What follows is the result of an idea to connect the field of philosophy and thought with the world of drama. Let us choose sentences to ponder from the statements of the members of the philosophical group, which are archived in the “Chistiha Blog” (http://chistiha.blogfa.com); and after manipulating the concepts of those statements, and doing a brief exercise and editing, let us create a dramatic idea that will continue to form another dialogue, another concept, and another thought.
In the principles of drama writing, “ideation” and “drafting” have a specific method; but we tried to be one step before the idea and the plot. At the same stage of mental spark or, in our own words, the “study” stage, where the writer’s hand is open to writing down any image, concept, or point. Here, we have not limited ourselves to not mentioning the technical instructions, performance arrangements, dialogue, staging, and other matters, and left them for more detailed plans; on the contrary, we have completely written down whatever came to mind at the moment.
During our group meetings, we came to the conclusion that it was not necessary to obtain refined and precise plans from our conversations. It was only necessary to immediately edit and record everything that came to mind in an instant as a “study.”
And now we share the same with you. May these exercises and sketches be the beginning of a path to step on a bridge between philosophy and drama.
Ideas on the Bridge from Philosophy to Drama: Etude One Hundred and Seventeen
Note: These sketches have been registered with the Islamic Culture and Guidance Department. And the intellectual property belongs to the author.
These sketches are only allowed to be republished on the “Chistiha” site.
Etude number one hundred and twelve
Etude 112
Half-length film
Working title: Pajoosh
First, let’s get to know the story’s character: Saeed, born in 1976, has been in prison since he was born. He was born in a women’s prison. His mother was imprisoned for theft at the time. His birth certificate states his name as Saeed Rahim Dad. However, his mother only guessed that Saeed’s father might have been Rahim. When he was three years old, his mother slapped him in the ear in a fit of anger, which caused the child to develop a fever and then lose all hearing in one ear. And since then, the annoying hum of women’s voices while eating in the dining hall takes away all the pleasure of food that was his only pleasure, and he suffers and sometimes wants to bang his head against the wall. The same wall he loves. The wall of the prison’s backyard. The wall behind which a single evergreen tree, a silver cypress, grows. A single tree outside the prison. Saeed looked at those evergreen branches of the cypress.
Saeed was six years old when his mother was released. And they went to the outskirts of a satellite town of a southern city where half of its residents spoke Arabic. Hormozgan or Khuzestan. In 1982, at the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war and economic shortages and the alarm bells and poverty. His mother continued to clean houses in the city. And Saeed, six, was assigned to a block-making workshop. What always caught his attention was a single tree that was beyond the workshop’s wire mesh and belonged to a government office or organization that was off-limits. A cypress. Just like the leaves that the cypress had behind the prison. That single tree was once a sapling, and now that it has grown up, it has nowhere to spread out in that narrow space of paving bricks, and under the pressure of these bricks, it has stretched its trunk across the pavement. And Saeed looks deeply at the single tree. Saeed’s employer forcibly sends him to night school when he is eight or nine years old. And Saeed wants to run away. He hates school. But running away from school requires courage, which he does not have. In 2017, Saeed studied until the second grade. And he is eleven years old. Most nights he sleeps in the block-making workshop. And he listens to the war news on the radio. Saeed has also gone through an unbelievable bitter experience and he absolutely does not want that memory to be associated with his mind. One of the block-making workers once tried to assault him, and Saeed, despite being a minor, was able to understand what his situation was and remembered the words of his mother’s fellow prisoners, and he realized the incident and was able to escape in that situation. And of course, that worker still works in that block-making workshop. From morning to evening. Saeed does not know much about his mother’s condition. But he is sure that his mother is still the same woman she was. An ignorant and inconsiderate woman; a house cleaner who is not to be trusted at all. She was stealing while she was carrying Saeed in her womb; and the last time, right in front of the owner of that house. And when the lady of the house realized that her pearl necklace had been stolen, she yelled at her husband, “How could you not say anything to this woman?” And Saeed heard this sentence over and over again from his mother, who would tell it to the women in prison. And she would tell them the story with laughter and great pomp.
In 1967, Saeed makes his decision one day. A truck carrying blocks to the front is leaving the block-making workshop. Saeed only has time to steal a few sheets of paper from his employer’s desk and take his ID card from the drawer of the employer’s desk, which he forgot to lock and the key was left on the drawer. In the darkness of the night, he jumps under the truck’s tarpaulin tent and places himself among the blocks. And another day, when he sees sunlight, he hears the sounds of explosions that are nothing like the sounds of explosions he heard on the radio. He has a strange feeling, and finally, in the midst of it, the people who learn of his identity must find a solution for him. In the end, it seems that the decision is that since he came of his own free will, has an ID card, and is twelve years old, he will be considered a member of the Basij.
The experience of war and the pleasure of that atmosphere are such that Saeed never wants the war to end. He loves the food. And the sleeping place that happens to be similar to his sleeping place in the same block-making workshop. Months pass. And Saeed feels physically and intellectually mature at the front. He has grown. His mind has opened up and he wants to save his country. He is a good savior now. He stands in the prayer line and has witnessed with his own eyes the wounded dying. Once, on the same paper that he had stolen from his employer, he draws a sketch of a single tree with a dying soldier. In a transition, Saeed wants to take action. At the same time, he sees a single tree bent under the stones that have been dug to dig a trench. The stones have damaged the back of that single tree so much that it has to bend itself but still remains standing and growing. But crooked. Saeed goes that way. He tries with all his might to lift the stones. He can’t. They don’t even move a little. He raises his head. And he finds himself surrounded by Iraqi soldiers. And after a short time he is in the Iraqi detention center with other Iranian prisoners. Saeed is the youngest and the sounds around him bother him. Everyone is bothered in some way.
In the detention center, the only thing that convinces Saeed not to cry is an old man who is mute but can hear. That old man is not old, of course. He is young. He only seems old because of his white hair. The old man writes something on a piece of paper once and gives it to Saeed.
Saeed is not very literate. But he can read these sentences. The old man has written: On the lighter of one of the American soldiers in the Vietnam War, there was a sentence engraved:
We die unwillingly
With incompetent leadership
With the murder of the unfortunate
For the ungrateful…!
One night, this old man succeeds in carrying out his plan and getting Saeed to escape. Saeed is thin and slender. And somewhere in the prison’s soil is soft. Right behind the bathroom wall. With the old man’s help, Saeed escapes from the prison. And with his usual stupid and bewildered face, he looks at the old man from the side. By morning, Saeed makes it to the place where they are carrying blocks. He remembers the single tree. It just so happens that right in his sight is a bush that is under the pressure of barbed wire. The oleander bush of the car. Saeed intends to move it a little. At that moment, the Iraqi soldier’s gun sight is aimed at Saeed. Saeed is in the shelter of a tree. The bullet first hits the tree and then Saeed’s arm. A lot of blood flows from his arm. During all these difficult and exhausting moments, Saeed thinks about his entire life. And reviews his entire story. He squeezes the piece of paper, which is now bloody, in his hand; A hand that is close to the trunk of a tree. A trunk that also has a boil. Until the hand is opened again and the blood dries. And that’s it.
The structure of this short film could be in the style of the story One Hundred Years of Solitude. That is, the last moment of Saeed’s life would be the very first scene of the first sequence, a moment of looking down and looking from Saeed’s point of view at the shrub and the bright noon sunlight; along with Saeed’s inner voice asking himself why his mother named him Saeed? And with this voice we review the whole story of his life. And at the end, the discovery of the secret and surprise of what this tree and that look at its leaves and the bright sun are. And the final credits, a helishot of an upward climb that clearly defines the location of the area. Soldiers at work and prisoners in lines, etc. etc. And that single tree under which Saeed ended up, his life, along with everything else, seems smaller and smaller. And that’s it.
Author: B. Khosravani
It is recalled that any copying and extraction of these ideas, from an ethical and legal perspective, is only possible by mentioning the address, and use for performance will only be possible if the author’s written consent is obtained.