The Who & the What

by Ayad Akhtar

  ZARINA: Instead of Dave Matthews and Jeff Buckley.

  ELI: Exactly.

  ZARINA: I’m a Jeff Buckley gal.

  ELI: Hallelujah.

  Pause.

  ZARINA: So the Muslim thing fits in how exactly?

  ELI: I’d been around Islam my whole childhood. The older Muslim guys, those were the guys I looked up to. Then I read Malcolm. Have you read The Autobiography?

  ZARINA: I haven’t…

  ELI: You should.

  ZARINA: I’ve a lot to read.

  ELI: Of course. With your own writing. I want to hear all about that.

  ZARINA: I don’t talk about it.

  ELI: Right…

  Awkward pause.

  ZARINA: Look, I barely know you. I’m doing this for my father.

  ELI: I was surprised to find you on that site. I know we didn’t talk much at the Hirsi Ali event, but it didn’t seem in character—

  ZARINA: It isn’t.

  ELI: Me neither.

  ZARINA: But you were on it…

  ELI: I have a friend who met someone on that site, and now he’s very happily married. I thought I’d try it.

  ZARINA: I don’t think you and my dad would make such a great couple.

  ELI: I should’ve figured it out. I’m embarrassed.

  ZARINA: You should be.

  ELI: He kept the messages short, though he did keep sending me these really elaborate emoticon smiley faces.

  ZARINA: He means well.

  ELI: So you’re not having any fun at all?

  ZARINA: I didn’t say that.

  (Beat)

  So what was it about Malcolm?

  ELI: The rage. That profound, righteous rage. I remember one night, I was seventeen. I was staying with my grandparents in upstate New York. I’d just read that section in The Autobiography where Malcolm is discovering the history of white colonial power. That night at dinner, I was railing at my grandparents about the white man and what he’d done…

  At one point my grandmother says, very nicely: “But Eli, you’re white.” And I remember saying: “Yeah. Well, I don’t have to be. Not like that.”

  ZARINA: Wonderful.

  ELI: So I got that Malcolm. But it was the other Malcolm, the post-hajj Malcolm, who taught me that, at its core, Islam is really about being equal. Which is what he realized when he went to Mecca. Muslims of all colors, incomes, languages… Worshipping. Together.

  Hearing this causes Zarina visible agitation.

  ZARINA: Where’s the dark side?

  ELI: Excuse me?

  ZARINA: Maybe your grandma was onto something. White kid doesn’t want to be white so badly, realizes the only way he can do it is to become Muslim?

  ELI: Don’t you think that’s a little…

  ZARINA: What?

  ELI: Reductive. Condescending.

  ZARINA: Or direct.

  ELI: You’re more like your dad than you realize.

  ZARINA: I’ll take that as a compliment.

  ELI: Take it any way you want.

  Beat.

  ZARINA: We should get the check.

  ELI: I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—

  ZARINA: It’s fine.

  ELI: You push at me, I push back… and you want the check?

  ZARINA: Look. You seem like a great guy. I’m just not—

  ELI (Interrupting): What did I say? Did I say something wrong?

  Pause.

  ZARINA: All that stuff about Islam. Equality and all that bullshit. You didn’t have to grow up as a woman inside it.

  ELI: You’re right, I didn’t.

  (Beat)

  Tell me about your writing.

  ZARINA: I don’t talk about my writing.

  ELI: Why not?

  Pause.

  ZARINA: I’m writing a novel.

  ELI: What’s it about?

  ZARINA: Gender politics.

  ELI: And then what happens?

  ZARINA: It’s about the Prophet.

  About the day that he married Zaynab bint Jahsh. Wife number seven. Who is the reason for the revelation of the veil. The curtain.

  ELI: And a very beautiful woman, apparently…

  ZARINA: Right, but who, before becoming the Prophet’s wife, was actually his daughter-in-law—

  ELI: But married to his adopted son.

  ZARINA: Do you know the story about how, before the divorce, the Prophet saw Zaynab naked?

  ELI: That story has been completely discredited.

  ZARINA: The problem, Eli, is that it’s in Tabari and alluded to in the Quran. Everyone is always trying to whitewash the sources—

  ELI: The Prophet’s not perfect. Nobody said he—

  ZARINA: Right. Because of that time that he, like, frowned at some blind guy. So a chapter in the Quran gets named “He Frowned” and we’re supposed to be so impressed at how revealing he is about his failings. But when it might be something truly human, like a man at war with his own desire, everyone’s so eager to airbrush that out.

  (Beat, increasingly passionate)

  What’s the big deal? Contradictions only make him more human, which only makes him more extraordinary.

  (Catching herself)

  Anyway. That’s how my novel starts. With the Prophet seeing Zaynab naked, with him wrestling with his desire for his son’s wife.

  ELI: Intense.

  ZARINA: Yeah.

  ELI: I mean you.

  (Beat)

  Tell me more.

  ZARINA: Most of my book takes place the day of their eventual wedding…—You know what, I’m not sure it’s your cup of tea.

  ELI: Try me.

  Beat.

  ZARINA: I’m using that day to show the different influences on the Prophet’s life. And how the Quran is the result of all these very human things that are happening to him. His problems with his wives, his community, his own anxieties… In a lot of ways, I think it might make more sense to see the Quran more as coming from Muhammad than God.

  ELI: I see.

  ZARINA: Do you know the account of the wedding in Tabari?

  ELI: I mean—I’m sure I read about it at some point, but…

  ZARINA: Well, after the Prophet’s son and Zaynab get divorced, there is trouble in the community because the Prophet wants to marry her. So to calm everybody down, Muhammad throws a big party the day of the wedding. But the party goes on too long. The Prophet doesn’t want to kick people out, the whole point had been to appease them, but this is his wedding night.

  ELI (Wryly): Right.

  ZARINA: So finally the Prophet gets up and starts walking to the bedroom, where Zaynab is waiting. And one of the guests, not realizing where the Prophet’s going, follows him. Muhammad has had it. He gets to the bedroom, stops cold, and pulls shut the curtain covering the entrance. And with that curtain between them, the Prophet recites the famous verses:

  Believers.

  Do not enter the house of the Prophet at improper times.

  Do not engage in familiar talk. This would annoy the Prophet and he would be ashamed to ask you to go.

  If you ask the Prophet’s wives for anything, speak to them from behind a curtain.

  (Beat)

  You know the Arabic word for curtain.

  ELI: Hijab.

  ZARINA: And because of Muhammad’s very human impatience to be with his wife, generations and generations of Muslim women wear a curtain to his bedroom on their faces. I mean, really?

  ELI: Well it’s not the only reason.

  ZARINA: The other references in the Quran, Eli, are even more dubious.

  ELI: There are a lot of young women who wear the veil in my mosque and are proud of it.

  ZARINA: They can be proud. As long as they understand they’re turning themselves into metaphorical wives of the Prophet.

  ELI: What’s wrong with that? If they see it as a sign of devotion…?

  ZARINA: You want to show devotion, Eli? Why don’t you start wearing a veil?

  ELI: I was saving that
for our second date.

  (Beat)

  Your book sounds amazing. I mean it. I want to read it.

  ZARINA: I’m not done. Not nearly.

  I’ve had writer’s block. Took me two and a half years to get through a draft and it’s all wrong. Haven’t been able to write a word for six months.

  ELI: Why not?

  ZARINA (With a shrug): I don’t know.

  ELI: I find that hard to believe. You probably have a pretty good idea.

  ZARINA: If I did, why would I tell you?

  ELI: Because… I’m here. And I’m interested. And—I’m just guessing—but you’re going to probably end up not seeing me again, so you’ve got nothing to lose…

  Beat.

  ZARINA: I feel like I’m not letting myself…

  I have this sense of Muhammad, of who he was. We know all these things about the Prophet. Or think we do, details: he was an Arab, Aisha was his favorite wife, he had a gap between his teeth, whatever. And all the stories we hear, that have gotten told for hundreds of years, don’t point to a real person. It’s all like this monument to what we have made of him. But who he really was?

  We don’t know.

  (Beat)

  That’s what I’m calling it. The Who and the What.

  ELI: It’s incredibly ambitious. Depending on how you go about it, could be trouble.

  ZARINA: And with what passes for blasphemy these days? How little it takes for there to be rioting in the streets. People setting things on fire.

  ELI: It is disheartening.

  Beat.

  ZARINA (Off a sigh): My father thinks I have fifteen biographies of the Prophet ’cause I love him so much.

  ELI: He did mention that you had fifteen biographies.

  ZARINA (Shifting, off a sudden thought): You know what?

  (Reaching for a “specials” card on the table)

  I just had an idea…

  Do you have a pen?

  Act One: Scene Five

  Night. The kitchen. Afzal, alone.

  Picking through pictures in a shoe box, as the lush, plaintive sounds of a Mehdi Hassan ghazal play in the background.

  He takes up a picture of his deceased wife, clearly moved. Kisses it.

  As he quietly hums and mutters along to the ghazal under his breath.

  When—Mahwish enters, keys in hand. A handbag over her shoulder.

  MAHWISH: Dad?

  AFZAL: Behti.

  MAHWISH: Dad, why do you have that box out?

  AFZAL: I’m missing her, Mahwish.

  MAHWISH: Last time you—

  AFZAL (Coming in): I’m sixty years old. I’m entitled to look at pictures of my wife if I want to.

  MAHWISH: Okay. But last time you got so depressed…

  AFZAL (Picking out a photo): Look at this one.

  Mahwish approaches.

  AFZAL (CONT’D): You were not born yet, behti. Summer of 1980.

  MAHWISH: I know, Dad. When you and Mom went to Memphis.

  AFZAL: Your mother had to see Graceland. For the life of me I don’t know what she saw in that man, but she was obsessed…

  Beat.

  MAHWISH: Zarina upstairs?

  AFZAL: Not back.

  MAHWISH: She’s not back?

  AFZAL: Not yet.

  MAHWISH: Dad. That’s a good sign.

  AFZAL: I’m trying not to think about it, behti. Your sister is very unpredictable.

  (Off a sudden thought)

  On the way back from Memphis, there was a catfish farm. Your mother did some fishing for the first time. She caught something. When she pulled it up, it was a turtle. She was so surprised—

  MAHWISH: That she fell on you, and then you fell in the pond. Right.

  Pause.

  AFZAL: You could at least pretend you haven’t heard some of these stories before, Mahwish. It would bring your father some happiness.

  MAHWISH: Sorry, Dad.

  AFZAL: And I didn’t exactly fall. I stepped into the pond.

  Mahwish’s phone rings. With a call from Haroon. Something unpleasant. And that Mahwish hides from her father.

  MAHWISH (On the phone): Hey…

  I didn’t see them…

  Haroon, I just got home.

  I can’t. I have my test for nursing school.

  But the test is in two weeks.

  I’m not saying that.

  Fine. I’ll check.

  I said I’ll check.

  Bye.

  Beat.

  AFZAL: How was the movie?

  MAHWISH: Fine.

  AFZAL: Something about She?

  MAHWISH: Her, Dad. And no. Haroon wanted to see the new Stallone.

  AFZAL: Sylvester Stallone?

  MAHWISH: Yeah, Dad.

  AFZAL: When I first came to this country, Rocky was playing in the movie theaters. That was a movie. Who knew what a stooge Stallone would become.

  Silence. Mahwish looks at photos.

  AFZAL (CONT’D): A man likes to get his way, behti. But that doesn’t mean you have to do what he wants to make him feel like he’s getting what he wants.

  MAHWISH: I know, Dad.

  AFZAL: You do?

  MAHWISH: Yeah.

  AFZAL: How?

  MAHWISH: I’ve had a lot of practice.

  Beat.

  AFZAL: Very cheeky.

  Sounds of Zarina’s return.

  Hiding their eagerness to see how her evening has gone, Afzal and Mahwish bury themselves in the photos.

  Zarina appears, keys in hand.

  ZARINA: What are you guys doing?

  AFZAL: Just looking at photos.

  MAHWISH (Pointing to a photo): Who’s that, Dad?

  AFZAL: That was your mother’s cousin Soraya.

  ZARINA (Knowing): You guys were waiting up for me.

  AFZAL: No.

  MAHWISH: I just got back from a movie.

  ZARINA: Okay. Well, good night.

  As Zarina turns to go…

  MAHWISH: How was it?

  ZARINA: Good.

  AFZAL: Good?

  ZARINA: Yeah. I—uh—actually had some ideas. I need to get upstairs.

  Beat.

  AFZAL: Okay.

  Zarina moves off. Stops just as she is about to exit…

  ZARINA: Hey, Dad. Thank you.

  AFZAL: Okay, behti.

  ZARINA: K. Night.

  AFZAL: Night.

  Afzal and Mahwish watch her go. Delighted.

  Lights Out.

  Then Lights Up—

  Zarina’s room. A desk. A computer. And pages.

  Zarina pulls out the card on which she has written sentences.

  ZARINA (Reading): What if it wasn’t God speaking to him? What if it was just his own voice?

  And then begins writing.

  ZARINA (CONT’D): How could he know if his thoughts were his own or his Lord’s? Sometimes the voice he heard was soft—no, sometimes the voice he heard was tender and brought to mind his mother, the sweet long-missing comfort.

  At times he could’ve sworn it was a woman speaking to him. He could have sworn the Lord was a woman.

  (Pause)

  Why did everyone need him to pretend he didn’t have doubts? Why couldn’t he show himself to them as he was?

  As she continues…

  Lights Up On—

  Afzal. Laying out his prayer rug. For evening prayer. And as he begins praying,

  Zarina, in her room, keeps writing:

  ZARINA (CONT’D): If only he could forget the image of Zaynab’s breasts. His desire for her was not to be avoided. For then they would all know what kind of man he truly was. Then they would know to turn not to him, a man, but to the Lord, their God.

  Afzal bows and prostrates.

  End of Act One.

  Act Two: Scene One

  One year later.

  Morning.

  Zarina and Eli. At home. Both wearing wedding bands on their ring fingers.

  ELI: I said I was sorry.

  ZAR
INA: Why were you drinking cranberry juice, anyway?

  ELI: Why do you care what I was drinking?

  ZARINA: You never drink cranberry juice—

  ELI: I didn’t intend to spill my drink—

  ZARINA: What are you, on your period?

  ELI: Zarina.

  ZARINA: The sweater’s ruined.

  ELI: I said I was sorry.

  ZARINA: If you weren’t sitting next to that harpy. Waving your hands around like a friggin’ windmill—

  ELI: She’s Haroon’s sister. She’s my family now, too.

  ZARINA: She’s a harpy.

  ELI: And I wasn’t waving my hands around like a—

  ZARINA (Coming in): And you should know by now, Haroon’s father isn’t going to donate to the mosque—

  ELI: You’ve made that very clear.

  ZARINA: He didn’t even give us a check for our wedding. So there’s no need to kiss his ass. One thing we don’t do in this family? Is kiss Haroon’s family’s ass.

  ELI: I wasn’t kissing his ass.

  (Pause, considering)

  Is this about your…

  ZARINA: You can’t even bring yourself to say it.

  Beat.

  ELI: I wanted to make sure we had the space and time to have the conversation—

  ZARINA (Over): Eli! You finished reading the book two days ago! You didn’t even tell me.

  ELI: I’ve been sharing you with this book for an entire year. I don’t get two days to think about it?

  ZARINA: When people love something? They tell you. When they don’t? They need time to think about it.

  ELI: I couldn’t put it down. I finished it at three a.m.

  ZARINA: And if you’d loved it, you would’ve woken me up.

  Pause.

  ELI: Your portrayal of the Prophet is stunning. That searching quality, his constant self-questioning, his rich conflicted inner life. You really put me in the head of this man…