TORTURE: ASIAN AND GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES | JUNE-AUG 2013
Handel talks to his friend Alan Greenbridge (Alan Greenspan, then head of the Federal Reserve). A citizenry riled by patriotism, and controlled by fear, “they will troll in from every state; they will enlist and go,” is rife for economic exploitation, too. “Everyone wants houses now. Give them mortgages to pay, bundle up. Rate them “A”. Revenge is empty. Must be fed. Their fixed rates will fast unfix…” Along with the dramatists of ancient Greece, I adhere to the prohibition against extreme violence on the stage. Torture in its full monstrosity is unrepresentable. The scene of the torture of Abu Zubayduh takes place outside the torture room. We hear his screams. When Lucia emerges, her white coat drenched in fresh blood, the actions that have just taken place inside that room are clear. If we wish to understand the effects of the willful destruction of a human being it is best to listen and imagine. It is hearing the testimony of the innocent Iraqi Al-Janabai taken by Susan Burke and used in Another Life that turns Lucia into a whistleblower: “The interrogator told me I have been sentenced to execution. The interrogator told me that if I cooperated my wife would be given a stipend after my execution. I said: I know nothing. I know nothing to say. I have done nothing.” And Lucia, having heard the harrowing testimonies from Iraqis kept in a black site at Abu Ghraib will release these stories to the press. By becoming a whistleblower, she will put language back into the service of the truth: “What we did…what I did…what our government has done, is doing, was wrong, is wrong, that we are committing atrocities. Yes, that is my word…No, I do not believe that war and torture in any way have made us safer…No, I knew no other course to take. I did what I had to do.” Another
VOLUME 02 NUMBER 02 & 03
Life is also the story of the recovery of the language of the thinking heart in the service of freedom, even if that freedom exits only in the imagination. “Let me tell you a story,” says the imprisoned Egyptian cab driver to Tess, with whom he is falling in love. “What good are words in times like these,” she asks. “Words are of no use. Stories yes. Stories take us out,” Abdul replies. Abdul will construct a running version of a 1,001 Nights tale to keep them both sane as the strictures of their imprisonment worsen. Language became my way in and my out of the stories I was hearing. The corruption of language and its redemption chart the arc of the play. Another Life is poetic because only poetry can contain such harrowing truth. Among its manifold problems, the Global War on Terror creates a subset of cultural or aesthetic dilemmas, of which I tried to address two. First and foremost, the challenge becomes how to create empathy for those who have been cast outside the law—the “terrorists” or anyone resembling anyone who might be said to resemble anyone who might be angry at the United States, the UK or other allied nation states. “They hate our way of life,” and presumably will stop at nothing to destroy it. This is the problem of the men in Guantanamo, 86 of whom have been cleared for release after being found completely innocent. The poet Adnan Latif, who killed himself this year; the visual artist Djemal Amezine, self-taught, who paints in the style of Van Gogh, and has been in detention and legal limbo for the past twelve years. If only their stories could be told, might that make a difference? Abdul in the play stands for those innocents who must rely solely upon their imaginations during long periods of solitary confinement and indefinite detention, days and nights without hope.
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