CAST
THE MISSILE
TIME
Now and Then
PLACE
The imagined country of Yemen and its landscapes. Also other countries where the USA is dropping its bombs and/or firing its missiles.
NOTE
THE MISSILE’s focus is on flying and the basic mode is intellectual, rather than emotional. But this does not mean that the delivery is dry but rather THE MISSILE is confident in sharing both knowledge and pleasure with us.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This play was inspired, in part, by Lamya Khalidi’s essay, “The Destruction of Yemen and its Cultural Heritage.” Int. Journal of Middle East Studies. 49 (2017).
This play was written in honor of the people of Yemen, and for all those that have lived or still live under the terror of US bombs.
SCENE 1
An actor appears on stage, dressed simply.
After clocking us, the actor begins, speaking as THE MISSILE
THE MISSILE
Below me: the landscape where everything is still. Dawn breaks like only dawn can break within its colossal sun. I am flying across the Ba al-Mandab straits and the Ramlat alSabatayn desert, where in the golden age the caravans rolled on their incense routes past the city walls of Baraqish and the great Marib dam rose up, irrigating even the air.
When you fly over terrain, it becomes yours. Deserts, valleys, coastlines, and heaving mountains. Yes, this is the land that was home to the Queen of Sheba, the place Herodotus mapped in his mind, that Pliny and Strabo praised. I cut across stone terraces, raising the once green earth to the sky, cities built of stone and mud, cities that seem baked not built, of iced gingerbread.* It looks like nowhere else on earth. A place to reveal the mysteries of life. And there, the ancient alabaster windows of Sana’a—so lucid they are more human than gypsum. This is my first flight.
I drop a little lower where the air is warmer; now I must be vigilant again. I can see it all, every detail, every intricacy of the little clock villages ticking beneath me. In one, I can make out a woman. A woman with a basket. Eggs. She is setting out at dawn to sell eggs. Perhaps one of the secrets to this mystery is here: a basket of boiled eggs like fat sweaty pearls, still warm from their shells. Her hair shines like glass in the rising sun and three boys, also early risers like myself, are playing and shouting each other’s names: Amer, Baraa, and. Though I dip to the left and to the right, I cannot catch the third. I loiter. Is it . . . Saleh? I do not know.
A girl. A girl of maybe seven or eight, is reading a book in front of her door. She taps her ear as she reads as though she were reading to her ear especially. I shout to her, “Hey, little girl! It’s too early to read! Mornings are for flying!” But she does not look up, so intent she is on her book of bright pictures and words.
I could read the words on the page—that precise is my vision—but her slender arm is hiding the words from my view. Her arm is small like something the wind left behind. When she lifts her hand for just a moment, I can almost read what’s written there. . . . But no. Though I can see the number of the page. Five. What is she reading? What I fly over is mine. Her book is mine. I circle over her and the boys and the basket of boiled eggs and the school like a shoe box and the little homes of morning heat. Heat. I was born in heat. I was born with hands all over me and that is to be born in love. I can do a figure eight in the air. I can “wait.” What bird can wait in the air like I can? Not even the skillful hummingbird.
The boys still ring out their names below me. The third boy’s name, I almost hear it then, but no. Three of the boiled eggs are passed from one hand to another as the girl turns a page. And this time, when she does, I catch a glimpse of what’s on it: a little green house and a wide blue sky and in the sky a bird. A bird? But that’s me! She’s reading about me! I am in her sky and we are together and I am flying through the book, her book of sky and I am soaring and swelling with sun, up in the air and up in this book, this girl and I!
I sweep down lower over the landscape, taking one last glance before I head home for I have grown sleepy absorbing so much beauty and like a sweet syrupy fuel, it weighs me down.
Finally now I am turning. I am turning to go home as she is closing her book. I can see she’s written her name on the inside cover. What is it? A light hits the cover of her book. It’s a beam, and now there is something that I almost remember. But what? What is it? A beam. Am I a beam rider? No. But I can hover like a hummingbird. Yes! Yes I can. I am a twenty foot high-grade hummingbird, twenty-one inches in diameter. That’s it, yes. My core, five hundred and fifty pounds of solid rocket booster, weight: three thousand, two hundred pounds. At launch I shed my booster as wings, tail fins and air inlet unfold and my turbofan takes over. Cruising speed: five hundred and fifty miles per hour!
Rocket that.
THE MISSILE says the following in one breath, not hurried, but rather it rolls out easy and with energy
I can swim, I can fly, I am a high-end five-star unmanned motherfuckin’ kick-ass accurate Tomahawk, son of a bitchin’s most audacious advanced cruise missile, launched at dawn from the USS Nitze destroyer!
THE MISSILE launches into a few energetic lines of John Mellencamp’s song
“I was born in a small town
And I live in a small town”
Oh yeah! First words I ever heard were when someone patted me on my ass-fin and said, “Born to fly, baby.”
And this is my first flight and now, leaving in my wake shimmering tunnels of air, I am turning to go home. I am turning, yes. But I am not turning. I strain to the left and to the right. But no. Yes. Why I am not turning? Why am I not—In my brain is an on-board 3-D database of the terrain I am flying over. Is this why I cannot turn? My Tercom system matches the terrain to the 3-D map stored in my memory. But I have no memory because this is my first flight. How can I remember what I’ve never seen? And where is her book—
THE MISSILE breaks off.
Where is her book in my map? Where is the basket in my—? (Beat) Have I always known this? That I was not made to fly? I am turning around but I am not turning. I am locked on, in, up; the sky is tilting around me.
Trying to get clarity
I was born to fly. No. Yes. I was born in the United States of Alabaster. I was made by love. Yes. No. The girl is opening the book on her knees again and now I can see what she’s written there: Mima. That is her name. From Jemima. It means dove. Little dove. In the old testament, one of the three beautiful daughters. I was not. Daughters of Job. My job. This? No. Yes.
But her name, Mima. One of three beautiful daughters of. Is this my only flight? I am not in the sky of her book; I am right above her!
She is reading page seven now. “Mima! Daughter of—! Move!”
THE MISSILE calms again now, intent.
Move your arm that the wind forgot. Move away from the page you are reading so I can understand the answer to the mystery of life which must be in the Book of Mima, your book, open on your knees in the open dawn. I am not life. Though in these last seconds as I come down over you I can see your life and those around you, life stirring inside of life, fueled by the counter-clockwise tempo of love, of which I am not made. Of which my origins are not made.
Instructional
Somebody, please. I was not made by love. (Beat) Somebody. Stop me.
END
*Description from Tim Mackintosh Smith. Yemen: The Unknown Arabia. New York: Overlook Press, 2014.
