Amina Abstracted: A New Play
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Amina AbstractedA New Play
Prologue: (sung or spoken)
Who knows what happenedIn the past?We weren’t there.Who knows what is happening now?You in the future,You aren’t here.
History is a dreamThat once was real.But drama makes that dreamInto something you can feel.
Nothing is past, nothing is goneIf you have that rare thing, imagination.
Scene 1
Chorus of market-women and -men at the gates of the city. [End Page 1037]
She has disappeared.
She has gone from us.
Where has she gone?
No one knows.
How do we know then that she has gone?
Didn’t you hear
I heard but did not understand.
We always hear but never understand.
We look but do not see.
We are here, but we are not present.
We were there, but do not bear witness.
We were in the story, but we did not live it.
We took part in the events, but did not notice them.
A legend happened in our life time, and we missed it all.
A legend in our life time, and all we talked about were pumpkins.
We argued about the goats.
We talked about small things.
Passing fashions.
Passing wonders.
And we missed the great things.
As if we were blind, or deaf, or without hearts to feel.
Maybe it is always so.
That when something great happens to us we only see the small insignificant things.
But she has gone.
Left us entirely.
Gone into the forest.
Never to return.
Gone into legend, into the air.
Gone into the great mirror of our ancestors.
But she will be back.
When we need her.
She has gone into our minds.
She has become an idea.
A dream.
An ideal.
A vision for the future.
She is here and she will be there.
She is always here.
But she has gone, in a most mysterious manner.
What do you mean?
They say after her great speech two white camels appeared from the forest. And on the back of one camel there was a man, the most handsome man in the world. He wore white, and had blue amulets round his neck, and golden light on his head. [End Page 1038]
And that she got on the second camel, and with a great happy laughter, they both vanished into the air, just like that. And that in that part of the forest, if you hold your breath long enough, you can still hear them laughing, our Queen Amina and the mysterious man of beauty.
Strange endings come from strange beginnings.
Do you remember the beginning of her story?
Of course, I was there.
Really, then you must be very old.
Why?
The beginning happened a long time ago, in a time before legend, a time of myth.
When the only well was guarded by a fearful monster, and so no one in the land could drink, and people died of thirst.
So?
You must be very old then, if you were there.
I was there.
How so?
This is Africa, my dear, you do not have to be old to have been there in the olden times.
She is...
