by Frances Poet
It doesn’t matter. I am here.
During the following dialogue, GLASGOW ADAM binds EGYPTIAN ADAM’s chest. It is very tight and very uncomfortable for EGYPTIAN ADAM.
I shave my head, I wear men’s clothes. I say goodbye to my birth name.
I have a new name.
GLASGOW ADAM is finished, looks at EGYPTIAN ADAM and nods with satisfaction.
Adam.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. The First Man?
GLASGOW ADAM. That’s not why I chose it.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. Cast out of heaven for plucking fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.
GLASGOW ADAM. Knowledge was worth it. Egypt wasn’t heaven.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. Do you know how they punished Ancient Egyptians for sins against the gods?
GLASGOW ADAM. Played them Justin Bieber over and over? ‘Baby, baby, baby’–
EGYPTIAN ADAM. Banishment. Cut off from the protection and resources of your own people, forced to seek kindness from people who are not your own. Most would die. This room, this is exile.
GLASGOW ADAM. Exile is nothing new. I’ve lived it my whole life.
Here it is safe to be what I really am.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. What is that?
GLASGOW ADAM. A transgender.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. Mama gave me one of those when I was six.
GLASGOW ADAM. That is a Transformer. Stop trying to provoke me. I am trans. Is that better?
EGYPTIAN ADAM. Egypt is trans. Transcontinental. It is Asia and Africa. Egypt was home to the first trans man. A pharaoh – Hatshepsut. Born a woman but ruled with a beard and the headdress of a king. I see no pharaohs here. Why am I?
GLASGOW ADAM. Because it is meant to be. I’m on a quest, like Frodo, carrying the ring to the Crack of Doom.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. AKA Glasgow.
A reproving look from GLASGOW ADAM.
GLASGOW ADAM. When I sold all that I had and bought the plane ticket to Britain, I did not know it but the highest court in this land was making a decision. That nobody can be forced to return to a place where the only way they can be safe is to hide who they are. The same moment I decided that hiding would destroy me just as it does Frodo when he wears the ring, this country made the same decision.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. Enough already with the Lord of the fucking Rings.
The anger drains out of EGYPTIAN ADAM for a moment.
I miss home. I want to go home.
GLASGOW ADAM. I will go home. Tell me it is safe for me in Egypt and I will go home.
EGYPTIAN ADAM can’t.
(Tender.) Here I can do what Mama raised me to do. Tell the truth and show the world who I am.
I am Adam.
EGYPTIAN ADAM becomes HOME OFFICE REPRESENTATIVE.
HOME OFFICE REPRESENTATIVE. Were you living as a man in Egypt, Miss Kashmiry?
GLASGOW ADAM. Um, no, I. My name is Adam, please call me Adam.
HOME OFFICE REPRESENTATIVE. Was Adam a name you went by in Egypt?
GLASGOW ADAM gives a shake of the head.
GLASGOW ADAM. I tried other names. In my head, many names.
HOME OFFICE REPRESENTATIVE. Did you ever explain your condition to a doctor in Egypt?
Another shake of the head.
Who knew you were transgender, Miss Kashmiry?
GLASGOW ADAM. It’s Adam.
HOME OFFICE REPRESENTATIVE. I’ll repeat the question. Who knew you were transgender in Egypt?
GLASGOW ADAM. Nobody.
HOME OFFICE REPRESENTATIVE. Let me rephrase. How many friends knew you were transgender?
GLASGOW ADAM. None.
HOME OFFICE REPRESENTATIVE. None?
GLASGOW ADAM nods.
And now? Who in your family knows you are transgender, Miss Kashmiry?
GLASGOW ADAM. Nobody.
HOME OFFICE REPRESENTATIVE. Not even your own mother?
GLASGOW ADAM. When my mother tells me she loves me she says ‘ana bahibbik’. I love you – a girl – her daughter. She can never love me as a boy, a son – ana bahibbak.
Can you hear it? BahibbIK for a girl, bahibbAK for a boy. I cannot be loved in Arabic.
HOME OFFICE REPRESENTATIVE. I understand you entered the UK on a holiday visa, Miss Kashmiry – is that correct?
GLASGOW ADAM. I didn’t know you could seek asylum in your own country.
HOME OFFICE REPRESENTATIVE. Your application stated that you were from a wealthy family, visiting family friends in the UK and that you intended to return home. You even bought a return plane ticket, is that correct?
GLASGOW ADAM. If I had known I could travel to Cairo and claim asylum, I would have –
HOME OFFICE REPRESENTATIVE. How much of the statement that you signed on that visa was correct?
GLASGOW ADAM. I lied on the forms so I could stop being a liar.
HOME OFFICE REPRESENTATIVE. Please answer the question.
GLASGOW ADAM. I was homeless in Egypt. I had no job. And no chance of getting one without presenting myself in the expected way for a woman.
HOME OFFICE REPRESENTATIVE. Could it be said, therefore, that your reasons for wanting to live in the UK relate to your employment prospects, Miss Kashmiry?
GLASGOW ADAM. No!
Madam I’m Adam!
It’s a palindrome. The same forwards as it is backwards. Madam I’m Adam.
Sorry, I…
HOME OFFICE REPRESENTATIVE makes notes.
What are you writing?
EGYPTIAN ADAM thrusts the HOME OFFICE REPRESENTATIVE’s notes at GLASGOW ADAM.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. The credibility of your claim has been undermined by fundamental discrepancies in your testimony. The Secretary of State does not believe your claim to be a transgender man.
GLASGOW ADAM is devastated.
What now? I appeal and what? Wait? I’m not allowed to work. Thirty-five pounds is not enough to live on. I have no debit card. The only ID I’m given has my birth name on it and states I’m a woman.
GLASGOW ADAM. ‘To sanction – to permit but also to penalise.’
I’ve escaped Egypt for another prison.
The stage becomes the claustrophobic Glasgow room which is also ADAM’s brain. Things will start to distort from here. Time passes in a fluid blur. The passing of the days may be charted 1, 9, 78, 113… The ADAMS are prowling, pacing the space, trapped. CCTV footage, lots of different angles, of ADAM living in the flat, eating, sleeping, watching TV.
The soundscape is of bad daytime TV and taps turning on and off, the microwave pinging.
It is oppressive.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. I can’t breathe in this binding.
GLASGOW ADAM. I need to prove I am a man.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. My ribs are bending into my lungs. If I cough, they will tear.
GLASGOW ADAM. I need testosterone.
GP (EGYPTIAN ADAM). You know I can’t prescribe that for you, Miss Kashmiry.
GLASGOW ADAM. Adam, please.
GP. You will need to speak again with the consultant psychiatrist at the gender clinic.
GLASGOW ADAM. I have. She will not prescribe the hormone therapy until I am granted asylum. They will not grant me asylum because I have not begun the hormone therapy.
GP. I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do.
GLASGOW ADAM hardens.
GLASGOW ADAM. On one of the websites I have found, there is a GP ‘shit list’. For trans people who are treated badly…
GP. Are you implying I’m on that list, Miss Kashmiry?
EGYPTIAN ADAM once more.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. I promise to be kind.
I promise not to hurt others.
I promise always to tell the truth.
Still in the imagined scene with the GP, GLASGOW ADAM’s aggression melts away.
GLASGOW ADAM. No. No. I’m just asking you, please, to help me.
GP. Good luck with your asylum appeal, Miss Kashmiry. Please can you close the door on your way out.
GLASGOW ADAM. Help me, please.
The GP has gone. EGYPTIAN ADAM has
become the HOME OFFICE REPRESENTATIVE.
HOME OFFICE REPRESENTATIVE. Did you report your alleged sexual assault to the Egyptian police, Miss Kashmiry?
GLASGOW ADAM. Alleged? I…
HOME OFFICE REPRESENTATIVE. Did you report your attack to the Egyptian police?
GLASGOW ADAM gives a shake of the head.
So you did not feel significantly threatened?
GLASGOW ADAM. I did.
HOME OFFICE REPRESENTATIVE. Why then did you not seek redress or protection?
GLASGOW ADAM. I, I don’t understand the question. From whom could I seek protection?
HOME OFFICE REPRESENTATIVE. The police, of course.
GLASGOW ADAM. If I tell the police that a person on the street has hurt me, they hurt me twice as bad. I tell them I was sexually assaulted by a man. Three police assault me. Redress? Protection? There is none.
HOME OFFICE REPRESENTATIVE. So to clarify, Miss Kashmiry, there is no formal record of your attack?
Nothing to prove it ever happened at all.
Faced with the impossible Catch-22 logic, GLASGOW ADAM steps out of the memory.
GLASGOW ADAM. I’m stuck in a palindrome. Backwards, forwards, everywhere my fate is the same. Madam I’m Adam.
Images from the Arab world (2011 as the Arab Spring gathers momentum) flicker on to the screens.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. What is happening at home?
GLASGOW ADAM. This room is my brain.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. People are protesting. Our brothers and sisters are screaming for change.
GLASGOW ADAM. I am trapped inside my brain.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. Look! How can this be happening?
GLASGOW ADAM looks for the first time.
GLASGOW ADAM. The internet.
This thought prompts GLASGOW ADAM’s renewed preoccupation with the internet, the laptop is opened again.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. This has nothing to do with –
GLASGOW ADAM. People are daring to ask things online that they wouldn’t ask aloud. They are meeting people who are changing them, helping each other to act. Just like I did.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. It’s bubbling over like a volcano. Revolution everywhere. Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain.
GLASGOW ADAM. I will find it in this room. The proof that I am a man.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. And in Egypt, Mubarak is overthrown.
GLASGOW ADAM. It’s possible to buy testosterone online!
EGYPTIAN ADAM. We have our first democratically elected leader in sixty years! Mama will be so happy. I should be there.
GLASGOW ADAM. Without a bank card, it’s almost impossible but I’ve found one site where you can pay by Western Union. It costs… forty-two pounds.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. Seven pounds more than I have each week to live on?
GLASGOW ADAM. I don’t need food.
Days pass. We’re into the 300s. The ADAMS pace and prowl. GLASGOW ADAM returns frequently to the internet, which angers EGYPTIAN ADAM who slams the laptop shut and thrusts a toilet roll in GLASGOW ADAM’s face.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. It’s nearly finished…
GLASGOW ADAM. You use too much. One sheet. One sheet per visit.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. The toothpaste’s run out.
GLASGOW ADAM. Brush without it.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. What about my period? I have no sanitary towels.
GLASGOW ADAM (rhetorical). Has it started?
EGYPTIAN ADAM. Not yet.
GLASGOW ADAM. So stop giving me problems!
EGYPTIAN ADAM. I’m hungry.
GLASGOW ADAM. I’m hungry!
EGYPTIAN ADAM. I will eat the last Weetabix.
GLASGOW ADAM. No! Save it.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. I can feel my bones jutting out through my skin.
GLASGOW ADAM opens the laptop again.
GLASGOW ADAM. This room is my brain. I will find the answers in this room.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. I am tired of being always in my brain. These ‘friends’ who help me on the internet? Can I touch them? At home, people are holding each other by the hand in solidarity. The internet did not start the revolution. Bouazizi did.
GLASGOW ADAM. The street vendor?
EGYPTIAN ADAM. His wheelbarrow of produce is confiscated again by corrupt police officials who he has no money to bribe. He appeals to them. He is hungry, desperate.
GLASGOW ADAM. My appeal! Months I’ve waited to hear and nothing. And now? Have they granted me asylum?
EGYPTIAN ADAM. They are deaf to him. He is trapped.
GLASGOW ADAM. I have been rejected. Again.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. They hold all the power.
GLASGOW ADAM. I am trapped.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. All his choices stolen from him, Bouazizi – a simple man – says ‘Enough!’
He pours gasoline over himself and sets fire to his body. And starts a fire in the hearts of the entire Arab world.
GLASGOW ADAM. I feel like the climber in the film. Stuck for a hundred and twenty-seven hours between a boulder and the wall of a canyon.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. What film? I’m talking about revolution!
GLASGOW ADAM. The one I saw an advert for. The one I would see if I had any money.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. Forget films. Start a fire.
GLASGOW ADAM. How?
EGYPTIAN ADAM can’t answer this.
Days pass. The ADAMS pace and prowl. EGYPTIAN ADAM secretly sneaks the last Weetabix. GLASGOW ADAM sees and attacks. They grapple on the floor.
Give it to me. That’s mine.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. I’m hungry!
GLASGOW ADAM. I want it. Give it to me now.
GLASGOW ADAM dominates EGYPTIAN ADAM, gets the Weetabix, nurses it for a moment, then has a moment of realisation. Calm again, GLASGOW ADAM laughs.
I’m Gollum!
Laughs some more.
Or was he called Sméagol? I’m losing my fucking mind.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. Exile wasn’t the only punishment in Ancient Egypt.
GLASGOW ADAM. This room is my brain. I kick the bed and my head throbs here.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. They would force a sinner to change their birth name and so part them for ever from their soul.
GLASGOW ADAM. I punch the wall and, here, I feel the ache of it.
EGYPTIAN ADAM begin to hyperventilate.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. I can’t breathe.
GLASGOW ADAM. I smash the mirror and feel a sharp pain behind my eye.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. I can’t breathe.
I need an ambulance. I cannot breathe. Am I dying?
GP (GLASGOW ADAM). Palpitations, hyperventilation, nausea, dizziness. It’s another panic attack, Miss Kashmiry. You can’t die from a panic attack. Did you try the breathing exercises?
EGYPTIAN ADAM (still hyperventilating). But this came from nowhere. I wasn’t anxious, I wasn’t upset. I was walking from the TV to the toilet. And suddenly, no breath at all.
GP. What were you watching?
EGYPTIAN ADAM. Channel 5. My TV only has Channel 5.
GP. That explains it then.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. I don’t understand… oh, it’s a joke, you’re joking. Yes, Channel 5 is a very bad channel.
The GP is gone. GLASGOW ADAM ceremoniously presents a package.
GLASGOW ADAM. It’s here. The testosterone is here.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. And a syringe?
GLASGOW ADAM nods. They both expose their thighs.
GLASGOW ADAM. The pharmacy would only give me this one for insulin. It’s too small. It should be long and fat…
EGYPTIAN ADAM sizes it up, warily.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. A small needle is fine.
GLASGOW ADAM. The testosterone needs to reach the muscle. Injecting into the fat can really fuck you up. Give you an abscess, a fever…
It’ll be okay though. Just need to avoid any blood vessels and hope for the best.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. How do I do it?
GLASGOW ADAM. Trust the brain. The primary motor cortex will send an electrical signal down the spinal cord to the muscles in the arm. And then…
stab.
Both ADAMS are primed. They stab the needles into their leg. Testosterone courses into their body. It is agony. EGYPTIAN ADAM begins to deteriorate from this moment on. It is a slow death.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. It hurts. It really hurts.
GLASGOW ADAM. But not as much as slicing your own arm off with a pocket knife.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. What?
GLASGOW ADAM. The film about the climber trapped in a canyon. I looked up the ending.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. My leg feels dead. Like actually dead.
GLASGOW ADAM. My leg is black and swollen.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. This room is not straight. It is tipping left and right.
GLASGOW ADAM. My head is burning.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. Left.
GLASGOW ADAM. I’m on fire. I’m ice.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. And right.
GLASGOW ADAM. It’s the testosterone. Oily and thick, seeping through the fat in my leg. It feels like I have been poisoned.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. Something is wrong in Egypt. Democracy is slipping away. Morsi has granted himself unlimited powers.
GLASGOW ADAM (to the imagined interpreter after the
Home Office interview). Why are you laughing? You are here to translate my words to the Home Office interviewer. Not to laugh with him.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. Egypt has itself a new tyrant. The revolution has failed.
GLASGOW ADAM as TRANSLATOR laughs longer than feels comfortable. Stops, then laughs again. Stops.
TRANSLATOR. This is one of the strangest interviews I’ve ever done.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. I’m going to be sick.
EGYPTIAN ADAM rushes away to vomit.
GLASGOW ADAM. I have evidence, documents to prove. This report from a psychiatrist see ‘in my professional opinion’ –’insistent, persistent and consistent’ – that’s me.
Here – this is a photograph of me at my all-girl school. See amongst all those smiling girls’ faces, there short hair, skinny boy with a look of blackness on my face, forced to sit in a girl’s uniform. Does that help? What else can I give you?
EGYPTIAN ADAM throws a slimy brain on the floor.
EGYPTIAN ADAM. Show them that.
GLASGOW ADAM. My brain! Does it look like a man’s brain? Does it have the same volume and density of neurons as a man’s? Does it prove it?
Days pass. The ADAMS pace and prowl.
