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AMINA
Copyright 2014 Wendy Beach. All Rights Reserved. ISBN: 9781311397171
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Amina
A Play by Wendy Beach
CHARACTERS:
KHALIL: 43 year old Lebanese- Australian cancer survivor, turned drug addict.
AMINA: (aka Mina) a 17 year old girl.
Abu Walid (aka Father): late 40s, Amina's father.
SETTING: This three hander begins in the late 1980s in the basement of a collapsed apartment building that has given way after more than 25 years of civil unrest in Lebanon.
INT: A cement rendered basement that has been used as a store room for unwanted furniture. In the centre is a plain wooden table and a few old kitchen chairs. A couple of mattresses are stacked against a wall and a sheet is draped over them to keep the dust off. A single candle in an old brass candle holder rests on the table. The candle is lit giving a dim light to the room. The electricity is out, again.
AMINA is sitting perched on the chair with her arms wrapped around her legs and she is staring out at the audience.
ABU WALID is sitting up on the mattresses drinking a glass of water.
KHALIL slowly appears near Amina as the light draws him out of the darkness like a ghostly apparition appearing in the night.
AMINA: Ah! Who’s there?
KHALIL: Amina it’s me, Khalil.
AMINA: Oh my god you scared me. How’d you? –
KHALIL: Sorry, beautiful.
ABU WALID: Are you alright, daughter?
AMINA: Yes, Father.
ABU WALID: Come and have some water.
AMINA: [To Khalil] You look so pale.
ABU WALID: I'm okay, the bleeding’s stopped now.
AMINA: What, Father?
KHALIL: Don’t be scared.
AMINA: [Stands up] Are you really here? Your skin, it seems so thin.
KHALIL: I’m here. Oh Mina, I missed you so much!
AMINA: Has the fighting stopped?
ABU WALID: We’ll wait a little bit longer in case it’s a trap.
KHALIL: Mina, can you hear me?
AMINA: Yes.
ABU WALID: Amina, you’re talking to yourself, come and have some water.
AMINA: It is you! You came for us.
KHALIL: I missed you!
AMINA: I knew you’d come! See Father! It’s Khalil, he’s come to help us!
KHALIL: Greetings, Abu Walid.
ABU WALID: Amina, there’s no one here.
KHALIL: You wish!
AMINA: Oh Khalil, I thought you had left without me.
KHALIL: I did Mina. I left with my mother and brothers.
AMINA: Oh.
KHALIL: A charity group from Australia sponsored us out. I was going to come back for you as soon as I made some money.
AMINA: But, it’s only been a few days.
ABU WALID: It hasn’t been too long, be patient.
KHALIL: It’s been longer, Mina. I’ll explain it to you later.
AMINA: I don’t understand… look at your face, so drawn…you’ve changed, you’re so old, so –
KHALIL: Nah. I still have my youthful looks!
AMINA: …so different.
KHALIL: I’m 43 now.
AMINA: But it’s only been four days… hasn’t it. Father?
ABU WALID: Yes. Four days, it won’t be long now. Someone will come and get us.
AMINA: They stopped shooting last night. Hopefully the electricity will be back on soon.
ABU WALID: I can hear the swallows nesting in the outer wall; in the bullet holes I suppose… More repairs to do.
KHALIL: It’s already been repaired by your eldest son. He took the building over after your death.
AMINA: Khalil, that’s a cruel thing to say.
KHALIL: Cruel is losing you for twenty-five years.
AMINA: That’s impossible.
KHALIL: You and your father died, Mina.
AMINA: That's not true. If we had died, we wouldn't be here.
KHALIL: You’re both stuck.
AMINA: Because we died here?
ABU WALID: We’re not dead.
AMINA: Maybe we are. Maybe we aren't. What difference does it make?
ABU WALID: We are alive.
AMINA: For how long? We don't have any food.
ABU WALID: Be patient.
AMINA: Why haven't we been rescued yet?
ABU WALID: It takes time to dig out rubble.
AMINA: I don't want to die.
KHALIL: I always loved you Mina, you’ve got to believe me about this.
AMINA: I want to believe you.
ABU WALID: Amina, you need to get some rest.
KHALIL: From the moment we met, I knew you were the one. I always felt it in my heart, a sort of connection.
AMINA: I feel it too.
KHALIL: Death is a cruel master.
AMINA: Why’d you leave me?
ABU WALID: I would never do that to you daughter.
KHALIL: If we’d run off together, your family would have hunted us down. I decided to make something for us in Australia.
AMINA: What do you do in Australia?
KHALIL: I’m a judge.
AMINA: A judge?
KHALIL: Well, a clerk, but sometimes when the judge wants to play a round of golf - he lets me sit in.
AMINA: What do you really do?
KHALIL: I’m an inventor.
AMINA: What do you invent?
KHALIL: Lies mostly!
AMINA: Khalil!
KHALIL: I’m just playing with you, Darl!
AMINA: You wanted to study music.
KHALIL: I did! I went to university for a while.
AMINA: That’s great.
KHALIL: Yeah, nowadays I’m working as a busker outside a pub.
AMINA: Oh, perhaps you should have studied engineering as your brothers suggested!
KHALIL: It was only a few days after we arrived in Sydney that I found out you’d died.
AMINA: They came up the hill shooting their rifles and everyone ran away. We were about to leave when my father was hit in the leg so we hid in here. We hoped they wouldn’t shoot us while they looted the building… then there was an explosion.
ABU WALID: It was a bazooka.
AMINA: It’s a blessing that the door to the basement became sealed, or I’m sure they’d have killed us.
KHALIL: I heard about it. The girl in the apartment opposite yours, she forgot her baby.
AMINA: Uum Bashar?
KHLIL: Yeah.
AMINA: How could she forget her baby!
KHALIL: Her husband was angry about it, but the people calmed him down. After all she was just a young girl scared out of her mind.
AMINA: I went to school with her, she’s seventeen.
KHALIL: We heard that she didn’t remember it until they’d driven out of the area, and then she let out a hell of a shriek, but it was too late to go back.
AMINA: What happened her baby?
KHALIL: A month later, when everybody came back, the baby was gone from its cot.
There was a note on its bedding saying ‘We will give the baby to a childless couple to raise as their own.’ Of course, once things settled down people asked around. You know how it is; people still have friends on the other side. But the guy who took it to the family, he was the only one who knew and he’d been killed later in the fighting.
AMINA: Poor Uum Bashar. How terrible for her.
ABU WALID: Dear God!
AMINA: Father, what’s wrong.
KHALIL: He weeps because he hears me.
AMINA: Father?
KHALIL: Isn’t that right Abu Walid?
ABU WALID: You’re losing your mind child.
AMINA: Can’t you hear him?
ABU WALID: I hear the sound of the wind whistling down broken pipes and the voice of my daughter going mad.
AMINA: But he’s here Father, Khalil’s here.
ABU WALID: He’s in your head!
KHALIL: Stop talking crap, Abu Walid!
ABU WALID: Your mind is playing tricks on you.
KHALIL: I planted a sunflower seed once, then I planted six codeine pills around it. The next morning it had turned into a poppy.
AMINA: Where was that?
KHALIL: In my mother’s garden. She’s always getting pissed off with me growing shit.
AMINA: A poppy flower?
KHALIL: Yep, no opium tree for me. Next time I’ll scatter some cement powder around it so it’ll grow up stronger.
AMINA: Oh, I don’t know who to believe.
KHALIL: Ten minutes of your time. Please just give me that.
AMINA: So then, how’d we die?
ABU WALID: We aren’t dead!
KHALIL: It was a month before anyone came back and it took time to dig out the foyer. You and Abu Walid didn’t make it!
AMINA: It can’t be true!
ABU WALID: Please Amina.
AMINA: If we’re dead then how come you’re here? Are you dead too?
KHALIL: Yeah almost. I’m dying, Mina.
AMINA: Oh God!
KHALIL: I swear it all on my Father’s grave…you know I would never swear on my Father’s grave if it wasn’t true.
ABU WALID: God help us both!
AMINA: But how’d you get in here, Khalil?
KHALIL: I’ve been sick, and for some time now I find myself floating. If I look down I can see my body,