CLASH OF THE BARBARIANS: THE REPRESENTATION OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE IN CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH AND ARABIC LANGUAGE PLAYS ABOUT IRAQ

AMIR A. AL-AZRAKI

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Abstract

The history of Iraq, especially since the establishment of the modern nation in 1920, has been a conspicuously violent one. The yoking together of Sunni, Shia and Kurds under an imported monarchy was a recipe for civil conflict, as was the corruption, authoritarianism and British backing of the monarchy itself. A succession of revolutions and coups d'etat, each bloodier than the last, culminated in the ruthless dictatorship of

Saddam Hussein, ushering in brutal repression, torture, a devastating war with Iran, the invasion of Kuwait, Saddam's overthrow in the invasion of 2003, and the carnage and destruction that has followed. Given such a history, it is not surprising that Iraqi playwrights would find themselves drawn to reflect the trauma of these decades in their plays.

The aim of this study is to analyze and appraise the ways in which the endemic political violence of recent decades in Iraq has been represented in drama, both by Iraqi playwrights writing in Arabic, and by English-language playwrights, mainly in the UK and the US, where the issues surrounding the justification and conduct of the 2003 invasion have generated intense political debate. How do Iraqi and non-Iraqi playwrights differ in their representations of political violence, in terms both of critical perspective and of dramatic strategy? For analytical convenience, political violence has been subdivided into three categories: resistance violence against tyranny and foreign occupation; revolutionary violence; and the violence of terror, whether by the state or by sectarian elements within society. While the culminating focus has been on drama since

2003, the study has sought to situate the contemporary output in a tradition of Iraqi drama V

going back nearly a century. It has also endeavoured to locate the perspectives and

dramatic strategies adopted by Iraqi playwrights within the larger frame of modern political drama generally, in Arabic, English and beyond.

Methodologically the study makes use of leftist revolutionary ideas put forward mainly by Karl Marx, Frantz Fanon and Mahatma Gandhi to analyze the representation of violence in selected plays written by several Arab and English language playwrights. In

addition to the theories of Marx, Fanon and Gandhi, it utilizes Diana Taylor's and Michel

Foucault's theorization of torture and the body. Patterson's book, Strategies of Political

Theatre, was useful in discussing the function of political theatre in the Iraqi war context.

I apply Patterson's dichotomy of the "reflectionists" vs. the "interventionists" to see how the plays in question adhere to one or the other category.

The questions pursued by this study are: how, and how effectively, have generations of Iraq-Arabic playwrights, and recent playwrights working in English, tackled this material? From what perspectives, and with what dramatic strategies and modes of representation, have they managed to put it on stage? And how adequately have they done so, in terms both of political insight and analysis, and of artistic achievement? It is concluded that English language and Arabic-Iraqi drama have so far succeeded only to a limited extent in presenting an accurate and comprehensive representation of the political violence in Iraq. VI

DEDICATION

To My Mother I long for my mother's bread my mother's coffee and my mother's caress... and each day childhood grows bigger in me on another day's chest, and I adore my life for if I die my mother's tears would shame me!

So if I return one day, mother, make me into a shroud that shades your long eyelashes, and cover my bones with grass your pure heels had baptized, and tighten my bind... with a lock of your hair... or with a thread waving from the hem of your dress, I might become a god then, a god, I might... if I touch the deep floor of your heart!

And if I return, use me as fuel for your brick oven... hang me on the roof, like your laundry line, I can no longer stand without the prayers of your days, I have aged, so bring back the stars of childhood to me, and I will join the little birds on the path of return... to the nest of your waiting!

{Mahmoud Darwish, translated by Fady Joudah) VII

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First, I would like to thank my supervisor Professor Christopher Innes for his support, astute guidance and sound advice. I am also immensely grateful to Professor Robert Fothergill and Professor Don Rubin for their invaluable contributions, editing and encouragement. A special thank to Mr. Edward Bond for his critical and insightful thoughts which have widened the horizons of my study. Finally, I extend my gratitude to my parents, Layla and A. Zahra, and to Dr. Abdul Kareem Abood and Mr. Mohamed al-Zubaidi whose suggestions were quite useful. viii

Table of Contents

Chapter One: Political Violence, Theatre, and Drama 1

Chapter Two: Political Violence in Contemporary Drama 37

Chapter Three: Political Violence and the Political Theatre in Iraq 77

Chapter Four: The Violence of the War in the Plays about Iraq 103

Chapter Five: State Terrorism and Islamic Terrorism in the Plays about Iraq 146

Chapter Six: Conclusions 174

Appendix A: Summary Overview of Modern Iraq History 187

Appendix B: Questionnaire Forms and Responses 192

Bibliography 213 1

I. Introduction: Political Violence, Theatre, and Drama

When embarking on a study of the representation of political violence in drama, it is essential first of all to establish some agreed-upon terms and frames of reference, and some reasonably stable understanding of the object of study. Political violence as a subject for dramatic representation can be seen as a special category of what is called

"political drama" more generally. Political drama can be understood to include such ingredients as the clash of political philosophies and strategies in concrete situations, the struggle for political power through democratic or extra-democratic means, the maneuverings, triumphs and defeats of parties, groups and classes in pursuit of their political goals, and the ceaseless weighing of ends and means in that pursuit. As a field of human activity and commitment, politics, broadly defined, has furnished material for a huge number of plays, engaging audiences in the recurring variations of personal and political dilemmas. Some of these plays can be seen to have the overt aim of changing or reinforcing the spectators' understanding and political alignment; others present the spectacle of human behavior in the political realm in an ostensibly neutral way.

The dramatic representation of political violence addresses more specifically the call to violent action, armed struggle, the readiness to fight and to kill, in the pursuit or defence of political ends. It can to a considerable extent be analyzed in the tenns and categories, and with the methodological tools, employed in the study of political drama in general. However, the dramatization of the issues raised by the adoption of violence as a political means and, even more acutely, the representation on stage of that violence, raises its own set of critical issues. A study of the subject calls for the identification of 2

categories of political violence, the modes and purposes of its representation, and the implicit or explicit judgment of it. To be even more specific, this study will principally investigate the representation of political violence in plays written about Iraq since 2003 by Iraqi-Arabic and English language playwrights. It will tackle the question: how do the

Iraqi-Arabic and English language dramatists differ in depicting and dramatizing political violence in the plays about Iraq.

"Why Iraq?" it may be asked. Does the drama written in and about Iraq in the last decade really warrant this kind of attention? First of all it can be claimed that the nature of the invasion and its aftermath has generated a surprising number of plays attempting to contend dramatically with the extreme violence and political complexity of the events.

From the outset the invasion was highly controversial politically, as the dubious rationale for it oscillated between liberating an oppressed people from an evil dictator, preempting aggression by a madman armed with WMDs (the acronym of the decade), and ensuring control of one of the world's largest oil reserves. Then the conduct and consequences of the invasion and occupation have proved to be appalling. The world has watched, and the Iraqis have endured, massive carnage, devastation and heritage destruction, the breakdown of infrastructure, services, security and governance, tilting towards civil war.

Constant suicide bombings have supplied the TV news with almost daily scenes of mutilated bodies and screaming ambulances. The conduct of the occupying powers, most spectacularly in the prison of Abu Ghraib, has aroused massive revulsion. And the whole ongoing episode has been framed within the larger context and explosive discourse of the

"war on terror" and a "clash of civilizations". The attempts, with various strategies and 3

from differing perspectives, to make plays out of this welter of material provides a major case-study of the capacity of drama to deal with contemporary political violence.

The politics of violence and terrorism has been a compelling topic for many playwrights and researchers. As far back as the classical drama of ancient Athens, plays like Prometheus Bound, Oedipus Rex, Antigone, and the Bacchae have depicted violence that could be, in a sense, regarded as 'political'. During the Renaissance, terror was used as a "weapon of state power", and this is reflected in some of the Elizabethan dramas where "Renaissance tragedy has its origins in Tudor terror and in the embryonic British state as much as in the Italian city-state of Machiavelli" (Orr & Klaic 3-4). However, it is chiefly in the twentieth century that playwrights like Sean O'Casey, Peter Weiss, Trevor

Griffiths, Bertolt Brecht, and Edward Bond have explored the dialectics and problematic of violence and resistance, violence and revolution, and violence and terrorism, seriously and in depth. Their plays address the ethical and political problems of the justifiability of violence in the theatre. Even more recently, with the escalation of terrorism as a global phenomenon, contemporary playwrights like David Hare, Victoria Brittain, Gillian Slovo and Robin Soans have begun to deal with such issues as the "War on Terror", the investigation of terrorism suspects, and the personality of the terrorist.

At the same time, many scholarly studies have been conducted to investigate the concept of terrorism and political violence in theatre. In Political Violence in Drama,

Mary Karen Dahl postulates that contemporary playwrights "variously recognize, manipulate, and focus the conventions", which she sees as the "directed use of violence", 4

to "create diverse images of human power" (Dahl 10). Contemporary dramatists who explore the use of political violence are asking "whether directed violence can resolve the crisis [the polemical legitimacy of using violence] (or at least revive the health of the body politic)" (9). They investigate the problematic legitimacy of political violence, asking whether "directed violence or even a spontaneous sacrificial event could generate the belief systems and social institutions that might re-establish the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate violence" (9).

The core chapters of this study will be dedicated to examining mainly the following plays: David Hare's Stuff Happens, Judith Thompson's Palace of the End, Jonathan

Holmes' Fallujah, George Packer's Betrayed, Gregory Burke's Black Watch, Mark

Bartlett's Artefacts, Kasim Matrood's Muwatn (A Citizen) , Jawad al-Assadi's Hemam

Baghdadi (Baghdadi Bath), Rasha Fadhil's Ishtar fi Baghdad (Ishtar in Baghdad), Abdul

Razaq al-Rubai's Umera al- Jaheem (Princes of Hell), Sabah al-Anbari's Shahwat al-

Nihayat (The Lust of the Ends), and Abbas Abdul Gheni's Aswar Shaeka (Barbed Wires) and Remote Control. The Iraqi plays are chosen for two reasons: first, they show different representations of political violence, and second, they have been either performed or published. As for the English-language plays, they are selected partly because they deal directly and specifically with Iraq, and partly because they reflect an array of different ways in which political violence is dramatized by playwrights of different national origin.

Methodologically, in my second chapter, unlike Dahl's approach but with the same focus on the problematic justifiability of violence, I will make use of leftist revolutionary 5

ideas put forward mainly by Karl Marx, Frantz Fanon and Mahatma Gandhi to analyze the representation of violence m selected plays written by several Arab and English language playwrights In addition to the theories of Marx, Fanon and Gandhi, I will utilize Diana Taylor's and Michel Foucault's theonzation of torture and the body

Patterson's book, Strategies of Political Theatre, will be useful in discussing the function of political theatre in the Iraqi war context I will apply Patterson's dichotomy of the

"reflectiomsts" vs the "interventionists" to see how the plays in question adhere to one or the other category

Furthermore, I will discuss the issue of staging violence in relation to Antonm

Artaud's theatre of cruelty, and some recent conference scholarship published in Theatre and Humanism in a World of Violence (2009) Louis Althusser's notions of ISA

(Ideological State Apparatus) and RSA (Repressive State Apparatus) will also be useful in accounting for the type of mediatised violence that results from the clash between the

Arab and American ideology I will make use of Althusser's theory to decipher the ideological influence of media on both the Iraqi-Arabic and the English language playwrights

The aim of the study is twofold First, it will map out the various manipulations of political violence in both the Iraqi-Arabic and English language plays I will argue that while most of the English language plays on violence and terrorism in Iraq try to awaken the audience to the deception and 'spin' practised by their governments' policies and therefore ignore other important violence-agents and violence-facets, a number of Iraqi plays either represent violence that has been overdone by the media and thus indulge the 6

traumatized audience in their self-pity, or encapsulate their argument about violence in fantastic, mythological, poetic settings and language. Hence, I will advance the thesis that neither the English language nor the Iraqi-Arabic playwrights may be judged to have succeeded comprehensively and objectively in incorporating the main factors that have caused political violence in Iraq.

Several Iraqi-Arabic and English language playwrights show violence against Iraqis as a result of the invasion/occupation only, especially in the Iraqi plays where the

Americans are portrayed as the new (barbarian) Mongols. They either neglect or ignore other factors that cause political violence. In fact, many of them, except for Betrayed and

The Princes of Hell, do not mention or reveal the violence that is caused by, for instance,

Al-Mahdi Army, al-Qaeda, the new Iraqi government, and other Arab countries in the region. In the case of the Iraqi-Arabic playwrights, their limited view might be a result of either the playwrights' religious, ideological, and artistic background, the influence of the media, or the playwrights' fear of being targeted. Even Kasim Matrood whose plays, he claims, are creative and artistic rather than propagandistic, sometimes portrays a consuming vision of pain and violence in a cliched realism or poetic imagery. For example, in Shafts of Bereavement, he shows a woman's house being bombed and her children being killed. Though he tries to reflect on the reason for violence by using a ghost character, the whole play is articulated through stereotypical and simple realism with melodramatic emotions expressed by the afflicted wailing woman. In Muwatn, on

1 By traumatized audience, I mean those who were either affected by or had experienced the violence in Iraq. 7

the other hand, he deals with political violence, and particularly terrorist violence, in an absurdist and symbolist manner.

Regarding the English language playwrights, their narrow depiction of violence could stem from either the influence of the media and journalism as the key source for their drama, the collective (passionate) feeling of guilt as being subjects of the invading governments, the intention of addressing the Western audience only, or their lack of a complete understanding of what I will argue is the real situation in Iraq.

Second, the study will explore the function of re/presenting political violence as a common issue and concern shared by the writers of the invading and the invaded culture.

In doing so, I intend to focus on how the English language playwrights' perception of the aim of political drama differs from that of the Iraqi-Arabic dramatists. Also, the study will attempt to provide an outline of the main factors and political stimuli that have shaped the representation of political violence in the 20n century Arabic and English language drama, and try to sketch out the essential differences and similarities in the manipulation of political violence in both kinds of drama.

Unlike the preceding studies on political violence in drama where political violence by and large was approached from the Western perspective only, the significance of this study consists in its explication of political violence through two different contexts: the

Arab/Iraqi (traumatized and invaded) context, and the American and British (invading) context. By concurrently exploring the dramatic representation of political violence in these two contexts, the study will provide comparative research on both political violence and the recent drama of Iraq. 8

Political Theatre

The roots of political theatre date back to Greek performances including those by comic poets who used to touch on politics in open arenas to address public gatherings.

Over the course of time, political theatre has evolved into various (interrelated) forms, with various purposes, such as agitprop, epic, ritualistic, documentary, verbatim, and street and living theatre. A distinctly modern genre and canon of political theatre has emerged in the theories and practices of Erwin Piscator, Bertolt Brecht and Augusto

Boal2.

Piscator, operating from a purely Socialist/Communist angle, sees theatre as a

"conscious response to the needs of a particular historical moment"; it should be "a weapon in the class struggle" (Piscator 21). Piscator's theatre not only serves an agitational and propagandistic function, but also provides a political analysis by dialectically presenting the complex social and economic forces shaping contemporary society (188). Through his productions, and with an elaborate and novel use of technology and documentary film techniques, Piscator tried to incorporate three main qualities into his political theatre: (1) totality, which is a shift of representation from the individual to the masses; (2) immediacy, which refers to the response to the historical moment and to day-to-day topical events; and (3) authenticity, which will force spectators to act in response to what they have witnessed. For him, the playwright "must concentrate on bringing out the ideas which are alive in the psyche of the masses"; he

2 Boal is not included in this study. 9

must be "clear and easily understood by all, and he must learn from political leaders..."

(47).

Influenced by Marxist dialectical materialism and by Piscator's ideas, Brecht, for his part, indicates that theatre should be "dialectical" and thus should provoke social change by transforming the audience through appealing to their reason and not to their emotions only. For him, man is conditioned by social circumstances, and change, therefore, should be first sought in social forces, be they economic or ideological. He believes that "social being determines thought" and that man should be perceived as

"process" (Brecht 37). He postulates that "human character must be understood as the totality of all social conditions" and that "the epic form is the only one that can comprehend all the processes" (Moore).

Significantly, Brecht thinks that theatre should be an agent for social and political change. To achieve such a goal, Brecht suggests, is to make use of the technique of

'alienation' which enables theatre to utilize the scientific method of 'dialectical materialism' (Brecht 193). This blending of Hegelian and Marxist dialectics can also be realized in "the actor who impersonates the character, yet remains himself; the stage that represents reality, yet remains a stage; and the characters who are themselves, yet can be made into something else" (Harrop 218).

Accompanying the primary creation of political theatre and drama, there has been an outpouring of research and critical theory on the subject. Among the prominent recent books that address the concept of political theatre are Michael Patterson's Strategies of

Political Theatre (2003), and Graham Holderness's The Politics of Theatre and Drama 10

(1992). Though the two authors attempt to approach the concept of 'political theatre' differently, they share a common perception of it as arising primarily out of a desire for social change from the standpoint of a broadly socialist model. The difference between the two hypotheses is that while Patterson conventionally investigates the varieties of political theatre as an object of inquiry, Holderness probes the politics of theatre as a method of analysis. At times, both of these writers seem to agree that all theatre is

'political'. Holderness, for instance, expands the term 'political' to incorporate all cultural and artistic products:

All culture, that is, contains or expresses or implies a political view: all art

whether consciously or unconsciously, is tendentious, polemical, partisan;

all literature and drama speak on behalf an admitted or unacknowledged

belief that one order of things, one set of social arrangements, one

structure of political relations, is better or worse than another. (5)

Patterson, in his attempt to define the political theatre, follows a traditional hermeneutic. For him, political theatre exhibits the following features:

1. It tries to create a change.

2. It achieves a communal response.

3. It uses direct communication (spoken and body language)

4. It is constituted not individually but by shared efforts.

5. It depends on transcendence of both actors and audience, "...the actors must

transcend their own individuality in order to assume the role of a stranger" (2). 11

6. It juxtaposes striking elements to offer contradictory information that, in turn,

stimulates our response.

7. Characters should interact in some political content. ".. .it should be equally clear

that it is impossible to parade characters interacting socially in front of a public

assembled to witness these relationships without there being some political

content" (3).

Listing the core features in this way, Patterson implicitly associates political theatre with the left wing of the political spectrum. Does this seem to imply that there is no such thing as right-wing political drama? It can surely be argued that any play that exhibits a tendentious political stance is political. Holderness indicates that Ian Curteis's Falklands, for example, may implicitly express the playwright's preference for capitalism over socialism (3). Patterson clearly is speaking of political theatre in the West, and even here there are exceptions such as church-related drama, and theatre celebrating American patriotism and capitalism. In the East, in countries such as India, Japan, and others, although much of the political theatre is based in leftist or Marxist and socialistic ideals, there is a tradition of right wing theatre that has been either preceded, or been a reaction to, the liberal tendencies. In the same respect, Holderness indicates that there are many theoretical problems with the "automatic identification of political" drama with "left- wing" drama', especially within a postmodern philosophical framework:

Post-structuralist theories of art, Marxist theories of ideology,

deconstructionist theories of language and the sign may differ from one 12

another in many emphases, but all concur in recognizing the political

character of all culture. (5)

Moreover, from the point of view of content, political theatre need not directly or literally stage elements of recognizable social reality. Some dramatists show politics symbolically or as an aspect of life. Beckett's Waiting for Godot, for instance, is considered by some critics as a political allegory of the cold war or French resistance or as a metaphor of Ireland's view of mainland Britain, where, as Graham Hassell puts it,

"society has ever been blighted by a greedy ruling elite keeping the working classes passive and ignorant by whatever means."

Holderness, for his part, tries to investigate the interconnectedness between theatre and politics:

The linking of the two terms immediately identifies a context of cultural

difference, perhaps even a binary opposition: political theatre is not the

same as ordinary theatre because it displays a different kind of relationship

with something other than itself- 'polities'. (2)

He, too, differentiates between what he calls 'symptomatic' and 'truly' political theatre. The former shows politics as a matter of unconscious partiality that "does not form a constitutive part of the cultural product itself, while the latter "must be a matter of conscious choice and deliberate intention." According to Holderness, this duality of theatre and politics can manifest itself in two ways. He argues that theatre can be

'political' without becoming 'political theatre'," i.e. a theatre which is ideologically 13

committed. In other words, a play that merely addresses political issues or represents matters of politics without taking sides is "accidentally political" (2).

More importantly, he puts forward three qualities of the political theatre: the politics of content, the politics of form, and the politics of function. The politics of content, which addresses matters of political reality such as governments, revolutions, economic oppressions etc., is just a quality of the political theatre which may turn the true political theatre into only 'symptomatic' where the matter of politics is conventionally perceived regardless of its political intention. Thus, it is the task of the politics of both form and function to give political theatre progressiveness and radicalism. Before explaining the mechanisms of the politics of form and of function, Holderness raises an important issue, the depiction of social reality. Is reality determined by the economic base or by ideology?

The early Marxists see art as a passive reflector of reality which is determined by changes and developments in the economic base. Nevertheless, this view was later modified and extended by such post-Marxists thinkers as Louis Althusser. According to most of the post-Marxists, ideology somehow shapes and defines the conception of reality. In this sense, Holderness wants to give ideology more freedom and independence of the economic base. In fact, ideology is another imperative tool in the hand of the ruling class that reinforces and sometimes forces its ideology on the people. Consequently, ideology is not entirely free from the economic base or the means of production of the ruling class.

Since ideology is rooted in the structure of culture and art, the task of the politics of form, therefore, is to "expose structure and form and open cultural artefacts up to investigation and challenge" (9). Brecht's theatre, for instance, deconstructs the 14

mechanisms of its construction and backs up the spectator's ability to question all ideological naturalizations. Referring to the postmodernist attitude, Holderness argues that the task of the politics of function resides in "de-stabilizing the conventional relation between spectator and performance, disrupting traditional expectations of narrative and aesthetic coherence, de-familiarsing and interrogating the passive power of naturalized cultural norms" (13).

The other significant aspect tackled by these two critics is the aim behind performing a political drama. For Patterson, the goal of political theatre is to create radical change along socialist lines. But since socialism as a political ideal has undergone a partial eclipse, new issues appear to be political in public opinion. Issues like gender, racism, sexual orientation etc. are nowadays politically presented and debated.

In order for the political theatre to be more effective in challenging the dominant social classes and the theatre of the status quo which shows the ruling order as 'natural' condition with no possible alternative, the task of a progressive drama, Holderness states,

"would then be the legitimate and necessary task of challenging that dominance, by showing that the existing order is not 'natural' but politically constructed and fundamentally unjust" (14). Essentially, this is not enough to achieve what Holderness himself calls 'political efficacy' as the mission should go further to provide alternative solutions and to direct the audience to the propagandized change. Notably, the writer attempts to enlarge the sphere of political theatre to include cases related to sexism, racism, sexual orientation, and other issues associated with oppressed and ethnic minorities. In doing so, he revolts against the traditional conception that limits political 15

theatre to being about revolutions, strikes, pickets, police brutality etc, and introduces a modern spectrum that could encompass sexism in language, male prostitution, or the personal experience of racism. As a matter of fact, Holderness broadens the perspective of political theatre to take account of not only the formal politics but also "individual and collective experiences formally considered 'private' or 'personal'" (13).

Patterson examines the controversial issue of the portrayal of reality by the political playwrights. He elaborates on the debate between what he calls the "reflectionists" and the "interventionists". In a nutshell, the reflectionists postulate that the "main function of art and indeed theatre is to hold a mirror to nature and to reflect reality as accurately as possible..." (15). The interventionists consider such an effort by itself as useless, because the role of the playwright or the artist should be not only to reflect reality as it is, but also to interpret it and challenge our perception of it. For example, in Brecht's theatre, spectators do not sit passively and watch reality as it is; rather they are encouraged to judge and make choices and their active responses generate what Brecht called 'political awareness'. Patterson explains the whole dispute:

The former [reflection] appealed to some British political playwrights of

the 1970s because it allowed them to portray a familiar world where

injustice could be easily recognized. The latter [intervention] appealed to

others because it seemed to offer greater possibilities of analyzing the

causes of this injustice. (24) 16

To schematize the discussion of the two types of political theatre, Patterson provides a

comparative table which essentially reproduces Brecht's taxonomy of theatrical

strategies:

Reflectionist Interventionist

Realism Modernism

Reflection of reality Analysis of reality

Objective Subjective

Recognizable world Autonomous world

Complete, rounded Fragmented, open-ended

Usually set in present Often set in past

Scenes linked sequentially Montage ('epic' structure)

Human nature unalterable Human behaviour alterable

Actions derived from character Characters derived from actions

Empathy Distance

Psychology Social forces

Set design imitates real world Set design consciously theatrical

Limited to everyday behaviour and Uses many theatrical elements (songs,

languages poetry, etc.)

Lays claim to being popular Lays claim to being popular

Change urged by considering world Change urged by positing alternatives

as it is 17

In conclusion, I think while Holderness' theorization of political theatre is productive and insightful, Patterson's distinction seems relatively narrow in scope and inapplicable to many kinds of political theatre. Critiquing Patterson's book, David R.

Jones argues that Patterson's type of postwar British playwright is "a white, male, socialist writer of the 1970s", and that Patterson's theory framework is outdated as he

"divides political theatre into two strategies, which are really the dominant styles of the last century: "reflectionist" (otherwise realistic or naturalistic) and "interventionist"

(otherwise Brechtian or modernist) (144).

Political Violence: Resistance, Revolution, and Terrorist Violence

The term 'political violence' can evoke a wide range of definitions and debatable theories; however, in this study I limit its scope to incorporate three major categories: resistance, revolutionary, and terrorist violence. Although they seem different from each other, resistance violence, revolutionary violence, terrorist violence, and even state violence may share one common element: production of terror. Even though Michel

Foucault's discussion of the 'spectacle' is contextuahzed in the archeology of punishments practiced in earlier times, most of the modern manifestations of political violence, except for some examples of disappearance as a state terror strategy, hinge on the spectacle, the visualization of violence which Foucault describes as "an exercise of terror" {Discipline and Punish 12).

Moreover, the categories of violence and its justifiability are politically and polemically perspectival. While the violence targeting the American troops in Iraq is 18

considered as terrorist violence by the American government, it is seen as resistance and therefore justifiable in the eyes of its actors and some other viewers. Further, what is regarded as revolutionary violence against a state could be perceived as terrorist violence and consequently justifies the use of state violence to coerce and control the revolutionary one. Meanwhile, revolutionary violence could turn into terrorist violence as in the case with the French Revolution when the State, which emerged out of the

Revolution and its goals, utilized extreme violence, such as the guillotine, to eradicate

'the enemies of the people', leaving the people living in a reign of terror. Was the use of such violence necessary or justifiable? Such a debatable question, in addition to being a contentious issue in theories of political violence, occupies a central point in a play like

Peter Weiss' Marat/Sade which hinges on a debate between Marat who believes that society can be changed by violent revolution and de Sade who believes that change can only come about if individuals use their unrestricted imaginations to unlock the "cells of the inner self. But the play pits revolutionary ideas of freedom and democracy against human limitations. Among the possible interpretations is that ultimately the magnificent revolutionary ideas end up in chaos and the inmates lose control of themselves and their message, as in the case of most revolutions which begin with glorious ideas and then turn to chaos and oppressive violence.

Resistance Violence

The issue of whether to use violence to resist an occupation or a colonial force is a disputable matter. To decipher the problematic rationale of using violence, I will briefly 19

outline two main contending stances that are advocated by Frantz Fanon and Mahatma

Gandhi. While the former preaches violence as the solution for decolonization, the latter adopts nonviolence as the best route to freedom and liberation.

Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence is deeply rooted in the Christian belief in forgiveness and love, and in the tenets of Jainism and Buddhism. For him, "Jesus was the most active resister known perhaps to history. This was nonviolence par excellence."

(Gandhi 2: 16). Also, the influence of Buddhism and Jainism lies in the very conception of ahimsa (non-violence), which refers to the "absence of the desire to kill or harm" and to the non-violent tendency in the Acaranga Sutra, a Jainist text, which states: "All beings are fond of life; they like pleasure and hate pain, shun destruction and like to live, they long to live. To all, life is dear" (Chappie 10-11).

Gandhi's 'satyagraha' (truth force or resistance by nonviolent means) has many essential principles chief among which are: (1) non-cooperation with everything humiliating, (2) speaking out and standing up for one's convictions, (3) laying down one's life for what one considers to be right, and (4) love as the sword of the satyagraha, and the unshakeable firmness that comes from it (Gandhi 1: 53-59).

Clearly enough, nonviolence does not mean cowardice or complete passivity; rather, nonviolent resistance should be carried out through brave actions such as strikes and demonstrations in which one shows a serious willingness to die rather than to kill:

"nonviolence is not a cover for cowardice, but it is the supreme virtue of the brave...Nonviolence presupposes ability to strike" (59). In addition to non-cooperation 20

and demonstration, nonviolence entails "the renunciation of benefits and privileges that are implicitly guaranteed by forces which conscience can not accept" (Merton 51).

For Fanon, however, nonviolence is a notion introduced by the colonialist bourgeoisie who were aided by and thus manipulated the Christian belief in forgiveness.

Even though Fanon does not completely banish the possibility of compromise, he lashes out at nonviolence and the colonized elite who channel the ideology of the colonialist bourgeoisie:

They [the colonialist bourgeoisie] introduce a new notion, in actual fact a

creation of the colonial situation: nonviolence. In its raw state this

nonviolence conveys to the colonized intellectuals and business elite that

their interests are identical to those of the colonialist bourgeoisie and it is

therefore indispensable, a matter of urgency, to reach an agreement for the

common good. Nonviolence is an attempt to settle the colonial problem

around the negotiating table before the irreparable, before any bloodshed

or regrettable act is committed. (Fanon 23)

Unlike Ghandi's conception of nonviolent revolution where "a program of transformation of relationships" ends in "a peaceful transfer of power", for Fanon, decolonization is "a power struggle" where the "exploited realize that their liberation implies using every means available, and force is the first" (23). Moreover, violence is considered by Fanon as the most natural state of colonialism that, in order to defeat it, should be confronted with greater violence (23). Even if it might be traumatic for both the colonizer and the colonized, violence, for Fanon, is necessary in the decolonization 21

process: "For if the last shall be first, this will only come to pass after a murderous and decisive struggle between the two protagonists" (xxix). The execution of such violence will have a cathartic impact on the colonized by cleansing them from the inferiority complex and by freeing them from despair and inaction (51). More importantly, violence becomes a unifying force that eradicates the tribalism and regionalism created by the colonialists (51).

In fact, Fanon's ideas about violence have aroused various responses. For example, Hannah Arendt critiques Fanon's belief in violence and in the humanism engendered out of the violent process and thus defined by the Third World. In the forward to Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, Homi K. Bhabha states:

For Arendt, Fanon's violence leads to the death of politics; for Sartre, it

draws the fiery, first breath of human freedom. I propose a different

reading. Fanonian violence, in my view, is part of a struggle for psycho-

affective survival and a search for human agency in the midst of the agony

of oppression. It does not offer a clear choice between life and death or

slavery and freedom, because it confronts the colonial condition of life-in-

death. (xxxvi)

Despite the fact that Fanon and Gandhi, in their pursuit of independence, have tried to rid the colonized people of feelings of inferiority and alienation, despair and inaction, Gandhi is drawn to the nonviolent resistance in South Africa and India, whereas

Fanon shows his approbation of the resistance violence in Algeria and revolutionary violence in Iran. However, certain issues remain controversial in both realms: (1) whether 22

violence is an innate feature in human nature, (2) the degree of the realistic effectiveness of violent and nonviolent resistance, and (3) the circumstances that can cause each approach to emerge.

The fundamental question for the present study is how modern playwrights conceive of and represent resistance violence. Do the Arab playwrights differ from the

English language ones? And if so, how and why? To tackle these questions, in chapter two I will examine some plays written by Ireland's Sean O'Casey and Egypt's Alfred

Farag. Though Farag's plays are more recent than O'Casey's, both playwrights have explored the same issue, resistance violence against a colonial rule. Yet, their dramatic representations and their personal attitudes towards violence are totally different.

Revolution and Violence

Revolution in this section is exclusively meant to be that which is carried out against a ruling regime, not against an occupation or a foreign colonial power. The relationship between violence and revolution is undoubtedly another polemical issue.

Hannah Arendt postulates that the theory of violence has not fully developed because violence has more often than not been studied from a very narrow perspective, that of justification:

A theory of war or a theory of revolution, therefore can only deal with the

justification of violence because this justification constitutes its political

limitation; if, instead, it arrives at a glorification or justification of

violence as such, it is no longer political but antipolitical. (10) 23

Arendt maintains that "like all means, [violence] always stands in need of guidance and justification, through the end it pursues", but she also rejects the idea of 'creativity' that is attributed to violence by Fanon and Sartre. Eventually, Arendt considers violence as futile for it is the common denominator for wars and revolutions (3, 51).

Although Marx's view on revolution and violence is clearly stated, his followers, like Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, have provided slightly different interpretations and thus adopted various strategies during their reigns. Nonetheless, the relationship of violence to revolution is plainly declared in the last lines of The Manifesto of the Communist

Party:

The communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly

declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all

existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communistic

revolution. (Feuer41)

So, the end is the establishment of communist justice or socialism, and the means is a forcible overthrow i.e., violent revolution. Moreover, the use of violence is not limited to the time of the revolution but it could be justified by the temporary 'dictatorship of the proletariat' to repress the bourgeoisie who, for many Marxists, are the proprietors of violence.

The question that could be raised here is whether violence is an essential aspect of revolution? Can a revolution effect change without being violent? In "Marxist Theory on

Revolution and Violence", Adam S chaff indicates that both "Marx and Engels and, later,

Lenin on many occasions referred to a peaceful revolution, that is, one attained by a class 24

struggle but not by violence" (254). Far from the polemical statements about the interconnectedness of violent revolution and evolution, for Marx and Engels, who neither preach violence nor condemn it, the possibility for a peaceful revolution, Schaff argues, depends on certain historical and political conditions. For example, in the United States, such a peaceful transition could happen because in the United States "the strong military and bureaucratic machinery of the state was still nonexistent at that time" (256).

Furthermore, Marx's idea of peaceful transition or peaceful revolution is accentuated also by Mark Juergensmeyer who, interestingly, sets Marx and Gandhi in a dramatic dialogue:

G: Excellent. [Pauses] But you also advocate violence.

M: Not in every instance. There are countries—England and America, for

instance—where the workers can attain their goals through peaceful

means. But in most countries, the lever of our revolution must be force.

The dialogue continues:

G: It seems to me that you've already chosen the means when you choose

the goal, and in this case of a violent situation...

M (Interrupting again): ...You are forced to use violent means! You see,

you do have the point after all.

G (a bit warily): What I had in mind was that violence breeds violence,

and that if you use it in your struggle for change, the result will also have a

violent tinge.

3 Gandhi's theory of nonviolence is more applicable to resistance a colonial or occupation power than to an unjust ruler or government 25

M: Perhaps so, but your dictum holds true at the outset of a struggle as

well as the end. A violent situation naturally produces a violent

response—in fact it requires it. It demands a force that can match and

subdue the brutality that is there.

G: Well yes, in part. A violent situation must be met with strength. But

that strength need not itself be violent. (115)

In Islam, on the other hand, the Islamic conception of revolutionary violence is

ultimately interrelated with the concept of Jihad against the unjust ruler, and with what

is known in Islam as Al-Umr bil Maruf wal Nahi un al-Munkar (The

Promotion/Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice). It is argued that the Sunni

Muslims believe that a Muslim ruler, regardless of being just or unjust, should be

obeyed and never revolted against. However, in modern political Islamic history, one

may notice the oppositional stances, revolutions and uprisings led by the Sunni

fundamentalists (reformists and radicals) against Muslim leaders such as in Syria

(Syrian Muslim Brotherhood), in Egypt (Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood) and in Saudi

Arabia (Ikhwan and recently al-Qaeda).

As for the Shiite Muslims, most of them strongly believe in the revolution against the unjust ruler. They find in the death of Hussein, the grandson of Mohammad, a leading example and a motive to revolt against the unjust ruler. The violent slaughter of Hussein and his companions has created a very noticeable impact on the modern Shiite revolutionaries and fundamentalists such as Ali Shariti, Khomeini and some other revolutionary scholars in Iran, and Mohamed Bakir al- Hakim and Mohamed Sadiq al- 26

Sadr in Iraq. While for some Muslims and historians Hussein's uprising against Yazid, a

Sunni Umayyad ruler, is a matter of power struggle, Shiite Muslims consider the uprising of Hussein as a revolution against an unjust and corrupt ruler. Revolutionary violence in this case is necessary to face the brutality of regimes that the Shiites believe to be unjust.

It is worth mentioning that, in spite of being sometimes a mere entertainment or a regressive and ineffective ritual, the annual theatrical enactment of al-Tef'battle between

Hussein and Yazid (Ta 'zyieh) has political, social and religious significance: it could serve as a revolutionary gesture against 'unjust regimes', a unifying factor of Shiite community, a propaganda for certain political parties in the post-Saddam Iraq, or it could cement the belief in its cathartic function (purgation of guilt) and its subsequent redemption in the Day of Judgment.4

But why did major Shiite imams, starting with Ja'afer al-Sadiq and ending with

Hassan al-Askeri, adopt what the Shiites called 'Taqia' (a dispensation allowing believers to conceal their faith when under threat, persecution or compulsion)? Does this concept oppose the political or the revolutionary stance?5 Actually, such a question leads us to the

4 See Amir Al-Azraki, "The Theatricality and Politics of Ashura Rituals in Iraq", Majala al-Adab, Baghdad University, 93 (2010)34-71

5 Shiite Muslims are often accused of being dulled by their rituals, they are often pictured as people waiting for their Hidden Imam to solve their problems Khomeini is seen as the first Shiite figure who broke this waiting by achieving a big political change in the silent history of Shiites But the Shiites claim that their history is full of many revolutionary figures such as al- Naani, al-lsfaham, Kashef al-Ghita, al-Shirazi, and later, Shanti, Mohamed Baqir al Sadr, Mohamed Baqir al-Hakim, and Mohamed Sadiq al-Sadr Those Shnte thinkers and ayatollahs, the Shiites believe, were politically influential in fighting the Western occupations and the tyrants' regimes, their fatwa and ideas had an impact on their followers The political engagement of the Shiites was very clear in the beginning of 20th century with emergence of such Shnte political parties as Daawa Islamic Party and Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution, and Shnte uprisings in Iraq in 199 land 1998, and also the emergence of Hezbollah as an influential party in Lebanon More important than this is what the Shia call 'Ijtihad' which allows the rational power of the ayatollah's mind, hinging on his interpretation of Quran, Sunnah and the sayings of the 12 Imams descended from Muhammad (Ahlul al-Bait), to explore the new problems and issue fatwa The very notion of 'Ijtihad' may 27

division between what is now called the 'quietist' and the 'revolutionary' lines or the

Hassaman (non-confrontational) and Husseinian (confrontational revolutionary) strategy

In Iraq, for instance, the two strategies are in conflict there are those who follow a revolutionary line such as Muqtada al-Sadr and those who follow the non-violent, non- confrontational strategy such as Ah Sistani The Shnte majority follows Sistam's non­ violent fatwa concerning the political situation in Iraq

So, how have modern playwrights tackled revolutionary violence7 Since it is so

difficult to incorporate all the plays that deal with revolutionary violence, I will simply

focus on the representation of revolutionary violence in selected plays Edward Bond's

Lear, The Worlds and The Bundle, Amiri Baraka's Slave Ship, and Salah abd al-Sabur's

Ma 'sat al-Hallaj (The Tragedy of Hallaj) and Ba 'ad an Yamout al-Mahk (When the

King Dies)

Terrorism and State Violence

Far from discussing the various definitions, causes and cures of terrorism, I am more interested in construing the discourse of terrorism by highlighting its dramatic and theatrical nature and exploring the correlation between terrorism, drama and theatre

Being a global issue that cannot be ignored, terrorism has attracted the attention of many modern and contemporary playwrights roughly because of its dramatic impact, refute the argument that the Smites are numbed by their rituals and awaiting their Imam to solve their problems

6 State violence has two major forms violence practiced by a state against its own citizens, and war The Invasion of Iraq can be seen as a state violence carried out by a state (USA) against another state (Iraq) through the implementation of huge armed forces The USA has used two types of violence brutal military force to occupy Iraq and destroy its heritage, and cruel violence directed against the Iraqi people, and against the so called 'terrorism suspects' or 'terrorists' The invasion of Iraq as a state violence will be discussed in the fourth chapter 28

spectacular action, and political debate. John Orr states that "one of the attractions of terrorism to playwrights is its dramatic impact, which can be both immediate and sensational in its repercussions" (8). Among those modern and contemporary playwrights who find terrorism or political violence a fascinating topic to write about are Griselda

Gambaro, Robin Soans, Harold Pinter, Howard Brenton, David Hare, George Ryga,

George Packer, Judith Thompson and Robert Fothergill. Modern Arab playwrights have also written plays that deal with terrorism as in Abd al-Razaq al-Rubai's Umara al-

Jaheem (Princes of Hell), Majid al-Khateeb's Fi'ran al-Ikhtebar (Test Mice), and state terrorism as in Sa'adallah Wannus' Ightisab (Rape) and Al-Fil ya Malik al-Zaman (The

Elephant, King of All Times), and Mohamed al-Maghout's Kasak ya Watan (To your

Health, Homeland) and Al-Usfur al-Ahdab (Hunchbacked Sparrow).

But what comparison can one draw out between drama, theatre, and terrorism?

Terrorism is perceived by some critics as having qualities that allow it to be conceived of as a social drama. In The Moro Morality Play: Terrorism as a Social Drama, R. E.

Wagner-Pacifici analyses the kidnapping and assassination of Aldo Moro in 1978 as a

'social drama'. Utilizing Victor Turner's theory of social drama and its tri-phases,

Wagner-Pacifici underlines the dramatic/narrative structure of these terrorist events:

The great advance of Turner's schema of the social drama is that not only

does it, as does Ricoeur's schema, assert and employ a posteriori the

narrative analysis of events but it also regards the social actors themselves

as proceeding through and attempting to direct certain events with, among 29

other kinds of consciousness and motives (e.g., political, moral,

economic), a theatrical self-consciousness. (7)

Actually, John Orr's account of terrorism as a social drama is not that different.

He thinks that in order "for its [terrorism's] political ends to have some impact, if not success, it must be also a form of social drama, a presentation of abnomiality in everyday life" (49). Commenting on Wagner-Pacifici's analysis of terrorism as a social drama, Orr elaborates:

Wagner-Pacifici notes that the age of modernity which produces

sophisticated terror also produces dramatic self-consciousness. Through

newspapers, magazines, radio, television, video and film we are now

saturated with communications which set up expectations about the

dramaturgy of events. They are meant to have a beginning, a middle and

an end, a complicated plot with ingenious twists, a serial narrative fed to

us in simplified form. (54)

As for terrorism and theatre, Diana Taylor, analyzing the theatricality of terrorism, provides a concise comparison between theatre and terrorism:

Terrorism, with its scenes of torture and abductions, proved to be highly

theatrical both on a practical and a symbolic level. Terrorists dressed their

parts and set the drama in motion. The victims, like actors, stood in (albeit

unwillingly) for someone or something else. Antagonists appeared on the

scene as if by magic; protagonists "disappeared" into thin air. (165) 30

Taylor also postulates that the performance qualities in both phenomena help expose their fundamental nature. She points out that theatre could be a tool for manipulating the perception of terrorism: "Theatre is an unstable vehicle for expression, as capable of obscuring problems as it is of clarifying them, as instrumental in mythifying victimization as in working to end it" (168).

Moreover, terrorism could also be perceived as a theatre of cruelty. As I have previously stated, the obvious connection between terrorism and theatre of cruelty is the theatricalization of violence to create a spectacle that in turn engenders a terror effect on the spectators. Discussing the underlying linkage between terrorism and art, Richard

Schechner observes terrorism as an artistic act that works on states of mind. Terrorism creates a visual and theatrical destruction that consequently produces terror as a state of mind (273). The affiliation between what Schechner describes and what Artaud proposes is very powerful. Artaud's cruelty refers to the "necessary cruelty which things can exercise against us" (Artaud 79). Artaud's proposed terror is produced through savage, powerful nonverbal language of shocks and the collision of images which appear almost fitting for provoking terror. His theatre of cruelty presents a revelation of violent images as an artistically transforming and healing force that transform the spectator by

"exteriorizing his latent cruelty, while at the same time forcing him to assume an external attitude corresponding to the state of psychological order which one wish to restore"

(Innes 87). For Artaud, through cruelty, theatre plays a therapeutic function by being an outlet, for both the actor and the spectator, of harmful, destructive impulses that all men have been keeping within themselves (Auslander 23). This kind of cruelty could awaken 31

us and shatter the Utopian and the impossible vision the representational theatre provides.

By creating violent images on stage, the theatre of cruelty engenders a terrifying spectacle of terror as a state of mind. Hence, Schechner concludes that "9-11 is an example of Artaud's uncanny assertion... that the sky can fall on our heads and theatre has been created to teach us that first of all" (Herbert and Stefanova 273). Artaud's conception is therefore to encounter the unknown and the unexpected; in doing so, it reminds and teaches us how to expect such a disaster as September 11.

As for stage violence, it is either criticized or called for as in the case of Artaud's theatre of cruelty. For example, stage violence is sternly condemned by Korean scholar

Yun-Cheol Kim, president of the International Association of Theatre Critics, who demonstrates that both literal violence (''violence acted actually on the actor's body" ) and aesthetic violence ("violence acted on upon our sentiments and sensibility") deny

"human dignity and theatricality" (40-45). Yet, David Edgar considers artistic representations of violence constructive:

By enabling us to imagine what is like to see the world through other eyes

(including the eyes of the violent and the murderous), artistic

representations develop capacities without which we cannot live together

in societies at all. Defense of free speech is not primarily a matter of the

rights of the speaker, but the rights of the listener. In that sense, we all

have the right not only to outrage and terrify, but to be outraged and

terrified. (101) 32

On the other hand, exploring the politics of stage violence, Japanese critic Manabu Noda postulates that stage violence is "a consumer product" and that all categories of theatre, except for what he calls "the gory" referring to the Japanese Kubuki which shows visual pleasure as the purpose of stage violence, are mimetic in trying to represent violence on stage:

...tragic, agitprop, sociological, psychological, melodramatic, journalistic,

political, etc...all these types try to contextualize violence that exists

outside theatre. In this sense, they are all mimetic. They strive to accuse,

glorify, condemn, justify, analyze, identify, or politicize violence in real

life, and thereby urge us to make ethical judgments or reevaluations,

which for these theatres is the only justification of staging violence.

However, these categories do not give any context to stage violence. They

do not address what stage violence stimulates the audience's imagination

to do. (195)

Other issues involved in the discussion of theatre and terrorism are the theatricality and psychology of torture, spectacle and spectatorship. These issues are either argued scientifically in books about torture and terrorism, or explored imaginatively in literary and artistic works.

Torture could be seen as a 'theatrical display' where power and powerlessness are defined. The show of torturers and tortured is a performance of power through which both the body and psyche of the victim are manipulated. Elaine Scarry describes torture as "a grotesque piece of compensatory drama" where the reality of "absolute pain" is 33

transformed into a "fiction of absolute power" (53-54). Taylor claims that she finds in

Scarry's theory of torture a missing but crucial element, the spectator. The importance of the spectator in the analysis of torture stems from the fact that the public, being spectators, "assist in the conversion of pain to power" thus achieving the aim of state terrorism and torture in provoking the realization that "the regime has the power to control it [the public]" (D. Taylor 173). The random choice of victims "serves to strengthen the identification between the public and the victim by accentuating the random nature of this atrocity" which could involve "an involuntary audience" (D. Taylor

173).

As for the torturers, within the chambers of torture, they often believe or are made to believe that they are doing the right thing for their country or their society7. Outside the rooms of torture, they might be seen as monstrous criminals:

Like the actor, the torturer is simultaneously a monstrous villain and

ordinary citizen, guilty of atrocious acts and guiltless of them. Within the

theatrical frame, the room with its props, its scripts for urging information,

and professional terminology, the torturers can safely proceed with the

annihilation of others. They maim or kill their victims by convincing

themselves that they are doing something else; they are defending

themselves and their country... (D. Taylor 172)

7 The same analysis could be applied to the notion of terrorism and terrorist. 34

The following study falls into six chapters. Chapter Two will examine the representation of political violence in selected modern English language and Arabic plays. This chapter will explore: how have the modern Arab and English language playwrights represented political violence and terrorism in their plays? What are their modes of representation? How do modern playwrights differentiate between revolutionary violence and terrorist violence?

The third chapter will provide a critical overview of the representation of political violence in modern and contemporary Iraqi drama written during and after Saddam's regime. This chapter will look at the following questions: have the Iraqi playwrights depicted any kind of state violence or revolutionary violence during Saddam's time?

Being invaded, occupied, and traumatized by a foreign power (American army and the coalition forces), how have the contemporary Iraqi playwrights responded to and explored the violence caused by the resistance, terrorism, and the American invasion/occupation?

Chapter four will be dedicated to analyzing the representation of political violence in selected English language and Iraqi plays. It will be divided into three sections: politics of the war on Iraq {Stuff Happens, Black Watch, and Justifying War), the arrival of the barbarians {Lust of the Ends), and the torture of Abu Ghraib prisoners {Palace of the End and Ishtar in Baghdad).

Both chapter three and four, along with the thematic treatment of political violence, will analyze the modes of representation in both the Iraqi-Arabic and English language plays. Iraqi-Arabic playwrights who write about violence in Iraq use various 35

modes of representation but they often adhere to modes that are more artistic or stylized than realistic. Some of them dramatize violence through symbolism (e.g. Remote Control,

A Citizen), some combine mythology and/or fantasy with realism (e.g. Ishtar in Baghdad and The Lust of the Ends), and a few use realism (e.g. Curfew and Shadows). Using mythology or symbolism may limit the scope of the play to those who are educated or to those who are considered as "professional spectators". The other problem for the non- educated and lay audience is the use of highly poetic language which in some way represents a difficulty for them. Sometimes such a poetic and metaphoric language makes the play what might be termed dramatic poetry rather than a poetic drama , a difference some Iraqi-Arabic playwrights have perhaps not yet grasped. But why do these playwrights use such modes of representation or such a poetic language? Does this have anything to do with the theory of art-for-art's sake? Is it a matter of literary conventions that have dominated the Arab literary tradition because of the oppressive regimes? Why do not the Iraqi-Arabic playwrights use verbatim techniques as a mode of dramatic representation? These questions will be explored in both chapters.

The fifth chapter will discuss the plays that entail what is known as 'terrorist violence', be it state terror during the Ba'athist regime and Islamic and sectarian terror such as kidnapping, suicide bombing, and assassinations {Betrayed, Artefact, Princes of

Hell, and A Citizen). The first section will deal with the representation of state violence during Saddam's regime in plays written after the fall of Saddam {Baghdadi Bath and 9

8 While dramatic poetry is originally a poetry that is formed or narrated through dialogues (e g. Shelly's "Prometheus Unbound"), poetic drama is a drama that uses poetic language as its verbal communicative medium to be used by its characters The former, being poetry, is basically not meant to be staged, the latter is not only written for reading but also for stage performance 36

Parts of Desire). I will inquire into both the subject and the object of violence. For example, in Baghdadi Bath I will show how the violence committed by Saddam's henchmen becomes an unavoidable morbid memory of the person who was unwillingly forced to be part of it. Also, the violence committed against Iraqi women during

Saddam's regime will be highlighted in plays like 9 Parts of Desire and Palace of the

End. The second section will focus on two key issues: the psychology and ideology of the terrorist and their association with the conception of Jihad, and the violence committed against the Iraqis, specifically those who work with the occupation/coalition troops. Finally, the last chapter will encapsulate some concluding remarks. 37

II. Political Violence in Contemporary Drama: A Review of Some Non-Iraqi Arabic

and English Language Examples

1. Resistance Violence

This chapter will address the depiction and treatment of violent political action in a selection of English language and Arabic plays approached through three perspectives: resistance violence against a colonial rule, revolutionary violence against an unjust ruler or government, and state violence against its citizens.

As it is almost impossible to encapsulate all the English language and Arabic plays that deal with political violence, the choice of the plays in this chapter is chiefly based on three criteria: the nationality, the standpoint, and the mode of representation.

The plays are selected partly because they represent different nations (Ireland, England,

USA, South Africa, and the Arab region), and partly because, in addition to their dissimilar stances towards political violence, they utilize various modes of representing political violence (realism, verbatim, documentary, puppetry, symbolism, Artaudian,

Brechtian, and Piscatorian). Such characteristics, along with the sundry aspects of the plays (e.g. history, folkloric tradition, parables etc), will hopefully be revealing in this comparative study.

To begin, it may be said that revolutionary and resistance violence in English language plays are dialectically problematized (except in Baraka's plays), they are generally depicted and glorified as heroic in the Arabic plays. Also, while state violence in the English plays is mostly portrayed realistically, it is expressed indirectly in the

Arabic plays, partly because of the perceived oppressiveness of the Arab governments 38

and partly because of the playwrights' artistic repudiation of direct realistic discourse in drama.

Turning first to a consideration of plays by the Irishman Sean O'Casey and the

Egyptian Alfred Farag: while O'Casey sardonically discredits the use of resistance violence, Farag applauds it as the only means to liberation. Whereas O'Casey shows an ironic depiction of the nationalistic bravado of the Dublin Irish of the 1916-23 period,

Farag creates a more romantic adulation of the Palestinian mujahidin.

Before O'Casey, plays like P.J. Bourke's For the Land She Loved (1915) and

W.B. Yeats' Cathleen Ni Houlihan (1902) showed a patriotic picture of armed resistance to free Ireland from colonial rule. In For the Land She loved, through a romantic but melodramatic love story between Munro (a revolutionary United Irishman) and Betsy

(the heroine of Ballinahinch), the love of free Ireland, which was in a state of rebellion against the British, is paralleled with the love of Betsy to Munro where Betsy, accidentally pierced by swords of both Munro and Brue in the last fight of the play, declares: "I am dying for my country" (359). The play links three ideological stances: nationalism (armed resistance for independence), labour power (represented in the power of the blacksmiths), and Irish feminism (Betsy's story which echoes the context for women during the emergence of feminist 'suffragette' movements) where women "bear the most of the ideological burden" and where Betsy Gray becomes a sacrificial hero

(Herr 57).

In a similar melodrama but with a less complicated story and with less complicated female characterization, Cathleen Ni Houlihan, an old woman, Cathleen, 39

becomes a mythical symbol and an emblem of Irish nationalism. She appears at the door of a family preparing for their son's wedding, and asks for a blood sacrifice to free

Ireland from colonial rule through martyrdom. At the end, the son leaves his wedding and his fiancee and joins the French troops to fight the British. Again, it seems that women, even in O'Casey's plays, are always victims in Ireland's wars.

Though both plays (For the Land She Loved and Cathleen Ni Lloulihan) show differences in their use of Irish history, Cheryl Herr points out:

Like the militant Old Woman in Yeats' play, Betsy is a serious nationalist.

Her patriotic fervor is complicated by the obligatory of love triangle of

non-Irish melodrama, but this aspect of the play is far less important than

the political energy of her actions. Gray's much-contested union with

Munro represents in two-dimensional fashion efforts of Irish patriots to

achieve the unity required for successful historical intervention. (61)

In contrast, the problematic of political violence in modern English language drama strongly emerges in the plays of O'Casey. O'Casey dramatized early on the violent political turmoil that prevailed in Ireland. An acute observer of the early years of these events, he reflected the experiences of his life, his environment and the people he knew. A left-wing activist in the Irish Citizen Army, O'Casey participated in many political protests such as the Transport Workers Strike in 1913 where he worked with Jim

Larkin, the leader of the Union. Though he did not take part in the Easter Week Uprising in 1916, his subsequent arrest allowed him to experience, for the first time, the real horror of political violence: 40

A political prisoner in the hands of the British during the Easter Week

Uprising, O'Casey did no fighting. However, he did have the highly

uncomfortable experience of being lined up against a wall for execution. A

scuffle at the other end of the street diverted the soldiers and permitted

him to escape. (Koslow 16-17)

Clearly, O'Casey was not only an observer but also a participant in the tense political atmosphere in Ireland. In fact, in the years 1916-1923, Ireland was a field of combat between the British forces and the Irish nationalists, and later between the nationalists themselves, i.e., between the Free Staters and the Republicans. That period was, as

Koslow describes, a period of "terror and violence" where, "in the name of freedom and liberty the Irish fought British, Free Stater fought Ulsterman, Protestant fought Catholic and Sinn Fein fought Sinn Fein", and where the "order of the day was curfews, military zones, martial law, executions, looting and expropriation of land and property" (23-24).

The civil war between the Free Staters and the Republicans was won by the Free Staters; it was devastating to both sides.

There are two kinds of violence to be noted in O'Casey's plays: violence depicted and violence provoked. As for the latter, O'Casey's plays provoked more violence than is shown in them. In "Sean O'Casey and the Dialectics of Violence"

Bernice Shrank argues that "O'Casey's representations of violence often produced violent responses" such as "the riots during the early performances of The Plough and the

Stars" "the Abbey's rejection of The Silver Tassie", and "the official banning of Within 41

the Gates in Boston" (41). Shrank concludes that in provoking violent reactions, O'Casey wanted to unveil the oppressiveness of both State and the Church (8).

On the other hand, resistance violence in O'Casey's plays is problematized. The use of violence for revolutionary national aims is severely deplored. In most of

O'Casey's plays, violence for national causes seems ineffective and eventually destructive. Does this suggest that O'Casey would have been closer to Gandhi's position than Fanon's? For O'Casey, revolutionary violence could only be justified for progressive social change. The real enemy for him was not the British colonialists, but the Irish bourgeoisie who betrayed the cause of the Easter Rising and who "laid low the concept of the common good and the common task, and were now decorating themselves with the privileges and powers dropped in their flight by those defeated by the dear, dead men." (O'Casey, Inishfallen Fare Thee Well 137-138)

For example, in The Shadow of A Gunman the violence employed in the war between the Irish Republicans and the British forces is described as damaging rather than constructive, such violence leading to the unjust and accidental killings of civilians such as the naive Winni who, because of her love to Donal, sacrifices her life to save her lover, a rumoured IRA assassin:

SEUMAS. It's the civilians that suffer; when there's an ambush they don't

know where to run. Shot in the back to save the British Empire, an'

shot in the breast to save the soul of Ireland...but I draw the line when

9 It is worth mentioning that Fanon's book, The Wretched of the Earth, was among the familiar books on the H-Block shelves of Belfast prison where the IRA prisoners were kept in the 1970s The prison had many copies of the book which was a great inspiration for the IRA members (Fanon xxix) 42

I hear the gunmen blowin' about dyin' for the people, when it's the

people that are dyin' for the gunmen. (42)

In commenting on the theatrical style of the play, John O'Riordan describes the play as "a warmly lyrical, highly satiric, kaleidoscopic drama, set against the background struggle for Irish freedom involving terrorism at the hands of the gunmen" (12). To satirically present a negative picture of such a violent act taken up by the resisters,

O'Casey portrays the people of the tenement as crippled, disillusioned and unable to recognize their reality; he dialectically pits these people against the reality of the ongoing cruel war outside the tenement. Theatrically, to 'debunk' and 'de-heroicize' the passionate national myth about Irish independence and nationalism and in turn to distance the audience, O'Casey makes the characters in the tenement behave in a way that, to use

Brecht's term, alienates the audience from the emotional hot air of the songs sung by those characters (Mitchell 26). However, m "Early Dramatic Experiments: 'Alienation' and The Plough and the Stars" Ronald Ayling argues that O'Casey "never scorned emotional involvement by the audience; indeed, he actively encouraged it by using

(among other things) sentimental hymns, music-hall songs, and full-blooded infusion of melodrama..." (Sean O'Casey 49-50).

In The Plough and the Stars, resistance violence and state violence cause the tragic end of the play: the accidental death of Bessie10, Nora becoming an insane widow, and the crushing of the uprising by the British. O'Casey combines Nora's tragedy (caused

10 The killing of Bessie could be seen as an ironic implication that the British are killing their supporter and in turn that their state violence is as ineffective as the revolutionaries' O'Casey combines Nora's tragedy with Bessie's tragedy which is caused by state violence in the shooting of Bessie (the one person who has supported the British) when she tries to restrain Nora 43

by resistance violence) with Bessie's tragedy (caused by state violence): Bessie (the person who has supported the British) is shot by the British when she tries to restrain

Nora.

In discussing the pub scene, which points to the contradiction between the bombastic nationalist speech given by the "the voice of the Man" and the miserable conditions of the common Irishmen inside the pub, Mitchell states:

In fact, it is obviously not war but an end to poverty and ignorance that

they need. They need an end to the conditions that force Rosie Redmond

to lie in wait for men in the pub so as to be able to pay her rent, the

conditions that bring people like Bessie and Mrs Gogan, Fluther and the

Covey, to the point where they attempt to attack each other physically.

These people have known nothing but war for the last hundred years and

more. Peace is what they have not known-war against want and

exploitation. (80)

Apparently, O'Casey disapproves of the use of violence for national causes but, being a fervent socialist and, like most Marxists who believe in the use of violence for social change, he seems to approve of the possibility of using violence to end poverty, class distinction, economic and political oppression. Such an idea is clearly echoed by the

Covey's statement, "Dope, dope. There's only one war worth having: th' war for th' economic emancipation of th' proletariat" (203). However, the ironic portrayal of the

Covey truly highlights O'Casey's personal attitude: "Personally, I hold the workers besides themselves are foolish to support any movement that does not stand to make the 44

workers supreme..." {Letters of Sean O'Casey 1: 40). Hence, Shrank argues that resistance violence in O'Casey's plays is pejoratively represented simply because

O'Casey, as a good Marxist, believes in the justification of violence for progressive social change; thus, the real person to be resisted is the Irish employer:

...O'Casey problematizes the nationalist discourse on the grounds that the

violence it advocates does not advance the interests of the tenement

dwellers, who are victims less of British domination than of Irish

exploitation. (46)

At the end of the play, the Covey, in spite all his zealous claims and humanist and revolutionary ideas, runs out to loot the broken shops. This indicates that O'Casey has a limited faith even in such a socialist character as the Covey and in males, usually shown as fools or cowards, of any political persuasion.

In Juno and the Paycock, O'Casey shows the horror of violence through the fear of Johnny who is traumatized by his past violent engagement in the Easter Rising. In spite of the loss of his hand and eye, Johnny is still terrorized by the ghost of Robbie

Tancred whom he betrayed. At the end of the play two mysterious men storm into Juno's apartment and abduct Johnny, who is later found dead. In comparing the violence in

Yeats' poetry and O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock, Natalie Prizel postulates:

.. .O'Casey's world, though not humorless, is distinctly ugly and mundane

in its treatment of violence. While we see the effects of economic

deprivation on the stage, both Tancred and Johnny are mutilated and

ultimately killed off-stage. For all his linguistic and thematic realism, 45

violence is strangely abstracted in the play. At the beginning of Act One,

Johnny berates Mary: "Oh, quit that readin' for God's sake! Are yous losin'

all your feelin's? It'll soon be that none of you'll read anything' that's not

about butcherin'!" In this line, not only does O'Casey show graphic

violence as increasingly the proper subject of the written word, but he also

forecasts his own refusal to participate in its depiction. Realism stops at

the point of horrific violence in the play, a relief to theater-goers who

would not only be asked to read it but to visualize it on the stage. Unlike

Yeats, O'Casey gives us an Ireland struggling for independence with

neither beauty nor terrific violence, but rather the dull, aching suffering of

everyday life. (Par 12)

Turning to the equivalents in modern Arab political drama, four key factors play a crucial role in buttressing their depictions of resistance and revolutionary violence: (1) al-

Nahda al-Arabia movement, (2) revolutions against foreign occupations (as in the case with O'Casey) such as the 1919 revolution levelled at the British occupation in Egypt (3) social injustice and political exclusion exerted by oppressive Arab governments, and (4) the defeat of the Arabs in 1948 and 1967 by the Israeli forces.

The call for resistance violence is specifically reinforced by al-Nahda al-Arabia

(the Arab Awakening or the Arab Renaissance) and its association with al-Qawmia al-

Arabia (Arabism, or Arab Nationalism). This movement dominated the Arab countries from 1820 to 1914, aiming at raising the Arabs', particularly the Muslims', awareness of their miserable conditions and sufferings at that time; it tried to seek solutions for Arab 46

problems by seeking to revive 'true' Islamic values and traditions. The ideas were first shored up by Islamic activists and intellectuals such as Rafa'a al-Tahtawi, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Mohamed Abduh, Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi, Butrus al-Bustani, and

Rashid Rida. Later, they were embraced and ideologically developed by other nationalists, especially after the losses in the war against Israel in 1948 and the emergence of Zionism as a counter to Arab nationalism.

It should be noted here that the conceptual nucleus of al-Nahda was not completely an innovation by Arab and Muslim thinkers. One can clearly see the influence of the principles of the French Revolution and the theories of Karl Marx at play. As well most of its adherents were inspired or trained by the scientific and social theories of

Western civilization, and later these notions had the clear support of Western writers such as Martin Hartmann and Jean Genet.

Al-Nahda had two key perspectives: (1) an ideologization of Islam, and (2) the politicization of theatre. Noticeably, al-Nahda was to open the door for Jihad against foreign occupiers, and to instigate an opposition against the Tatrik (Turkification) policy of the Ottoman Empire. Through the writings of al-Nahda originators, Islam took an anti- colonial tone:

In their writings, Islam becomes an anti-colonial ideology. Thus a

relationship exists, though indirect, between these Muslims scholars—Ibn

Abd al-Wahhab, al-Afghani, and Abduh—and Arab nationalism, premised

on opposition to foreign domination, whether Ottoman or European, and

on emphasis on the Arab origins of Islam. (Chalala 25) 47

During al-Nahda epoch (1820-1920) theatre emerged as an important art form in the Arab world; it became a powerful vehicle to express the spirit of Nationalism or Arab solidarity and took an anti-colonial stance. In Arabic Drama: A Critical Introduction

(1986), Khalid al-Mubarak provides some examples that show the political involvement of theatre in the Arab struggle for independence and social justice:

1. In nineteenth century Algeria the French colonial administration banned

shadow plays because of the anti-colonial comment in them.

2. In 1912, it [Nagib al-Haddad's Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi] was performed

as a nationalist reaction to Italy's attack on Tripoli, Libya...In the

Sudan, the play was part of the cultural preparation for the 1924

rebellion.

3. The political involvement of the theatre led to a practice...in which

performances were occasions for speeches, poetry and general political

mobilization. (27-32)

In most Arab drama, resistance violence is powerfully shown as the only way to achieve liberation and freedom. This is mainly connected to the concept of Jihad. In

Islam, there are, in fact, two types of Jihad: the greater (spiritual) Jihad, a battle against evil in one's self, and the lesser (physical) Jihad, the exertion of force in a righteous war.

In fact, the concept of Jihad and its necessity are hermeneutically debatable issues among

Muslim scholars and among Islamists. Whether Jihad is defensive or offensive is problematic. The polemical conception and interpretation of Jihad and its reflection in the 48

drama of terror will not, however, be discussed here, but will be discussed in detail in

Chapter Five, "Terrorist Violence".

For the purpose of this discussion, it can be fairly said that the true essence of defensive Jihad is to defend one's country with one's soul. It is a violent act that can expel the occupiers/aggressors from the Muslims lands. In Holy Violence: The

Revolutionary Thought of Frantz Fanon (1982), B. Marie Perinham postulates that

"Fanon's concept of holy violence was not only fully developed in his writings, but in association with the Jihad, it stalked the Algerian land" (14). Under the rubric of violent resistance against the colonial power, the Algerian nationalist revolutionaries and

Mudjahidin were united for the same goal, liberation and independence.

The glorified picture of violent resistance and the mobilization for it, especially in plays about the Palestine-Israeli conflict, can be found, as in Irish plays like Cathleen Ni

Houlihan and For the Land She loved, in many Arabic plays, among which are plays by the Palestinian playwrights Samih al-Kasim {Kirkash), Ma'in Bisiso {Shamshum and

Dalila), Habib Bahri {Fi Sabil al-Sharefi For the Sake of Honour), and Burhan al-Abushi

{Watn al-Shuhada; The Homeland of Martyrs); the Lebanese playwright Suhil Edris

{Zahra al-Dam; The Flower of Blood); the Syrian playwrights Mustafa al-Hallaj {al-

Ghadhab; Anger) and Sa'adallah Wannus {Haflat Samar min Ajil Khamsa Huzayran; An

Evening Party for June the 5th), and {Ightesab ; Rape); and the Egyptian playwright

Alfred Farag {Suleiman El-Halabi), {Al-Nar wal Zeitun; Fire and the Olive Tree), and

{Thawra al-Hijara; Revolution of the Stones) which is a revision of Al-Nar wal Zeitun. In most of the Arabic plays about resistance, the nationalist, revolutionary, and religious 49

motives, unlike in O'Casey's plays, are strongly merged to encourage the goals of independence and liberation.

Farag's Suleiman al-Halabi (1965) is based on the historical figure of Suleiman al-Halabi who assassinated the French general Jean Baptiste Kleber during the French occupation of Egypt in 1800. The play dramatizes the crisis of an intellectual: a man torn between taking a violent action to end injustice (by killing Kleber) or being content with his position just as an idea. After a deep struggle with himself, he realizes that his world, especially occupied Egypt, is governed by violence and arms, and to end injustice and occupation, violence is needed. Though the original story states that al-Halabi killed

Kleber because he had an agreement with the Ottoman government according to which he should assassinate Kleber to release his father from being indebted to the Ottoman government, the assassination of Kleber in the play, far from being a politicized murder, is portrayed as a political revolutionary action where al-Halabi, unlike others, refuses to kneel down to tyranny, injustice, and corruption (Alfred Farag: Sani'al-Akini'a 72). The murder of Kleber could be interpreted as both revolutionary violence (to end injustice and revolt against unjust regime and ruler) and as resistance violence against a foreign occupation. The protagonist, who is originally a religious and an intellectual figure, being enraged by the atrocities and injustices practised by the French occupation against his people in Egypt, undergoes a Hamlet-like dilemma: he indulges in profound ponderings about justice and injustice, and about whether the intellectual should resort to violence to end the injustice and the occupation or be satisfied with simply his awareness and knowledge. Finally, like Hamlet, he concludes with a statement of the problem: "Justice 50

or injustice, that is the question." Indeed, the use of violence is justified here as the only means to end occupation and injustice.

Al-Halabi is shown here as an epic rather than a tragic hero: he is burdened by his responsibility towards his society and by his agonizing conscience which urges him to seek justice and freedom for the people. To achieve justice is to resort to violence which, for al-Halabi, is the most reasonable way to end injustice and gain freedom:

Suleiman al-Halabi is a new kind of character, a pure reasonable character;

his character is the essence of the French Revolution which was betrayed

by its people; it is the essence of the revolution during the most glorious

epoch of Arab Islamic thinking, the revolution of reason. When reason

revolts, then its revolution will be for justice and for the people. Suleiman

al-Halabi has done the right thing to bring back the rights for the people.

(Sani' al-Akini 'a 72)

In his second play, Al-Nar wal Zeitun (1970), Farag shows armed conflict between Palestinian commandos and Israeli soldiers, and the massacres committed against the civilian Palestinians. Throughout the play, violence utilized by the Palestinian resisters is portrayed as the only way to free their land; it is glorified and shown as the path to martyrdom. The use of violence by the Palestinians is justified here since it is depicted as heroic, justifiable resistance as the Palestinians try to defend their land and evict the Israelis from it. Unlike O'Casey's representation of the Irish national resisters, the Palestinian feda'iyin are envisaged as heroes. Farag uses three modes of representation here: documentary, realism, and expressionism. He merges documentary 51

with expressionism to show the atrocities and massacres (such as Dir Yaseen, Balad al-

Abasd) committed against the Palestinians. He uses realism to show such violent actions as when the feda'iyin destroy an Israeli ammunition firm. Sami Khasheba, commenting on the issue of armed resistance in the play, accentuates the importance of employing violence:

We defeated killing, so let's defeat the killer: in so doing, we will regain

our land, our history, and our humanity...our feda'iyin are our fighters,

and this is the essence of the issue: they don't kill for revenge; they kill

because killing is the only way to justice ...we fight to regain our free and

healthy union with the world. (57)

The violence used by Arab resisters against foreign occupations would no doubt be admired by Fanon who once indicated that the Third World was "in the process of shattering their chains, and what is extraordinary is that they succeed" (Fanon 34).

In Thawra al-Hijara (2001), Farag re-envisages the idea of resistance and counter-violence in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. At the very beginning of the play,

Farag views resistance violence as being ingrained in the Palestinian children's school anthems; they sing of how the Israeli forces destroyed their houses, factories and farms, and how they, in spite of being little children, resist the Israelis with stones. The play shows Israeli forces targeting the school with helicopter rockets. The victims of the

Israeli violence, depicted here as martyrs, are accompanied by a group of singers and a musician who, instead of mourning the victim, are passionately celebrating his martyrdom: 52

Bring the martyr, bring him

Roll his body with the revolution flag,

How happy are his father and mother

His wedding in his bloody night

His body was buried by the dust of freedom

Oh brothers, join the revolution. (13)

The conflation of martyrdom motivated by a religious faith and revolution underlines the nexus between the nationalist ideology of independence and the belief in the metaphysical reward of Jihad in the afterlife.

It seems safe to conclude from the few Arab examples that resistance violence is simply shown through heroic and grandiloquent discourse by the resisters and through demonization of the enemy. Violence here is approximately the only strategy for liberation and independence.

2. Revolution and Violence

Violence—and its own problematic relation to revolution—has been explored by many modern playwrights including Bertolt Brecht, Edward Bond, Amiri Baraka, and

Selah abd al-Sabur.

Although influenced by Brecht, Bond's attitude towards revolutionary violence is radically different from Brecht's. While Brecht shows revolutionary violence in certain situations" as utterly justifiable, Bond occasionally represents revolutionary violence as

" Brecht's exploration of violence is undoubtedly polemical due to the ideological shifts throughout his writings Yet, I have chosen The Measures Taken since, being to a certain extent a didactic play, it shows a pro-violence stance where violence is sometimes necessary for revolutionary goals 53

destructive and incapable of solving the problem and hence of bringing change (e.g.

Cordelia's violence in his Lear, and the kidnap and subsequent murder of the hostage in his play The Worlds). For instance, Brecht, in The Measures Taken, dramatizes clearly how violence is sometimes needed for the success of a revolution. When the Four

Agitators explain to the Control Chorus why they have killed their comrade in The

Measures Taken, the Chorus seems to approve their action for the sake of the revolution:

THE FOUR AGITATORS.

And so we decided: we now

Had to cut off a member of our own body.

It is a terrible thing to kill

We would not only kill others, but ourselves as well, if the need arose.

For violence is the only means whereby this deadly

World may be changed, as

Every living being knows.

After hearing the story of killing the Young Comrade, the CHORUS states:

And yet your report shows us what is

Needed to change the world:

Anger and tenacity, knowledge and indignation

Swift action, utmost deliberation

Cold endurance... (33-34)

Bond's plays, on the other hand, are mostly concerned with the dialectical relationship between violence and revolution, violence and justice, and violence and 54

terrorism. Bond believes that violence is a "biological function" and "self-defence". For him, "violence creates an atmosphere of violence" (Bond 1: 127). In Lear (1972), for instance, Lear uses violence to maintain his power but he is also overthrown by violence.

When Cordelia, the revolutionary leader, insists that the wall must be maintained, he shouts "Then nothing's changed! A revolution must at least reform" (84). Bond refuses to use violence for political action, "violence in revolution is like a light in a powder keg.. .violence prevents the aims of a revolution, and the ideals are lost" (1: 127).

For Bond, change should stem from within the individual. Bond states that if "I understand I am the problem, I can change myself. I understand the problem, I am changed. I can explain the problem so that you can change. But it doesn't work because

God says this and the state says that" (Bond). Unlike Bond, Brecht believes that man is conditioned by social circumstances and that change, therefore, should be first sought in the social forces (be they economic or ideological).

Despite this clear position, Bond, in The Bundle, somehow seems to valorize the use of force and violence to revolt against an unjust landowner. In such an unjust fissiparous and tottering feudal society, the use of revolutionary violence is undoubtedly vindicated as the only way out. Wang, the protagonist, starts his revolution by first educating and awakening the thieves and other members of his society about their conditions, ignorance, and their exploitation by the landowner in order to galvanize their support. Then he resorts to "rifles" to save the poor after he has raised their consciousness. Wang's revolution succeeds and at the end of the play he finally proclaims how moral and political judgements are connected to the changing historical 55

situations: "We live in a time of great change. It is easy to find monsters—and it is easy to find heroes. To judge rightly what is good—to choose between good and evil—that is all that it is to be human" (78).

As for staging violence, Bond employs what he terms "aggro-effects" to show violence that is not necessarily revolutionary:

'Aggro', as shorthand for aggravation or aggression, became part of the

vernacular in the 1960s ...Bond uses the term in a theatrical context to

describe the opposite of the stereotypical understanding of Brecht's

'alienation.' Rebelling against the supposed sense of detachment produced

by Brechtian alienation, 'aggro' confronts the audience with frightening,

disgusting or simply extreme acts. Rather than simply aiming to provoke

strong feeling or a gratuitous sense of shock, these acts of theatrical

provocation fully implicate the viewer by demanding an emotional

response. The purpose is to get a reaction but, further, to start a thought

process about the significance, the meaning, of what is taking place on

stage. (Davis 202)

Far from the British drama, in the 1960s and 70s in the United States, revolutionary violence in drama was incorporated in the plays of, among others, the revolutionary African-American activist writer LeRoi Jones who later converted to Islam and changed his name to Amiri Baraka. His plays are mainly concerned with oppression by white capitalists of black Americans and the latter's violent resistance to the whites' authority. Many of his plays are saturated with violence both by and against the black 56

people in America. In contrast to Martin Luther King, Baraka, like Fanon, feels "only violence, armed struggle, can change capitalist society to socialist society; not turn the other cheek, or "nonviolent" revolution, or we shall overcome by kneeling and praying as the police dogs attack, and the racists shoot us down" (Baraka, Daggers 112). This is clearly manifest in many of his plays including Slave Ship which dramatizes the ritualized oppressive history of black people in America. The production of the play in

1969 galvanized the audience's angry involvement by utilizing techniques of Theatre of

Cruelty and environmental theatre to achieve what Baraka calls "total atmosfeeling", unifying the audience and the performers in the last dance of the slaves who rise up against their white masters and then kill a black collaborator preacher, Tom. Henry C.

Lacey indicates that the dance has two functions: "First, it invites the members of the audience to act out the aggression and violence which they have held in check both during the play, and in their everyday lives...The dance, with its unifying force, also celebrates the spiritual restoration of the black man" (157). Theatrically, the effect of the final dance is illustrated by Floyd Gaffney:

The final moments of the drama bring members of the cast together in a

communion of singing 'When We Gonna Rise' and dancing 'a new-old

dance, Boogalooyoruba line.' The celebration moves beyond the footlights

into the theater, involving black spectators in this gesture of unified

consciousness. The severed head of the preacher is thrown onto the dance

floor, abruptly reminding audience members that the struggle continues in

the community, the nation, and, ultimately, in the world. (29) 57

Baraka states that his Revolutionary Theatre seeks change by engendering an emotional attachment between the audience and the spectacle on stage; it indicates the importance of struggle for the black audience which is motivated by this kind of theatre to hate white men {Home, Social Essays 130). The idea of revolutionary violence in the

Slave Ship, which is exposed symbolically and ritualistically, is also highlighted by

Stefan Brecht who states:

The final revolt is a genocidal call to arms to young African-American

audiences—a call for killing of the white man. There is a symbolic

overthrow of Uncle Sam. The play joins the present with clenched fists,

hymns, new flags...The play incites to violence. (215-218)

As for Arab drama, a number of external factors have affected the idea of using revolutionary action for change, usually represented symbolically or indirectly, chief among which are—as as previously noted— the influence of Marxism on Arab political ideology, the principles of the French Revolution which were promulgated during the

French occupation of Egypt, the emergence of al-Nahda and the publication of al-

Kawakibi's Tabai al-Istibdad (The Nature of Autocracy or The Characteristics of

Tyranny), and the poverty, tyranny, and social injustices that have prevailed in many

Arab countries. In "Political Violence in the Arab World: Causes and Consequences",

Mohamed al-Shimi argues that one of the main reasons for political violence in the Arab world is poverty and corruption:

The absence of social justice, the failure of economic improvement

programs in responding to the people's needs during the increase of class 58

inequality, and the incapability of the state in providing the basic needs for

its people and in managing the social crises such as the Loaf Crisis in

Egypt and Maghreb, all these represent reasons for political violence... (6)

Al-Sabur's Ma 'asat al-Hallaj (1965) stands as an outstanding example here. It is a poetic drama that shows the story of the mystical Sufi al-Husain Ibn Mansur al-Hallaj

(858-922) who was sentenced to death because he was accused of being a heretic and thus was violently executed by the authority of the Abbasid Caliph al-Muqtadir. Al-

Hallaj was imprisoned and tortured then put on trial after which he was condemned for heresy. The play opens with his body, hung on a tree, being mutilated and burnt. The play re-enacts events that have already taken place.

Though the play clearly shows the cruelty and manipulation of state violence, it implicitly accentuates the agitational and confrontational tactics adopted by al-Hallaj in facing state injustice. In his conversation with his Sufi friend, al-Shibli, al-Hallaj reveals his agonizing conscience about the spread of 'evil'. For him, evil is "the poverty of the poor," and "the hunger of the hungry"; it is unjust slavery, imprisonment and torture of the powerless (al-Sabur 2: 469-470). To eradicate this evil, al-Hallaj has to take action: he starts by agitating the people publicly against authority and sending letters to those whom he thinks are more apt to be just rulers than the unjust caliph.

The main issue of the play, which subsequently leads to the protagonist's execution, is the question of the role of man in society. Al-Hallaj, exposing his inner thoughts to his friend al-Shibli, undergoes some doubts in exploring this question: whether, as a Sufi, to exclusively dedicate his whole inner life and love to God, or to be 59

socially involved and thus care about the sufferings of the poor: "al-Halaj has fallen prey to serious doubts about the Sufi attitude to the outside world. He finds himself, unlike

Shibli, no longer able to concentrate exclusively on his inner life to the total neglect of the suffering of the world outside him, 'the poverty of the poor and the hunger of the hungry." (Badawi, Modern Arabic Drama in Egypt 221)

The character is depicted as stuck between his love of God and social responsibility, a responsibility that his conscience cannot ignore. Then he chooses a revolutionary action and begins zealously talking to the crowds to make them aware of their problems; he tries to agitate them to revolt against the status quo. Badawi argues that the central concern of the playwright

is not so much with the nature of mysticism, and its relation to orthodoxy,

as with the need for social and political action and the resulting dilemma

facing the mystic/intellectual, as to whether or not his weapon is the word

or the sword against social and political injustice" {Modern Arabic Drama

in Egypt 222).

When the government feels threatened by al-Hallaj's public speeches and his letters to his followers in other parts of the state, it decides to arrest him. But to arrest him for a political reason may enrage the public. For that reason, the authorities deliberately twist al-Hallaj's public speeches about his union with God against him, and arrest him for heresy.

However, in declaring his dissent against injustice, al-Hallaj does not call for violence or push his followers to adopt violent action against the government. When he is 60

in jail, one of the prisoners debates with him about the most effective means to end injustice, the sword or the word: al-Hallaj cries to God "Must I raise my voice or my sword? What should I choose...? What should I choose?" (Al-Sabur 2: 199). His subsequent execution has a powerful effect on the people who confess their guilt in taking the government's side against al-Hallaj and in killing him as well. Should al-Hallaj have followed a non-violent approach? Ultimately he does not call for civil disobedience or non-cooperation, but continues, indirectly and through his Sufi beliefs, to try and awaken the people about their terrible conditions. His dilemma—being caught between the word and the sword— and then his adherence to the power of the word does not show him as a Gandhian because Gandhi was not satisfied with words only but insisted on non- cooperation and strikes.

Unlike Ma 'asat al-Hallaj, in his 1973 drama Ba 'ad an Yamout al-Malik, al-Sabur seems to affirm the idea of revolutionary violence. The play starts with the sudden death of a childless and ruthless king and the elopement of the queen with the court poet. While the Poet and the Queen enjoy their romantic moments -which results in the Queen becoming pregnant— the courtiers struggle to bring the dead king back to life; ultimately they decide that the only way to revive him is to make the Queen lie beside his dead body. They send the Executioner to kill the Poet and return the Queen. The Queen refuses to go, however, and the Poet kills the Executioner with the latter's sword. At this point, the playwright provides three different endings: (1) both the Queen and the Poet complain to the Fates and present their case to their court; (2) they wait until time resolves the problem and then they agree to accept their fate; (3) using the sword of the 61

Executioner, they face the Courtiers and challenge their decision. The third ending seems the most convincing and powerful. The Poet and the Queen go back to the castle and forcibly order the Courtiers to take the King's body and bury it and never return to the castle. And the Queen declares her own royal authority.

In this play, revolutionary action starts when the Poet, who knows nothing but words, takes the sword of the Executioner and kills him. Does he kill the Executioner to defend himself and his beloved Queen or to defend the principle he and the Queen believe in? Undoubtedly, the playwright reveals them both as revolutionary characters who refuse to surrender to the will of the courtiers in bringing back to life the childless and unjust King. In Modern Arabic Drama in Egypt, Badawi postulates:

When the King Dies is clearly a symbolic work in which, as has been

noticed, many of the ideas Abd al-Sabur expressed in his other plays are

brought together and freshly and concisely stated: the tyranny of power,

the abuse of individual freedom, the need to assert the values of life in

face of the irrational and destructive forces of death and the crucial role of

the poet/intellectual in defending social justice and civilization; a role

which must be positive and militant. (227)

The killing of the Executioner—a symbol for the King's repressive state apparatus— implies that to bring change, the Poet too must rise up and face, with the Executioner's sword, the Courtiers:

{POET yanking his sword and raising it up before their faces) 62

JUDGE. What do you want? Sheathe your sharp sword. We will obey

what you order.

POET. I don't want anything. But my Queen wants some things. (145)

The Queen lists her demands among which is to have all people (including the sick, the poor, the wanderers) to live equally and peacefully in her palace. The third ending exposes the Queen as a socialist planning to open her castle to all people to share everything including sadness and happiness. Seen in this perspective, the play seems to approve both the Marxist approach to revolution and the Islamic interpretation of Jihad against an unjust ruler.

3. Terrorism and State Violence

Terrorism is certainly an interesting subject for modem drama and particularly so for verbatim drama. In spite of its drawbacks and its strategy of selection and exclusion, a verbatim play (a play created roughly from the exact authentic words articulated by people interviewed about particular subject or incident) can sometimes be an authentic vehicle for issues. For example, Soans' Talking to Terrorists (2005) juxtaposes various viewpoints on terrorism by situating terrorist, victims, workers, politicians, and a psychologist in a circle of discussion. The play unmasks the terrorist's mentality and the influences that make him/her commit violent acts. One of the play's main arguments is articulated by the psychologist who indicates that "the difference between the terrorist and the rest of us isn't really that great," and by the character of Mo Mowlam (Secretary of State for Northern Ireland) who believes that "talking to terrorists is the only way to beat them" (Soans 6). In "Interpreting Talking to Terrorists'", Sheila Cannon points out 63

how certain psychological and political conditions could escalate terrorism in young people:

[Soans] gives a psychoanalytic view of how young people, especially men,

get involved in violence: Life-threatening situations provide a 'peak

experience' and the importance of status and power to a teenager. He

gives us a political view, or a framework for understanding the War on

Terror, in which policies engender a culture of fear which creates the

terrorists that they are claiming to protect us against. (1-2)

However, the playwright does not neglect the humanistic aspect of the play which consists in the revelation of the human side of the terrorists, their sufferings, and the repression of their childhood. This does not mean that Soans justifies the terrorist acts.

Rather, he sees into their past and tries to present a collage of the history of terrorism.

Unlike Talking to Terrorists, al-Khateeb's Fi'ran al-Ikhtebar (2008) explores the issue of terrorism and state terrorism through a story of a professor who has found a cure that can eradicate violence and aggression. After testing the medicine on lab mice, the government chooses three terrorists to be cured by the medicine. It starts by positively affecting the youngest among the terrorists but the government ultimately decides not to accept the Professor's claim of improvement in the patient's condition. Therefore, the

Professor resigns and the youngest terrorist returns to his group which kidnaps a nurse in an attempt to force the government to release them. The play ends in tragedy— the police brutally attack the terrorists to free the hostage. Considering it as an anti-terrorist and anti-state play, Asa'ad Ardash argues that the playwright has succeeded in articulating 64

two levels of dialogue: the dialogue that is used by the government during its repressive communication with the terrorists and the Professor, and the dialogue used by the terrorists among themselves (1).

In Canada, the polemical issue of revolutionary/terrorist violence and state violence was also a prominent theme in George Ryga's Captives of the Faceless

Drummer (1971). It was based on the political crisis in Canada in 1970 when James

Cross, the British Trade Commissioner, and Pierre Laporte, Minister of Labour in

Quebec, were kidnapped by two separate cells of Front de la Liberation du Quebec.

These events led to the imposition by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau of the War

Measures Act, effectively declaring martial law. Canadian troops were deployed in

Quebec and the police forces launched an enormous arrest campaign that resulted in the detention without charge of 497 suspects. These events also created a division in public opinion -those who sympathized with the terrorists and were thus critical of the use of state violence, and those who supported the state decision.

For Peter Hay, the editor of Talonplays, the play is "a dialectic of urban violence; not what has happened, but its logical extension in the future" (Preface to Captives of the

Faceless Drummer 9). The play explores the problematics of political violence: the violence used to maintain power and restore order, and that used to bring about change or defy established state power. While the kidnap of a senior governmental official could be perceived as merely a terrorist act, the action itself could also be conceived of as an effective means to force a government to listen to the other side's demands: 65

HARRY. Think what you will, in those days the government was willing

to withdraw a state of emergency when the situation stabilized itself, as it

did for a while. But activists terrorists like you were not content to let

events resolve themselves. By provocations, bombings, terror, you

succeed in creating conditions whereby military power had to be recalled

to restore order time and time again.

COMMANDER.

Hah! What about the violence of defeat? Province after province, city

after city...fell to right wing fanatics, each elected with the protection

of riot sticks If my dream is hollow, yours is an ice castle

(48-49)

In the end, as Hay postulates, "both protagonists are condemned: one for the violence with which he tries to bring about change, and the other for the violence with which he defends the status quo (9). It is noteworthy that both Ryga's Captives of the Faceless

Drummer and Bond's The Worlds deal with the same issue—the dialectic of revolutionary and terrorist violence— which is explored through the action of politically- motivated kidnapping.

Bond once said that terrorists "may wish to break through the barriers of incomprehension, which makes our society dangerous, and introduce a true institutional democracy" (Bond 2: 115). So, does Bond support terrorism? When I asked him personally about his previous statement, he said that he meant "the Red Faction terrorists of the 1960s and 1970s" who "were very different from terrorists nowadays" (Bond). He 66

thinks that one should not condemn all kinds of terrorism. Terrorism, for Bond, is a political activity and as such it could be "good or bad politics" (2: 117). Terrorism must be judged politically rather than morally. "Terrorists are attacking injustice—and governments are maintaining law and order. They are not fighting the same battle" (2:

113). Nonetheless, Bond postulates that terrorism "is never successful because it has no program to run the country after actually overthrowing the government" (Bond). In The

Worlds (1979), which is about industrial unrest and terrorism, Bond asks: who are the real terrorists? Partly, the real terrorists in the play seem to be those who, like Trench, control and impose their capitalist ideology on the means of production and expression as

Anna's speech indicates:

Yet the public means of explanation—press, television, theatres, courts, schools,

universities—almost everywhere ideas are formed or information is collected, is

owned in one way or another by people like you. Even our language is owned

by you. We have to learn a new language. Even our morals. We have to be

different people. (25)

Attacking what Althusser terms "Ideological State Apparatus" really cements two facts that Bond believes in: (1) the worlds are controlled by ideas, not by instincts and (2) "law and order protects things as they are" (Bond 2:116). Law and order, for Bond, keep people from comprehending themselves, their society and their relations. Nonetheless, the end of the play accentuates Bond's belief that "violence can't be contained by an equal or greater force of counter-violence" (Bond, Introduction to Saved 13). The play ends with Trench killing the hostage. By killing the hostage, does Trench become a 67

terrorist? Or does he represent state terrorism (as Terry implies in the quote below)? For

Jenney S. Spencer, Trench "does not become a terrorist. Rather, his actions demonstrate that he already is one, that the views he holds are fundamentally cruel, destructive, inhumane" {Dramatic Strategies 196). On the other hand, the play might allude to a different type of terrorist, a worse in kind: the ignorant human beings who do not know who they are or what they do:

TERRY. .. .Terrorists threaten with guns? We do it with bombs. One well-

heeled American with his finger on the button. That's sick. And

there's worse than that. The ignorance we live in. We don't understand

what we are or what we do. That's more dangerous than bombs. We're

all terrorists. Every one of us. We live by terror. Not even to make a

new world: just to keep one that's already dead. In the end we'll pay

for that as much as the lot who're starving now. ...When they ask me

to condemn terror I shall say: no. You have no right to ask. You are a

terrorist. (84)

The point raised by Terry in the quote above parallels Lear's realization that society

"always does more harm than crime," and its "morality is a form of violence" {Lear 85).

Moreover, the use of torture is one of the most striking issues in the area of state violence. In such situations, the state also brainwashes the torturer and trains him/her in the tactics of torture and investigation, and it eventually makes that person a ruthless participant in the service of ideology and policy. In Pinter's One for the Road (1984), the investigator and torturer, Nicolas, while torturing Victor, spells out some statements that 68

help him justify what he is doing to Victor. He repeats the word God many times to show that he is religious and that "God speaks through" him. He also plays with the idea of patriotism to show that Victor is not as loyal to his country as he is: "We are all patriots, we are one, we all share a common heritage. Except you apparently" (44). The use of

'We' here implies that the torturer believes that his atrocious acts are for the benefit of the country and that Victor is a threat to the country. What cements this fact is his declaration, "I am not alone. I am not alone!" (44) This suggests that he feels he is part of this oppressive institution. In addition to its representation of the confrontation of power and powerlessness, the play "also investigates the psychology of a torturer or a leader who kills or sacrifices others for his ideals, country, group, or faith, posing the recurrent, but perhaps unanswerable, question of how such a person may reconcile murderous deeds with a positive self-image" (Grimes 81). This situation is quite clear in Wannus' Ightisab where the torturers, Jad'oun, Maer, Moshi, and Isha'aq, are motivated by their Zionist ideals and beliefs. For them, the Palestinians are a threat to the return of the Jewish

Kingdom promised by God. The playwright here differentiates between Zionism as a politicized picture of Judaism and Judaism as a religion that believes in the peaceful coexistence of Jews and Palestinians on the same land. The playwright depicts the difference between Judaism and Zionism through the figure of the doctor, Abraham, and the Mother of Ishaaq. While the former believes in the possibility of humanitarian coexistence, the latter believes in the politicized view of Judaism, which will be achieved by occupying Palestine. 69

The torture carried out by the Israeli Security Department has a powerful impact on both the victims and the torturer (Isha'aq). The play shows two scenes of torture: the torture of Ismail, and the rape and torture of his wife, Dalai, before his eyes. Ismail is tortured by electrical shocks and the crushing of his fingers; then, he is violently castrated by one of the Israeli investigators who strongly presses his foot on Ismail's testicles.

Then Dalai is raped by the Israeli officers in front of her husband during the investigation. The scene of rape takes place offstage. However, it is not only a rape scene but also a torture one: while raping her, Ishaaq takes a sharp blade and cuts her body; he reports the story to the Doctor:

ISHAAQ. I took a blade and approached her. You know that Arab women

shave their crotch. Her genitals were hairless and saturated with

others' semen. I felt fevered. I bent down on to her and started cutting

small pieces of her flesh. I scratched her crotch and her breasts, then I

was stopped by Maer. (112)

The impact of such torture affects both Isha'aq, who later suffers from impotency and psychological problems, and Dalai, who, after being raped, insists that resistance is the only solution to the problems of the Palestinians and that "the land can not contain both of us [Jews and Palestinians]. Either we or them," (120).

In this play, the use of violence and torture is justified as the only way to deal with what the Israeli officers call their enemies: "terrorists". After being raped by Jadoun,

Raheel, Jedoun's friend's wife, rebukes him for his actions and describes their work as

"rape parties," 70

RAHEEL. So, your real job is torturing..

JADOUN. It is the only language that terrorists can understand.

RAHEEL. And you use all the tools that we read about in the books?

JADOUN. Our tools are too new to find in any book. There is nothing

more effective than crushing the testicles or opening forcibly the legs

of a woman in front of her husband. (134)

Another example that shows the torturer as a believer in what he/she does can be seen in Canadian dramatist Robert Fothergill's Dershowitz Protocol. In this play,

Fothergill gives us a realistic picture of the severe cruelty used by American investigators when interrogating suspects who are suspected of terrorism. Though the torture victim is concealed, the audience can hear his cries from electric shock.

The play, dramatizing torture through 'shit-kicking' realism with a slightly satirical edge, is comprised of four main voices: (1) McCall, an FBI interrogator who insists on using extreme violence to make the suspect confess "Quick and dirty", (2)

Cosentino, a U.S. Department of Justice lawyer appointed to ensure that the Protocol is not violated during the interrogation (but her objections to the torture are always ignored and argued against), (3) Watkin, a doctor in criminology whose task is to administer torture under the Protocol, and (4) Aziz, a Syrian-American journalist who is the suspect.

The character of Watkin and his actions illustrate the conditioned mentality of the torturer and the naivete, or maybe the hypocrisy, of that character. Before they start using the electric machine to torture the suspect, Watkin addresses the others: 71

WATKIN. A moment. I would like to commence by offering a short

prayer. (They look at him in astonishment) O Lord, we ask for

guidance and wisdom in our undertaking here tonight. Give us the

strength and the resolve to do what is required of us, and the

...restraint ...compassion...ah...to do no more than is absolutely

necessary. Forgive us, as we hope to be forgiven. Amen. {He looks

expectantly at the others). (202-203)

The play does not simply condemn the use of extreme violence in investigating a ticking-bomb suspect; it problematizes the necessity of excessive violence in a situation where the interrogator has sometimes to torture the suspect to get a quick confession before a bomb goes off and causes enormous damage.

In post-apartheid South Africa, Ubu and the Truth Commission (2001), written by

Jane Taylor and produced by the Handspring Puppet Company, is another play that shows state terrorism and violence levelled at the black community during the apartheid regime. The play, hinging on documentaries and victim testimonies, moves apartheid to

"'a politically volatile terrain, asking difficult questions about the moral value and social effectiveness of 'reconciliation' as an official nation-building strategy." Such an approach was clearly espoused by the Truth Commission in the post-apartheid period where the convicted could apply for amnesty if it could be shown that their violent crimes were politically motivated. The goals of the TRC were " establishing as complete a picture as possible of the causes, nature and extent of the gross violations of human rights committed within a thirty-four-year period from 1960-1994..., and compiling a report of 72

the Commission's findings and conclusions." Amnesty was therefore "a tool for excavating the truth about the past" (Graham 1).

The sorts of violence carried out against the victims (burning and killing children, and torturing during interrogation, etc) are shown via various anti-naturalistic theatrical techniques: animations, testimonies of the victims' families embodied by human puppets, and documentary press footage. The reason for using an anti-naturalistic style and the satirical figures of Jarry's Pa Ubu and Ma Ubu to dramatize the truth of these atrocities committed by the apartheid is rationalized:

The consciously anti-naturalistic style of Taylor's text reflects the

instability of any concept of truth. Because of the rapid shifts in action,

and the tendency of one level of the narrative to comment ironically on

another, no discourse is privileged with absolute dramatic authority. As

soon as the audience becomes accustomed to one configuration of

theatrical 'truth', it is fractured, inverted or shown to be artifice, as in the

sequence in which the puppeteers break the carefully constructed

'humanity' of their puppets to reveal that they are inanimate assemblages

of wood and cloth. (Gilbert 27)

Terror as farce is perceived as a release for trauma. Shane Graham argues that the use of puppets could "reenact the experience of trauma, characterized as it is by displacement and alienation...The puppet becomes a medium through which the testimony can be heard" (6). The representation of violence in the play can be seen in 1) Ubu's acts of violence which take place offstage, only their aftermath being realized through "the smell 73

of blood and dynamite"; 2) images of realistic violence revealed as videos such as footage of police torture allegations; 3) images of violence committed during the interrogation of the suspects revealed through animations while the camera-eye is watching these kinds of violence (Graham 7).

State terrorism in Arabic drama is depicted and tackled through a variety of dramatic modes and settings. For instance, among the diverse dramatic strategies in Al-

Maghout's plays, the portrayal of state terrorism and political oppression is achieved through surrealistic panorama (e.g. Al-Usfur al-Ahdab) and comedy (e.g. Kasak ya

Watan). Al-Usfur al-Ahdab (1967) presents its characters (human beings, birds, a Bird

Woman, the Voice of the Wind) as political prisoners in a surrealistic setting: "A mysterious mancage in an unidentified desert. A pale sky and grey clouds..." (1).

Commenting on the political violence in the play, Badawi points out that "the violence of

Maghout's imagery and syntax is paralleled in the action of the play, which includes the flogging of prisoners and the shooting of children by a firing squad" {Modern Arabic

Drama 14-15).

Far from the realistic treatment of torture in Wannus' plays and the surrealistic scenery of Al-Maghout's Al-Usfur al-Ahdab, Kasak ya Watan shows the torture of

Ghawar, the protagonist, in a comic way. The play, by satirizing both the government and the citizen, is a satirical comedy that outrageously criticizes the repressive policies of

Arab governments in general and the situation of the Arab citizens in particular. The play may stand for the oppressiveness and hypocrisy of many Arab governments and the miserable situation of Arab common people which are displayed through a series called 74

"Ahlam" (Dreams) and programs showcased to the audience by a TV channel called

"Arab Carlow". Among these is the absurd torture scene in which two investigators interrogate the protagonist Ghawar, acted by Duraid Lahham, using electric shocks and water. Ironically the tortured man reveals that he enjoys the shock simply because electricity is so rarely available in his village. It seems he enjoys his head being forcibly put in the water pot simply because water is also rarely available for the people of the village. The torturers are desperately incapable of making him confess.

In Wannus' play Al-Filya Malik al-Zaman (The Elephant, King of All Times) the playwright illustrates the relationship between the citizen and state terrorism through a folk story where the oppressive violence and tyranny of the government and its institutions are revealed through a metaphor of an Elephant which represents the government repression tool. The King's Elephant symbolizes oppressive authority and its abusive power while Zachariah, an angry young radical, stands for the revolutionary conscience of society which, in seeking justice from the King, is let down and demoralized by the oppressed and intimidated people just to become another oppressed subject.

Al-Filya Malik al-Zaman (1969) specifically dramatizes the story of the King's elephant which destroys people's property, kills their children, and terrifies them. After many debates among the people, they decide, led by Zachariah who plans the whole complaint, to go to the King and complain about his elephant. Before they go, however,

Zachariah trains the people in how to complain to the King. He emphasizes that their voices should be united in order not to be discordant and upset the King. They are 75

supposed to speak out their complaints after Zachariah says to the King: "The Elephant,

King of all times..." Unfortunately they are overwhelmed by the titanic splendour of the palace and frightened by the angry-faced guards and they are too scared to speak.

Zachariah keeps repeating the same phrase waiting for them to unfold their case. As the

King becomes upset, he orders him to speak or be whipped. Finally, Zachariah declares,

"we want the Elephant to get married to help him reduce his loneliness, and to produce for us tens of elephants, hundreds of elephants, thousands of elephants, so the city can be filled with elephants" (Wannus 1: 475-476). Quite the opposite to the popular goal! In this play, as in many other plays by Wannus, the playwright tries to highlight the nature of the relationship between the government (the oppressor) and the citizen (the oppressed), and how, because of the citizens' fear, oppressive governments maintain and increase their repressive powers.

Accordingly, based on the discussion of the selected plays and the theories of political violence, a few findings can be proposed. First, while resistance violence is somehow deplored and derided in O'Casey's plays unless it is utilized for the socialist revolution, it is canonized, when seen through Fanon's conception of it, as the best approach to liberation in the Arabic plays. Second, whereas revolutionary violence is problematically shown in Bond's plays, it is intensely exalted in Baraka's plays, and is indirectly provoked in al-Sabur's drama. Third, both English language and Arab playwrights have idiosyncratically employed various modes of representation (verbatim, puppetry, symbolism, realism etc) in showcasing state terrorism. 76

Additionally, the foreign occupation of Arab lands (such as Palestine and Egypt), the emergence of al-Nahda al-Arabia, and the Arab unjust and oppressive regimes have been demonstrated as, among other factors, the main dynamics that contour the type of political violence in modern Arabic drama. Did al-Nahda have an impact on the representation of political violence in the Iraqi political drama? How have the Iraqi playwrights responded to the political violent events that took place throughout the modern history of Iraq? Having such an oppressive and unjust regime as Saddam's, have the Iraqi playwrights depicted any kind of state violence or revolutionary violence during

Saddam's time? Also, being invaded, occupied, and traumatized by a foreign power

(American army and the coalition forces), how have the contemporary Iraqi playwrights explored violence caused by resistance, terrorism, and the American invasion/occupation? These questions will be dealt with in the next chapters. 77

III. Political Violence and the Political Theatre in Iraq: An Overview

This chapter will present an overview of the representation of political violence in modern and contemporary Iraqi theatre. It will look critically into the following questions: how did Iraqi drama respond to the patterns of violent events before, during and after Saddam's regime? What are the key factors and theatrical/dramatic techniques that have governed the representation of political violence in Iraqi plays? In addition to the representation of violence inflicted on Iraqis, is there in the Iraqi drama a direct representation of a countervailing resistance and revolutionary violence?

In addressing these questions, this chapter is intended to pave the way for a more detailed study of political violence in a selected group of contemporary plays. The chapter will explore violence that happened in reality (including state violence exerted on the Iraqi directors/dramatists/theatre practitioners) and violence in drama portrayed in relation to actual political violence engendered by the spirit of Arab Nationalism, by resistance against foreign occupation, by revolutions against so-called 'unjust' or

'collaborating' regimes, by the violent conflict between the Communists and the

Nationalists (especially the Ba'athists), and by state violence. (For a background sketch of the key events in the political history of modern Iraq [established under the British

Mandate in 1920], which have influenced the depiction and treatment of political violence in Iraqi drama, the reader is referred to Appendix A.)

With violent and rapid political transformations in the modern history of Iraq, which have made dramatic discourse unstable and vacillating, Iraqi theatre somehow managed to respond, sometimes indirectly, to these changes through various dramatic 78

vehicles. The political theatre in Iraq has been dominated by three main ideologies: early

Arab Nationalism, Communism/ Socialism, and later Ba'athism.

Impacted by the Nationalism nurtured by al-Nahda movement, and falling under the British mandate, some educated Iraqis (lawyers, engineers, Nationalist activists, politicians, poets, etc) inaugurated local forums and clubs where they could meet and discuss the conditions of the country, and express what were anti-Ottoman and anti-

British stances. Throughout the first three decades of the 20l1 century a number of public and secret clubs were established to mobilize national and nationalist stances (Abbas

110). In addition, the visits of Arab and Turkish theatre troupes (such as George Abyad,

Artughrul Bik and Yusuf Wahbi), and the return of Iraqi theatre scholars (such as Haki

Shibli) who were apprenticed in the West, helped to constitute the real start of the modern

Iraqi theatre.

The clubs were largely located in the three main cities of Iraq—Basra, Baghdad, and Mosul—(although the first club was founded by Iraqi scholars in Istanbul). A number of clubs were very active during the first decades of the 20u century including al-Nadi al-

Adabi al-Mosuli (the Mosuli Literary Club), Dar al-Tamtheel al-Arabi (the House of

Arab Performance), al-Nadi al-Watani al-Elmi (the National and Scientific Club), and al-

Nadi al-Tamtheeli al-Iraqi (the Iraqi Performance Club).

Members of these clubs were clearly aware of the importance of theatre in their struggle, as well as the power of propaganda. Therefore, in spite of government warnings and censorship, theatrical productions, though often performed by amateur actors and students, were used to galvanize spectators. The kinds of plays produced during that era 79

were mostly historical (such as Fatih Amoria and Salah al-Din al-Ayubi) or adapted from

French literature such as Patrie! (Fatherland) by Victorien Sardou. The choice of historical plays was to propagate Arab nationalism and Islamic glory as a counter- discourse to the dominant British and Turkish patronizing authority.

The spread of nationalist sentiment and the necessity of armed struggle against the occupiers and colonizers pushed young Iraqis towards theatre to raise nationalist, political and cultural awareness in the country (al-Zubaidi 121). The role of poets, like Mohamed

Mahdi al-Basir, Ma'ruf al-Rasafi and Jamil Sudki al-Zahawi, was crucial in backing up the role of political theatre, whether by reciting nationalistic poems on opening nights of plays or by reworking stories for the stage. Al-Basir, for instance, introduced the story of al-Nu 'man Bin al-Mundhir to be staged in 1920 by amateur performers. The play was politically oriented to support the Arab nationalist revolutionary spirit during the British occupation (al-Zubaidi 119).

Moreover, most of the nationalists and Islamic thinkers believed and still believe in the idea of Islamic conquest. Such a belief can be seen in the history plays and dramatized stories from Islam's "conquest" during its conquest epoch. Shiites, on the other hand, do not see the wars of conquest after the death of the Prophet as legitimate or even right. They think these operations were carried out not to defend or spread the word of Islam, as the Sunnis believe, but to terrorize and pillage by violence and in the name of Islam. This Shiite belief renders such plays as Fatih Amoria (The Conquest of 80

1 9

Amoria) and Fatih al-Andalus (The Conquest of Andalusia) unappealing for them .

From 1920s to 1970s, the politicized dramatic discourse could be termed either nationalistically Sunni or dogmatically Communist.13

Typical of the plays done of this early period was Fatih Amoria (1923), a historical anecdote dramatized by Abdul Majid Shawki and Fadhil al-Saidali, which tells the story of a beautiful Arab woman who becomes a captive in the hands of a Roman leader named Sabinus. Sabinus loves the woman and asks for her hand but she refuses.

Then he imprisons her in Amoria and starts torturing her, finally killing her baby before her eyes. The woman, outraged by the cruelty of the Roman leader, cries out "Wa

Mutasima!" which can be interpreted as an urgent cry for help directed towards al-

Mutasim, the caliph of the Muslims at that time. Upon hearing her story, al-Mutasim gets up angrily and prepares to invade Amoria to rescue the woman and answer her call for help. His huge army surrounds Amoria and forces the enemy to surrender. Al-Mutasim rescues the woman and victoriously comes back with more war booty.

Influenced by 19th century Romantic drama, the play mixes poetry with prose, presents the theme of love and violence on stage, and exudes the ethos of romantic heroism. Symbolism in this play can be seen in the figure of the captive woman who represents the occupied Arab land inciting Arab conscience and heroism to rise up and free her from her usurpers. The woman is an iconic image of the motherland whose 12 There should be a differentiation between the religious Shntes and the Shutes who have been engaged in political activism While the former are attached to their perception and interpretation of the Islamic history during and after the death of Muhammad, the latter may ideologically de-dogmatize their perception to cope with the current political situations and changes in the country and even in the region n Such a statement leads to the debate as to whether the political theatre m Iraq was started and nurtured by the Communists or rather by the Nationalists 81

honour must be protected by men. Portrayed as in constant need for male aid, the significance of the female is suggestively subordinated.

Eventually, as the State realized the power of theatre as a tool for public agitation and awareness, it began to suppress and control such plays. Critic Ali Muzahem Abbas indicates that from the outset, the Iraqi State became conscious of the potential role of theatre and the danger it might create politically and socially, and thus restrained its activities {Eftaho al-Sitar 11). As early as 1921, for example, the government ordered police to monitor cinemas and theatres. As a result, when students of al-Kut primary school were rehearsing for the production of Wafa al-Arab (Arab Loyalty), the police stormed into the school, stopped the show, and insulted the principal arguing that the school had not gotten permission to stage the play. On the following day, the students launched a strike but the police forced them to end it and whipped some of them (11).

Generally speaking, the political plays of the 1920s and 1930s were dramatically and theatrically immature, and they simply showed Arab heroism and past glories. As well, they were performed by amateur performers and students in clubs and schools.

During the 1940s and 1950s, political theatre in Iraq, influenced by socialism, shifted its emphasis to the exposition of the evils and corruption of the monarchy by revealing the destructive impact on Iraqi life of feudal and monopolistic policies. Among the noteworthy plays produced were Shuhada al Watenia (Patrie!), Filos (Money) by the

Turkish Najib Fadhil, and Ana Ummuk Ya Shakir (I'm Your Mother, Shakir) by Iraqi

Yusuf al-Ani. 82

In 1948, al-Firqa al-Shabia hi Tamtheel (Popular Troupe for Performance) produced Shuhada al-Watenia at Masrah al-Malik Faisel (King Faisal Theatre). The play was directed by one of the well-known pioneers of the history of Iraqi theatre, Ibrahim

Jalal Many critics consider the production a turning point in the Iraqi theatre since it shows for the first time how a story was rewritten to fit a political situation to allude to the bloody event of the Portsmouth Treaty which happened two months before the show premiered, and how it utilized various new theatrical techniques in terms of decor, lighting and makeup.

Filos, another play of note from this period (directed by Ja'afer al-Sa'adi and translated from Turkish by Mohamed al-Dibum), was produced in 1952 by the same group at King Faisal II Theatre. The play reveals the conspiracies, plots, and corruption of banks. This play coincided with the 1952 strike by Iraqis against the Oil Treaty that gave more power and control to Britain. A satire, the play helped provoke a 1952 strike eight months later. 5

In 1958, and with the evident influence of Communism on the cultural and political life, al-Am's Ana Ummuk ya Shahr was produced by Firka al-Masrah al-Fani al-Hadith (Modern Artistic Theatre Troupe). The troupe was established in 1953 by

Ibrahim Jalal, Yusuf al-Ani, and Abdul Rahman Bahjat. Because of its anti-government positions, the troupe was banned, but after the revolution by Kasim and Arif in 1958, the troupe resumed its performances. Influenced by Russian literature especially the works of

See Appendix A l5SeeJci)eedaal-Mizan,No 19, Baghdad Sept 2 1953 83

Chekhov, Gorky, Tolstoy, and even the German Marxist Brecht, the figure of the mother in Ana Ummuk ya Shakir is based on Gorky's The Mother and on Brecht's Mother

Courage where al-Ani shows the courage of Um Shakir in facing the cruelty of the regime against her family.

The play revolves around a story of a mother, named Um Shakir, who lost her elder son, Shakir, during the resistance against the British. Her second son, Sa'udi, is arrested and imprisoned for his activity against the government. The playwright presents those who collaborate with the 'unjust' government (such as the uncle, his son, and Um

Shakir), and those (such as the doctor) who represent the voice of patriotic protest against the government's oppressive policy and corruption. The uncle asks Um Shakir to persuade her imprisoned son to write a statement to indicate he will never be involved in politics or any political activity. Rejecting the request, Um Shakir argues that if politics is not for the student or the worker or even for Woman, then who will liberate the country?

At the end, Kawthar, her activist daughter, is captured by the police, and Sa'udi is killed in prison. Alone, the mother praises her revolutionary son, and asks the audience to avenge his death.

One of the important issues encapsulated in the play is the use of violence against prisoners. It is claimed that the play tried to shed light on the crimes committed against

Iraqi political prisoners in Baghdad and Kut prisons. In 1953, the prison commander in

Kut ordered political prisoners (Nationalists and Communists) to prepare themselves to be moved into another prison. The prisoners thought that they would be transferred to

16 It is worth mentioning that Brecht wrote a play called The Mother, which is also based on Gorky's The Mother. 84

Nigrat al-Salman, a very notorious prison in the middle of the desert close to the Iraqi-

Saudi border, where various kinds of torture and abuse were practiced. When the prisoners barricaded the doors, the policemen and jailers used extreme force (shootings and beatings) to compel the prisoners to retreat, causing a bloodbath. Seven prisoners were killed and eighty-one injured. A similar event took place in Baghdad prison and the result was eight dead and ninety-four injured (Yasin 308-309).

In the play the mother tells the doctor what happened to Sa'udi in the prison:

MOTHER. Do you know, Fo'ad, what they do to them? The jailers come every

midnight holding their machineguns and hit them with the gun butts. Then

they take two or three of the prisoners to be brutally beaten and then bring

them back...And after a period of time they repeat the same operation, and

there are other things cannot be told." (al-Ani 119)

Although the playwright tries to realistically show the Mother's passionate and strong belief in resistance in spite of her loss and suffering, the play, for Ali al-Ra'i, is melodramatically idealistic; it presents clear and definite contrasts between bad and good.

(310)

Torturing and abusing political prisoners represents the core subject for Shakir

Khasbak's al-Shay (The Thing). The play, published in 1966 just after the 1963 uprising led by the Communists against the Nationalists who overthrew Kasim's regime, was the first dramatic response to the violence against Communist prisoners. In revenge for what the Communists had done to the Ba'athists, the Ba'athists, after executing Communist

Party leaders, delivered their remaining prisoners, most of them army officers, to Nigrat 85

al-Salman by a train called the 'Train of Death'. In the prison, the detainees were tortured and abused. A number of them died during the investigation.

The play starts in a small, dark and dirty cell which is filled with people, most of them Communists, who have been arrested by the Ba'athists, and accused of plotting against the February 'revolution' in 1963. Most of the prisoners represent educated levels of Iraqi society: Fa'ez al-Kamali (a well-known journalist), Mahmood Sami (a doctor),

Falah al-Fakhri (an engineer), Nori al-Saleh (a judge), Fakhir al-Jaber (a professor),

Akram Fatehi (an officer), Khalil al-Hani (a worker), Admon Yaqo (a photographer),

Hasun Mohamed (a butcher), Jankiz Mustafa (a Kurdish university student), and Ayusi

Alwan (a worker). The commander of the prison is called by the prisoners 'Himmler'.

Humiliation and violence begin when the commander and his armed assistants enter the cell and start calling the- names of the prisoners and throwing insults and accusations and then beating anyone who attempts to defend himself The jailers come every day to take one of the prisoners for investigation. When the doctor is brought back by the jailers, he narrates what happened to him during the investigation:

DOCTOR. They hanged me on the ceiling fan and turned it on its highest

speed. Then they hanged me from my arm and started punching and

kicking me. Afterwards, they took off my clothes and put me on a

table and started hitting me with cables. But in spite of all that, I defied

them with my indifference and did not confess anything. (45)

The problematic of violence is twice mentioned in the play, first by Fakhir who states that he faces a very difficult question that keeps him wondering; "how can man be 86

so cruel with his own brother because of a different opinion?" But Fa'ez replies to the question saying, "...blind fanaticism makes man lose his humanity, and turns him to an animal no different from the animals in the forest." (25-26). The issue of violence is brought up again when the prisoners are discussing the possibility of another revolution that might happen in the future against the Ba'athists. The prisoners are divided into those who are Utopian (who think that change can be brought about by adhering to the right values, and who steadily protest against their enemies) and those who believe in the use of violence to end the Ba'athist regime:

KHALIL. So those unbelievers will imprison us here forever. What will

our high values and sublime principles do for us?

FAKHIR. High values require sacrifice...

FA'EZ. .. .The people will revolt against them.

AKRAM. What can the people do other than denouncing demonstrations?

Victory goes to power, not to numbers. Power was in the hands of the

nationalist officers, they were in control of the whole army with its

weapons ...tanks, air force, cannons, but they didn't do anything, and

they left them to carry out their conspiracy and destroy the country...

(40)

The play demonizes the Ba'athists as "fascist" and their so-called 'revolution' as "fascist revolution", and glorifies the Communists whose aspirations and sufferings show them as revolutionaries who fight on the people's behalf. 87

During the 1960s and 1970s, and with the escalation of violence by successive regimes, Iraqi playwrights turned to symbolism (mythology, popular folklore, history) to

dramatize contemporary situations as in Adil Kadhim's al-Tufan (The Flood), Taha

Salim's al-Tantal (1966), and Tarek abdul Wahid's Enhad Ayuha Quramiti, Hatha Asrak

(Oh Qarmathian! Wake Up, This Is Your Time).

In al-Tufan (1964), the playwright uses the myth of Gilgamesh as an indirect

vehicle to reflect the horrendous political and economic situation in Iraq. Gilgamesh was

the fifth king of Uruk who ruled 126 years after the Flood. He was an oppressive tyrant who forced all his subjects to his service. In the play, the people, after the killing of a

shepherd named Sumuqan, revolt against Gilgamesh. Eventually, killing himself, he

declares "no one can end Gilgamesh but Gilgamesh" (49).

In this play, Kadhim tries to create suggestive links between the story of

Gilgamesh and Iraqi's current political situation. Written in an era of fear and injustice

(dominated by the oppressiveness of Arif s regime where violence became evident in the

struggle for power) the play shows revolution as hopeful, but there seems no alternative but to simply overthrow the king.

In Tantal (1966)17, Salim, like Kadhim, tries to give hope to the people, but this time by offering up an imaginary creature named Tantal, a fabled figure rooted in Iraqi popular folk tradition. The play revolves around an encounter between this mythical

creature— believed to live in the roots of palm trees—who scares the people in the

village, and Tulba who represents the power of reason and who eventually defeats the

17 In the beginning, Asa'ad Abdul Razaq, the manager of the cinema and theatre office, did not permit the play to be staged, since he was worried that the author might be arrested by the regime. 88

imaginary Tantal. The battle starts when Tulba, defying the people's beliefs about the power of Tantal and the jinn, decides to go on 'darb al-sad ma red' (the path of no return). In addition to challenging the power of Tantal, Tulba buys a house that is believed to be haunted by jinns.

The play is replete with symbolism. By facing Tantal who lives in palm trees and j inns who haunted the house, Tulba is the Iraq revolutionary trying to awaken the people's awareness of their situation. While the haunted house may represent the country, the jinns clearly embody the oppressive regime. The corroded and weak palm trees here symbolize the poor and suppressed people with Tantal standing for people's fear of the regime and shored up by their submissiveness.

In 1978 revolution was again in the air in Tarek Abdul Wahid's Enhad Ayuha

Quramiti, Hatha Asrak (Oh Qarmathian! Wake Up, This Is Your Time), produced in

Baghdad by Firka al-Masrah al-Jami'I (The University Theatre Troupe). After the production, the actors and the director were arrested by the Ba'athist regime. The play showed the Qarmatian Movement18 as a progressive revolutionary movement against the regime. This enraged the Mayor of Baghdad, Khairallah Tolfah, Saddam's uncle and father-in-law, who charged the Qarmatian Movement with being libertine. After a thorough investigation of the group, the court sentenced the actors and directors went to prison for several months (Malallah).

As a matter of fact, the history of Iraqi theatre, from 1979 to 2010, is full of diverse theatrical techniques and modes of representation employed to deal with the issue

18 Qarmatians were a Shnte Ismaih group centered m eastern Arabia, where they established a Utopian republic in 899 CE. They are most famed for their revolt against the Abbasid Caliphate 89

of political violence. Although Saddam's authoritarian regime gradually tried to ideologically dominate the theatrical productions, it could not completely succeed since some playwrights attempted to use indirect tactics and methods to touch on the State's repressive violence. But who was in a position to grasp the message about violence which was dramatized in such a way as to allude only indirectly to the situation in Iraq?

Observably, most of the serious shows, which, generally speaking, made use of Western classic drama such as Shakespeare's plays or stories from the Arabic tradition using standard Arabic as a medium, usually targeted 'theatre-professional' audiences like theatre students and professors, actors and directors. Thus, the Iraqi audience was limited to the relatively small number of those professionals.

The other question is what was the goal of revealing political violence in such an indirect manner and what, if any, impact did it have? The attempt to conceptualize the violence represented in the play in order to connect it with the current political violence carried out by Saddam's regime was undoubtedly an issue in the mind of the theatre- oriented audience. However, that perception and understanding could not find its way to the larger community simply because the individual spectators were thoroughly intimidated by the oppressive regime. Therefore, perceiving and discussing violence represented in the drama during the Ba'athist regime was also narrow since it could not move into the public sphere.

To look more closely at the recent period, I would like to divide the discussion into five parts: 90

1. (1979-1980): After the physical liquidation of its political rivals by the Ba'athist regime, Iraq became a slightly more open society culturally and economically. During this period the government allowed the creation of new theatres and established national theatre groups in Baghdad and in other provinces. Theatrical productions, however, neither contained nor called for political change. Their orientation was intended simply to reinforce the spirit of nationalism and Ba'athist ideology.

2. (1980-1988): the War with Iran precipitated a shift in the political perspective, and theatre in this period was of three kinds:

a. Agit-prop productions. These shows glorified the war against Iran and

justified its violence; they urged citizens to be part of the war and to defend

their country against what the State called 'al-Furs al-majoos' or 'The Persian

Invasion'. Such shows were specifically produced during national occasions

with the aim of eulogizing the State and its policy of war and reinforcing

violence committed against the enemy as a patriotic deed. It is worth

mentioning that Iraqi TV at that time used to showcase a program called

Siwar min al-Maraka (Images from the Battlefield) which displayed bloody

and brutally graphic images of Iranian soldiers who had been burned,

wounded, or captured by the Iraqi army. Among the theatre groups which

produced such agit-prop plays were al-Taleea (sponsored by the Iraqi

Women's Union, al-Ethad al-Watani), and al-Firka al-Qawmeya HI Tamtheel

(The Nationalist Group for Performance) which officially represented the

State. 91

b. Commercial productions. Due to the pressures of the war and the dominance

of the State and its prohibition of many cultural practices, a number of

playwrights and directors resorted to producing light comedies and farces

which basically involved dance, singing, and jokes (e.g. Bayeit al-Tin, Bin

Mreidi wa London, and al-Mahata). Nonetheless, during this period there

were a few serious productions such as Brecht's The Good Person of

Szechwan directed by Awni Karumi; and Hathayan al-Thakera al-Mur (The

Bitter Hallucination of the Memory), written by Adnan al-Saegh in 1984 and

directed by Ghanim Hameed. In Hathayan al-Thakera al-Mur, the playwright

dramatizes the hallucination of an Iraqi soldier who is fearfully sitting in a

trench expecting his life to be ended at any moment by a sniper's bullet. The

cause of his bitter hallucination, which revolves around life and death, is the

violence of war that is imposed on him. c. Academic productions. Usually experimental in nature, these shows were

based on allusion, implication, and suggestion to present ideas that could run

counter to the State ideology and policy. Among them were Selah al-Kasab's

productions of Zafir's Sorrows of a Circus Clown (1986) and Shakespeare's

King Lear. Noteworthily, there was a kind of avant garde theatre, named

Masrah al-Fan al Hadith, led by a group of brilliant theatre experts. Run by

people with a communist orientation, such as Ibrahim Jalil, Kasim Mohamed,

Salah al-Kasab, Masrah al-Fan al-Hadith was being continually prosecuted

by the government as its shows used to call for political change. 92

3. (1990-2003): Iraq witnessed grave political and economic unrest during this time due to the invasion of Kuwait, the Gulf War, the Shiite uprising, and the imposition of the economic sanctions and the embargo on Iraq. All these factors, along with the repressive policy of Saddam's regime which imprisoned, tortured, and executed anyone opposed to it, kept the representation of political violence at bay. Where it did appear it was allusions, implication, suggestion, and symbolism. Hence, it basically had two strategies:

(1) tradition which was used as an indirect way to explore political violence as in Kasim

Mohamed's Kanyama Kan (Once Upon a Time), or (2) the Western dramatic tradition as in the reworking of Macbeth directed by Selah al-Kasab in 1998. Al-Kasab regularly chose themes from Shakespeare's plays that had some indirect connections to the Iraqi political situation. In directing Macbeth, for example, al-Kasab rejected the traditional setting of the play and instead set it in the garden of the Fine Arts College in Baghdad.

The killing of Duncan was done by the kind of firemen's hoses used on students. "al-

Kasab tried to condemn even indirectly the violence prevalent during Saddam's reign"

(Abood).

Other Iraqi directors also reworked and manipulated plays in this way, in an effort to connect them to the Iraqi situation, to avert suspicion or censorship. In Farag Maxim's

Hiroshima, directed by Abdul Kareem Abood in 1996, the playwright dramatizes the war victims' families, all searching for their relatives and loved ones in hospitals. In a personal interview, the director stated that "I was trying to present a kind of an indirect comparison between, on the one hand, the Japanese families who were traumatized by the dropping of the atomic bomb, and the Iraqis traumatized by war, on the other" (Abood). 93

In spite of the indirection, several Iraqi playwrights and directors were called in for investigation, and sometimes after being investigated, they were put in prison. For example, in 1993, Ghanim Hameed, after directing Al 'lathi Thala ft Hathayanihi

Yaquthen (Who Stayed Awake in his Hallucination) was arrested and jailed. His production showed the hallucinations of an Iraqi soldier who remembers his agonies, miseries, unbearable daily activities, delayed dreams and future plans. All of it comes to an end when a sniper's bullet hits him. At that point, dramatic time is frozen and hallucination sets in.

Ironically, many positive reviews were written about this play in official newspapers such as al-Iraq which described it as a play of condemnation, and al-Thawra which stated that the play "passionately presented a detailed picture of the soldiers' world and the hard and sad times that all Iraqis underwent" (al-Thwara 9).

Other directors called in for investigation included Kadim al-Nassar for his production of Amam al-Bab (In Front of the Door) in 1994, and Ahmed Hassan Musa for directing Kasim Matrood's Lil Ruh Nawafeth Okhra (For the Soul has Other Windows) in 1998. In an attempt to get around the government, some directors either presented alternative versions at the opening performance, or presented their productions after other performances to avoid trouble or accusation by the government. Even when shows were cancelled, directors were still called in for investigation. Kasim Matrood's Mujarad

Nafayat (It's Just Waste), written during the 1990s in exile but produced and published in 94

2007, is a striking example of a play that depicts the cruelty of Saddam's regime19. The play shows an Iraqi radical intellectual who is tortured while being investigated in prison.

The torturers use various tools to make him confess about his brother who is accused of tearing Saddam's picture:

MAN...my body has not known such torture before, it turned into an

ashtray for their cigarettes and a lab for their sadism. They stormed

into me every night to drink alcohol and spit on me, and then they

asked me to dance for them like an acrobat, and if I hesitate to do what

they demand, I was beaten by their blind whips which made me dance

because of the severe pain and made them laugh... (5 8)

After being exposed to this ruthless ordeal in prison, Man is given two choices: either he faces execution, or participates in shooting other prisoners captured by the regime. Fearing death, he reluctantly agrees to participate in killing prisoners. After shooting the prisoners, he realizes that one of them was his brother. Mujarad Nafayat shows the tormenting guilt of Man who agrees to kill innocent human beings and inform the regime about the hideout of his brother to save himself. Feeling unbearable pain and culpability, he eventually conceives himself as someone lacking humanity.

Although the play does not contain explicit references to Saddam's regime, one can see it clearly simply by looking at the type of tortures and the idea of an arrest for tearing President's picture.

19 Because of its relevant content to the postwar situation where the employment of violence and extreme torture m prisons has become conspicuous especially after Abu Ghraib scandal, the play was produced in Mosul University in 2007 95

4. (2003-2005): In 2003 the infrastructure of the Iraqi theatres was totally destroyed partly because of bombing and partly because of subsequent looting. As well, the security situation was very hazardous and the new religious parties saw theatre as immoral unless used for promoting religious values and traditional Islamic morality.

5. (2005-2008): Numerous playwrights and directors, like other artists and scientists, fled the country and started producing plays in Arab-speaking countries (such as Syria,

Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and in the Maghreb) and in European countries (such as Denmark, Sweden, and England). The issue of political violence was a prominent theme in most plays produced during this period. The majority of contemporary plays showed a sort of traumatic violence where the American invasion and its military presence were represented as the only reason or agent of the current political violence in

Iraq. Torture, destruction, and displacement were depicted as committed mainly by

Americans as in Hamam Baghdadi (Baghdadi Bath), Aslak Sha 'eka (Barbed Wires),

Shahwa al-Nahayat (The Lust of the Ends), Ishtar fi Baghdad (Ishtar in Baghdad) etc.

Other plays explore alternative agents of violence such as Abdul Razaq al-Rubai's

Umara al-Jahim (The Princes of Hell), Muhaned Hadi's Hadher Tijwal (Curfew) and Fi

Qalb al-Hadath (In the Heart of the Event), Kahil Khalid's Wehdet al-Inaya al-Muraqeza

(Intensive Care Unit), and Haithem Abdul Razq'a Dhilal (Shadows).

It was important to note that while playwrights of this period tackled the issue of political violence, the direct representation of revolutionary and/or resistance violence in

Iraqi plays was rare. Why do Iraqi playwrights, in spite of the obvious public indignation and dissent against the American occupation and the new Iraqi government, refrain from 96

advocating and/or utilizing revolutionary and resistance violence? It could be that Iraqi playwrights do not believe in violence as a cure to the problem of the occupation. In fact, many people in Iraq did not believe that violence could end it. However, this does not deny the fact that nearly all Iraqis were unhappy with the American presence. More importantly, since Iraq now has violence sponsored by other agents (such as al-Qaeda and the Mahdi Army), a considerable number of Iraqis think that if the Americans leave Iraq entirely, whether by force or by diplomatic means, they will leave "Iraq to the wolves" as

Tanq Aziz, the former foreign minister in Saddam's regime, declared to The Guardian on

Friday Aug 6, 2010.

Second, Iraqi playwrights could be afraid of being politically prosecuted or tracked down by the government. Fear of being arrested has historical roots in the Iraqi memory— many writers and artists were captured and tortured during Saddam's reign.

Third, they might be concerned about being labelled as agitators. Fourth, they might not believe in the direct depiction of revolutionary or resistance violence nor in the direct address/communication of the drama. In an interview, Kasim Matrood, a famous Iraqi playwright and critic, said:

I am against theatre that addresses the audience directly. If we, who claim

to be cultured and educated, preach violence, we will open the way to the

owners of political shops and religious movements to make use of this

justification to propagandize for their dirty goals. (Matrood)

" During Saddam's reign, Iraqi dramatists and directors avoided direct and even indirect representations of revolutionary violence as they were very wary of being impeached by the authorities 97

In essence, direct discourse can be looked at through three lenses. It may refer to the direct presentation of (edited) raw materials taken from reality, as in verbatim and documentary drama, and put into a dramatic mould. It can also suggest the idea of addressing the audience through direct speech. Moreover, direct discourse may be interpreted in relation to the role of art, especially when dealing with political drama.

So, what is the role of art in such circumstances? Does art, and drama in particular, seek to reflect reality, constitute reality, or intervene in reality, or perhaps achieve something else? The function or role of art may possibly lead us into another debatable issue, ideology and its problematic correlation with form and content. Also, in discussing the function of art, another challenging problem arises which is the artistic and aesthetic value of art; where is the line that separates what is artistic and what is non- artistic? What is the conception of aesthetic value in relation to the role of art? All these issues are still controversial in Iraq.

For Kasim Matrood, as for many Iraqi playwrights, direct discourse, with all its three interpretations, (especially verbatim drama which is entirely absent in modern Iraqi drama), cannot be regarded as highly artistic because drama, instead of directly presenting specific (local) situations that die out after they are shown, should represent universal issues that raise questions and stimulate both the imagination and the intellect of any audience. To shore up his discontent with the direct discourse/address in drama and particularly verbatim drama, Kasim Matrood uses his play Muwatn (A Citizen) as an example of using the media as a source for his play: 98

I read a news story about a man forced to make a choice: either kill his

daughter or the killers will slay him. I wrote the whole play on this

episode but instead of showing directly what was written in the news, I

created an artistic space and presented a universal dilemma that every man

could face one day. Instead of showing a ready-made situation and an end,

in drama the representation of the situation should be humanistically

profound to arouse questions and leave the reader/audience to think of the

possibilities. This is how art, and particularly drama, is different from

direct discourse in the media (Matrood).

Defenders of verbatim drama would take another position. David Hare, whose recent works like Stuff Happens and Via Dolorosa are good examples of verbatim drama, finds that the "idea that this kind of political, social, realistic theatre is less profound" is

"ridiculous" (Verbatim Verbatim 75). In a lecture, entitled "David Hare: Mere Fact, Mere

Fiction", given at the Royal Society of Literature, Hare, trying to unravel the confusion about verbatim drama and journalism, argues:

Particular objection is made to the use of other people's dialogue. No

sooner had a genre called verbatim drama been identified than sceptics

appeared arguing that it was somehow unacceptable to copy dialogue

down, rather than to make it up. People who did this, it was said, are

called journalists, not artists. But anyone who gives verbatim theatre a

moment's thought - or rather, a dog's chance - will conclude that the

matter is not as simple as it first looks, (par.l 1) 99

In addition, whether it is a form, technique or a theatre genre, the artistic and dramatic aspect of the verbatim play may reside in its narrative structure, dramatic conflicts, characterization, and, as Robin Soans maintains, the playwright's creative editing:

... .but a verbatim play should still be built around a narrative, and it must

still set up dramatic conflicts and attempt to resolve them. Characters

should be shown to undertake journeys of discovery of some kind, even if

these journeys take place while the character is sat in a chair, talking.

...For the verbatim writer this process [creating the vision of the play]

occurs in the editing... {Verbatim Verbatim 26, 34)

For Soans, to edit 'creatively' is to "enlighten and intrigue", to "create a dramatic ambiguity" the aim of which is to "engage the audience's natural inquisitiveness" (35).

But, does "creative" editing involve manipulation of the raw material, which thus makes the embodied conception of truth and authenticity elusive and therefore renders verbatim drama disingenuous? Such a question has been thoroughly and critically explored in recent studies such as Verbatim Verbatim: Contemporary Documentary Theatre (2008) edited by Will Hammond and Dan Steward, Dramaturgy of the Real on the World Stage

(2010) edited by Carol Martin, and Get Real: Documentary Theatre Past and Present

(2009) edited by Alison Forsyth and Chris Megson.

Because the main source for English language playwrights who write about Iraq is the media, verbatim might be the appropriate dramatic vehicle to show the conflict in

Iraq. The problem here is that the media are not completely reliable sources of 100

information, not even taking into account the ideological orientation. However, what verbatim drama tries to achieve, as Alecky Blythe claims for her plays, is to "provide insight where journalism fails"; for Soans, it provides an venue for the people to speak for themselves, an "implication of otherwise lost voice" (Verbatim Verbatim ).

As for Iraqi playwrights, experiencing at first hand the traumatisation of the populace, their main source is the knowledge of the situation which comes from their ongoing involvement in the daily struggle and violence. Some Iraqi playwrights draw on the media news itself to write their plays, as in dealing with the Abu Ghraib scandal.

Channels like al-Jazeera and al-Sharqiya, imbued with propaganda and nationalistic ideology, have played their own role in manipulating the attitude of many Iraqis and

Arabs concerning the war.

In general, it can be said that while most American and English plays about Iraq try, first and foremost, to unveil the public 'spin' fabricated by the American and British governments concerning the Iraq war, Iraqi dramatists attempt to dig deep into the tragedy of the situation to reveal the injustice of the invasion and of the human suffering in Iraq. The violence shown in Iraqi plays, though sometimes too passionate and overdone, usually aims to provoke the audience either emotionally or intellectually, or as

Kasim Matrood puts it: "the violence in the Iraqi drama tries to generate an impact on the emotional side of the audience which in turn creates a bridge for the audience's later thinking" (Matrood). Is this a justifiable assertion? Does the representation of violence in

Iraqi drama actually succeed in stimulating critical reflection on the part of the spectators, by way of emotional arousal, or is there an element of self-delusion at work here? An 101

informal survey of professional Iraqi theatre practitioners, professors, playwrights and directors yielded some suggestive, if somewhat ambiguous results. (The completed questionnaires are attached as Appendix B.)

Revealingly, when asked to identify the sources of the violence reflected in contemporary Iraqi drama, all of those questioned unanimously selected the option 'war'.

The word 'war' here denotes the American invasion and its subsequent occupation.

However, this perception does not accurately reflect the realities of the violent situation in Iraq, simply because, as mentioned previously, while many contemporary Iraqi plays attempt to show the American invasion and the occupation as the only source/reason of the violence in Iraq, there are other agents of violence that are neglected or ignored by

Iraqi dramatists.

When asked about the kind of response generated by the representations of political violence, and given the options 'catharsis', 'protest', 'consent' or 'other', by far the most commonly selected option was 'protest'. However, if 'protest' is understood to mean the public expression of active opposition to the powers-that-be, it is hard to find any evidence of theatre audiences being roused to protest by what is presented to them.

While the performances may well generate a mental attitude of outrage and indignation at the suffering exhibited on stage, the public manifestation of applause cannot be interpreted as anything more than appreciation of the performance.

To recapitulate, since political violence is a recurrent noticeable phenomenon in the history of Iraq, the representation of political violence in the Iraqi drama has ideologically taken different shapes; it has been dramatized either directly or indirectly 102

through various dramatic vehicles and trends, be they mythology, history, folklore, and so on. In the pre-invasion era, the oppressive Ba'athist regime tried to control and mobilize the Iraqi political drama for its ideological goals. However, a few playwrights managed to escape the censorship, and sometimes jeopardized their lives, to produce plays

(whether by utilizing indirect strategies such as Western drama, far-reaching settings, and experimental modes of representation, or by employing a direct realistic approach to probe and expose the deepest tragedies lying in the protagonists' lives and situations) that touch on the oppressive policy of the Ba'athist regime. Nonetheless, in the post-invasion era, the depiction of political violence revolves mainly around the American invasion and the destruction caused by the invasion. To portray the violence perpetrated by the

Americans and their allies in Iraq, Iraqi playwrights use various dramatic techniques and modes of representation such as mythology, fantasy and realism. This chapter has attempted to present a general and brief picture of the range of representation of political violence in the modern Iraqi drama from 1920 to 2010. The following chapter will provide a detailed investigation of essential issues in a group of contemporary plays written by both English language and Iraqi playwrights. The issues to be examined are:

(1) media discourse and the politics of violence, (2) heritage destruction and the image of the 'barbarian' in the counter-discourse, (3) military indoctrination and the ideology and theatrical mechanisms of torture. 103

IV. The Violence of the War in Iraq

1. Plays about the Politics of the War in Iraq

The invasion in Iraq in 2003 undoubtedly falls under the broad umbrella of political violence or state violence committed against another state. In this section I will illustrate the correlation between language, politics, and violence, and how such a relationship can be understood in the light of the war in Iraq and the discourse that manipulated American public opinion during that war. At the same time, I will argue how certain English language plays have taken up the role of clarifying the deception and

"spin" created by this discourse by exploring, basically through the conventions of verbatim theatre, the real drama that took place behind the doors of the White House. I also will compare several English language plays on this topic with a number of Arabic ones, where the latter depict the politics of the war in Iraq through, for example, mythology.

To go back in time a bit, it can be said that after the September 11 attack, language becomes a very powerful ideological tool in the hands of the American political state apparatus. After September 11, the American government, finding itself facing severe criticism and public anger, created a kind of discourse that could produce a new reality and thus could win public consent for the government's next step, which was the

'war on terror'. The political, economic, and cultural premises of the war on terror were conducted through the new discourse on counter-terrorism to achieve a multi-faceted goal: the normalization, legitimization, institutionalization, and justification of the counter-terrorism campaign. 104

The process whereby the American administration tried to make the war on terror incontrovertibly right and unavoidable included normalizing the violence of war:

The process of inducing consent—of normalising the practice of the war—

therefore requires more than just propaganda or public diplomacy; it

actually requires the construction of a whole new language, or a kind of

public narrative, that manufactures approval while simultaneously

suppressing individual doubts and wider political protest. It requires the

remaking of the world and the creation of a new and unquestioned reality

in which the application of state violence appears normal and reasonable.

(Jackson 1)

This new language was comprised of specific sets of words, metaphors, grammatical structures, ideological rhetoric, myths and forms of knowledge which constitute a well- constructed discourse that, for Richard Jackson, aimed to accomplish the following goals:

to normalise and legitimise the current counter-terrorist approach; to

empower the authorities and shield them from criticism; to discipline

domestic society by marginalizing dissent or protest; and to enforce

national unity by reifying a narrow conception of national identity. The

discourse of the 'war on terrorism' has a clear political purpose; it works

for someone and for something; it is an exercise of power. (2)

Among the vital aspects of language that were used to manage public opinion were: narrative, rhetoric, and binary opposition. In "Metaphor and War: The Metaphor

System Used to Justify War in the Gulf, George Lakoff, analyzing the conceptual 105

framework of the metaphor used in the Gulf War discourse, proposed that the discourse of the war on Iraq was morally contextualized through 'the fairy tale of the just war' which entailed the story of a battle where the hero rescues the victim and defeats the villain. Hence, applied to the Gulf War, the fairy tale of the just war can encompass two scenarios:

The Self-Defense Scenario: Iraq is villain, the US is hero, the US and

other industrialized nations are victims, the crime is a death threat, that is,

a threat to economic health.

Or

The Rescue Scenario: Iraq is villain, the US is hero, Kuwait is victim, the

crime is kidnap and rape. The American people could not accept the Self-

Defense scenario, since it amounted to trading lives for oil. The day after a

national poll that asked Americans what they would be willing to go to

war for, the administration settled on the Rescue Scenario, which was

readily embraced by the public, the media, and Congress as providing

moral justification for going to war. ("Metaphor and War" 7)

A similar scenario could be applied to the 2003 War in Iraq where Saddam was the villain, the US the hero, and the Iraqi people the victims. Saddam was depicted, through visual and linguistic media, as a monstrous villain who "gassed his own people", a statement used as "the bloody shirt repeatedly waved by George W. Bush in his frantic bid to build support for an invasion of Iraq" (Floyd 1), and a brutal leader who is 106

9 1 regarded as an extremely oppressive tyrant . The victims were therefore seen to be the

Iraqis who had been suffering at the ruthless hands of Saddam's regime for almost thirty- five years. America, the hero and the only power that could topple Saddam, would rescue the Iraqis and trounce the villainous tyrant. The rescue mission would be expressed through a powerful rhetoric using such words as 'liberation', 'freedom', 'justice', and

'democracy'.

Politicizing language is actually effective in reshuffling perceptions of reality.

What might be considered as outrageously unacceptable could be altered by the manipulative power of language which can create a different picture and perception of the same reality. The linguistic capacity to change our perception of reality, especially in wartime, and hence affect public opinion to make political change, allows language to become, as John Collins and Ross Glover hypothesize, "a terrorist organization" which, like terrorism, "targets civilians and generates fear in order to effect political change" (2).

For example, in "Anthrax," R. D. Egan indicates that the phrase "weapons of mass destruction" is the "ultimate way of producing a cultural panic and blindness to the contradiction between Anthrax, which has at this time killed four people, and the repeated dropping of ten-ton bombs on Afghanistan" (18). By hyping the illusion of

Anthrax as a weapon of mass destruction, the US administration attempts to create a cultural panic which in turn necessitates the governmental intervention for national safety

(18).

21 It is unquestionable that Saddam was a cruel dictator; however, the facts about Saddam were obviously politicized to gam support for the invasion 107

The use of binary oppositions (two concepts or terms in opposition to one another where one is privileged over the other) in the discourse of counter-terrorism is also another linguistic strategy. Words like good vs. evil, civilization vs. barbarism, democracy vs. terrorism, West vs. East, 'us' vs. 'them' are also utilized in the political discourse of the war on Iraq. The binary structure of language, which characterizes the mental process of recognition, is often "value-laden and ethnocentric" with an illusory order and superficial meaning (Goody 36). Moreover, in the binary opposition, as Derrida postulated in Of Grammatology (1976), the first term is typically conceived as original, authentic, and superior, while the second is thought of as secondary, derivative, or even

"parasitic."

On the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, George Bush declared the war on terror to be "a struggle for civilization" (Bush, 11 September, 2006) having earlier said that "We [Americans] are in a conflict between good and evil..." (Bush, 1 June, 2002).

Exactly four years later, President Obama described the attack of 9/11 a "barbaric act"

(Obama, 11 September, 2009). For Richard Jackson, the use of binary structure here is to dehumanize and demonize the enemy 'other':

Simply by referring to 'an attack on civilization' for example, the

language brings to mind or naturalises its binary opposite—barbarism and

savagery. Therefore, by implication, terrorists are characterized as

inherently cruel, hateful, murderous, and lacking in human values. (62)

With the description of the war on terror as a war between 'civilization and barbarism,

"we are asked", Marina A. Liorente maintains, "to believe that the behavior of these new 108

"barbarians" is uncontrollably guided by the same cruel instincts that motivated some barbarians of the past centuries, including Atilla the Hun and the Mongol leader Genghis

Khan" (Collateral Language 41). Ironically, as we shall see, many Iraqi playwrights, and even politicians too, portray and compare the American invasion of Iraq as an invasion like that of the barbarian Mongols on Baghdad in 1258 where the Mongols, led by the grandson of Genghis Khan, savagely destroyed Iraqi civilization and cultural heritage, and killed thousands of people.

In response to such doctored disorientation and deception, English drama, especially British verbatim plays, assumed the role of providing a clear picture of the reality by dramatizing the actual words of the politicians involved in the war. Using various modes including documentary, satire, and tribunal forms, certain British plays, as an example, began to "question the current political leadership" and explore Tony Blair's use of 'spin'2 in relation to Britain's association with the Iraq war. Among these plays are Feelgood by Alistair Beaton, Justifying War by Richard Norton Taylor, and Stuff

Happens by David Hare.

In Stuff Happens (2004) Hare presents various stances, including arguments for and against the invasion of Iraq, versions of real speeches, meetings and press conferences paired with fictionalized satirical versions of meetings, especially meetings behind closed doors, between members of the Bush and Blair administrations, and such international figures as Hans Blix and Dominique de Villepin. In this way, he critically

"" Defined by Amelia H. Kntzer, 'spin' is "the practice of interpreting policies and actions to coincide with popular opinion " (Political Theatre in Post-Thatcher Britain, New York Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, p 169) 109

unveils the nature of the discussions and debates that took place privately and highlights the fabricated bombastic speech resulting from these discussions articulated before the media cameras and microphones.

Stuff Happens, Amelia H. Kritzer asserts, "attempts to answer the question of why the war in Iraq happened." The answer it finds is "in the personalities and goals of major leaders in the West." The play, she says, makes "visible the irresponsible, self-serving, and irrational qualities of current political leaders" (178, 182). Further, the playwright shows an adumbration of the intention of the Iraq invasion as being planned before 9/11.

On January 30n 2001, President Bush along with Condoleezza Rice, Dick Cheney, Colin

Powell, and George Tenet insisted on a meeting of the National Security Council during which the CIA director, Tenet, showing a photograph of a factory in Iraq, demonstrated that the factory might manufacture biological and chemical weapons (12-13). Moreover, in a private meeting between Bush and Blair, Blair, addressing Bush, is represented saying "I can very easily lose Cabinet members over this [Iraqi invasion decision]. If my enemies can say 'This is a war which was cooked up a long time ago by a group in

Washington..." (42).

The play generally displays how American and British politicians 'cooked up' the decision to go to war in Iraq, whereas the real (economic and political) premises remained hidden from the public. It seems clear at this later vantage point that the majority of the American public was convinced that it was important to disarm Iraq's weapons of mass destruction since they were a threat to the national security of the

United States. As well, they were saving the Iraqis from Saddam's oppression (a 110

humanistic/moral goal), and eradicating Saddam's regime whose supposed alliance with al-Qaeda represented an international threat.

The manipulation of the rhetoric of the war on terror was exhibited in this play.

Indeed, the use of the phrase 'war on terror' by George Bush is approved of by Donald

Rumsfeld and Colin Powell who seem to like it because it is "vague" and will serve to cover whatever they want to do (23-24). Also, Bush's reliance on speech-writer Michael

Gerson to "ramp up" the rhetoric in the play is another indication of the manipulation of language for political purposes. However, the responses to Bush's speech and his references to the "axis of evil" and "freedom's power" are shown as heterogeneously sardonic:

WOLFOWITZ. It was when I heard that speech I thought: the President

really gets it.

FRENCH FM. Simplistic

GERMAN FM. Alliance partners are not satellites.

FO OFFICIAL. We smiled at the jejune language. It sounded straight out

of Lord of the Rings.

IRAQI VP. This statement is stupid.

JACK STRAW. The President's speech can be best understood by the

fact that there are mid-term Congressional elections coming up in

November. (33)

Closely associated with the Iraq war is the story of the intelligence dossier about the Iraqi weapons and the consequent tragic death of David Kelly, a British UN inspector Ill

who was sent to Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction. Two plays have dealt with this issue: The Palace of the End by Canadian Judith Thompson and Justifying

War by British Richard Norton Taylor Using a tribunal form and docu-verbatim drama,

Justifying War explores the circumstances of David Kelly's death and examines the

British government's involvement in the Iraq war The fundamental question it raises is

"whether the government was justified in going to war in Iraq, or whether they did so on the basis of a hidden agenda and used flimsy or doctored evidence to convince a sceptical public that it was necessary" (Kntzer 173).

The 'sexmg up' of the information about the weapons, particularly the notorious

"forty five minutes" in the dossier, was actually done, as David Kelly secretly told the

BBC reporter, in the office of the Prime Minister Thus, the government called Kelly in to testify before two parliamentary committees which were investigating the war. When Dr.

Kelly was later found dead, the Hutton Inquiry was given the task of also investigating the circumstances that surrounded his death

The play dramatizes the conflict between the BBC reporter and the government's

Director of Communication, who is alleged to have altered Kelly's report and implanted exaggerated statements in it In the play, Brian Jones squarely states that the forty-five minute claim was dubious and that there was "an impression that there was an influence from outside the intelligence community" by those who worked on the dossier (81-82).

The charge of falsification and 'sexing up' of the dossier by the British government is also made in Colm Teevan's How Many Miles to Basra (2006):

23 The title, Palace of the End, refers to the place in Baghdad where Iraqi Communists used to be investigated and tortured by the Ba'athists 112

SOPHIE. A source in the Intelligence Service told Andrew Gilligan that

the government asked Intelligence to sex up the dossier on Saddam's

weapons capabilities. And the Government then published the dossier

knowing it to contain false claims. (19)

Drawing mainly on "publicized events surrounding the public life and solitary death of Dr. David Kelly", Kelly's death in The Palace of the End is humanely dramatized. In the play, Kelly asks the audience/reader to witness his last moments before death. His struggle with his conscience and the inner torment of his guilt is strongly unfolded through the evocation of violent imagery of a tortured child. Knowing and pretending not to know, keeping silent and failing to speak the truth about the fabrications, seeing bombings, human casualties and destruction happening in Iraq, all make Kelly internally agonized:

Can you imagine, knowing that a man is torturing a child in your

basement, and just going on with your life? Knowing it is happening right

under your feet, as you wait for the kettle to boil, as you tuck your own

children in bed, as you work in the garden the dim light is always there,

the muffled sound of her screaming, you pretend to yourself "It's the cows

on the line," but in your belly it is her agony, he is cutting off her fingers

one by one, pulling out her eyes, her teeth, unimaginable torture and this is

something you know for certain and you don't tell anyone because you

might lose something if you do. Your carefree life, your ability to be

happy, your job.. .They admitted they needed to sex it up, for the people of 113

Britain were not going to send their boys to a war they didn't believe in

...they said we have to fill the people with fear ...they had to understand

that the threat of Saddam was like the threat of the Nazis. We all knew that

this was not true. (21)

Kelly, portrayed in the play as a tragic hero, reveals his humanism through this struggle with his conscience and through his relationship with and profound sympathy for an Iraqi family in Baghdad whose child was raped by American soldiers after they killed her parents.

In Gregory Burke's Black Watch (2007), which refers to an infantry battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland, the politics of the war, shown through an effective theatricality which mixes verbatim, documentary, tattoo-style formation, and Brechtian techniques, is explored through various angles. First, the war was a job opportunity for

Scottish unemployed youths who were exploited by the army: Cammy declares, "They poor fucking boys. They cannay day anything else. They cannay get a job. They get exploited by the army." (4) Second, the war was a political game where the decision of the involvement of the Black Watch in Fallujah was politically schemed by the American government: "...I believe that this deployment was political in its nature, we think the request was political, the answer was political, during the American presidential election." (9) Third, rather than liberation, the war was a bullying job and an invasion:

CAMMY. .. .After a while, it's more bullying that fighting ay.

STEWARTY. You dinnay join up tay bully cunts day you.

ROSSCO. Bullying's the job. 114

GRANTY. It's no reason you want tay be in the army, though.

CAMMY. It's a buzz, you're in a war ay, but you're no really doing the

job you're trained for but it's no like they're a massive threat tay you

or tay your country, you're no defending your country. We're invading

their country and fucking their day up. (48-49)

Burke comments "The Scots' uncomfortable conclusion is that what they and the

Americans are doing is not real soldiering, but 'bullying'" (Cull 13).

How did Arabic writers deal with the war? Mashahed min al-Jinoon al-Kheer

(Scenes From the Last Madness) was a play written during the invasion in 2003 by a

Saudi playwright named Abbas al-Hayek. It presents the politics of the war through

Greek mythology, in this case Atlas and Icarus. Though the theatrical aspect is to a certain extent far-fetched, the play shows the tragedy of Atlas and the misfortune of

Icarus. In the first scene, while Atlas carries the Earth on his shoulders, the Arab Icarus is working on his burnt wings. Sounds of explosions and bombings make Atlas run away kicking the Earth with his feet crying "Madness...Madness". Meanwhile, Icarus flies with his repaired wings. In the second scene, Atlas embraces a palm tree but after hearing the sounds of explosions, air force bombings, and cries for help, he begins shouting

"Madness...Madness". Icarus falls down and Atlas shakes the palm tree but only flames fall down on Atlas. In the third scene, Atlas is tied to a cross while his wounds are bleeding; he holds the Earth under his feet. Icarus is working on his burned wings.

Sounds of explosions and cries for help agitate Atlas and the Earth is set on fire under his feet. Atlas is completely burnt and turns into ashes. 115

When asked why he used mythology in the play, al-Hayek said:

Mythology contains stories and tales that are similar to the stories and the

reality we live by. Hinging on mythology was to evade the direct

discourse in dealing with political violence...By returning to mythology

and its figures, I am inspired by its universality, which in turn adds a spirit

to my text. (al-Hayek)

Icarus, for al-Hayek, represents the ambition of the Arabs who, like Icarus, fly on "fake wings", on the wings of others. As for Atlas, his situation is like those Arabs burdened by wealth and resources. "Atlas is the Arab Homeland which becomes prey for the colonizing states...and Iraq is one of the Arab countries that has endured the madness of the imperial nations...Iraq is like Icarus, ambitious, but its wings fail him" (al-Hayek).

Although the use of mythology may add an interesting dimension to the play, the form ignores the real political and economic conditions of Iraq before the invasion. What is the use of having wealth and resources while the majority of the Iraqis are underprivileged and oppressed? This is never discussed. Oppression, injustice, poverty, and marginalization are ignored in favor of a comparison of Iraq with Icarus or Atlas.

Eventually the instability of the situation in Iraq and the oppression and wars of

Saddam's regime provide a good pretext to the imperial and colonizing nations to invade

Iraq.

In Abbas abdul al-Ghani's Remote Control (2008) the politics of the invasion are explored through an ethnic perspective. The reason for the invasion is simply to attack

Arabs: 116

I am the Remote Control who was programmed to speak different

languages but I have been recently programmed to Arabic only, which was

the main reason and pretext to be attacked from all sides... You are

accusing me of being an Arab and you have crossed oceans to make us

suffer tragedy after tragedy..." (2, 3)

Al-Ghani claims that the character of Remote Control, through showing various situations and narrations about the current violence, is a multi-dimensional character because it represents several elements: (1) Everyman (who turns into a machine); (2) the remains of an Iraqi individual who lives in violence; (3) the narrator of the story of various kinds of violence exerted on Iraqis; and (4) the voice of everyman who faces bravely the violence imposed on him/her by superpowers (al-Ghani). However, the language of Remote Control seems a bromide lamentation where Remote Control boasts about the glorious past and civilization and wails over the destroyed Baghdad.

Moreover, the play is quite melodramatic with its stereotypical vision of the attack of the Americans on the so-called 'symbols of freedom' such as al-Huriya

(freedom) Monument24. Would the Americans invade Iraq simply because its people are

Arabs? Rather than seeing the war from ideological, political or economic angles, al-

Ghani, like several Arab playwrights, seems to believe in imaginary battles between ethnicities. The play ends with a cliched traumatic voice reciting Khudhayer Hadi's poem

"Kalo hata al-Sa'af"—a poem about the destruction of the US-led invasion—without even acknowledging the poet.

Such symbols and their problematic interpretations will be dealt with in the next section 117

2. The Arrival of the Barbarians

A considerable number of Iraqi plays portray the American invasion of Iraq in general and on Baghdad in particular as similar to and/or worse than the invasions of

Hulagu and Tamerlane on Baghdad in 1258 and in 1401. Some playwrights even mention the name of Hulagu when describing the destruction in Baghdad. But why Hulagu? What did Hulagu do that makes it so unforgettable in Iraqi memory? In fact, before the

Americans invaded Iraq, the invasion by Hulagu was seen as the worst tragedy in the history of Islam because of its devastating destruction as well as the loss of Islamic supremacy and cultural religious heritage nurtured in Baghdad.

In short, between 1257-1258, the huge army of the Mongols which was coming from Asia and Persia and marching towards Iraq, led by Hulagu, grandson of Genghis

Khan, after crushing the Shiite Assassins and after the refusal of the caliph Mustasim to surrender, surrounded the city of Baghdad, broke through its walls, killed almost eight hundred thousand, and sacked the whole city:

Ten days later they [the caliph and his officials and qadis] were all put to

death. The city itself was given over to plunder and flames; the majority of

its population, including the family of the caliph, were wiped out of

existence. Pestilential odours emitted by corpses strewn unburied in the

street compelled Hulagu to withdraw from the town for a few days. (Hitti

487) 118

In addition to the mass slaughter of 800,000 people , the Mongols destroyed the libraries, architectural treasures and mosques, and looted every precious metal including the gold and silver stored in the treasury of the caliph. Historians, especially Iraqi ones, usually refer to an image when the water of the Tigris turned black because of the ink of the manuscripts and books and because of the blood of the 'martyrs'. The question that arises here is why Baghdad? The simple answer that can be evoked is because Baghdad was a noticeable source of many human resources; it was a city of wealth and commerce, and a cultural centre for the Muslim world where scholars and scientists used to come from various parts of the world to improve their knowledge and to be rewarded by the

77 caliph. The end of Baghdad was, for many historians, the end of the Islamic golden age.

For Yasin, its being an attractive supply of resources and wealth was the mam reason behind the numerous invasions of Iraq throughout history (171). Such a rationale could be applied to the recent American invasion of Iraq simply because Iraq has a strategic stronghold of oil in the Arab world.

A few people were spared by the Mongols, most of them Christians, Jews, and Muslim merchants See Bakir Yasin, p. 172

26 See Bakir Yasm, History of Bloody Violence in Iraq, p 168 Also, it is said that the Mongols used the books and manuscripts to cross over the Tigris

27 fhe golden glory of Baghdad and its Abbasid caliphate reigns was exclusively a glory for the Sunms simply because the Shnte Muslims were, generally speaking, oppressed and marginalized However, the Shntes are perhaps mistakenly regarded, especially by Ian Frazier, as traitors who helped Hulagu to occupy Baghdad and kill the caliph, Mustasim. Yet, m History of the Arabs, Philip Hitti indicates that there were many reasons and internal and external conflicts that helped weaken the power of the caliph. He also maintains, in contrast to Ian Frazier's statement that the Shntes told Hulagu no disaster would happen if he killed the caliph Hulagu's astrologers were the ones who advised Hulagu about the killing of the caliph See p 478 This does not deny that a few of the Shntes collaborated with the Mongols to end the regime of the caliph. 119

In "Invaders Destroying Baghdad", Ian Frazier, trying to explain the statement made by Osama Bin Laden about the first Gulf War where the latter said that Colin

Powell and Dick Cheney had destroyed Baghdad more ruinously than Hulagu of the

Mongols, reinforces the greediness of the invading Americans:

Fuelled by grass, the Mongol empire could be described as solar-powered;

it was an empire of the land. Later empires, such as the British, moved by

ship and were wind-powered, empires of the sea. The American empire, if

it is an empire, runs on oil and is an empire of the air. On the world's

largest landmass, Iraq is a main crossroads; most aspirants to empire

eventually pass through there. (The New Yorker 2)

The portrait of the Mongol invasion is often conjured up in Iraqi plays. In Abbas

Abdul Ghani's Barbed Wires (2008), Bin Laden's statement is echoed: "The Mongols did not do as much as the Americans have done" (2). So, Iraqi playwrights make use of history as a strategic source to depict the American invasion of Baghdad and its aftermath. They stir up the Arab and Iraqi collective and historical perception of the

Mongols' invasion of Baghdad to channel a comparison with the American invasion, and to attach and attract the Arab and Iraqi readers/audiences to the issue of the cultural carnage through an inciting dramatization of a shared tragedy in the Arab historical memory. Hence, the recurrent brutal picture becomes the destruction of the national and cultural heritage resulting from burning and destroying the libraries and museums, looting the relics, and the massacre of civilians. American soldiers are therefore envisaged as the barbarian Mongols or sometimes worse than the Mongols. 120

Rasha Fadhil's Ishtar in Baghdad (2004), utilizing the ancient Mesopotamian mythological godly figures of Ishtar and Tammuz, dramatizes how Ishtar, the goddess of fertility and love, and her lover Tammuz, the god of food and vegetation, instead of descending to the underworld as in the myth, descend on Iraq where they are galvanized by the bloody scenes and the killings of Iraqis. In one explosion Ishtar and Tammuz, instead of carrying her mission to rescue the Iraqis, are separated and later captured by the Americans. Both are investigated, tortured, and sexually abused along with other

Iraqis who are kept in Abu Ghraib prison. The play ends in huge explosions and a rumble of rain.

The appearance of the American soldiers in the play is revealed through Ishtar's description, and the black water of the Tigris is described by Tammuz:

ISHTAR. {Looking carefully at the Earth) Who are those strangers

bristling with heavy arms? Their colors are not like my dynasty..!

Even their language ..does not belong to the dictionary of my people..!

TAMMUZ. Those are the ones who destroyed greens and turned your

people into anemones spreading over ravines.

ISHTAR. (yells in anger and sadness) A people gives birth to civilization.,

will never die..! I will get down to bless them again ..to charm them

from death..to endow them with the plant of life.

TAMMUZ. (protesting) But your palm is smaller than their thirst..!

ISHTAR. There is the palm of Wadi al-Salam whose water has not dried

yet. 121

ISHTAR. (amazed) But ..look at Wadi al-Salam? There are a lot of

drowning people .. children., women., toys., colorful balls., shoes.,

cloaks with its blackness floating over the waves...O what a

blackness..! (I 2)

The portrayal of the Americans is similar to the historical description of the Mongols who were also armed with heavy weapons, wearing "scales of iron sewn to garments of thick hide, and iron helmets..." (Frazier 2). More importantly, the reference to the blackness of

Wadi al-Salam's water is again another glimpse of the historical description of the Tigris water turning black but this time because of the American invasion. Similar imagery is also depicted in 9 Parts of Desire (2002), a play written by the American-Iraqi playwright Heather Raffo, where the character of Mullaya, sitting beside the Tigris, narrates the old story of the river whose water turned black because of Hulagu's invasion:

"When the grandson of Genghis Khan burned all the books in Baghdad, the river ran black with ink" (2). In Sabah al-Anbari's The Lust of the Ends (2007), the same image of the black water of the Tigris is reiterated when the protagonist, Selah, describes the water of the Tigris after the American invasion: "We walked towards the Tigris.. I imagined that the Tigris was like a wounded tiger stabbed by a knife in his heart and left bleeding a strange blood., a blood whose color is an ink that I saw shedding from the books and manuscripts of Iraq"(16).

It was precisely this picture that was instilled in the minds of the Iraqi people in secondary schools where they learned about the Hulagu incident in history books. From that point, the image of the black water of the Tigris becomes a frequent motif in 122

contemporary Iraqi drama and always connotes the destruction of Iraqi cultural heritage at the hands of barbarian armies.

The same picture recurs and is portrayed through: (1) a mythological figure, the god Tammuz, who is describing in a poetic language how the water is turning black; (2) a narration of a conventional Iraqi female character who is telling the history of the river;

(3) and the protagonist, Selah, who has just been released from Abu Ghraib prison to be an eyewitness of the destruction of Baghdad.

Selah, helped by a (female) jinn, manages to enter the National Museum and

Library to see how the marines and their agents are participating in the demolition of what is agreed to be the national and historical heritage. The fantastic use of the female

'jinn', (jinia)—an idea rooted in Iraqi popular tradition—gives the protagonist the freedom to move invisibly around Baghdad to witness and then tell the audience what he has seen. Among the places he visits are the national library and the museum where he sees how American soldiers and their disguised agents are obliterating the library and then the museum:

Gunmen stormed into the library building... They spread out in its

corridors and gave an entry signal to the other group which followed them,

a group of disguised men ...they poured oil over the books...They never

left any book without saturating it with oil... I saw one of them, who was

wearing dark glasses covering half of his face, taking a matchbox from the

pocket of his grey jacket..He lit the matchstick and threw it on the oiled

floor. I ran quickly towards him trying to stop him, to put off the fire, to 123

do anything, but I found myself surrounded by the flames... I was

watching the letters shedding from the golden books covers, letter by

letter..falling on the floor full of blood, wriggling... (9)

In addition to its function of helping Selah to be invisible and thus enter many horrible places without being seen, the symbiotic relationship between the jinn and Selah, as interpreted by Najib Talal, may present the jinn as a symbol of: (1) the Iraqi civilization ("Jinn: (to Selah) Go to the National Library and do what you have to do before it is too late." (7)), (2) Home ("Her [the Jinn's] body was anointed with oil, fragrant of the roots of the palm trees, and from within I smelled the mud of the Tigris and the Euphrates." (6)), (3) documentation ("Selah: (to the Jinn) I want to see the facts in my eyes so as to rationalize them, after I saw them in my mind and comprehended them." (7)), (4) resistance (Jinn: (to Selah) It's time, Iraqi man, to get up and do what is waiting for you." (13)), (5) uncertainty and confusion ("Selah: I was so uncertain that I wanted to ask her who she [the Jinn] was and why she was sitting beside me..." (13)), (6) patience ("Jinn: Keep your tears, Iraqi man, they are your way to your escape." (9)), (7) freedom (Jinn appears in the shape of the Freedom Monument, (21)), (8) Jawad Salim's soul28 ("Selah: They are chasing you [the Jinn] because you harbor the soul of Jawad

Salim..."(28))(Talal4).

The other place that Selah visits to witness the destruction of cultural heritage is the National Museum. He recalls:

28 Jawad Sahm (1921-1961) is an Iraqi sculptor who is regarded as an outstanding pillar of modern Iraqi art, and whose famous statue, The Freedom Monument, is one of the prominent cultural features in Iraq The reference to the destruction of his bust in this play may stand for the annihilation of the modern Iraqi culture and art by the American invasion 124

I heard the sound of a tank stopped at the main gate. It pointed its largest

gun at the facade of the Museum and fired an intense shell after which

they savagely pushed each other.. First I thought they will steal the

masterpieces and snatch the golden necklaces from the necks of the Sumer

and Akkad princesses but they did not do that.. All they did was attack the

statutes and topple them. Then they crushed them with their boots.. I tried

to stop them but one of them hit me with a piece of a statue and I went

unconscious. (15)

But the question who are 'they'? It is obvious from the context and the reference to the

'tank' that 'they' refers to the American soldiers. Is this historically and realistically true?

Did American soldiers really destroy and burn libraries and museums? Did they actually steal relics, artefacts, and masterpieces? In other words, who are the real accomplices in this crime? Far from indulging the reader in controversial postulations about who did what, which is not the purpose of this study, I want to clarify the fact that the people who destroyed cultural objects and looted national treasures were mostly Iraqis. In the

Introduction to Antiquities Under Siege: Cultural Heritage Protection After the Iraq War

(2008), Lawrence Rothfield observes that the American war policy was not aware of, and therefore did not provide a plan to protect cultural materials after the invasion, but the looters were chiefly mobs of Iraqis (19). The story of this cultural destruction and looting of the Museum is described in Matthew Bogdanos' "Thieves of Baghdad: The Looting of the Iraqi Museum" where he narrates how the looters stormed into the Museum after 125

combat with, among others, Saddam's Republican Guards, who took up fighting positions inside the Museum to fight American troops . Bogdanos concludes:

The blame for the looting must lie squarely on the looters. But the blame

for creating chaos at the museum from the eighth through the eleventh that

allowed the looting to occur must lie with the Iraqi army. It was they who

chose to take up fighting positions within the museum, they who chose to

fire on the American tanks, and they who kept American forces from

investigating the reports they had received of looting "in the area of the

museum." After the eleventh, however, the blame clearly shifts to the U.S.

(39)

It was also rumoured that many countries were involved in the destruction of the libraries and museums including Kuwait, Iran, and even Israel.

After the invasion, Americans were blamed for everything but this is in fact inaccurate. Many Iraqi playwrights, like Sabah al-Anbari, simply ignored other essential causes and focused merely on the American invasion/occupation as the sole agent of destruction and violation. Certainly the American invasion/occupation was the main factor leading to the chaos in Iraq; yet, there were other parties (e.g. al-Qaeda, Iraq's neighbors such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria, former Ba'athist members, and al-Mahdi

Army) who contributed to the violence and destruction. But the devastation generated by others was often greater than that engendered by the Americans. Hamed Shihab, an Iraqi director, actually commented on this in al-Anbari's The Lust of the Ends, when he states:

See pp 34-38, Antiquities Under Siege 126

"I think the occupation is a reason but there are other reasons that Selah had to cry and to cry out to complete the picture" (Shihab 2).

Although The Lust of the Ends encapsulates many theatrical techniques—

Piscatorian and Brechtian— and shows a powerful amalgamation of realism, fantasy and metatheatricality, the image of the destruction is also somewhat overdone. Moreover, the use of Jawad Salim's bust, even though the figure of Jawad Salim is undoubtedly of a cultural significance, as a symbol of freedom is not authentically significant, because how can a writer evoke for an audience the idea of freedom through a symbol that has never been perceived as such, especially during an oppressive regime like Saddam's? Even for such artistic works as the Freedom Monument which can have an equal cultural weight, it is incommensurate to present them as freedom symbols after the invasion, since the majority of Iraqis had never conceived of them as such during Saddam's regime.

Furthermore, the historical delineation of Baghdad during the Abbasids era as the magnificent centre of knowledge and Islamic glory is a one-sided view because for many

Iraqi Shiites the Abbasid caliphs were seen as usurpers who marginalized and oppressed the Shiites. Thus, their perception of Baghdad under the Abbasids cannot be the same as the Sunnis'. However, by showing the Sunni Baghdad, the play may appeal to a wider

Sunni audience (since the Sunnis are the majority in the Muslim world) and to those theatre-educated audience who can understand the presupposed symbolic significance of

Abbasid Baghdad and the Freedom Monument. In addition, a subtext showing the glory of the past may give a hint of a preference to Saddam's time; something also alluded to 127

by the signification of the last name of the writer, 'al-Anbari', which refers to al-Anbar, a

Sunni pro-Saddam province.

It is noteworthy that the only published criticism I found about the play was an article, which I have already cited, written by Najib Talal. As I have noticed in most of the articles and reviews about Iraqi drama, the article is not critical at all, not only because it simply praises the playwright and his play, but also because of the biased point of view of the critic who, ignoring all the enormous violence and torture, mass graveyards, and the oppression and killings of the Shi'ites and Kurds, does not see

Saddam as a dictator, and instead considers Saddam's Iraq as free and liberated (1).

On the other hand, the barbarian image reappears in Jonathan Holmes' Fallujah

(2007) where the savagery of the war is reflected in the massacre of civilians, including old men, women and children, and the employment of prohibited chemical and biological weapons. Drawing heavily on journalistic reports and testimonies, the play, using basically verbatim and documentary modes of representation , presents a portrayal of the

US military attacks on Fallujah in 2004:

SASH A. This is what I found in Fallujah. The Iraqi National Guard used

loudspeakers to call on people to get out of the houses carrying white

flags, bringing all their belongings with them. They were ordered to

gather outside near the Jamah al-Furkan mosque in the centre of town.

Eight members of Eyad Naji Latif s family—one of them a six month-

30 In the first production of Fallujah in London 2007, Holmes used a projection screen, two mobile TV sets, soundscape to create an auditory iconography of war and, as he indicates, "to encourage the audience to empathize with the predicament of those trapped in Fallujah, and to enhance the aural dimension of the performance" (144) 128

old child—gathered their belongings and walked in single file, as

instructed, to the mosque. (We hear this taking place, but the stage

remains bare)

When they reached the main road outside the mosque they heard a

shout, but they could not understand what was being shouted. A Red

Crescent doctor told me it could have been 'now' in English.

DOCTOR (interviewed by SASHA). Then the firing began. US soldiers

appeared on the roofs of surrounding houses and opened fire. Eyad's

father was shot in the heart and his mother in the chest. They died

instantly. Two of Eyad's brothers were hit, one in the chest and one in

the neck. Two of the women were hit, one in the hand and one in the

leg. Then the snipers killed the wife of one of Eyad's brothers. When

she fell her five-year-old son ran to her and stood over her body. They

shot him dead too.

Survivors made desperate appeals to the troops to stop firing. But

whenever one of them tried to raise a white flag they were shot. After

several hours Eyad tried to raise his arm with the flag. But they shot

him in the arm. Finally he tried to raise his hand. So they shot him in

the hand.

The five survivors, including the six-month-old child, lay in the street,

surrounded by the blood of their families, for seven hours. Then four

of them crawled to the nearest home to find shelter.... (193-194) 129

Also, the play reveals the contradiction between the Pentagon Spokesman and

Rana, an Iraqi aid worker, concerning the use of napalm:

RANA (ON SCREEN) ...it was a body with the colour green, and I have

never seen this in all my life, and my work is dealing with dead bodies

and all this stuff, but I never seen a body with a green colour.

CUT TO:

PENTAGON SPOKESMAN (ON SCREEN). Napalm has not been used

in Iraq. ...The US took napalm out of service since the 1970s. (170)

Did the American army in fact use napalm in the battle of Fallujah? Controversial evidence may take the subject into an endless discussion. Yet, in his introduction to the play, Holmes postulates that the play seeks neither objectivity nor authenticity because it is 'disingenuous' to present documentary realism in such a play:

...my guide was not so much authenticity as authority, a sense of ethical

responsibility to the sources rather than a kind of photographic mimicry.

Finally, though the play is truthful and grounded in several dozen carefully

documented sources, it makes no claim to objectivity...These things

happened, these people said what they did, and it is not incompatible with

the veracity of these things to condemn the perpetrators. (142,144)

Regarding the employment of military violence, the use of extreme violence in

Fallujah was a vengeful response to the extreme violence exerted on the bodies of the four American contractors working for Black Water, a security company. Both kinds of violence are barbaric: the violence used against the people in Fallujah and the violence 130

used against the American contractors. The power of theatricalized violence against the

Americans enraged both the American public and the American government. The mutilation and hanging of their bodies on a bridge at the Euphrates created a shocking spectacle broadcast by the media:

Witnesses said the contractors were passing through Falluja in two four-

wheel-drive vehicles when gunmen opened fire. An angry crowd

descended on the cars, throwing stones and setting the vehicles ablaze.

The corpses were dragged from the wreckage and television pictures

showed one burnt body being kicked and stamped on, while at least two

were tied to cars and driven through the city, witnesses said. Adults and

children hacked the bodies to pieces, before lynching two of the charred

remains from a bridge spanning the Euphrates River. "The people of

Falluja hung some of the bodies on the old bridge like slaughtered sheep,"

said local resident Abdul Aziz Mohammed. One Iraqi held a sign

underneath one of the lynched bodies which read: "Falluja is the cemetery

for Americans". (BBC News, Wednesday, 31 March, 2004)

The reaction of the American government was more violent and massively brutal.

However, while the former incident of violence is considered as 'barbaric' and 'evil', the latter violence committed by the American troops against the Iraqis is regarded by the

American government as 'liberating' and 'justifiable'. In "The Barbarians of Fallujah",

Matt Carr, though he turns a blind eye to the savage violence committed against the

American contractors (shown here as inhuman mercenaries) writes: 131

However the barbarian was defined, the term was invariably used to

justify a common objective of imperial conquest and domination. If the

savagery of the barbarian made it possible for civilised states to present

such conquests as a form of liberation, there were also episodes in which

barbarian peoples could not be raised up from their primitive state but only

destroyed - particularly when such peoples resisted the encroachments of

civilisation...By representing 'the barbarian' as an alien 'other' with

whom no rational discourse or common ethical framework is possible,

even gross acts of barbarism may appear to be not only morally acceptable

but morally essential. Such representations were crucial to the self-

righteous consensus that demanded the obliteration of Fallujah in April

2004 and served to transform a city of some 300,000 inhabitants on the

Euphrates river into a symbol of the wider confrontation between the

civilised West and the new barbarians of the twenty-first century. (25-26)

3. Torture in Abu Ghraib

The torture which occurred at Abu Ghraib prison brings many essential issues to light chief among which are: (1) the mentality of the torturer and the pedagogy of the

American militarism; (2) the conception of barbarism and civilization and the sexualized racist torture against the 'other' under the claim of civilizing uncivilized nations; (3) pornography and the significance of the image in the American perception; and finally 132

(4) the gendered sexualized torture and the use of female soldiers as tools or conduits in the men's game of war.

In "What Might Education Mean after Abu Ghraib: Revisiting Adorno's Politics of Education", Henry A. Giroux postulates that to understand the images of Abu Ghraib and the military "pedagogical conditions" that were associated with the torture, one should question their relation to "discourses of privatization, particularly the contracting of military labor, the intersection of militarism and the crisis of masculinity, the war on terrorism, and the racism that makes it despicable" (11). In addition, the aggressive nationalism, fuelled by the jingoistic rhetoric of the American neo-conservatives, has paved the way to a holy war against what are perceived as the non-Western threats (19).

However, in "How is White Supremacy Embodied? Sexualized Racial Violence at Abu

Ghraib", Sherene Razack sees the torture in Abu Ghraib as a "race pleasure in violence"

(345). She maintains that if what happened in Abu Ghraib

has more to do with deeply historical processes through which Americans

understand themselves as white, then we can better confront the

educational and political challenges we face in this new world order by

understanding the complex ways in which systems of oppression (white

supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy) operate through sexual desire and

fear. (345)

The mentality of the torturer/soldier in Abu Ghraib has been nurtured by military pedagogy, which dictates how the torturer/investigator should use any means necessary to get required information from detainees, and the perpetuation of what Adorno calls 133

'aggressive nationalism'. This fact is dramatically highlighted in Thompson's Palace of the End where Lynndie England explains to the audience/reader how she was doing the sexual torture for the purpose of getting information from the Iraqi detainees: "They knew who was gonna blow up who as far as I am concerned. I was doin' what had to be done, to get to the intelligence ...I was doin' what I was trained to do!" (10)

Lynndie England's use of extreme torture and sexual degradation were not indiscriminately or accidentally practised by the investigators. Rather, these kinds of torture were indoctrinated by a specific military pedagogy which to a degree drew on certain cultural and social studies conducted on Arabs and Muslims. In The Language of

Empire (2005) Lila Rajiva asserts the fact that Raphael Patai's The Arab Mind, written in

1973, has a noticeable impact on those who tortured Arab detainees:

But even before Lewis-Huntington thesis, Rafael Patai in The Arab Mind

conjured up these Orientalist fears and proposed remedy -force and

humiliation, sexual humiliation especially—physical violence against the

body and psychic drama to cripple the spirit. It was sterile obsession with

fecundity that gave birth to the castrating formulas of Abu Ghraib. (123)

In On Art War and Terror (2009), Alex Danchev also indicates how the attitude of certain American commanders and neoconservative commentators is shaped by Patai's thesis:

'You have to understand the Arab mind,' explained an infantry company

commander. 'The only thing they understand is force—force, pride, and

saving face'—a dictum straight out of Arab Mind, by Raphael Patai, the 134

guru of choice for neoconservative commentators and military officers

alike. (228-29)

The significance of using a female soldier to sexually abuse Arab men raises two points. First, the photographs, which show female soldiers sexually abusing Iraqi detainees, underlines two facts about the West' s consuming gaze: the West's dependence on the image and its voyeuristic manipulation, and the exploitation of women in a men's game where female domination reflects men's sexual taboos. Second, from the Arabs' and Muslims' perspective, the use of a female in torturing and sexually abusing men has much to do with the Arab and Muslim perception of woman in society.

Far from the controversial debates about gender inequality in Islam, in many verses in the Qur'an, Allah gives men more power than women and sometimes over women: "Men are managers of the affairs of women because Allah has made the one superior to the other" ( Sura 4: 34), and ". . . Wives have the same rights as the husbands have on them in accordance with generally known principles. Of course, men are a degree above them in status . . ." (Sura 2:228). It is alleged that because a woman has many (domestic) duties to do, her man (husband) should be responsible for protecting, providing, supporting, and fulfilling her requirements and needs. As such, power is divided between the two genders in relation to their duties as assigned by God.

Consequently, a woman can be more powerful in her controlling situations, as man can

1 1 be in his. The problem is with the types of duties assigned to both genders. For

31 The problematics of gender has been a debatable issue among feminists and non-feminists scholars. A theorist like Judith Butler gives a detailed discussion and hypothesis about gender m her books Gender Trouble and Bodies that Matter. 135

Muslims, men and women are created equal but they are different in many aspects among which are the biological and the psychological Duties are assigned to each in accordance with their differences. To be clear, being different does not mean being inferior and thus woman is an equal partner of man in the procreation of humankind.

Nonetheless, in the Arab countries, as in many countries where patriarchy plays an influential role in the social conception of gender, man is always depicted as the protector of woman's honour as part of what the Arabs call 'man's Gheira1 which literally means man's jealousy. Essential to Arab traditional values is the idea that if a woman hits a man, he cannot hit her back because if he does he will be shamed and looked down on. Hence, man's physical strength and even the idea of male violence is associated with protection of the female, woman is usually represented as weak in terms of physical strength and it is the man who should protect her from other men or external dangers. For men, to be physically stronger than a man or in a controlling position is not the image Arabs and Muslims want to see. What happened in Abu Ghraib is therefore a reversal of gender roles with female soldiers acting as physical dommators over men; that is, a degradation of Arab men. Even in prisons m Arab countries, it is always men in control of prisoners regardless of their gender

Sex is another problematic issue here Sex is a taboo subject in Arab society.

Generally speaking, men cannot talk about sex with women and vice versa; however, one might talk about it freely with the same gender. Moreover, males must maintain their

'manhood' even in having sex with their wives Thus, during sexual intercourse the wife

39 For more details about women's duties and rights m Islam, see Hammuda Abdul-Ati's "The Status of Woman in Islam", Islam in Focus, Jannah Org 2008 136

should not control the husband. In the West, female domination over men is accepted but in the Arab tradition women must not dominate. All this connects to the idea of female sexual domination over Arab men in Abu Ghraib images which had a striking impact on both the Arab detainees themselves and on public reception because it publicly de- normalizes the Arab and Islamic common vision of the sexual -gender relationship between man and woman. Being naked and looked at by a female soldier makes the Arab detainee both vulnerable and humiliated, and therefore ready to cooperate to avoid more psychological or physical damage.

Another issue is sodomy and its relationship to the concept of being homosexual.

In Islam, as in Christianity and Judaism, sodomy {'Luaf in Arabic) is specifically forbidden. That is, homosexuality is absolutely prohibited in the Arab and Muslim world.

This is not to say that Arabs and Muslims don not practise 'mat' clandestinely. In countries where women and men are not allowed to socialize or communicate publicly with the opposite gender, cases of homosexuality and lesbianism do emerge. But the idea of being penetrated is for woman only; man must play the role of the giver/penetrator/conqueror with woman as the receiver/penetrated/conquered. By showing men in homosexual situations, it is clear that the perpetrators are trying to emasculate them psychologically and humiliate their masculine dignity.

From an Althusserian point of view, the torture at Abu Ghraib is a violent manifestation practiced by repressive state apparatus (RSA) to shore up the proliferation of the ruling class ideology which has been sustained by such ideological state apparatuses as the national media and military pedagogy. For Althusser, this reinforces 137

the ideology of the ruling class which is crystallized in the idea of 'national security' and the 'war on terror'. That is, the state works through two apparatuses: ideological state apparatus (which includes the religious, the educational, the family, the political, the legal, the communications, the trade-union, and the cultural systems) and repressive state apparatus (RSA which includes the Army, the Police, the Courts, the Prisons, etc. ).

While the former functions primarily by ideology, the latter functions predominantly through violence:

...every State Apparatus, whether Repressive or Ideological,

'functions' both by violence and by ideology, but with one very

important distinction which makes it imperative not to confuse the

Ideological State Apparatuses with the (Repressive) State

Apparatus.

This is the fact that the (Repressive) State Apparatus functions

massively and predominantly by repression (including physical

repression), while functioning secondarily by ideology. (There is

no such thing as a purely repressive apparatus.) For example, the

Army and the Police also function by ideology both to ensure their

own cohesion and reproduction, and in the 'values' they propound

externally. (Lenin and Philosophy 138)

Nevertheless, reading Foucault's theorization of the body and its imprisonment, the Abu Ghraib scandal stands against Foucault's assumption that the penal systems of modern societies have shifted from physical violence, which was used usually to create a spectacle of the convict's body for the public, to a more disciplinary carceral/reforming system:

One no longer touched the body, or at least as little as

possible...The body now serves as an instrument or intermediary:

if one intervenes upon it to imprison it, or make it work, it is in

order to deprive the individual of a liberty that is regarded both as

a right and as property. The body according to this penalty is

caught in a system of constraints and privations, obligations and

prohibitions. Physical pain, the pain of the body itself, is no longer

the constituent elements of the penalty. From being an art of

unbearable sensations punishment has become an economy of

suspended rights...The modern rituals of execution attest to this

double process: disappearance of the spectacle and the elimination

of pain {Discipline and Punish 11).

Contrary to Foucault's notion of the disciplinary system, bodies in Abu Ghraib were not contained to regulate their potential uncertain resistance or reaction, but were disciplined to control that uncertainty by improvisation and practical judgement (Caton & Zacka 208).

Abu Ghraib proves to the world that even modern societies, like that of the

United States, can still apply methods of punishment dating back to the Middle

Ages. Since the photos of Abu Ghraib show a spectacle (the convict's body), theatrical mechanisms can be seen through two lenses. From within, the bodies 139

were theatricalised for the camera but their theatricalization was basically meant, in addition to documentation, to offer 'fun' and 'pleasure' for the spectator. From without, such a spectacle, which Foucault believes to be a punishment and 'an exercise of terror' that belongs to past ages, was conveyed to the world via the media to cause a public backlash and an uproar against American government policy towards the detainees. Further, if perceived as theatre of cruelty or, as

Diana Taylor postulates, as a theatrical display of power and powerlessness, torture, according to the Foucauldian conception of the spectacle of torture as 'an exercise of terror', may create terror in the spectator, or it may make the spectator feel complicity or guilt by watching it.

How did Western and Iraqi dramatists respond to the Abu Ghraib scandal? How did they represent the violence revealed in the photographs and media? Is there any connection between the representations in the media and various serious playwrights' portrayal of the Abu Ghraib torture? What are their modes of representation? What is the purpose of representing such violence of torture in their plays? To tackle these questions,

I will examine and compare the representation of Abu Ghraib in three plays: Judith

Thompson's Palace of the End, Rasha Fadhil's Ishtar in Baghdad, and Sabah al-Anbari's

The Lust of the Ends.

Generally speaking, reading or seeing the three plays, one could simply assume that these plays enact and more or less animate the well-known Abu Ghraib photos and make the readers/audiences indulge in and feel that violent world. All the scenes of torture depicted in the plays are principally based on the images revealed in the news. 140

In Palace of the End, the portrayal of torture, the playwright states, is founded on

"news stories" and "the media circus around Lynndie England", however, the dramatic persona of each character was created by the playwright {Palace of the End 1) In contrast to Palace of the End, the representation of torture in Ishtar in Baghdad is de-famihanzed by the playwright's use of the mythological figures of Tammuz and Ishtar in a realistic setting and situation (yet, Fadhil has kept the central torture allusions of nakedness and dog-like humiliation)

OFFICER {Angrily orders his soldiers) Take off his [Tammuz'] clothes

{The soldiers surround him and take off his clothes by force unaffected

by his cries and his strikes Confusing music They show him naked

before the OFFICER) Put this rag on him {Soldiers put the rag on him

which covers the lower half of his body) This one also {gives them a

hood and they put it on his head) Let him stand and spread his arms

{They spread his arms The OFFICER and soldiers start laughing and

taking photos from every side) (12)

More importantly, while Thompson's narrative monologue, though vivid in graphic language and visceral images, sounds undramatic, Fadhil's and al-Anbar's representation of torture is fully and stylistically realized Tammuz and Ishtar, upon descending on Iraqi soil, are captured by the American army to be taken as terrorist suspects to Abu Ghraib prison Tammuz is the first one who is arrested and investigated The torture of Tammuz, his beating and humiliation by the Americans, is almost directly envisaged 141

OFFICER, (moves slowly towards Tammuz to crudely spit on him) You're

going to dance in front of me now. (While chained, TAMMUZ spits on

the officer)

THE AMERICAN, (hits him strongly then takes out a whistle) When I

whistle you imitate the barking of the dog! (He whistles but TAMMUZ

defies him with his looks. THE AMERICAN, carrying an electroshock

weapon, approaches TAMMUZ and asks the soldiers to move away.

He starts beating TAMMUZ with the weapon and laughs. His laughs

overlap with TAMMUZ' cries for help). (6)

Similarly, Ishtar's torture is also directly represented along with her resistance:

ISHTAR. .. .Your faces are white but you are drowned in darkness!

(THE AMERICAN hits and kicks her furiously till she bleeds from the

face)

ISHTAR. (She wipes the blood from her face and looks at him) I know

this land... I keep the history of every grain of its sands in my blood. I

can hear the blistering of the sands trying to revenge against you. Put

your hand on it and feel how it is boiling, angry, and longing to

swallow you.

THE AMERICAN. Not before swallowing you (He beats her and calls

her names). (9)

The torture of Tammuz and Ishtar clearly suggests the annihilation of Iraqi civilization and its history at the hands of the American invaders. If myth is perceived as 142

history, which is, as Dowden writes, "merely damaged and distorted by the passage of time", then the violence exerted against Tammuz and Ishtar is an attempt to exterminate

Iraqi history. Further, in Approaching the Ancient World: The Uses of Greek Mythology

(1992), Dowden argues that myth is also a national heritage (170). In this sense, Tammuz and Ishtar could be seen as the national heritage of Iraq; and, by showing them abused and humiliated, the playwright is certainly trying to indicate that the invasion has violated not only Iraqi bodies but even their national heritage. Also, the torture of gods like Ishtar and Tammuz demonstrates the savageness of the American military (not to mention the irony of torturing gods by humans). It seems that even gods, with their supernatural powers and sacredness, cannot defend themselves and the Iraqis against the barbarity of the Americans.

Irony is another interesting issue here. By humanizing the gods and immersing them in the real world of Iraq, the playwright creates genuine irony by making the gods mockingly collide with humans. The irony can be recognized in the second scene of Act

One when Ishtar is looking for Tammuz amid the rubble and smoke of the explosion, and in the first scene of Act two during the investigation of Tammuz. When Ishtar is trying to find Tammuz, she asks a wounded Iraqi about him and he replies: "Oh woman, we are in

June. Why are you asking about July while you're searching for someone who is lost"

(4). The irony occurs because Tammuz in Arabic means July and when asking an Iraqi about Tammuz, he thinks that she is asking about the month. Then Ishtar moves to a group of kids and asks them whether she is in Sumer, by which she means Iraq. The children are confused and Ishtar says "You don't know this word?! Don't you know your 143

history and roots? One of the children replies "Sumer...Yes, I remember... Sumer is a bad Iraqi cigarette" (4). Being unable to recognize Tammuz or Ishtar (who symbolize the ancient civilization of Iraq), the young Iraqis are portrayed as unaware of their roots and history (Ali para. 8). However, the wounded man's and children's answer to her question is based on their association with their own reality.

Another example of irony—when Tammuz is being investigated by an American officer who asks him where he lives, Tammuz replies "in heaven". The American officer laughs and ironically asks him again "So why have you come to earth?" Tammuz answers "This is our land" and the officer laughs and then says "So you don't want to leave us anything: Heaven, Earth and even the oil are all yours?" (Ishtar in Baghdad 6).

'Yours' here refers to all the Iraqis which functions here as an indirect indication of the

Americans' real cause in invading Iraq.

In Lust of the Ends torture is represented through a combination of mime, pantomimes, flamenco tempo, striptease and music. The torturers, who are here female soldiers, use realistic torture tools like electroshock weapons and whips. The tortured

Iraqis on stage are both: real human beings, and human puppets.

When the prisoners enter the stage and stand to the right and left of Selah, the female soldier kicks one of the detainees till he moves to the centre of the stage. Then striptease music is turned on and the female soldier begins to dance around the man in the centre stripping his clothes piece by piece. Another female soldier kicks a detainee and forces him to kneel down. Then she rides him like a bull using an electroshock stick to make him move till he is worn out and faints. Afterwards, the female soldiers make the 144

detainees lie on naked human dolls, aiming their electroshock weapons at the detainees' backsides demanding them to have sex with the puppets (Scene iii, 11).

While the focus in Palace of the End and Lust of the Ends is on the torture and abuse of male detainees, in Ishtar in Baghdad torture is equally shown to both genders.

Furthermore, whereas the tortured detainees in Lust of the Ends are depicted as waiting for their release to meet their families and start their lives again, the tortured in Ishtar in

Baghdad wish for death because of their shame and the loss of their honor resulting from torture, rape, sexual abuse, and humiliation. The women in Ishtar in Baghdad yearn for death because they cannot face the world knowing they have been raped by Americans.

In this sense, women are subjugated to the patriarchic cultural norms and to the violent consequences of the religious mentality:

FIRST WOMAN. (Scared) What if they don't kill us?

SECOND WOMAN. {Calmly) Of course we will kill ourselves.

FIRST WOMAN. What if they release us?

SECOND WOMAN. We also will kill ourselves.

FIRST WOMAN. (Screaming) But suicide is religiously forbidden!

SECOND WOMAN. (Calmly) And what about Zinal

FIRST WOMAN. (Screaming and crying) We did not do it, we did not

commit Zina...they did it to us...BASTARDS! MONSTERS! (10)

Nonetheless, in Palace of the End Thompson turns Lynndie England from a victimizer who horrendously abuses Iraqi detainees into a victim whose trailer trash background, naive patriotism, and bumpkinish ignorance make her a scapegoat and a 145

monster created by American society and militarism. By defending her against her male colleagues' exploitation in the prison, and by making her humorously reveal the visceral images of torture, Thompson in turn turns away from the horror of the violence committed against Iraqis. Here is a different story.

To sum up, the manipulation of language plays an influential role in mobilizing war and misleading public opinion to justify the violence of war against Iraq. It seems that a few Arab/Iraqi playwrights, in comparison to a huge number of poets, have responded to the politics of the war with works of art; their responses reflect various visions of the politics and premises of the war on Iraq. However, the British verbatim plays, like Justifying War and Stuff Happens, have deeply explored the politics of the war to showcase the problematic reality and spin created by the British and American governments to justify the war on Iraq.

The discourse of the war has simply been reversed in the Iraq drama which shows the American troops as the new barbarians since the invasion of Baghdad by Hulagu. As for the representation of Abu Ghraib torture, while Thompson capitalizes on the doer of violence as a victim of the American society and military pedagogy and thus decentralizes the shock of violence, Fadhil and al-Anbari, being part of the traumatized culture, dramatize, through diverse theatrical modes of representation and traumatic and romanticizing voice, the horror of torture and the barbarity of the American soldiers. 146

V. State Terrorism and Islamic Terrorism: Iraq Violence from the Ba'athists to the

Islamic Insurgents

V.l. A Brief Retrospection on the Ba'athist Violence: 9 Parts of Desire and Baghdadi

Bath

This chapter will serve as a penultimate stage of my discussion of the

representation of political violence in the Iraqi-Arabic and English language drama,

turning now to examine the issues of state terror and Islamic terror in seven

contemporary plays written about Iraq. The first section will review some scenes of

Ba'athist state terrorism, especially state violence against Communist women in Palace

of the End, 9 Parts of Desire, and Baghdadi Bath. The second section will analyze the

discourse of Islamic terrorism, the problematic of Jihad and resistance, and terrorist

violence targeting Iraqis working for the US in Princes of Hell, Betrayed, A Citizen,

and Artefacts.

From the 1963 coup d'etat to its overthrow in 2003, the Ba'athist regime proved

itself to be quite egregiously brutal towards its perceived opponents. Even women

could not escape the Ba'athist terror. Confronting these atrocities, playwrights resorted

early on to little more than graphic narration.

In 9 Parts of Desire (2006) Heather Raffo shows the brutality of the Ba'athist

regime through a monologue by an Iraqi Communist woman. In 9 Parts of Desire, a

play which shows the lives led of a painter, a communist, a doctor, an exile, and a

lover. Huda, a former Communist and a wife of a Party member, tells her story of how

she and other women were tortured and abused by the Ba'athists in 1963: The prison status was terrible we stayed lying on the floor only lying like sardines. We were naked.

I remember one woman she got her period.

You know what they do when a woman gets her period?

They hang her upside down naked her blood runs on her, for her whole cycle like that, upside down.

Anyway. That was that.

The fearsome thing was that every night at sort of two o'clock we heard the gates and chains opening and they'd call a list of women and they'd take them and they wouldn't come back.

We could hear things, all night, always rape, or rape with electronic instruments.

But their way, I promise you, their way was to torture the people close to you that is how they'd do it.

One woman I was with they brought her baby, three-months-old baby, outside the cell they put this woman's baby in a bag with starving cats they tape-recorded the sound of this and of her rape and they played it 148

for her husband in his cell.

That is how they do it. (52)

Ba'athist violence against women in 9 Parts of Desire and Palace of the End is more brutal and sadistic than the violence against women in Abu Ghraib, as depicted in

Ishtar in Baghdad. Raping women in front of their husbands and children, or torturing prisoners' relatives, including children, became primary investigation tactics used by the

Ba'athists.

In Judith Thompson's Palace of the End (2007), a similar story recurs where a former Communist is arrested, tortured and raped by the Ba'athists during the 1970s. The

Communist woman, Nehrjas, defends the Party in Iraq as being composed of intellectuals and peace-loving people, and argues that it should not be compared to that of Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot. For her, the Communist Party "was the only one that welcomed people of all religions and backgrounds...and fought to the death to free the people" (33). Though the picture portrayed by Nehrjas is to some extent biased, ignoring the previous violent incidents and oppressions committed by the Communists during Kasim's regime, the

Ba'athist regime remains the most brutal rule Iraq has even known.

The brutality of the Ba'athists against Communist women was carried out as part of a violent process to liquidate all political dissidents or rivals. During the 1970s, a secret police unit called Jihaz Hanin (instruments of yearning), founded and supervised by Saddam Hussein, was responsible for investigating and torturing political prisoners, principally Communists. Nehrjas tells how members of Jihaz Hanin were launching an arrest campaign against Iraqi Communists (or anyone who disagreed with the Ba'athist 149

regime), and how they were torturing them in a place called Qasr al-Nihayah (palace of the end) where prisoners were exposed to rape, beatings, breaking of bones, removal of nails etc. Nehrjas describes how she was raped and, with her sons, tortured:

They start by jumping on my feet. And hitting my son's nose with a

hammer. They hit him till he could not feel it. So he stopped crying out.

And then they stopped hitting him, because they knew it did not hurt him

anymore...Needless to say I was raped many times in front of my son.

They forced him to watch. But he did not see. His eyes looked into my

eyes only. So wise for fifteen. (36)

Nehrjas' second son was also captured, tortured and forced to watch his pregnant mother being raped. Unlike Huda in 9 Parts of Desire, Nehrjas' story of her rape and the torture of her sons is narrated heroically as if she is showing how brave she and her sons were by not surrendering to the cruelty of the Ba'athists.

Moreover, women, as in most of O'Casey's plays, are the victims in men's games of violence. The suffering of the three Iraqi women in the three plays (9 Parts of Desire,

Ishtar in Baghdad, and Palace of the End) is basically caused by men. Women in Ishtar in Baghdad are tortured and raped by Americans in pursuit of the so-called 'terrorists' who are either their husbands or their male relatives (brothers, sons or cousins). Further, in both Palace of the End and 9 Parts of Desire, women are arrested and tormented because of their husbands' affiliations, and because the regime is seeking their husbands.

Baghdadi Bath (2008) dramatizes state terrorism, also by means of narrative monologues. The play takes place in both the present where Americans are the 150

perpetrators, and in the past, where the Ba'athist regime was the perpetrator. It also shows in a dialectical relationship the stances of two brothers living in Iraq after the 2003 war: the older (Majid), a truck driver, is pro-American and the younger (Hamid), who works for his elder brother, is anti-American. The main action is set in two different locations: the first a public bath and the second the Iraq-Jordan border.

The present terror is revealed through the sounds of explosions, and the horror stories of those being beheaded or killed every day. It is also concretized when Majid and

Hamid are trying to deliver the dead body of a political candidate to his family in

Baghdad. They are terrorized and humiliated by the American soldiers:

MAJID. (to the American soldier) ...Please let me pass with this corpse to

Baghdad. I kiss your hand, your boot, the barrel of your gun. If you

want to search the body, go ahead. Search it any way you wish. Strip

him naked, strip him of his dignity. (121)

After a huge explosion, Majid is intimidated again by the American soldiers:

MAJID. There was an explosion ... I gathered up the pieces ... of the

corpse. I returned the head, the feet, and the hands to the coffin. I

drove the bus as fast as I could, hoping to get the body to the cemetery

in Baghdad where the family was waiting. Suddenly a chopper

descended near my bus, and I was ordered to get out. The soldiers

asked for my passport. They searched the bus and opened the coffin.

They looked at the corpse, disgusted, but they didn't ask me anything.

They told me to drive the bus and follow them. And I did, for four 151

hours, into the desert. I was frightened to death of them. I didn't know what they wanted or why they'd led me to this strange place. ...

Suddenly the soldiers all stopped, so I did, too. They took off, carrying their weapons towards some orchards off in the distance, deep in the desert, looking for armed men, and they forgot about me. I stayed in the bus with the rising stench of the corpse. ... The stench made me vomit. I could hear the howling of the dogs coming closer. I was alone with my agony, and at that moment I needed you. There was nothing else for me to do except to stay in the bus with the coffin, praying to all the saints in the desert. Would the dogs devour me and the corpse?

The only thing I could think of was to bury the corpse right there. I dug with my hands and fingernails. 1 dug and dug and dug. The rabid dogs came closer to the bus. I carried the pieces of the corpse out of the bus and threw them in the hole and covered them . . . covered them with dust. It was so vile and horrible. .. .For three days and three nights the tanks passed in front of me and circled around me . . . the helicopters were above my head. Soldiers passed in front of me without speaking . . . they wouldn't let me move. The dogs roamed all around the bus, in the bus, on top of the bus. Then the soldiers came running back . . . with their machine guns. They went inside the bus again and yelled, "Where's the dead man? What's his name? Where's his passport?" I didn't know what to do, Hamoud. I told them the truth. 152

They told me to dig him up. I dug and dug with my hands . . . with my

fingernails. I held up his feet . . . his head ... his hands. They started

to laugh. They aimed their guns at me . . . then they pushed me into the

grave and covered me with dust. And then . . . they disappeared. (122)

As for the Ba'athist state violence, it is exposed in a retrospective narration by the young brother, Hamid. In one of the debates between the two brothers, Majid accuses

Hamid of stealing his money when he was working as a driver of Majid's bus in 1998.

Trying to defend himself, Hamid tells Majid a story in which he explains why he did not return with money at that time. By signing a piece of a paper, in which he agreed not talk to anyone about the operation, Hamid made a deal with the Ba'athist police to transport

"convicted soldiers" from one prison to another in return for two million dinars. After driving for an hour on streets and alleys, Hamid was ordered to stop, the prisoners were forced to get out whereupon they were shot. After shooting all these soldiers, the

Ba'athist police began to carry their bloody bodies up to the bus forcing Hamid to help them. In the following days, similar operations were performed, but this time Hamid, in addition to being compelled to carry the bodies, was abused and humiliated by the

Ba'athist police:

They filled the bus with forty young men, all sentenced to death. On

the third day there were more, seventy condemned men. They even

asked me to put the corpses in bags, to carry the bodies up to the bus

on my shoulders, to smoke with them, and play cards, to tell them dirty

jokes. They forced me to get drunk. They wanted to humiliate me. 153

They put a machine gun in my hand and screamed, "Shoot, you son of

a . . . Shoot hard! Shoot up in the air!" They turned me into a mop they

used to clean up their crimes. I got sick. I puked blood. I lost my

appetite. I turned pale and thin. I beat my head against the prison

walls. I fell to the floor. I cried. They took me to a military hospital for

treatment. After a month the same officer came to see me. He

threatened to cut my tongue out if I said a word about what I'd seen.

"We've decided to accept your service with us as a gift," he said. "A

most valuable contribution to the nation. We're not going to give you

one dinar." (He puts his head in the pail and pukes. He screams. He

rushes toward the shower to wash himself. Majiid rushes after him.)

(117)

In fact, Hamid has been traumatized by this incident and the cruelty of his elder brother towards him. His story indicates that he, in addition to forcibly participating in the mass killing, was abused and humiliated by the torturers/killers. His guilt and traumatic memory make him psychologically unbalanced, especially when facing the present violent situation and the brutality of the American soldiers. When compared with the violence perpetuated by the Americans, the Ba'athist regime's violence seems, again, more vicious and horrendous.

But why were those soldiers callously executed? The "convicted soldiers" were executed because they were "traitors to the nation", a broad umbrella catch-phrase under which many innocents were imprisoned, tortured, and even executed. In Jamhuria al- 154

Khawf (Republic of Fear) (1991), Kanan Makiya states that the violent activities practiced in Iraqi institutions like rituals of investigation, torture, public executions, the public exhibition of bodies, were designed to raise and maintain fear. Such violence is justified in the name of the right of the State to wage a war against the enemies or traitors to the nation (127). "Disappearance" of the dissidents' bodies became an additional technique of state terrorism.

V.2.: The Problematic of Jihad/Resistance, and the Psychology and Discourse of Islamic

Terrorism in Iraq: Princes of Hell, Betrayed, Muwatn, and Artefacts

Even though the present study is not concerned with the investigation of the debatable issue of Jihad which would take much time and many pages, it is essential to briefly examine some of the most controversial issues. The very concept of Jihad is problematic since Muslims, throughout history, are divided among themselves on when and where Jihad becomes legitimate and obligatory. More significantly, Jihad is, as

Naunihal Singh puts it, "a concept with multiple meanings, used and abused throughout

Islamic history" (27).

To begin with, what is 'Jihad'? In the West, the word is by and large perceived as

"holy war," which is inaccurate because it presupposes military connotations even though its context, sometimes, does not necessitate a physical confrontation. In the Canadian

Oxford Dictionary (2004), Jihad is defined as "a holy war undertaken by Muslims for the propagation or defence of Islam" (25). In Arabic the word 'Jihad'' or the verb 'Ujahid\ depending on the context, can be variously interpreted as "to struggle" or "to strive," "to 155

exert an effort" or "to indulge in physical fight". So does Jihad imply fighting injustice and oppression? Is it spreading and defending Islam? By which means?

Preaching/teaching or armed struggle?

Generally speaking, two kinds of Jihad exist: the greater Jihad, a spiritual/inner struggle against one's evil desires, and the lesser Jihad, an armed confrontation against what are considered as the 'enemies of Islam'. However, the greater Jihad also involves the propagation of good and the prevention of evil which could be achieved in four ways: by the heart, the tongue, the hand, or the sword.

The main sources for the concept of Jihad are the Qur'an and the Sunnah.

However, Muslim, and even non-Muslim, scholars33 debate about the ayat (verses) and suras of Jihad. In the Quran, there are two different types of suras concerning Jihad: those, usually in the formative phase of Islam, which urge Muslims to carry out Jihad in the sense of armed struggle, and those which urge Muslims to use peaceful means such as dialogue and advice. So, those who believe in violent Jihad as the only effective means selectively quote only those ayat and suras which advocate the lesser Jihad, while those who believe in peaceful dialogue selectively cite only those ayat and suras which advocate non-violent means. The debate is complicated by the fact that some of the suras were revealed at Mecca, while others were revealed at Medina. It is claimed that the

Jihad-as-a-holy-war suras were revealed at Medina because Jihad was necessary to ensure the establishment of Islam in its formative stage. It is argued that Muhammad's first Jihad in Mecca had been by teaching and raising people's awareness about

Muslim scholars are generally divided into fundamentalist and non-fundamentalist scholars 156

ignorance, corruption, poverty, and, most importantly, polytheism. Then, after the migration to Medina, Muhammad and his followers started their armed struggle against many warring parties and tribes. So the question remains: is Jihad defensive or offensive?

Singh states that "defensive Jihad" "appeared in the earliest Quranic verses revealed shortly after the hijra to Medina when Muhammad and his followers knew they would be forced to fight for their lives" (32). "Fight in God's cause against those who wage wars against you, but do not overstep the limits: for God does not love those who overstep the limits" (2:193) But in Why Muslims Rebel (2003), Hafez notes that Jihad, for the Sunni fundamentalists, is "an aggressive doctrine, not a defensive concept", because the Sunni fundamentalists, especially Jihad and Jama'a groups, believe that

1. Jihad is an Islamic obligation against infidel regimes who do not rule

according to God's laws.

2. Jihad is necessary to counter foreign aggression and depose Jahili

rulers

3. Jihad is necessary to liberate the lands of Muslims in Palestine, Spain,

and the Balkans as well as to preach Islam to Kings and emperors

through the Qur'an and the sword. (179-180)

As for the difference between the Shiites and the Sunnis concerning the concept of Jihad,

Singh says both

see Jihad as a religious duty incumbent on individuals and the Islamic

community to defend life, land, or faith and to prevent invasion or

guarantee the freedom to spread faith. However, they differ with regard to 157

who can declare a Jihad. For Sunnis, the Caliph, with the support of the

ulema (religious scholars), had the religious and political authority to

declare a Jihad. Shii view its power as having been unjustly taken from the

true successors to Muhammad, the Imams. .. .in the absence of their Imam,

only a defensive Jihad was considered permissible. (41)

Nonetheless, the difference mentioned above is overly simplistic because the concept of

Jihad in the Shiite doctrine is rather complicated in the modern era especially with the escalation of violence by such Shiite revolutionaries as Khomeini and Hassan Nasr Allah, and with the emergence of revolutionary Shiite figures like Ali Shariati.

And the offensive Jihad, which allows for war to be waged against a non-Islamic country to establish the supremacy of Islam and to destroy the power of infidelity, is advocated by such Sunni fundamentalist scholars as Sayyed Qutb and Bin Laden who back up their claims by selectively citing, for example, the verses below:

"Fight those of the People of the Book who do not truly believe in God

and the Last Day, who do not forbid what God and His Messenger have

forbidden, who do not obey the rule of justice, until they pay the tax and

agree to submit." (9:21)

"Fight them on until there is no more persecution, and worship is devoted

to God. If they cease hostilities, there can be no [further] hostility, except

towards aggressors" (2:194). 158

All of which adds up to a recognition that the issue of what might be called 'Islamic terror' is painfully tortuous subject and that its representation in drama is likely to be highly contentious.

Princes of Hell

Al-Rubai's Princes of Hell—a play about Jihad—was first produced in Auckland,

New Zealand in 2006. Directed by Farouk Sabri, an Iraqi director living in New Zealand, the play was produced in Arabic to address the Arab community in that country. The play is a monodrama which explores recent Islamic terrorism in Iraq after the 2003 war. It discloses the reality behind the mobilization for Jihad, and reveals the kind of discourse that is propagated by the so-called al-Umara or the 'Princes'. Clearly enough, the title of the play is ironically used here to suggest that those 'princes', who are claimed to be princes that guide people to Heaven through Jihad, are in fact princes of 'al-Jaheem' or

Hell. The play implies that through their manipulative and ideological brainwashing and hypnotization of others, they lead people to destruction and self-annihilation, and the annihilation of other innocent civilians.

The play dramatizes the process whereby people become terrorists. It shows how the 'prince' fosters make-believe by deploying certain discursive practices which in turn produce a brainwashed mentality and a revengeful person who is ready to commit suicide construed as martyrdom and the rightful path to Paradise. In order to mobilize terrorists to their suicide missions, the Prince, Abu Dulama, has to adopt certain strategies whereby he moralizes and thus justifies the use of violence. To do so, he follows effective narratives, rituals, and tactical discourse. 159

In Suicide Bombers in Iraq (2007), Hafez observes:

Insurgents deploy ideology, religion, and cultural identities in three ways.

First, religion and cultural identities serve as tool kits from which

organizers of collective action strategically select texts, narratives,

traditions, symbols, myths, and rituals to imbue risky activism and

extreme violence with morality. (118)

The ideological entextualization of particular narratives and discourses, and the strategic use of certain linguistic choices create a new discourse whose aim is to galvanize support by engendering a new reality that could motivate the use of violence. More importantly, in the play the ethification of violence is demonstrated through: (1) the use of such linguistic categorization as "crusaders", "infidels" "sinful" etc which are tactically utilized to demonize the target enemy; (2) the "sexing up" of the enemy's upcoming threat, (3) the manipulative depiction of the necessary evil as a greater good; and (4) the heroic and tempting rhetoric used to envisage the idea of Jihad and Martyrdom, and its reward.

In fact, Abu Dulama uses many strategies to justify violence in the name of Jihad.

First, before he mobilizes the other characters to carry out suicide attacks, he reminds them of their dark and 'sinful' past, and of how his Jihadist group, helped sinful and needy persons and welcomed them. For instance, Abu Dulama reminds Qutada of his miserable and criminal history. Qutada, with help of his adulterous wife who had connections with Saddam's high government officials, got a job in the Ba'athist intelligence institute. His tasks were to monitor and report on the activities of Abu 160

Dulama's fellows and also, as an intelligent agent, to report on anyone who might be suspiciously acting against the government. Later, one of Abu Dulama's people tells him that his wife was betraying him with her cousin, a VIP in Saddam's regime.

Consequently, he kills his wife and becomes a fugitive. After the fall of the regime,

Qutada became a wanted man by families whose relatives had been killed by the regime because of his reports.

Abu Dulama also brings up another character's corrupt history:

ABU DULAMA. (Moving towards Hassan Zada) And you, Hassan Zada,

weren't you undergoing a psychological crisis because of your drug

addiction and your need to trade drugs in Karbala? Till we captured

you in the act.

HASSAN ZADA. (Kneeling down) Have mercy on me! Let me live! I am

ready to be your servant! Take all my possessions just let me live even

for one day! Please, I beg you! .. .Don't hand me in to the police!

ABU DULAMA. We had mercy on you, and you became our brother, and

we helped you in your dilemma. You were on the brink of Hell but we

lured you to join our organization, and you have become an active

member in our organization. (3-4)

The aim here is to play on the character's weakness, shame or guilt, and thus make him ready to embark on any mission that could relieve his agony.

Interestingly, the recalling of the characters' history and how they have become terrorists takes us back again to Soans' Talking to Terrorists. In Talking to Terrorists the 161

five characters, because of powerful oppression, became members of terrorist groups to reclaims rights and freedoms. The characters in Princes of Hell, on the other hand, have turned into terrorists mainly because of their inescapable 'shameful' pasts.

In "Islamikaze and their Significance", R. Israeli claims that suicide bombers share three common aspects:

1. They are young and therefore have few life responsibilities: career,

business, family, material possessions;

2. Many of them were not particularly successful in their lives: in study,

work or interpersonal relations, or they have been relatively shunned

by their families/friends/environment to the point of feeling isolated;

3. They are usually characterised by poor self-esteem. (106)

Though the first and third aspects are not very applicable in the play, the second one can be seen in most of the characters. For example, in addition to Qutada and Hassan,

Mansur, an expelled university student, was sheltered by the Jihadist group because he was lost and jobless after his failure in the university. Despair seems one of the most observable factors that motivate terrorists in the play to commit suicide missions in order to stop pain, hopelessness, and helplessness.

In "Psychological Aspects of Suicide Terrorism," Ariel Merari highlights the significance of indoctrination as an effective way to strengthen motivation:

Throughout the preparation for a suicide mission, the candidates are

subjected to indoctrination by authoritative members of the group.

Although the candidates are presumably convinced from start of the 162

justification of the cause for which they are willing to die, the

indoctrination is intended to further strengthen their motivation and to

keep it from dwindling. (110)

In the play, the process of indoctrination and hypnotization starts when Abu Dulama addresses the candidates with passionate heroic and religious rhetoric, while distributing explosive belts to them:

ABU DULAMA. ...Oh heroes! Offer your bodies as sacrifices to

Paradise. We've got you explosive belts (he distributes the belts)

Wear them on your pure bodies (They are terrified). What's wrong

with you? These are ropes to salvation from Hell...Wear them

well...There, in Heaven, when you fly like birds (sounds of crows)

you will find everything you desire...You will fly high in Heaven to

be next to the virtuous apostles ...wear your belts well (silence)...It

seems you are tired...Take a sip of this sacred liquid (he passes them

a narcotic substance. After a short time, they start feeling relaxed

and become obedient to his orders as if they were hypnotized and

then they begin to wear the belts...) (5)

The effects of indoctrination and hypnotization can be seen when Ayad, hearing about the first suicide bombing of a Shiite mosque, declares:

Allah is the greatest! Allah is the greatest! He hit the right target and went

quickly to Paradise to have his breakfast with Allah's Prophet (peace be

upon him). He left after he punished the infidels ...He got the honor of 163

martyrdom. Now he is spirit like the virtuous angels' breaths, and I will

follow him, I will follow him with no delay because the table is waiting

for me with all its joys and delicacies. ...I will turn into spirit surrounded

by angels ... (1)

The play implicitly shows that violence, particularly in the form of suicide attacks, is directed towards the Shiites. The language of the terrorists represents the

Salafis'34 modern ideology, al-Qaeda's theological foundation, which incorporates hatred towards the Shiites. For them, the Shiites are treasonous and sinful: they claim that the

Shiites were the ones who helped Hulagu to occupy Baghdad and have now collaborated with the Americans and their allies to occupy Iraq. Also, they consider the Shiites sinful because, among other accusations, they insult the honor of Aisha, Mohammad's wife. As a matter of fact, the tension between the two sects, the Shiites and the Sunnis, is quite problematic and deeply rooted; each one of them, giving proofs from the Quran and the Sunnah, claims to be in the right and accuses the other party of being wrong. Besides, since the Shiites, the majority of the population, have been oppressed throughout the history of Iraq at the hands of Sunni regimes, they might well find it their right to collaborate with external powers to overthrow their oppressors. Yet, not all the Shiites have collaborated with the Americans; except for the Badr Brigade whose base was in

Iran, the Shiites' strongest armed militia led by Muqtada al-Sadr is considered the fiercest

Salafis refers to those Sunni Muslims who see themselves as the true adherents or followers of 'forefathers of Islam'. The term is often used to describe fundamentalist Islamic thought propagated by such scholars as Mohamed bin Abd al-Wahab and Ibn Taymiyyah.

Pi The issue was discussed m chapter IV. 164

militia that has been fighting the Americans in Iraq until the present time. However, both militias, Sunni and Shiite, have committed crimes against civilians.

One of the glimpses that indicate violence targeting the Shiites is the reference to

"Wadi al-Salam" cemetery in Najaf, the Shiite holy city where one of the assembled workers narrates the story of how his family could not bury the bodies of his cousins because of the terrorists who control the highway to Najaf.

The Prince continues to argue for Jihad in an attempt to marshal them for the attacks against the Shiites:

ABU DULAMA. ...Our sacred duty is calling on us, and Paradise is

waiting for us. Thus, we have to do something for this land which is

dishonored by the occupier, and the people who have gone far away from

religion and became fully indulged in debauchery. And, anyone who keeps

silent is infidel, and every infidel should go to Hell. Killing infidels is

Jihad. So get them! Show no pity and no mercy...Destroy them

completely...show no mercy to any child or an old man or even to an oil

pipe!! Turn their day into darkness, horror and fear ...behead them like

sheep with no mercy just like the way your prince did it {proudly showing

them with a movement) Shed their blood....rape their women with no

mercy just like the way your prince did {showing them a movement) cut

their breasts which are filled with dirty milk.... (2)

Abu Dulama then approaches Ayad to do the pre-Jihad ritual. Ayad is a former army officer in the previous regime who is now desperate because, as in the case of Qutada, the 165

families of his executed victims are after him. Abu Dulama tries to hypnotize him, rounding off his ritual with the injunction "kill an infidel, and you will go to Paradise without judgment" (3).

In the play, although the rationale for Jihad is not presented, the reader can detect that it is Jihad against what they call "infidels", "crusaders", and against the Freedom

Monument36. Of interest, the infidels here are not really the Americans but rather the

Shiites. The Freedom Monument is, for the Jihadists, a profane imitation of Allah's creatures.

Though the play effectively presents a clear denunciation of terrorism and violence targeting civilians, its style, despite the use of Brechtian masks cannot escape its own narrative structure which overshadows the theatrical aspects, making it ultimately stereotypical.

Betrayed: Violence Targeting Iraqis Working for the US

George Packer's Betrayed had its world premiere at Culture Project in New

York, on February 4, 2008. Based on interviews which Packer, a writer for the New

Yorker, conducted with a group of Iraqis working with the US in Baghdad in 2007, the play is another verbatim drama which explores, as Packer states, "how the Americans and

Iraqis saw one another", the kind of relationship between them during the war, and the

"ability or inability of individuals to transcend their 'official' roles and maintain a human pulse" (introduction ix-x). Yet, what the writer has discovered is that there "was far too

Freedom Monument is defined in chapter three. 166

much mutual need and mutual suspicion, expectation and ignorance, simple affection and simple hatred, desperation and pain..." (x).

Betrayed, as the title suggests, refers to the betrayal by the American government of those ambitious Iraqis who worked with them m Iraq while embracing the hope of rebuilding a new democratic country by bridging the gap between the occupier and the occupied: when left on their own by the US, they were threatened or killed by insurgents, and their voices were ignored by US officials. However, Packer's key message, which is clearly spelt out m his introduction to the play, is highly questionable, especially the claim that Iraqis were working with the Amencans ''for their country". In the period following the 2003 invasion, most Iraqis who were working for the Americans did so because it was a job and they needed money. It had nothing to do with hopes being pinned on the Amencans to rebuild Iraq and bring about change. After the invasion of

Iraq, most young and even old Iraqis were unemployed. They were ready to work at any job that could give them money to survive.37

In the play, it is quite obvious that Laith, Adnan, and Intisar work for the

Americans because they need a job not because they think they are helping their country.

LAITH You know, when the Americans came to Baghdad this hotel

wasn't empty and dark like now. Every Iraqi who wanted a job was

I am an example I was one of hundreds in Baghdad and in Basra who were waiting in long lineups and queues and under the hot Sun at the gates of the presidential palaces where the British and Americans resided We were desperate for any job—cleaning, translating, anything Fortunately, I managed to work sporadically with the foreign media that were visiting Iraq during and after the invasion Yet, I could not escape the threat from the religious militia there So, I fled to Syria where I stayed for almost six months before moving to Canada 167

here. Journalists were here, soldiers were here, everyone mixing

freely. (10)

ADNAN. After university I couldn't get a job, I was selling cigarettes,

selling spare parts, selling books on Mutanabi Street. But there was

always, always this sound in the back of my head: the time will come,

the time will come. My time will come. It is not my destiny to live and

die in Iraq like this. And when 2003 came, I couldn't believe how right

I was. (11)

INTISAR. ...Lately, my family is begging me to stop. But this is our only

salary since my father died, and it is for my career. (42)

The main issue here is violence against Iraqis who work for the US. The violence is justified, of course, by the belief that those who work for the 'occupiers' help them stay and exploit the Muslims in their own land. The play asks about the nature of the jobs of

Adnan, Laith, and Intisar? Is it only to translate or interpret? Or, are they, as stated by the

Ambassador in the play, "the eyes and the ears of the embassy"? (54). In addition to the insurgents' interpretation, the stereotypical understanding of working for the Americans arouses suspicion, even though one's work has nothing to do with 'spy' activities. Those people know they are risking their lives but they continue to work for the embassy. They jeopardize their lives because of a need for money, not because of idealistic principles.

Violence against the people is perpetuated mainly by the Mahdi militia and Sunni insurgents. The violence used by both militias is justified by the argument that they consider the Americans presence an occupation. Working for the occupation forces is 168

'harram' or religiously forbidden. The punishment for such an act is usually death. Laith and Adnan receive a threatening phone call: "I'm watching you right now. You're wearing a striped shirt. You and your fat friend are agents and spies of the slaves of the cross. This is your second warning"(45). Intisar, on the other hand, we learn "was picked up on her way home last night... .They drove her around Mansour and they shaved off her hair and then they shot her and dumped her on the street" (53).

But not all Shiites believe in the use of violence. For example, Ayat Allah Ali

Sistani has a fatwa regarding those who work with the occupation forces. In an interview with Sheikh Mohamed Falak, the spokesman of Sistani in Basra, he declares that "it is not permissible to work for the occupation except when one works with them on behalf of the Iraqis who are building Iraq's infrastructure. It is never permissible to work for the occupation in their military pursuits and operations or for military purposes" (Falak).

Moreover, when asked about the issue of using armed resistance against the occupation, the main spokesman of Sistani, Hamid al-Khafaf, says "the religious marjiaiya calls for adopting peaceful means to quickly regain the sovereignty to Iraq and to the Iraqis, in order to enable them to rule their country with no foreign intervention" (al-Khafaf 179).

Indeed, Iraqi dramatists and theatre directors and actors are also split on this.

While some (e.g. Sabah al-Anbari and Abbas abdul al-Ghani) show in their plays that it is an illegitimate and malicious occupation, some Iraqi playwrights do not see the

Americans as occupiers. Interviewing two well-known actors and directors (Eqbal

Na'eem and Haythem Abdul Razaq), they say: 169

"I don't see the American presence as an occupation or as colonization;

the Arabs and particularly the Iraqis have been internally occupied and

colonized by themselves. Saddam's regime colonized us for decades."

Eqbal Na 'eem

"I don't believe in so-called 'resistance' because it is not pure...What we

need now is not an armed resistance but a resistance against the ills of our

society and its rooted violence." Haythem abdul Razaq

Betrayed also reveals how sectarian violence dominates life in Iraq. It shows how

Baghdad has become a dangerous arena divided between the religious militias (Sunni and

Mahdi Army) where one could be killed or kidnapped because of his/her name or family religious background. When Ahmed, Adnan's younger brother, is kidnapped by the militia, Adnan calls the kidnappers to negotiate with them about his release:

ADNAN. Alio? Ahmed? Alio?

A stranger answers him in a chilling calm voice-over, in Arabic: No, this

isn't Ahmed. ADNAN looks at the display to see if it's Ahmed's number

calling and then continues in Arabic, his voice filling with terror as the

situation becomes clear.

ADNAN. Who are you? Where is Ahmed?

Voice-over. Ahmed is here. I'm looking at him.

ADNAN. Who are you?

Voice-over. He is tied up and he can't speak.

ADNAN. Are you joking? 170

Voice-over. No. I'm not joking.

ADNAN. I want to hear his voice, just let me hear his voice.

Voice-over. How do you want us to kill him? Shall we cut him into pieces

and feed him to the dogs?

ADNAN. No, no! Please don't hurt him, he's still a boy. Just tell me, tell

me what you want.

Voice-over. Are you Sunni or Shia?

ADNAN. Me? My family? We are—we are Shia.

Voice-over: Rejectionist infidels! You all deserve to die. Say goodbye to

Ahmed.

There is a click

ADNAN. No! Please! Alio! Alio!

Frantically ADNAN tries the number over and over and over—no luck.

The phone rings again.

ADNAN. Sunni! We are Sunni! Don't hurt my brother. I told you Shia

because I thought you were Mahdi Army. We are Sunnis. I can prove it.

Let me prove it. (71-72)

On the other hand, playwrights like Mike Bartlett accentuate the idea of fighting terror by a heroic refusal to surrender to the terrorists' demands. In Artefacts, Bartlett envisages an idealistic, but contradictory, picture of the father character whose daughter is kidnapped by terrorists, and who has to sell an ancient Mesopotamian vase, which can symbolize the Iraqi civilization and heritage, to pay the ransom. The father struggles with 171

whether to sell the vase and surrender to the demands of the kidnappers or to challenge them by not paying and thus losing his daughter:

IBRAHIM. ...Every time that things have changed it is through someone

saying no. If ten families in a row do not pay, they will stop.

KELLY. If.

IBRAHIM. And this will be difficult for you, but listen. Listen and think.

Sometimes if something is right we have to be ready to die. We have

to be ready to sacrifice our sons and our daughters for what we

believe.

KELLY. This sounds like a terrorist. (45)

This idealistic portrayal of the father is, in fact, contradicted because in the beginning of the play we learn he stole the vase from the museum to give it as a gift to his other daughter who lives in England. The play ends with the idealistic message that one should not surrender to terrorists but should rather say no to defeat them. Both daughters, the rescued daughter and the one who lives in England, have a conversation while looking at the vase in the British Museum in London:

RAYA. It was the wrong decision.

KELLY. To get you back?

RAYA. To pay them. They did not deserve it.

KELLY. What do you mean?

RAYA. It is not important I am alive.

KELLY. You think? 172

RAYA. Many of my friends have lost their brothers and sisters. We have

grown up with our country at war, and we have been poor and we had

nothing. It is all falling apart. But we all have to take the responsibility

for what we have done. Other children were killed because you made

him sell the vase. (61)

Unlike the father of Raya, the father figure in Kasim Matrood's Muwatn (A

Citizen) is caught in the dilemma of killing his boy or being killed by the terrorists. In an absurdist setting with no reference to a specific time or place, the playwright reveals the father's predicament:

There is an iron cage in the middle of the stage in which a nice little ten-

year old boy sits. He is busy playing with a toy in his hand. Beside the

cage, a man sits on an old chair or a tin holding his head between his

hands. Echoing sounds come from outside the theatre and they seem to be

mixed sounds coming from the depth of the sky or the earth.

The sounds: Kill him! Stab him! Slaughter him! Blow him up! (1)

Terrorism in the play is portrayed as an old phenomenon practiced with various tools throughout human history: knife, sword, drill, and bomb. The existential predicament of the father echoes the story of Ibrahim, commanded by God to sacrifice his son as a test of his faith. Such a situation indicates the severity and absurdity of the father's dilemma.

The father always asks the terrorists how he can use the tool to kill his son, and the teiTorist tells him how and the father replies, "It's difficult", then the terrorist 173

disappears with the coming of a group of wailing victims who repeatedly show the cruelty of their sufferings at the hands of the terrorists. But for them, even prayers are no longer useful. The play ends with various weapons descending from the above, while a spotlight is shed on the cage where the child plays with a toy.

The kind of violence revealed in the play is quite traumatic, especially when the group describes violence exerted on them by terrorists. Their voices and even that of their father are wailing voices that may succeed in stirring up the emotions of the audience through melodramatic exhibition of their calamity. 174

VI. Some Conclusions

The history of Iraq, especially since the establishment of the modern nation in 1920, has been a conspicuously violent one. The yoking together of Sunni, Shia and Kurds under an imported monarchy was a recipe for civil conflict, as was the corruption, authoritarianism and British backing of the monarchy itself. A succession of revolutions and coups d'etat, each bloodier than the last, culminated in the ruthless dictatorship of

Saddam Hussein, ushering in brutal repression, torture, a devastating war with Iran, the invasion of Kuwait, Saddam's overthrow in the invasion of 2003, and the carnage and destruction that has followed. Given such a history, it is not surprising that Iraqi playwrights would find themselves drawn to reflect the trauma of these decades in their plays. While the culminating focus has been on drama since 2003, the study has sought to situate the contemporary output in a tradition of Iraqi drama going back nearly a century.

It has also endeavored to locate the perspectives and dramatic strategies adopted by Iraqi playwrights within the larger frame of modern political drama generally, in Arabic and

English, and especially in contrast to the body of recent English-language drama addressing the same post-2003 events.

The questions pursued by this study have been: how, and how effectively, have generations of Iraqi playwrights tackled this material? From what perspectives, and with what dramatic strategies and modes of representation, have they managed to put it on stage for Iraqi audiences? And how adequately have they done so, in terms both of political insight and analysis, and of artistic achievement? Taking into account the formidable obstacles to any kind of dramatic expression in Iraq in recent decades, and the 175

cultural and aesthetic biases operating to shape the drama in certain limiting ways, the provisional verdict must be a qualified one.

In modern Iraqi drama (1920-2003), as in the Arab drama generally, the early plays, influenced by the principles of al-Nahda al-Arabia, and prompted by rage at foreign occupations and poor social conditions under the monarchy, were nationahstically orientated and took an anti-monarchy stance. Islamic history, appropriating stories about

Islamic chivalry and heroism, and classical plays that call for resistance and fighting unjust regimes, have formed the main source for early 20l1 century Iraqi plays. Political violence depicted in the early plays was meant to provoke resistance violence against the occupiers, raise young people's political awareness, and strengthen the Nationalistic sentiments. Among those plays was Fatih Amoria where political violence (the violence of war) is represented on stage to highlight the nationalist history and bravery of Arabs.

Several Iraqi plays of the 1940s and 1950s represented the real start of a mature political theatre in which the impact of socialism and Marxist literature was conspicuous.

Obviously, the true pioneers of the Iraqi theatre were mostly leftist and Marxists. The type of political violence portrayed in the 40s and 50s plays was essentially revolutionary, as it tried to incite its audience to stand up against the cruelty and corruption of the monarchy.

Since 1958 (Kasim's revolution and the overthrow of the monarchy), Iraqi theatre, due to political and economical upheavals and conflicts, has been geared to represent the ideological and violent struggle between Nationalists and Communists. Most of the plays 176

written during the 1960s and 1970s tackled revolutionary violence indirectly through symbolism, folklore, mythology, and history to evade being violently silenced by the

Ba'athist regime. For example, in Tantal (1966), Salim, utilizing popular folkloric and mythical figure of Tantal, envisages revolutionary action through the protagonist's confrontation with this mythical figure, who stands for outside tyranny and oppression and who, at the same time, represents the inner fear of the oppressed people.

During Saddam's time and with the dictatorial censorship of the State on artistic productions, theatre deteriorated to agit-prop or commercial comedies, with a few serious productions for playwrights to tackle or depict revolutionary violence through indirect methods or dramatic contexts such as the use of Western classic drama (e.g.

Shakespeare's Macbeth or King Lear), stories from Arabic tradition, and highly suggestive treatments of reality during the war with Iran as in Hathayan al-Thakira al-

Mur. Even though those playwrights used to hide their critique of the State and its cruelty against its own citizens through suggestion, symbolism and allusions, some of them were arrested and investigated, and even imprisoned. This indicates that the State was fully aware of the danger of theatre in provoking the people and raising their awareness.

Since 2003 a considerable number of plays have been either produced or written in various parts of the world, basically in Iraq, the UK and US (the major countries involved), as a response to the 2003 war and its consequences in Iraq. In the US and the

UK, while certain plays are written by playwrights like David Hare and Gregory Burke, others were written by what is called "embedded reporters" or have been adapted from classical and Shakespearean drama to evoke, if only by implication, the issue of the Iraq 177

invasion. Though the dominating form of the plays, especially the British, seemed to utilize techniques from verbatim, documentary and tribunal theatre, a certain number of playwrights have tried other forms, settings, and techniques to respond to the Iraq invasion. In general, it seems that the English language plays about the Iraq war can be divided into five main categories:

1. Plays that deal with the politics of the invasion. They are usually written (except

for Tim Robbins' Embedded (2004) as a satirical cartoonish depiction of the

politicians and Iraq invasion), in a verbatim, tribunal or documentary style.

Among the best examples are David Hare's Stuff Happens and Norton Taylor's

Justifying War. These plays "were designed as interventions into the political

ethos of invasion" (Gupta 109).

2. Plays which deal with the front-line/home experiences usually written by

"embedded reporters" such as The Pull of Negative Gravity (2004), Live from

the Front (2005), or by playwrights such as Simon Stephens' Motortown (2006)

and Gregory Burke's Black Watch (2007). Various dramatic styles are used in

these plays from monologues and flashbacks to songs and theatrical dances.

3. Plays that were adapted from a different era (classical or Shakespearean) and

made relevant to the issue of the Iraq invasion. Among such are the productions

of Henry V directed by Nicholas Hytner in 2003, and Antigone directed by

Lorraine Pintal in 2004.

38 Not included in this study

39 In post-war Iraq, a few attempts of adapting Western classic works can be noticed Among these attempts are Husan al-Dam (Horse of Blood), which is adapted from Macbeth, and Nisa Lorca (Women of Lorca) which is a reworking of Lorca's House of Bernardo Alba 178

4. Plays that portray violence targeting Iraqis: terrorist (sectarian) violence

(George Packer's Betrayed, Mike Bartlett's Artefacts), and violence exerted by

the Americans (e.g. Jonathan Holmes' Fallujah, and Judith Thompson's Palace

of the End, which deals with the issue of Abu Ghraib torture). Except for

Artefacts which is written in a realistically narrative way with the reiterative

symbolism of the 'vase', the dramatic styles of Betrayed, Palace of the End, and

Fallujah are based heavily on verbatim and documentary techniques and

multimedia devices.

5. Plays that explore the issue of responsibility and relationship between the

American and British soldiers/personnel and the Iraqis (e.g. Teevan Colin's

How Many Miles to Basra? and Betrayed).

Most of these plays are written as verbatim drama where the playwrights dramatize collected interviews and/or politicians' and stakeholders' public speeches using multimedia devices. These plays can be seen as 'blips in that broader public theatre' which, hinging on the mediatized and the virtual, show the social reality of the

Iraq invasion and highlight "that perception of the public theatricality"; therefore, these plays could be considered as "part and parcel of the establishment strategy for managing public belief and disbelief that is conducted continuously in courtrooms and parliaments and press conferences and so on" (Gupta 117).

On the other hand, a few attempts by non-Iraqi Arab playwrights have responded to the invasion by adapting works of classical mythology as Mohamed al-Kaghat's

Asateer Muasera (Contemporary Mythologies), Abbas al-Hayek's Mashahid min al- 179

Jinoon al-Akheer (Scenes from the Last Madness), or by reworking classical drama as in the Egyptian production of Aristophanes' Lysistrata, entitled Nisa al-Salam (Women of

Peace). For their part, Iraqi playwrights, being part of the invaded (traumatized) culture, have explored the issue of the invasion through several dramatic vehicles. But the general tone of these plays has generally been limited to a somewhat cliched reworking of the traumatic material. In studying the Iraqi plays, one may notice the following:

1. Some plays depict the Iraq invasion as similar to Hulagu's barbaric invasion

of Baghdad in 1258. The invasion of Hulagu becomes a motif throughout

these plays such as Lust of the Ends, Barbed Wires, Ishtar in Baghdad, and

even in 9 Parts of Desire which is written by Iraqi-American Heather Raffo.

Portrayed as a new barbarism, indoctrinated and earned out by forces in the

West, the image of the 'barbarian' in the plays can be regarded as a counter-

discourse to the American discourse of the 'War on Terror' where the

invasion is made to be seen as part of the war between 'civilization and

barbarism'. Hence, since each discourse attributes the image of barbarian to

the enemy, the so-called 'War on Terror' could be perceived as a war between

barbarians, or a clash of barbarians. Some of these playwrights like Sabah al-

Anbari and Rasha Fadhil utilize a variety of techniques and settings (such as

Brechtian techniques and an amalgamation of realism and mythology).

2. Like the motif of Hulagu, the torture in Abu Ghraib becomes a recurrent

picture throughout many Iraqi plays as in Ishtar in Baghdad, Lust of the Ends,

and even in the more recent production of Matrood's It is just Waste in Mosul 180

in 2007. Unlike the treatment of Abu Ghraib in the Canadian play Palace of

the End where the playwright highlights Lynndie's victimization by American

military indoctrination, the Iraqi plays show, for instance through mythology

and Brechtian techniques, a demonizing picture of the Americans' actions and

the victimization/humiliation of the Iraqis at the hands of their torturers.

3. A certain number of plays dramatize the issue of terrorism either by merely

depicting terrorist violence targeting civilians and the Iraqis' sufferings

because of that violence (e.g. Intensive Care Unit, Curfew) , or by exploring

the discourse of terrorism and the personality of the suicide terrorist (e.g.

Princes of Hell). Yet, there is an exceptional example, A Citizen, which,

through the individual dilemma of a father who is forced to kill either himself

or his child, investigates terrorism and its history in a far-fetched

absurdist/symbolic setting. Furthermore, the representation of the problematic

of Jihad and resistance is completely absent in the Iraqi and English language

drama about Iraq. The treatment of the topic of terrorism and resistance tends

to be narrow and shallow, and the effect of the media is quite perceptible. In

their depiction of Islamic terror, both English language and Iraqi-Arabic

playwrights originally depend either on the discourse of certain partial media

reports (as in Princes of Hell) or on Iraqis working for the US in envisaging

Islamic terror in Iraq. Such a depiction is problematical because it draws on

prejudiced sources which demonize every act of armed violence as terrorist 181

and thus devalues any type of legitimate armed resistance against the

occupiers.

4. The use of cliched realism, stereotypical and bromide discourse in

dramatizing the destruction of the American invasion as in Abbas Abdul al-

Ghani's Aswar Sha'eqa (Barbed Wires) and Remote Control, and the impact

of terrorism in Kassim Matrood's Rimah al-Fajee'a (Shafts of Bereavement).

5. Plays that connect Saddam's cruel regime with the violence of today such as

Baghdadi Bath and 9 Parts of Desire (Iraqi-American)

6. In spite of the public discontent, anger, and suspicion about the successive

governments which came after the fall of Saddam, it is hard to find plays that

deal with revolutionary violence or even offer any glimpse of revolution.

Also, there is no trace of the issue of resistance in the Iraqi plays. Though the

war on Iraq is considered an invasion/occupation and thus resistance becomes

an essential issue, Iraqi playwrights remain silent regarding this issue. It

seems that most of these playwrights are either afraid of being targeted as

advocating violence, or they have no belief in the current armed resistance.

Also, they might avoid reference to the issue of resistance because, unlike the

British verbatim playwrights, they do not believe in employing direct political

discourse in drama.

7. Within these plays, the focus is on Baghdad, ignoring the problems and

violence in the north and south of Iraq. Their depiction of Baghdad in relation

to the so-called Abbasid 'golden age' and glory is also somewhat distorting 182

because the majority, the Shiites, in addition to the Christian community, look

at Baghdad differently; what is seen as a golden age in the eye of the Sunni

scholars and people, is regarded an oppressive regime of usurpers who stole

by force the rule from the Shiite Imams and oppressed the Shiites throughout

history. Espousing this position, the plays must appeal more to audiences

outside Iraq simply because the majority of Muslims in the Arab world are

Sunnis. The difference between the Shiite and Sunni views of history can also

be seen in their different interpretations of the epoch of Islamic conquest,

where the Shiites see the attacks as illegitimate while the majority of Sunnis

see those wars as legitimately undertaken to spread Islam and the word of

Allah.

8. The use by certain playwrights of the Freedom Monument as a symbol of

freedom is imprecise since the generally associated meaning of the Monument

does not evoke any thoughts about freedom; although it artistically links

Kasim's revolution in 1958 with the glory of the ancient history of Iraq, it was

established in 1962, with the coming of the Ba'athists, and thus its associated

meaning became one of the empty slogans propagated during Saddam's

regime. Since, and even before, 1962 Iraqis have never experienced true

democracy or freedom, so it is hard to see how the Monument has become a

symbol of freedom for the Iraqis.

9. Whereas Iraqi playwrights could be considered, to reverse Patterson's

dichotomy, as "reflectionists", English language playwrights could be seen as 183

"interventionists" Though verbatim and documentary dramatists copy the

exact words to be as authentic as possible, they can be regarded as

interventionist, because they make use of the mediatized and the virtual to

challenge the propagated view of the invasion On the other hand, although

Iraqi plays seem lnterventiomstic, especially with the employment of a variety

of theatrical and dramatic strategies such as Brechtian techniques, mythology

and symbolism, Iraqi playwrights could be seen as "reflectiomsts", since they

are satisfied with merely depicting what is already known and shown via the

media without offering new perspectives or challenging an accepted opinion

While verbatim plays could sometimes engage the audience's mind in

thinking about the situation, most Iraqi plays tend to involve the audience

empathetically For playwrights and audiences having little experience of

drama that incites dialectical debate, there is an inability or reluctance to

address, for example, the question of the responsibility of Iraqis themselves

for some of the violence and misery

10 Disappointingly, characters in most Iraqi plays tend to be divided into good

and evil with no dramatic complexity or depth m characterization and m plot

In Ishtar in Baghdad, Remote Control, and Lust of the Ends, Americans are

shallowly depicted as evil, while Iraqis are portrayed as innocent victims who

are always good Among the few exceptions are A Strange Bird on our Roof

by Abdul Razaq al-Rubai, and Baghdadi Bath by Jawad al-Assadi In these

plays the playwrights do not represent characters in terms of rigid 184

connotations of black and white; rather, while al-Assadi shows a complicated

picture of two Iraqi brothers undergoing a haphazard situation, al-Rubai

reveals the other side of the American soldier, the humanistic aspect of his

personality which is highlighted when a soldier actively sympathizes with an

Iraqi family and tries to help.

This is not meant to condemn the work of Iraqi playwrights, but we would be wrong to ignore the limitations of the work they have been able to do. In fact, Iraqi drama has not dealt satisfactorily yet with political violence of the last ten years. Unlike Iraqi drama, British theatre has a long history of sophisticated political drama; active and critical political drama has been an indispensable part of the British intellectual life.

Complicated analysis and theatrical techniques in modem British drama generate political debate in an attempt to influence people's opinions. On the other hand, such a tradition of intellectual and critical political drama is almost absent in modern Iraqi theatre.

Moreover, addressing directly sensitive political issues is still dangerous in Iraq. Thus, while the British playwrights have the luxury of freedom in exploring openly any issues

(political or otherwise), Iraqi playwrights do not have such a luxury simply because they have been restrained by the perilous conditions of their contexts. To sum up, although

Iraqi playwrights should be applauded for working and producing in such an unsafe atmosphere, their drama is not mature yet; it is still developing.

Furthermore, in both Iraqi-Arabic and English language plays, the representation of violence is, to use Noda's label, "mimetic" as they try to "contextualize violence that exists outside theatre" to affect to an extent our ethical judgments. While dramatizing 185

violence for the Arab audience could provoke indignation or identification with the victims, depicting violence committed against Iraqis in the English language plays could serve as condemnation or identification of the violence agents, create sympathy in the audience, or could function as authentic vehicles to show the audience the reality of the war on terror

Moreover, Iraqi plays do not show any depiction of violence committed against black Iraqis, Christian Iraqis (except for Princes of Hell where the playwright refers very bnefly to violence targeting the so-called 'crusaders'), homosexuals (who have suffered sadistically at the hands of the religious militia in Iraq), former Ba'athists, women , and translators or Iraqis working for the US and their allies

Also, the majority of plays written about the Ba'athist state terror, especially

Ba'athist violence against women, are usually written by women after the 2003 invasion

Yet, what is missing in the post-invasion drama is the Ba'athist violence that targeted religious ayatollahs (such as the assassination of Mohamed Baqr al-Sadr, Mohamed Sadq al-Sadr, Ah Ghurawi, Murtada al-Brujardi, and others), Shnte Dawa Party members,

Kurds and common Shnte people whose bodies are still being discovered in various mass graveyards throughout Iraq Also, narration of violence seems the dominating style m all of the plays examined where the playwrights appear to find it difficult or problematic to dramatize violence

Except for Jawad al Asadi's Nisa a a!- Harb (Women in War) which I have not included it in this study because I could not find the text or the performance, most contemporary Iraqi drama do not explore violence against women in today's society The only reference to the violation of women can be seen in the plays written by English language dramatists that show violence against Communist women during Saddam's regime 186

In conclusion, it can be said that English language and Arabic-Iraqi drama have so far succeeded only to a limited extent in presenting an accurate and comprehensive representation of the political violence in Iraq. Perhaps it is an impossible task, but through either negligence or ignorance most playwrights show the occupation as the only cause for Iraqis' political violence. Perhaps it is the influence of the media as the main source for their plays or some collective feeling of guilt, but the deep connections to history are not being made. It is only by reaching for this deeper level of theatre that dramatic truth—or truth itself—will ever be reached. To date, that level has not been made manifest. 187

Appendix A: Summary Overview of Modern Iraq History

Historically, violence in the region in which modern Iraq was created dates back to the very beginning of the formation of Mesopotamia. In Tarikh al-Unf al-Damawi fi al-Iraq (History of Bloody Violence in Iraq), Baker Yasin, describing in detail the bloody events that took place in the region from 3000 BC to 1970 AD, maintains not only that the history of Iraq from ancient times until now is full of bloody events, increasing injustice and excessive cruelty, but also that those violent events and historical happenings are clearly characterized by exaggeration and fanaticism (19). Trying to account for the instability in the character of modern Iraqi society, Yasin argues that there are eight factors that are reflected in and have affected that society:

1. The phenomenon of unsteadiness and violence in the Iraqi frame of mind;

2. The recurring manifestations of one-creed dictatorship in Iraq;

3. The emergence of lynching, mutilation, and the severe abuse of enemies;

4. The numerous Iraqi rulers who were killed throughout Iraqi history;

5. The oppression of thinkers and religious leaders;

6. The disappearance and rapid demise of Iraqi cities;

7. The destruction of historical relics, and the cultural and artistic heritage in

Iraq;

8. Perpetual sadness in the Iraqi society. (327) 188

A number of violent episodes should be briefly mentioned here in order for the conception of political violence in drama to be contextualized :

1. 1920: uprisings erupted against the British occupation in Iraq;

2. 1936: a military rebellion led by Gen. Bakr Sudki ousted the regime of Yasin al-

Hashimi;

3. 1937: Bakr Sudki was assassinated by nationalist officers in the army;

4. 1939: King Ghazi was killed by an arranged car accident and Nuri Said (the Prime

Minister) was accused.

5. 1941: a military revolution, (Revolution of May), led by a nationalist officer

named Salah al-Din al-Sabagh, overthrew Taha al-Hashimi's regime. The new

military regime then engaged in war with the British army in Iraq, which ended

with the defeat of the Iraqi army. After the defeat, chaos and looting spread in

Iraq and violence, especially against Jews, was common. The officers of the

revolution were captured and executed, except for al-Kilani who escaped to Saudi

Arabia, and Prince Abdul Ellah returned to the throne with the help of the British

army;

6. 1948: hundreds of Iraqi demonstrators gathered at the old bridge in Rasafa

Baghdad to protest against the Treaty of Portsmouth (an agreement between

Britain and Iraq by which Britain agreed to withdraw its forces from the two air

bases of Iraq but retained the right to send its armed forces in case of need). The

41 In summarizing these violent happenings, I have drawn on Bakir Yasin's Tarikh al-Unf al-Damawi fi al- Iraq and Kanan Makia's Jamhuria al-Khawf (The Republic of Fear) Manshorat al-Jamal Beirut (2009) 189

police and army savagely crushed the protestors and caused what is called now as

'the massacre of 1948';

7. The last months of 1948: many Communist members were hunted down,

investigated, tortured and imprisoned, and their leaders were executed because of

their activities and plots to overthrow the government;

8. July 14, 1958: led by Gen Abdul Kareem Kasim and Abdul Salam Arif, a number

of military battalions surrounded the royal palace (Rihab Palace), where King

Faisal II and his relatives were living, and forced the royal family to surrender.

But when the royal family walked out of the palace carrying white banners and

Qurans above their heads, they were shot by the army. The body of the Prince was

snatched by the mob, dragged through the streets, then hanged in front of the

Ministry of Defence, while the body of the King was secretly buried. Afterwards,

the Prime Minister, Nuri Said, was found trying to escape the country. He was

killed and his body was mutilated by the Iraqi mob. In the end Kasim became the

new president of the Republic of Iraq.

9. 1959: a group of nationalist officers in Mosul led an uprising against Kasim's

regime but Kasim, with the help of the Communists, crushed the uprising and

liquidated many opponents. In the same year, the Communist Kurds committed a

massacre against the Turkmens in Kirkuk and Kasim started a campaign to arrest

the Communist Party members. In 1960, Kasim banned the Communist Party

until the end of his regime;

10. 1961: led by Kasim, the Iraqi army attacked the Kurds in the mountains; 190

11. Feb 1963: Kasim's regime was overthrown by the Ba'athists. He was executed

and his body thrown in the Tigris River. During this year, the Ba'athists continued

arresting and liquidating the Communists. However, the conflict among the

Ba'athists continued as well;

12. July 1963: the Ba'athists launched their operations to hunt down the Communists.

They executed their leaders and tortured and imprisoned the others;

13. July 17, 1968: the Ba'athists overthrew the regime of Abdul Salam Arif. On July

30, Ahmed Hassan al-Bakir was declared the President of the Republic of Iraq,

and Saddam Hussein became responsible for internal security;

14. 1969: the Ba'athists started the war on the Kurds. Also, they began to arrest the

Communist Party members on charges of treason;

15. 1977: thousands of Shiites demonstrated during the Ashura commemoration in

Karbala but the police arrested around 2000, executed 8 religious clergymen and

displaced a huge number of them to Iran;

16. 1979: several members in the Ba'ath party were executed, and Saddam Hussein

became the president of Iraq.

17. 1980: Ayatollah Mohamed Baqr al-Sadr—a Shiite revolutionary figure—was

executed. Iraq-Iran war broke out.

18. 1988: war between Iraq and Iran came to an end. Saddam's regime attacked the

Kurds using chemical weapons in an operation called "al-Anfal"; enormous

human casualties were reported especially in Halabja

19. 1990: Iraq invaded and occupied Kuwait 191

20. 1991: A UN-authorized coalition force led by the US forced the Iraqi troops to

withdraw from Kuwait. In Feb. 1991, a massive Shiite uprising broke out but

Saddam's regime succeeded to crush it by an extreme force.

21. 1998: A revolutionary grand ayatollah Mohamed Baqr al-Sadr was assassinated

by Saddam's regime.

22. 2003: A united coalition force led by the US invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam's

regime. In June, the Mahdi Army was created by Muqtada al-Sadr. Later,

ayatollah Mohamed Baqr al-Hakim, the guru of Shitte resistance, was

assassinated in Najaf.

23. 2004: Images of torture at Abu Ghraib were released

24. 2006: al-Askari Shiite shrine in Samarra was bombed by insurgents, which

enflamed sectarian violence in the country. 192

Appendix B: Questionnaire Forms and Responses

Questionnaire Form in English

Question Options Yes No Others Notes What are the 1. War sources/reasons of political 2. Terrorist Attacks violence in contemporary 3. Torture Iraqi theatre? 4. Organized Crime

What is the mode of 1. Realism representation of political 2. Fantasy violence in contemporary 3. Mythology Iraqi drama? 4. Symbolism 5. Epic 6. Documentary What kind of effect/impact 1. Catharsis does political violence in 2. Acceptance contemporary Iraqi plays 3. Protest have on the audience?

Other Comments:

Name: Position: Signature: Date: 193

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N.B. 1 have translated the following plays:

1. Sabah al-Anbari's Lust of the Ends

2. Rasha Fadhil's Ishtar in Baghdad

3. Kasim Matrood's A Citizen and It's Just Waste

4. Abdul Razaq al-Rubai's Princes of Hell

5. Shakir Khasbak's The Thing

6. Yusuf al-Ani's/'m Your Mother, Shakir 11.

8. Alfred Farag's Revolution of Stones

9. Salah A. al-Sabur's The Tragedy ofal-Hallaj

10. Saddallah Wannus' Rape, and The Elephant, King of All Times

12. Abbas abdul al-Ghani's Remote Control