Gruesome Playground Injuries; Animals Out of Paper; Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo

by Rajiv Joseph

  See? I can still do what I want. I can do whatever ... whatever I want and no faggot-ass tiger is gonna ... is gonna ...

  Yeah.

  Kev dies, and crumples in a heap on the bed.

  Tiger goes to Kev, looks him over.

  TIGER: (realizing) Shit.

  I bite off the one kid’s hand. And then I drive this one to suicide.

  Tiger shakes his head. Looks at the topiary head and then starts to walk out, defeated.

  TIGER: (to audience) I am digging myself into one hell of a fucking hole.

  Tiger exits.

  Scene 6.

  Musa sits at a table in his home. He looks exhausted and depressed. He holds the gold gun and stares at it, toying with it, sometimes aiming it, sometimes stroking it.

  The front door opens. Uday Hussein enters carrying the severed head of his brother, Qusay. Uday is riddled with bullet holes. Otherwise, he seems fine.

  Uday is joyously psychotic. He is delighted by just about everything. However, he should never laugh maniacally.

  UDAY: Knock! Knock!

  Musa looks up, but does not respond.

  UDAY: I said, Knock! Knock! You are to answer “Who is there?”

  Beat. Uday speaks sometimes to the head of his brother, sometimes to Musa.

  UDAY: He’s no fun today! You’re no fun today!

  (beat) Fine, I will say! “Who is there?”

  “Knock! Knock!”

  “Who is there?”

  “Uday and Qusay!”

  “Uday and Qusay who?”

  Uday walks up to the table where Musa sits, puts his hands on the table, and bends down so he is nose to nose with Musa.

  UDAY: Uday and Qusay Hussein, motherfucker!

  (beat) Look Qusay! It is Mansour. My trusted gardener. But he is not keeping the land any longer.

  He has a gun! Qusay, he has a gun!

  Uday looks at the gun more carefully.

  UDAY: Well, what is this? Qusay! This is my gun! It is my gold-plated semiautomatic pistol. Crafted in Riyadh! Qusay, isn’t that remarkable?

  Uday puts Qusay’s face to his ear, as if Qusay were whispering to him.

  UDAY: Qusay says you are a cockroach piece of mothershit worth zero weight in gold. Qusay, his English is not as good as my own. But I like this, I like this piece of mothershit, because that is what you are, you piece of mothershit peasant.

  Musa points the gun in Uday’s face.

  UDAY: It is not polite, when you have guests, to shove a gun in their face. I imagine you know this, and so the sting is all the worse. I do not like rudeness.

  MUSA: Allahu Akbar.

  UDAY: (with fury) Shut up!

  Uday walks around the table, behind Musa, and sticks the gun to the back of Musa’s head.

  UDAY: How does this feel? How does it feel to have this beautiful weapon pressed against your worthless skull? Qusay! Should I shoot this peasant?

  Qusay nods.

  UDAY: (loud, joyous, about to shoot) Fine! Thank you for claiming my gun!

  Thank you!

  Thank you!

  Thank you!

  MUSA: (Arabic) No please! Don’t kill me! Please don’t kill me! Please!

  La’ reja’en! Le tuktulnee! Reja’en le tuktulnee! Reja’en!

  Uday takes the gun away from Musa’s head.

  UDAY: (cheerful) Okay okay okay okay okay.

  Uday walks around, suddenly in a very reflective mood.

  UDAY: I went looking for my brother after they killed me. All I found was his head. How do you like that?

  Poor Qusay. I wonder if he’s walking around with my head.

  That would be funny.

  I find all this very funny, Mansour. Funny, funny, funny.

  Uday pulls up a chair and sits at the table, across from Musa. He smokes and kicks up his feet on the table.

  UDAY: (truly aggrieved) But people don’t like me. They say I am a bad man. Evil. A torturer. They say I tortured people.

  (beat) Of course I fucking tortured people.

  When you have people who have wronged you, who have attempted to kill you or your father or your brother, or you have people who look lasciviously upon your wife or your sisters or your girlfriend, and these men have felt it in their hearts that they would kill you and would wipe everything that has become you off the face of the earth, let me tell you, my friend, you would torture them.

  Uday speaks with great relish, as if it were a great joke, or as if describing a delicious and wonderful recipe.

  UDAY: You would ...

  Tie them up ... and you would beat the soles of their feet with wet bamboo until they couldn’t walk. And then you’d watch them stumble around the room, trying to walk on the bloody soles of their stupid feet.

  And then you’d laugh and break their ribs.

  And you’d pull out their teeth and their toenails and then watch them try to run away again.

  This is better than any movie you’ve ever seen!

  And then once they have tired of this, and they have given themselves up to you, ready for death, then you deny them this death and you bring in their women. And you have your way with them. Because to watch your wife get fucked by a man who is about to kill you, well, that is a piece-of-shit day you are having, my friend. And that is why you don’t ever fuck with Uday Hussein!

  Uday leans forward, looking at Musa intently.

  UDAY: Knock! Knock! Anyone home? I just told a funny joke and you don’t laugh and you don’t speak to me and you are very rude, Mansour. Very rude.

  Uday kicks back again, soliloquizing.

  UDAY: But, yeah man, I am dead. I got about twenty-six bullets from here to here on me.

  The Americans got me.

  Me and Qusay. And then what do they do? These U.S. Fucking Troops? What do they do? They come into my home and they steal everything I have, like common little thieves. Like piranhas.

  I had piranhas. I would know.

  And it is these hungry, greedy little Americans, who you work for. You work for them to kill us. To steal our oil. To fuck us in the ass, Mansour.

  MUSA: No.

  UDAY: No?

  MUSA : I do not work for the Americans.

  UDAY: You can lie to me, Mansour, but you cannot expect me to lap up your shit like the dogs you work for. You, Mansour: a traitor in everyone’s midst. Watch your step. One false move and kaput.

  MUSA: I am a different person now.

  UDAY: No, piece of mothershit. You are the same. And you are lying to everyone who wants to trust you. You steal from the Americans and you steal from me. And you lie, Mansour.

  You lie to me.

  MUSA: I do not lie.

  UDAY: You lie! Why do you lie to me!?

  You are thinking you can slip one past me?

  Who am I?

  MUSA: You are dead.

  UDAY: Yes! I am dead! And yet, here I am . . . roaming around Baghdad. Uday Hussein will not go away, Mansour. He is not so simply shot down by a bunch of teenage Ronald McDonalds who think they are the hot shit of 2003. Americans! Always thinking that when things die, they go away.

  Uday smokes and offers a cigar to Musa.

  UDAY: Smoke?

  MUSA: No thank you.

  UDAY: It’s a Cuban!

  (re: the good cigar) Cubans.

  Fuck me, man. Fuck me in the ass.

  Breathe it in. Even a dead man loves a Cuban.

  (beat) I’m doing good things here, Mansour. My pure existence causes destruction.

  Everything going down in the streets? The war still being fought? What they call the insurrection?

  I am the insurrection, Mansour. It is me.

  (beat) You’re not impressed? Oh, what’s wrong, Mansour? Are you still mad about that little thing between us?

  Musa doesn’t answer.

  UDAY: I bet you are. I bet you are angry with Uday. But you work for me, and so I have rights, and your little sister . . .

  Little Hadia . . . she works for me too.

>   Musa, breathing heavily, suddenly screams, jumps to his feet, kicking the table, and finally collapses on the floor.

  UDAY: Okay, good. Yeah, crybaby. You can go and cry like a baby.

  MUSA: What do you want.

  UDAY: What do I want? What do I want?

  But that is not the question, Mansour. The question is what do you want? You find yourself in a fucked-up situation all of a sudden, my friend.

  Uday holds the gold gun out in front of them.

  UDAY: This gun was a gift to me from a Saudi sheikh, I can’t even remember his name.

  They’re all faggots, the Saudis. You know?

  He gave me this thing and, man, it was the best thing I ever got in my life.

  That’s when I started having everything turned into gold. All my guns, kitchenware, tools, my bedposts, my toothbrush, even the toilet, sahib. Shitting on gold, man! That is the king’s way, I am telling you!

  MUSA: (quietly) King Midas.

  UDAY: What?

  MUSA: (quietly) Nothing.

  UDAY: What did you say? (beat)

  You said “King Midas” is that what you said?

  (beat) And then you say, never mind, because me, Uday Hussein, doesn’t know who King Midas is? Because me, Uday Hussein, educated in Switzerland, doesn’t know about Greek mythology, but you, little peasant from Baghdad, is knowing more than me?

  Uday grabs Musa by the hair, pulling his head back.

  UDAY: The Midas touch! You think I am like Midas? No no, my man, I am better than him, because I don’t need magical powers, because I don’t need them. And then if I had them, how would I be able to do this?

  Uday grabs Musa by the hair and slams his face into the desk. Musa falls to the ground.

  UDAY: And this!

  Uday kicks Musa in the stomach and then spits on him.

  UDAY: You think I want to transform shit like you into gold? Is that what you think, Mansour?

  MUSA: . . . No . . .

  UDAY: No! Absolutely right. No.

  Uday picks up the gold gun.

  UDAY: You take this back, Mansour. And you know those stupid kid Americans who stole it, they are criminals, just like everyone else. They want it back, but now you have it. So you know what you have now? You have some leverage!

  Musa looks at the gun and then back at Uday.

  MUSA : I won’t do anything for you.

  UDAY: Oh but it’s not for me, Mansour. I’m here, but I don’t need anything. I have you. I have Qusay’s head, I have Iraq, just as I always have. And I’m never going to go away.

  Look at me.

  What are you going to do with your life? Where are you going to get work as a gardener? There’s nothing left to garden, my man. And you think the Americans are going to employ you forever? They’re already retreating. And they’re going to leave you here with nothing green and nothing to work with except a big pile of shit.

  The only thing you have is me and my gun.

  Uday gives the gun to Musa. Musa takes it.

  Uday grabs Qusay’s head and listens, as if Qusay is whispering to him.

  Uday laughs at Qusay’s wit.

  UDAY: Qusay is funny.

  He remembers your sister, too. Hadia. Haadeeeaaahhh.

  Do you know what the thing about your sister was that we loved?

  Musa drops his head in defeat. He begins to choke with grief.

  UDAY: Mansour. Look at me.

  Do you know what was interesting about her? The way she quivered, Mansour.

  She was like one of those sculptures you were doing in my garden.

  What did you call those animals you made?

  What is that called, Mansour? You tell me, but I am always forgetting.

  MUSA : Topiary.

  UDAY: Topiary! I love this topiary! You are the real artist, you know that Mansour?

  (seeing Musa’s grief) What? What do you want, you brought her to my garden!

  You brought your little virgin sister to me!

  I take what is mine, boss. I take it.

  And you should have heard her.

  Such a little creature make such a great noise.

  What a mess that was, my man.

  Maybe someday you can make a topiary out of your sister. You can carve her out of the hedges. And she can quiver in the wind.

  You need to start working again, Mansour.

  All your animals have died.

  Uday exits, leaving Musa with the gun.

  ACT 2

  Scene 1.

  Tiger appears.

  TIGER: This place is lousy with ghosts.

  And the new ones are irritating. They’re walking around, wide-eyed . . . What happened to me? Where am I?

  You’re dead and you’re in Baghdad. Shut up.

  Anyhow, the other day, I’m walking down the street. The street is literally on fire.

  And I see this little girl. Her life is like a soap bubble, and then pop! She’s here, in the middle of the street, looking up at me. And she says to me: What are you? And I tell her, I’m a tiger.

  She asks me am I going to eat her.

  And I say, no, I gave up eating children.

  She says why?

  And I say, I don’t know, it’s this philosophy I’m working out about sin and redemption since God is apparently nuts.

  And the girl just kind of looks at me.

  And I’m like, think about it, if God’s watching, why’d he snuff you out? Why are you standing here, alone, in a burning street, with a dead tiger?

  Why is half your face gone?

  And she says yeah, but why’d you give up eating children?

  And I tell her the bit about the two kids in the forest, and how I keep thinking about them and how I have all this guilt.

  She doesn’t understand that. The guilt thing. She doesn’t have any guilt. And I’m like, of course you don’t. What did you ever do? Nothing.

  She tells me she’s afraid.

  I tell her I am too.

  Which you’d think would be comforting, given the circumstances, but somehow, being blown to bits and then coming face-to-face with the likes of me . . .

  Well the girl starts to cry, you know?

  Her one eye cries.

  And I say, don’t cry. But she cries harder. And so I say to her, hey do you want to see something? And she stops crying for a second. And she’s like, what?

  And I say it’s a . . . I tell her it’s a garden.

  And she looks at me as if to say, big fucking deal, like I haven’t seen a garden before?

  And I say, no it’s a special garden.

  Lights up on the topiary animals.

  And I don’t know why I say this, but I say, it’s God’s garden.

  I tell her it’s God’s garden.

  He likes gardens, see. He tests us in them, he tempts us in them, he builds them up and tears them apart. It’s like his fucking hobby.

  And she’s skeptical, I can see that, but I bring her here and she sees these plants, these animals, and she’s never seen anything like them. And I nailed it because she’s not crying anymore. She’s walking around the garden, pointing. A lion! A camel! An elephant!

  Fucking kids, you know?

  And I mean, this whole time I’m talking out of my ass, this business about God’s garden, etcetera. Maybe she knows I’m bullshitting, too. The girl is no dummy, even if she does only have half a brain.

  But for a second we both look up at these ruined shrubs and think, okay Man, You work in Mysterious Ways. We get it.

  And I feel this swell of hope.

  And then she turns to me and she’s like, When will He get here?

  What?

  She says, When will God get here? If this is His garden, then He has to come to it, He has to tend to it.

  Look! she says. The green is all burned.

  This animal has lost his head.

  Well?!

  What am I supposed to tell her?

  I’m asking You to tell me.

  Bec
ause if You don’t . . . I’m going to have to watch her cry again. I’m gonna have to sit here and watch that little single eye of hers well up with tears . . .

  Until eventually she’ll stop. She’ll stop crying.

  And her brain will fill up, as mine did, and she’ll understand the universe.

  And her spirit or body or whatever You’ve left us with, it will go on to other things.

  And this moment, this fucking moment when she appraises a ruined piece of beauty with her one good eye, this moment will become extinct.

  Just like You.

  Is that what You want? Say something! This animal has lost her head! Speak through me, or through her, or through someone, but speak, God, speak!

  A back room in a converted officers’ building.

  Tom sits at a chair. Across the room a teenage Iraqi girl sits.

  She wears a hijab head scarf, but a tight T-shirt and blue jeans.

  They don’t look at each other. Tom stares at the floor.

  Tom gets up and paces around the room, nervous.

  Tom looks out the door, anxious, waiting for someone.

  GIRL: Ficky-fick.

  TOM: Yeah. Ficky-fick.

  GIRL: Ficky-fick!

  TOM: (loudly, as if volume could translate) Just . . . five minutes . . .

  The girl is irritated, shakes her head dismissively at him.

  Tom sits back down. Kev enters. He holds his own severed hand.

  Tom doesn’t look at Kev, but senses him and shakes his head in frustration.

  KEV: Dear Tommy,

  How are you. I am fine.

  TOM: (quietly) Leave me alone.

  GIRL: (irritated) Ficky-fick, eh?

  TOM: Yeah, ficky-fick! Five minutes! Would you just wait!?

  Girl, not intimidated, shakes her head dismissively.

  KEV: I don’t know why I did it, Tommy. I was trying to chop off my hand and give it to the tiger. But it’s a pretty intense process to remove your own hand.