1001 Nights Cast

Flood-waters had loosened the stones around ancient graves. Footfall was unsteady. He had discovered that there were tombs and cupolas and minarets all around, under water, ancient civilizations, lost Atlantises for his consideration. He thought poetry of the waters from the Euphrates, of the great waters behind the wall of Haditha Dam. He adopted an enthusiast’s curiosity. He had made use of his College Education. Then his battalion was moved back to Haditha, and ‘back’ seemed like a word from another kind of time, another age, another being. The old Haditha was no more. The old him was gone. The rules had changed. The entire landscape was something else. There was no return here, no cycles or circles, nor before nor after, only now, now, and now and now. The first and last time he had been stationed there, at Haditha, in the old times when time and place had mattered, he hadn’t minded it. You could sleep the whole night without worrying about the watch.* There were Azerbaijani soldiers there to do that job. It had felt almost cushy. But not now.

What's that? He bent down, picked it up, put it in his pocket. He kept walking. It was like he was packin’. But he was packing. He smiled, his smile a grimace, for less than a moment. A small patch of thick dampness eventually spread, sticky scent of blood if anyone were sniffing, through the outer fabric. He held his face taut, the blankness of an unsigned check, but for the flickering twitch under his good right eye. He kept walking. He took a breath, acrid, disabling, its sting searing his ribs as he marched into the sun. The light was gritty, his squint like the feel of sandpaper. He kept walking, stumbling. His hand fumbled the thing in his pocket—what was it? Deep in the pocket, a clump of something soft lodged under what remained of his fingernail: He couldn’t hear a thing, but he could damn well feel every little sensation in his ribs and his fingers, all ten of them. Small mercies. And he could feel every last detail in the pattern and texture of the thing he was fingering in his pocket, like he was some sort of super hi-res scanner from IT. Why had he picked it up? He was pretty sure he knew what it was. Maybe he would make it into a lucky charm, his own Haditha rabbit’s foot. A souvenir. The grimace returned—again, for less than the time it took to—he could feel, at the tip, the flat crescent with its jagged edge and he could feel the structural hardness beneath soft tissue that gave way, wantonly, like one of those foam mattresses, when he pressed it between his own fingers, still firm. He could run his nail along the great ridges of engraved lines that once bore an individual identity, like playing a tune on a comb. There was a dog lying by the side of what had been the road. What was a dog doing here? The dog stared blankly as he passed, yellow dog-eyes stuck like glue—but a nose as sharp as glass. The dog sniffed. It bundled itself into standing position and, swaying somewhat, managed to look keen. It moved alongside him, and stared. He danced and swayed and, flirting, played, as much as possible, as if to spring away. The dog danced back and they shuffled together a few steps in the dirt, half-rings in the diminishing smoke. Looser rules and nobody gave a toss: Until he flipped the finger from his pocket. The dog caught it and at once started to chew. Dog drool bit the dust.

* See Filmgeek83’s diary, Daily Kos, June 1 2006

Adapted for performance by Barbara Campbell from a story by Margaret Morgan.