by Ayad Akhtar
NICK: She did—
BASHIR: She keeps it together this time. I have to say, I was impressed. She’s really a bit of a bird, in’t she? Cute kid, too. His hair all messed up, snot coming out his nose…
Beat.
NICK: I didn’t do anything. I didn’t do anything to you! It wasn’t even supposed to be me in that goddamn car. You thought it was my boss. It wasn’t. You don’t want me.
BASHIR: A bit of bad luck—and not just yours, to be honest…
Beat.
Bashir turns to Dar.
BASHIR (CONT’D): (In Punjabi) Bastard!
Bashir grabs Dar by the arm. And pulls him to his feet. Dragging him to the door…
Dar turns for a last lingering look at Nick before Bashir shoves him out. Bashir follows.
Alone, Nick gets up. Pacing.
When he sees something on the ground.
Reaches down and picks it up.
The nail cutter.
Nick holds it in his fingers.
Lights Out.
Act One: Scene Two
Three days later. The same room. The cot is further stage left than it was in the last scene.
Nick and Bashir. Nick is handcuffed.
Intermittently—through this scene and others—we will hear a recurring distant mechanical buzz. Very faint. Coming in and out.
(The noise will not be referred to—or explained—until Scene Five, by which point the audience should have become acclimated to it, unaware… )
There is an iPhone before Nick. Playing. We hear a woman’s voice. The video Nick’s wife has made to plead for his life:
VIDEO: Nick is a good man. He cares about others. He volunteers on the weekends at a soup kitchen, feeding the poor. He has a young son, Kaden, who adores him. Please let my husband go. I’ve learned that Islam is about mercy and forgiveness—
Bashir grabs the iPhone. Stops the video.
BASHIR: Then she goes on and on about Islam, like she’s got a fucking clue.
Silence.
NICK: So they were negotiating?
BASHIR: They were.
(Beat)
No longer.
NICK: I told you it was too much. You didn’t believe—
BASHIR: That’s not it.
NICK: I don’t know how many times I’ve told you—
BASHIR: Would you just shut it for a change?
(Beat)
Imam Saleem got put on some list. Last week. Your State Department. The bank can’t negotiate. She can’t negotiate. It’s against your laws.
NICK: List?
BASHIR: Of terrorist groups.
(Bashir snickers)
Imam Saleem’s not a terrorist. Fucking irony? The Taliban? They don’t like us any more than they like you.
NICK: Right.
BASHIR: Imam Saleem’s a visionary. He’s doing what you people always promise but never do. He took over the orange groves to the river. Put people to work. Running the schools, the hospital in these parts. Money for everything’s gotta come from somewhere. You’ve been robbing us blind for sixty years. We’re just taking back what’s ours.
NICK: I haven’t been robbing you—
BASHIR (Over): The fuck you haven’t. You know what was in the paper the other day? Your bank made four billion dollars in three months. Where d’you think all that money came from?
NICK: That has nothing to do with me.
BASHIR: The fuck it doesn’t. Let me get this right. You work for the big man, Carey Martin, but—
NICK (Coming in): He’s not the big man.
BASHIR: Ask him for the money yourself? Least he can do—for taking his place.
NICK: I doubt he’s got ten million dollars lying around—and even if he did—
BASHIR: If he’s got bugger all, why’s he in the paper all the time?
NICK: He’s in the Pakistani papers. Not any others. Nobody knows who he is outside Pakistan.
He’s just a banker.
BASHIR: And Daniel Pearl was just a journalist.
Beat.
NICK: Cutting off my head is not going to accomplish anything.
BASHIR: See, it’s not us’d be cutting it off. We don’t go in for that sort of thing. That’s why we’d be giving you to Lashkar.
(Off a thought, wryly)
Always wondered about it, though. What’s the part of you that—I mean your head’s rolling around on the ground, thinking…—but what’s happening to the other part of you? What would it be like being in both places at the same time?
(Beat)
If you find out, will you tell me?
Long pause.
NICK: We can work something out.
BASHIR: Like what?
NICK: I’ve already told you. I can come up with two and a half, maybe three…
BASHIR: Your ransom’s not three. It’s ten.
NICK: That’s insane! For God’s sake, three million you can get is better than ten you can’t.
BASHIR: I’m actually not sure it is. To be honest. Lashkar’s been breathing down our necks. Coming in across the river. Shaking us down for cash. Who knows? Maybe we tell ’em you’re a Jew, and you buy us some real peace for once.
NICK: But I’m not Jewish.
BASHIR: They’re idiots. They won’t know the difference.
NICK: I’m not circumcised.
BASHIR: Isn’t anything can’t be taken care of.
Pause.
NICK: God. Bashir. Don’t be stupid.
BASHIR: Excuse me?
NICK: You’ve got something of value. Don’t piss it away.
BASHIR: You got some fucking nerve, don’t you?
(Approaching)
You’re the one’s yapping that you’re not worth sod all—
NICK (Coming in): That’s right. To them. To my company. Not worth a penny. Not now. Not after you people kidnapped me. In fact? To them? I’m actually a liability.
But that doesn’t mean…
BASHIR: What?
NICK: That I’m not still worth something… to you. Just because you can’t get what you want one way doesn’t mean you can’t get it another.
Beat.
BASHIR: I’m listening.
NICK: Just a month ago, I had a meeting with emerging markets at UBS.
BASHIR: What’s that?
NICK: Union Bank of Switzerland.
BASHIR: Right.
NICK: Their operation is ten times bigger here in Pakistan than Citibank. I was actually in talks to leave Citibank and go to UBS. They were going to pay me a lot more money.
BASHIR: How much?
NICK: Seven figures.
BASHIR: For what? Showing greedy Pakistanis like Bilal Ansoor how to squeeze every drop of wealth out of their own people?
NICK: For my understanding of the marketplace. The market climate here in Pakistan…—Hell, Carey Martin is an idiot. I’ve been doing his job for three years. I’m worth a lot more to you alive than dead.
Beat.
BASHIR: How d’you figure?
NICK: I—uh—engineered a trade… that cleared the Gaznoor Group twenty million dollars.
BASHIR: The Gaznoors.
NICK: Yes.
BASHIR: You mean the Gaznoor family? Richest family in Punjab?
NICK: Gaznoor Group is their holding company.
Beat.
BASHIR: How’d you make ’em twenty million?
NICK: Trading wheat.
BASHIR: Wheat.
NICK: Yep.
BASHIR: You’re talking about the food shortage.
NICK: No. This was the spring before.
BASHIR: That’s when the food shortage actually began. Not this spring. Last spring. People buying and selling, fucking up the wheat supply.
NICK: You want to talk about how I made the Gaznoors twenty million dollars or not?
Beat. Bashir finally nods.
NICK (CONT’D): I recognized a systemic difference in the prices of wheat in Faisalabad and Multan. It was pretty drastic. And it
had nothing to do with agriculture. It was just an abnormality in the distribution. Once I understood it, I was able to take advantage.
BASHIR: How?
NICK: By creating an instrument that made it easier for people in Multan to buy wheat in Faisalabad.
BASHIR: An instrument?
NICK: A future.
BASHIR: Future. Cor blimey. Heard of that.
Pause.
NICK: Where are you from?
BASHIR: What does that have to do with anything?
NICK: Your accent.
BASHIR: You know you’ve tried that before…
That shit’s not gonna work on me. I know all about that stupid class they give you when you come work in Pakistan: Make friends with your captor, get him to see you’re a human being.
NICK: I wasn’t trying to make—
BASHIR: You really think I’m an idiot, don’t you?
NICK: I don’t think you’re—
BASHIR: I’m not an idiot. And you best not be insulting my intelligence like that.
For your information…
I aced my GCSEs.
NICK: What’s a GCSE?
BASHIR: You’re not so clever after all, are you, Mr. Bright? GCSE’s your final exam in school. You know about Hounslow?
NICK: I don’t.
BASHIR: Well, you’re an ignorant fucker, then, aren’t you?
(Beat)
You ever take the Tube from Heathrow Airport?
NICK: Yes.
BASHIR: You went right by my house. Had a view of the tracks from my bedroom. If I’d known you were passing by, I would have thrown something at your train, you fuck. See, I don’t like you. I’ll never like you. You’re a heartless greedy bastard. And I think the likes a you are better off dead. You got that?
NICK: I got it.
BASHIR: So what the fuck is a future?
NICK: It’s a contract to buy something. Or sell something. In the future. If sugar is cheap right now because of overproduction in Brazil or something, you can say, I’d like to keep buying a month from now, six months from now, at today’s price.
(Off Bashir’s interest)
If you do, if you lock in that price, you’ve bought a future. If the price of sugar goes back up, then it’s worth something. You can sell it to make money.
BASHIR: What if the price goes down?
NICK: You can make money a different way if that happens.
BASHIR: You can?
NICK: Absolutely.
Pause.
BASHIR: Wheat.
NICK: Potatoes.
BASHIR: Right.
NICK: There are opportunities.
BASHIR: Twenty million.
NICK: Give or take.
BASHIR: A way for people in the south to buy from the north.
(Beat)
In the future.
NICK: And then we sat back and watched the money roll in.
Bashir nods.
With a thought.
Lights Out.
Act One: Scene Three
Two days later. The same room.
Nick and Bashir. And:
IMAM SALEEM. In a white shawl and shalwar. Regal. With charisma to burn.
He is articulate but speaks with a pronounced Pakistani accent.
IMAM SALEEM: When I started out in the world as a young man, it was as a journalist. Writing for the newspaper in Bahawalpur. South of Lahore.
NICK: Bahawalpur Times?
IMAM SALEEM: You know it?
NICK: I do. I’ve spent some time there.
IMAM SALEEM: That was home. Where I was raised. Where my family is from. I knew the place. I knew the people. I wrote local news. Stories I hoped would make some difference.
A village’s entire year’s wheat crop lost in a fire. A new technique for digging wells that made it easier for farmers to irrigate their fields…
I wrote a lot about farmers…
A child born to a sharecropper’s family who had a remarkable ability in maths. Truly remarkable. That article was a success. Someone with the power to do something read it. That young boy got a scholarship to go to study in London.
NICK: Was that Bashir?
BASHIR: I told you I was born in London. Not Bahawalpur.
IMAM SALEEM: It was not Bashir. Though it could have been. He’s like a son to me now. A very brilliant young man. Despite the occasional lapse. Your kidnapping, for example.
NICK: Right.
IMAM SALEEM: The one thing I couldn’t write about, the one thing that really mattered, was corruption.
(Beat)
There is a road from eastern Bahawalpur to some of the outlying villages. A road that some fifty, a hundred thousand people depend on. Unusable.
Pockmarked with potholes the size of a city bus.
NICK: Nangni Road.
IMAM SALEEM: Right. Every year in local council Nangni Road was at the top of the list. Every year it was brought up in Parliament. Every year it was voted on, approved, paid for. For ten years. But the road has never been fixed.
(Beat)
I wrote the article. Told the story of where that money might have been going. My editor killed it. Of course, I was fired. Lectured about how I should know better. Two days later, my father was coming home from work. Three men ambushed him. They were riding motorcycles. They beat him to the ground with chains. My father was left on the side of the road. They told him: “Tell your son not to worry about Nangni Road. It’s fine just the way it is.”
NICK: Jesus.
IMAM SALEEM: For three days, he survived. Long enough to berate me for my foolishness.
(Pause)
You see, we are prisoners of a corrupt country that is our own making. But don’t pretend you don’t participate. You do. Of course you do. That’s your job. That was Mr. Carey Martin’s job. To grease the wheels, to rape and plunder our nation.
(Off Nick’s silence)
I commend you for not objecting, Mr. Bright. One of the many things I never seemed to have learned: that the key to success in life is keeping one’s true thoughts to oneself.
(Pause)
It was a very long path from that young man whose father was killed because of him to the person you see before you today. A long journey, but a straight one. A clean line. A clean line of outrage.
(Pause)
Are you following me, Mr. Bright?
NICK: I believe so.
IMAM SALEEM: What am I telling you?
NICK: That you kidnapped me… so you can fix roads.
Pause.
IMAM SALEEM (Wry): Exactly.
(Beat)
When Bashir came to me with your idea, I was skeptical. But he made a passionate case. We have a growing annual budget. If he had a deeper understanding of the financial side of things, that would be very helpful, indeed. So…
If I am inclined to take you up on the offer, Mr. Bright, it will be as much for the sake of his education as for the prospect of the full ransom being paid.
NICK: Well, you’ll have to reduce your expectations on the ransom, sir. Three million I can get. I can turn it into five. Feel confident about that. Ten? That’s not going to be likely.
BASHIR: But that’s what you said.
NICK: That’s not exactly what I said.
BASHIR: It bloody well is!
NICK: I didn’t—
BASHIR (Cutting him off, angry): You said you made the Gaznoors twenty million. You could do the same for us.
NICK: I wasn’t locked up, being held in some room.
BASHIR: Fucking hell…
IMAM SALEEM (In Punjabi): Bashir. Calm down.
(To Nick, in English)
You don’t have to humor him, Mr. Bright.
Beat.
NICK (To Imam Saleem): You have to give me a realistic goal. Or I won’t be effective. Give me something I can really work toward.
BASHIR: Fucking hell…
IMAM SALEEM (To Bashir, in Punjabi): Calm down.
(Beat)
You are right. This is what I propose: mercy.
NICK: Excuse me?
IMAM SALEEM: You work to make your full ransom. If you are diligent, well behaved, but haven’t made the full ten million in one year’s time, we revisit the terms of your captivity.
NICK: Well that’s not—
IMAM SALEEM: Mr. Bright. Enjoy the mercy I am showing you.