultan, but all mankind is of low birth. You were born of a sperm drop, of mean water, master and servant, man and woman alike-- from the first of your kind to the last. But you, Sultan, live out of the self and so all your aims exhaust themselves in yourself. And in the mirror of that self you shall see what you have to see. Entire peoples disappear into the trash of history, and my heart should not be weary? Entire nations are lost because of the century-lasting impact of people like you who have corrrupted their consciousness until it reached a degree of crookedness from which there is no return and the more crooked ones eat the less crooked ones alive, and I should not ask: What for all that? Indefatigueably I see man striving after their own loss-at the time of the afternoon and at any other time of day and night. I see into whose hands they are given and I see into what they started to turn this world as soon as they had come up, and I should not ask: What kind of bio-chemical accident has caused this? Entire continents with high cultures that have formed the features of civilisation are sinking into the dumb fog of ahistoric darkness for the barbarians to take over, and I should not ask: Where are these coming from and where are those coming from? And what is the cause of this all? The entire pain of creation should have been for the sake of this nonsense?! Is it then man who is corrupt or is it the animals, the insects, the earth and its dust, too? Should I not ask: Stage after stage this society has evolved; class after class has overthrown the other and taken over the rule in a cycle of centuries-- should all that have happened only for you, Sultan, to prevail and later on be replaced by your palace guards who are even worse parasites than you were?! Have these teachings and has this Quran been revealed only for 'Ali and Hussain to be slain and for Mu'awiya and Yazid to violate them?! Should Hallaj in our time not be more than a martyred excentric?! How long then shall this truth be hidden? And how long still shall we have to wait? Or shall we die with this veil? Without ever tearing it asunder? And steal and lie in order to survive? O Beloved of my heart: How far or how near is fana'?
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