Next:THE DOGS / Home    FAITH : A Play in Two Pieces by Joe Martin Copyright (c) 2002 by Joe Martin Complete text and rights for performance can be secured from the Marton Agency: tonda@martonagcy.com _________________________________________________ CHARACTERS PIECE 1 AURANGZEB, Moghul  ruler of India DARA SHIKOOH, rightful heir to Moghul India, his brother JIHANARA, their elder sister MUMTEZ MAHAL, their step mother, wife of Shah Jahan A SAQI/SCRIBE PIECE 2 SAADI, a hat and scarf Salesman JOHN B WAIT, Evangelical relief organizer CHRISTIANE LANE, Catholic lay aid consultant ILANA DAVID, a student returning from Israel A WAITRESS _______________________________ The two "pieces" are autonomous, yet interlocking.  The set configuration in each echoes the other.  Three round tables are in the foreground in both. The carpets covering the floor and clothes on the tables in the first piece are hung on Saadi's street vendor's booth in the second.  Other maneuvers in this spirit are encouraged.                                                                I An interior chamber of the Red Fort in Agra India, or in a history museum anywhere. The stage is covered with overlapping carpets, including the round tables, with many blues and reds and some gold mixed in.  In the center a throne.   On a dais far upstage, a low bed with a glowing spread on it.  An immobile figure lies in this bed in turban and whites (not a live actor) : This is Shah Jahan, the father of AURANGZEB and DARA SHIKOOH. The characters emerge from inside three round tables and a throne, with holes in the center.  They are covered with brilliant classical paisley-adorned silk clothes.  They exit "into" the tables as well.  The tables and throne are able to roll, and can shift  right and left, up and down.  The characters emerge from the center of the tables and throne.  AURANGZEB emerges from the center of the throne in the same way.  He does not sit on it. A  SAQI who doubles as a scribe (played by a woman) pours them wine.  Then he/she returns, always, to writing with quill and scroll. _________________________ A shaft of light on AURANGZEB, who emerges from within the throne. AURANGZEB: Get this down, the whole vision. I speak to the true believers. I give you testimonies of faith. Shall we commence? The SAQI puts pen to page and head down. I saw a small house in the alley  by the mosque which sits in the Delhi Red Fort, in which a man sat cobbling shoes. I walked up to greet him.  "Oh man of the faithful, servant of the just"  I said. He was sitting in my fort so I knew all of this in advance— "King of the faithful!  What is it that makes you sit and cobble here all day?  How can you be so steadfast and consistent in your faith?" He responded: "Oh Sultan of sunlight, oh Calif of Mercy, oh king of the compassionate who is bred in right speech and right action, and who does right by his subjects. Soul king, angel king, ruler of righteousness.  I am fixing these shoes so their owner can walk in them." I was astonished by his reply.  Its simplicity hit me like a flash.  I determined from that day I would crush all the enemies of that simple and direct man who lives in accordance with the law.  I will protect him from those who'd spit on him for his piousness.  Those who would put his daughters on  display to arouse lusts in the simple people and bring violence upon them.  All those who would throw his holy book into their accursed holy rivers of India, deluded as they are in thinking their rivers are gods.   What wouldn't  I do to quiet the secret screaming of their idols that scour me in my dreams at night up and down the Indus and the Ganges, drowning out the pure voice of this simple man's one true God. The idolaters are everywhere.  The idols can been seen on your streets and avenues.  The worst of them sit every day in the market place.  Calling out, putting out their tendrils, leading people away from Paradise that is theirs by right, and into the roiling flames of judgement.  "Where is the soul of these people" I asked myself?  Caught in the honeyed jaws of moneylenders, whore-makers and sellers and buyers and swindlers.  All those who earn their living by persuading the people to love idols.  "Non-believers must be convinced or disappear from the face of the earth." I quote myself.  My father was a good man, but an idolatrous man  an infatuated man. I have put him in a generous prison.  In this far tower of the Agra fort.  Here he sits every day on his sick bed staring at the river, on which boatmen sway like reeds of grass in the heat when the humid vapors distort all the images of men, trees and animals,  and miles away it bends his glowing white monument in the sun.  There he sits and stares out at the distant embankment at that palace housing nothing but a corpse.     An idol dedicated to an even worse idol. Pause. A woman. Pause. There is nothing in a woman that is not trickery, trouble, betrayal and a will to use you.  Well,  even if Mumtez Mahal was my imperial mother.  it may be true that, in the plan of all things, women must deceive in order to conceive.  (To the SAQI)   Now I have hit my stride, no? Back to the main thread.  Enough is enough.  (Pause.)  That's schoolboy pomposity. Let's say ... It is time to draw the line. How much of his vast realm of the East did Shah Jahan exploit for art and gems to buy for his monument using our treasury.  To get his ivory his gold the chiseled stones the lattice work, the arabesques the honey colored agates the lapis outlines amethyst cups the gold leaf the inlaid emerald tiles that glow when the moon flares its skirts at night.  He depleted the vaults and all for love.  Love.  That's a  rich word—and demonic too. Pause. Did we get all that down? I hope I am articulating my position? Hell, you fools have no advice. Pause. Intoxicated.  A whole continent intoxicated that was the logical conclusion of his work for love. Pause. Across the river lies the stump of the next Taj he planned!  This one for himself for the day he would join his beloved Mumtez Mahal.  The idol-crazed dotard had to be stopped.  It was in the nick of time.  Only the stump will remain on that side of the river.  He fills out his days staring at the vista of his bulging idol of material stupidity.  Our poor  stepmother.  If Hell wants to take her on judgment day does he think his great dome will stop it?  He sits on his bed on the top of this tower, the breezes over his water pool coursing  around his neck, looking at his Taj with the misty eyes of love ...  Intoxicated.  Stupefied. Pause. All this description, you say.  Past history. Where's the action?  Where's the drama? This is my action.  To make history static.  Forever. All great men want to solve the problem of history's endless oozing. Pause. Now let's summon the past. Once I seized the peacock throne, how did it go? I asked myself—what is to be done about this family?  I need guidance— I said. They are all defiled by this universal religion dreamed up by Akbar. That's it you see— it starts with our grandfather.  Dara Shikooh was the heir and the eldest son.  But alas—he's been bent by demons.  And Jihanara the book-writer she  studies with men outside of our family, sits in meditation prescribed by the Qadiriya cult, and chants all through the night. Worse—all morning long  she writes books.  How can this family bear this shame. JIHANARA emerges from the center of her table.  She prostrates from the waist, then sits back. AURANGZEB Look, I've summoned her up. She's spying again you see. JIHANARA Aurangzeb you called me. You're disturbing my writing.  What is it. AURANGZEB I have heard rumors about you. JIHANARA And you listened? AURANGZEB You're my sister.  I keep my ears open.  That's all. JIHANARA Afraid of something? AURANGZEB Dara Shikooh, I'm sure, would like the power back that's rightfully his. JIHANARA My poor brother is not suited for politics. AURANGZEB Well you're coming around.  Do you think so too? JIHANARA Not Dara Shikooh.  I mean you. AURANGZEB You're going to be put to the test.  I cannot afford to have disloyalty lodging in this place. JIHANARA You have a lot of fears. AURANGZEB I have a right to them.  I am the usurper of Hindustan.  I've imprisoned my father.  I have displaced his heir and both little brothers.  Granted soon most people will understand it was done for the good of the order.  I'm not a gilded rose.  And I have so much trouble explaining myself. JIHANARA I wish you luck. AURANGZEB Let's try this.  What do you want from me, Jihanara? JIHANARA Aside from freeing Baba? AURANGZEB Shah Jahan has made his bed and is sleeping in it. JIHANARA Quite right.  He is a prisoner of it. (Pause.) Are you really hell-bent on your course of action? AURANGZEB I'm not the one who has been bent by hell here. Anyway I am a prisoner of history.  Surrounded by it. JIHANARA Listen brother— don't worry about me.  I will not remain among you here much longer.  AURANGZEB Oh? A sweet self annihilation for the sake of your good father? JIHANARA My teacher Sheikh Mullah Shah has given the word that I qualify to succeed him. Pause. AURANGZEB (laughs) You? So now you're going to be a master of  mystics? Or should I say mistress? JIHANARA I have responsibilities beyond that of any king or politician. AURANGZEB (thunders) What has happened to motherhood?  What's wrong with that?  What about setting the example of loyal marriage, Is this what the people need to see you doing?   What about— JIHANARA What if that is not the path marked out for me? AURANGZEB —moral examples?  The ridiculous notions of these people— JIHANARA I have been honored by a great master— AURANGZEB —who think they can change universal laws— JIHANARA Which universal laws.  Who were the Prophet's spiritual friends?  Khadija— AURANGZEB It's set down for all time, immutable, unchangeable— JIHANARA Khadija and then Aisha, his spiritual counselors were— AURANGZEB They were wives! JIHANARA —women! Pause.  DARA SHIKOOH emerges from the center of his table. He gazes about, a look of astonishment. DARA SHIKOOH Are these disputes going to go on forever? Weren't they resolved and shunted off into history somewhere? JIHANARA I assure you, they are unending. DARA SHIKOOH You have awakened me from my meditations. AURANGZEB Your fakir practices.  Still?  Here?  In the abyss? DARA SHIKOOH They are healthy exercises of the mind. AURANGZEB Hindu exercises. DARA SHIKOOH Why did you wake me?  Or I should say why did you bring me back to sleep from my awakeness? (To the SAQI)  I'd like pen and paper please! The SAQI/SCRIBE brings him quill and paper. AURANGZEB So you think you are sleeping when you enter the court? When you enter here you enter reality. DARA SHIKOOH When I enter these rooms I am walking into a nightmare.  The sleeper's consolation is that these things are dreams.  They pass. AURANGZEB You think the slightest unpleasantness is a dream.  And you wanted to run the empire? DARA SHIKOOH I have everything I want. AURANGZEB Don't bore me with that. You told your army to fight mine, and you will pay. No wish to see Shah Jahan again?. DARA SHIKOOH I have patience.  I am sure to see my father. Our father that is. AURANGZEB Well you can't see him.  (Pause).  That's how the conversation went. Or something to the effect. We'll skip to the next exchange of significance. Then I asked: Where are your soldiers? DARA SHIKOOH They are, most of them, away at Hazrat Nizamudin, celebrating the Saint's holy death day. AURANGZEB These people talk like death is the good life.  He didn't get married today, he died.  It's not his birthday. DARA SHIKOOH You don't understand.  He celebrates all three on one day. AURANGZEB And what are they doing there?  Dancing to music? DARA SHIKOOH Dancing on the bones of those who danced before them. AURANGZEB Have you followed the rulings on men and women together.  Is there partition? DARA SHIKOOH Not possible.  It would not have suited the Hindus and their families. AURANGZEB Families? .... HINDOOS? ... The jurists call that unnatural mixing. DARA SHIKOOH The sitar player is Hindu this year.  Look, Kushru may have invented the instrument to sing his love poems to Hazrat Nizamuddin but the Hindus have made it their own.  The instruments are designed to play Indian modes. The best sitar players now are Hindus. AURANGZEB Unnatural mixing. DARA SHIKOOH You deal with the Law.  I'll deal with the music. AURANGZEB Finally you grasp it. Music and the Law are mutually exclusive. DARA SHIKOOH Is that my sister? My dear you are so wan. AURANGZEB The two of you always trailed about each other.  What did you talk about? JIHANARA Poetry, God and chess. AURANGZEB Sister I must have a word with you before you depart to your master. Let this brother of ours sit here and contemplate the things he never accomplished before I took his head. JIHANARA disappears into the table. AURANGZEB to the SAQI/SCRIBE. AURANGZEB Record his musings for posterity.  (Pause.)  For eternity. AURANGZEB descends into the throne. DARA SHIKOOH (alone, to the scribe) Yes he's right.  You put it down for me. Dead men don't compose on paper. To begin: I am blessed by the holiest of all things. I have spent my life digging, and what I have uncovered is light pure light of the world. It is the light upon light of our being and the light of our non-being as well. I have had in my possession the first of all the celestial books Glory  to these People of the Book among whom we govern. The saints of their faith predicted our own faith and even the prophets of the Torah and the prophets of the Gospels. I read these texts and at once I heard a voice crying out: "How could this have happened!" Well, it was my own voice, but forced out by the thrust of an inner arrow of fabulous golden glowing discovery I read each day drank the wine fell over drunk with these words these calm arguments and logic beyond thinking these pointers paradoxes impossible thoughts revealing the collapse of this existence this shadow play of non-being and I was thrown off the lap of existence itself until I was nowhere in the midst of All. These fifty books— I call them in Persian the Oupnekhat How could it be possible that the highest Islam could have been known millennia before there were Muslims. The purpose of surrender lies here It has always been here. Did Akbar know this when he created his all-embracing religion and brought the gurus into our council? Did he know that this strange word "Upanishads" embraced the lost texts of the divine vision? I have almost completed translating those fifty books. I have given orders for a new translation: The Bhagavad Gita. I don't know what I shall call it for Muslims. Ah, the Mir'aht al-haqq'iq.  No that was used before an entirely warped translation that was.  Now that book  tells of the end of the Path. It is the greatest mystic commentary on the Way of times past present and future. I shall find a suitable name for it. Words count. He descends into his table. * AURANGZEB re-emerges from the throne, looks about. Relieved to see that DARA SHIKOOH  is gone. AURANGZEB Good.  All clear.  Get this down. Time for my justification to history. These little brothers of mine ... What right did they have to attack from Bengal to attack from Kabul, against the rightful heir Dara Shikooh.  What colossal self-smashing idiots. Talk about dirty politics. But they helped sap the blood of Dara's loyal troops. The favorite son was run down. So too the khafers and non-believers who fought for him. I have a certain political faith. The first article of this faith says: "We will drive them down". One day on this earth there will  be nothing to look upon but men of the faith. I quote myself. No, it pays to think flexibly. Either we will have that or there should be nothing to look upon at all. JIHANARA rises from her table.. JIHANARA Remember the tradition: I was a hidden treasure and wanted— AURANGZEB That's why true soldiers look on them as less than human JIHANARA —to be known, and so I— AURANGZEB If we could we would make their ways disappear from view JIHANARA —created Creation in order to be known. AURANGZEB We took our troops down to the birth place of their God at Mathura—this God born as a man— JIHANARA The dream that your enemies are evil is the creator of evil.  My master has said— AURANGZEB —and plowed under the temple and built a tribute to God on the mound of the dead idols. DARA SHIKOOH  emerges quickly, like a jack-in-the-box.. DARA SHIKOOH God should not be buried not even under a mosque! AURANGZEB Whose God?  What god? JIHANARA God has many names.  God is beyond categories. AURANGZEB Syncretic shit.  Tolerance, tolerance!  God help me. Look, our father forced one of the best imams of our time to translate these epics about barbarian divinities— Rama and Sita, Krishna and Arjuna— and the whole pantheon of these obscene fairytales in which a god or the God descends to earth as a great lover.  This man, purest of souls, had to gag himself and translate infidel books.  Now that pious man's hatred of Jahan knows no bounds.  He is full of bile and fears he'll vomit in the precincts of the court.  He has an ulcer that bleeds from his rectum and through his teeth at the same time. He has had several strokes and has lost partial use of his face. By forcing "tolerance" on a man, and depriving him of his righteousness you can make him severely sick. DARA SHIKOOH "Paradise is the place where there is no cleric!"  I quote myself. AURANGZEB Strike that from the record. If we had true religious law that would be enough to have you quartered. DARA SHIKOOH If we had clerics' laws, you mean. And by the way, in case you've forgotten you will do just that. AURANGZEB You always trumpet your hatred of the religious men. DARA SHIKOOH I prefer spiritual souls to religious men. AURANGZEB These gnostics.  They are women.  DARA SHIKOOH "Paradise is at the feet of Mothers". AURANGZEB Would you stop preaching to me where heaven is and is not! DARA SHIKOOH I thought you liked preachers. AURANGZEB The gnostics do nothing.  They flinch at violence.  They have no stomach for holy war.  The holy warriors prove their faith in the highest way.  What is a gnostic anyway! DARA SHIKOOH "The gnostic is like a lion who eats only what she herself has killed, not like the fox who lives off the scraps of others' conquests."  (Pause.) I quote myself.  (Pause.)  Listen, wasn't I supposed to be king? AURANGZEB You would have been if you'd trained to be king.  Jahan let you off  your obligation to learn the art of war, to immerse yourself in poetry, in meditation.  And you go to seek teachings from that drop-out from existence, M an Mir—and his sister!  His SISTER!  You sat at the feet of Bibi Jam l, a woman!  You took teaching from a hotbed of evil.  Your seed has been boiled and drained by a vampire sheikha.  DARA SHIKOOH I took only warriors for teachers. AURANGZEB One affront after another.  DARA SHIKOOH Nothing I say means harm. I never wanted your head ... in particular. AURANGZEB And what about your actions. DARA SHIKOOH What actions? AURANGZEB Actions.  Behavior.  Indiscretions. Example: Who is this naked Jew you have wandering around your corridors? DARA SHIKOOH He is one of the greatest intellects of Persia. AURANGZEB He lives like a dog. DARA SHIKOOH He studied Christianity as a young man, and converted to Islam in middle age.  AURANGZEB That Jew is an animal in my estimation. DARA SHIKOOH Scripture calls Jews "People of the Book." AURANGZEB You call everyone "People of the Book!"  If all people are People of the Book, then why do we need the true religion? DARA SHIKOOH To try to keep the standards high? AURANGZEB If everybody qualifies as people of the book, then what idols are there to be torn down?  What heresy is there to combat?  What enemies of God to put down? DARA SHIKOOH I hadn't thought of that. AURANGZEB If Jews are People of the Book, and Christians are people of the Book DARA SHIKOOH It's in the holy Q'uran— AURANGZEB and now Hindus are people of the Book, what about Zoroastrians? DARA SHIKOOH The Avesta is revealed scripture.  People of the Book. AURANGZEB The Buddhists, whose temples now lie in ruins ... DARA SHIKOOH Their texts are carved on columns throughout the country, by the order of Emperor Ashoka two thousand years ago.  Most of their book was transmitted orally by devoted monks trained in their minds. AURANGZEB Ashoka.  Akbar wanted to be Ashoka all over again. What about the shamanists? DARA SHIKOOH Their book is constantly being read, but never written down. AURANGZEB The animists. DARA SHIKOOH They read the book of nature.  AURANGZEB The Franks, with their icons.  DARA SHIKOOH They are in love with the Messiah.  He is only an idol of their love. AURANGZEB People of the Book? DARA SHIKOOH Yes. AURANGZEB And the Ethiopeans. DARA SHIKOOH They are safe-keepers of  the ark of the covenant.  The book. AURANGZEB The Manicheans. DARA SHIKOOH The Book. AURANGZEB The Krishna worshippers. DARA SHIKOOH The Book.  Clearly, the book. You will see when the fifty books— AURANGZEB The followers of Osirus. DARA SHIKOOH The book.  They resurrect him in drama. AURANGZEB The cult of Baal. DARA SHIKOOH. Book. AURANGZEB Platonists, your favorite. DARA SHIKOOH Book.  Pure book. AURANGZEB The Chinese alchemists. DARA SHIKOOH Taoists.  Book. AURANGZEB Book. DARA SHIKOOH Book. AURANGZEB The Mithraists. DARA SHIKOOH Book.  Book. AURANGZEB Who is left ... DARA SHIKOOH The Malimatiyah. AURANGZEB Book? DARA SHIKOOH The same book as us. AURANGZEB Who doesn't adhere to the Book! DARA SHIKOOH Some of these Muslims. AURANGZEB I beg your pardon. DARA SHIKOOH The ones who deny the principle of the Book. AURANGZEB Then there are no heretics? DARA SHIKOOH Oh no, there are plenty. AURANGZEB Good.  Because if there weren't, what meaning would there be in spreading the religion? DARA SHIKOOH I don't know.  All is part of creation.  Are you a dualist? AURANGZEB I believe in heaven and hell.  Is that dualism? DARA SHIKOOH Did you hear about the people who wanted paradise and the people who dove into the inferno? There was a great tree.  On one side were burning flames which could annihilate a man in seconds.  On the other were the cooling waters.  On the one side, there were people prepared to dive into the flames.  The others thought them crazy  but they jumped in the fire and they popped up in the cool waters.  The others thought only of getting to the waters of paradise.  They dove in there.  They came up screaming in the flames at the other side of the tree.  And there they remained. AURANGZEB So people should not aspire to paradise? DARA It's a dangerous distraction. AURANGZEB Now I'll tell you.  I have been playing the Turkish Sultan DARA SHIKOOH How so. AURANGZEB Behind the partitions there are judges masters of jurisprudence evaluating every word you have said. DARA SHIKOOH It doesn't matter.  In my heart is recorded everything I have done. and it will play back like music for eternity where the Truth echoes timelessly in the radiant emptiness of now. Pause. Let Samad be my advocate with the judges. AURANGZEB Who is Samad? DARA SHIKOOH The naked Jew. A silence.  Then: AURANGZEB (long raucous laughter) Superb.  Have him wear an ironed loin cloth when he appears in court. He must pick his fleas before he addresses the Qadi. Now I must sleep. I will dream of how I will have you quartered. Though it happened long ago I must relive it as a prophecy of the future: there's more satisfaction in prophecy than memory. He disappears into the throne. JIHANARA emerges, looks about, signals conspiratorially to he SAQI/SCRIBE, who also looks about, and stops writing. JIHANARA  (whispers to Dara Shikooh) Don't you want to rule? DARA SHIKOOH Not possible.  It is not to be. JIHANARA Many people are with you. You could reestablish the council. DARA SHIKOOH Right now, opening the council of all religions would bring down the iron heel on all of you. JIHANARA Among the officers are many who would support you. DARA SHIKOOH Only until it looks like we might lose. JIHANARA It can happen.  In Istanbul  the Janissaries have brought down a Sultan. DARA SHIKOOH They made the mistake of letting Sufis school the Janissaries.   The SAQI stands. JAHANARA Listen to me.  There is poison ready in the kitchen. DARA SHIKOOH I let my men enter into killing.  It was a mistake. Some old Guru taught me this practice of non-harm. JIHANARA You're afraid to unleash more blood letting. There are some who are steady. Even in a corrupt palace there are sound hearts. DARA SHIKOOH If the heart of a religion freezes for five hundred years its body may still live and act in endless ignorance without it. This is a miracle often performed by religions. MUMTEZ MAHAL emerges from her table. MUMTEZ MAHAL Oh my children.  Oh!  So much wind up here. JIHANARA Stepmother.  DARA SHIKOOH Dead stepmother.  MUMTEZ MAHAL In the name of your father, stop this bickering. Where is oh! where is that younger brother of yours Call him up here because oh! I must talk him down. JIHANARA He is love sick for you he has lost himself. MUMTEZ You uh well you may say your father's incapacitated but it's not— no its not due to love. In this earthbound life Oh I was your father's beloved. And he offered to knot the Himalayas into a string of pearls and conquer them only for the sake of making me jewels. Yes he was attendant on me every waking day. His love knew no limits in religion or outside religion. The waters of the river flowed through our veins and oh the singing of boatmen hummed in our ears. Though he pushed out the borders of empire in his youth all reasons for conquest had vanished because you see those boatmen could sing so well. Imams, Brahmins and yogis blessed you and all our children.   We were fortunate.  The banyan trees put down roots in the fortress and oh we planted gardens of every kind. MUMTEZ MAHAL  goes into a freeze.  A silence. The others look at one another, and back to her. She revives. MUMTEZ MAHAL Your Saqi  has not served me or recorded a single one of my words. JIHANARA He lives in time and you don't. MUMTEZ MAHAL I don't exist on his plane? JIHANARA You are memorialized.  He is forgotten. MUMTEZ MAHAL Oh.  Memorialized.  Oh. And now that I am gone, look at him the emperor too sentimental and so so sick. He should raise an army for love but instead he gazes out at this Taj and drinks the sweetness of his perfect meeting with love. He is stuck yes I see that he is stuck. JIHANARA He should raise an army against egotism and greed and conquest and ambition and sycophancy and idolatry and the animal soul and the compulsive self. But he himself suffered from all those maladies. MUMTEZ MAHAL Yes but yes he should  ride in the chariot against our pious priestly general son but oh! he will not I can assure you for he has lost the discipline of love which raised the Taj  from the soil of chaos.  But to be stuck ... She goes into a freeze. AURANGZEB (emerges in the throne.) Dear imperial mother,  eternally dead. You are known in history as a dead woman. You are a tomb. JIHANARA Tomb, womb—one leads to the other. MUMTEZ MAHAL (unfreezes, savagely) Aurangzeb, you like building mosques on the temples of our enemies. In five hundred years your enemies will therefore remain alive to attack your structures and they will be treated without mercy and their protectors too you have tapped into the energies of destruction using the most beautiful forms the architecture of the house of God. AURANGZEB The voice of architecture herself speaks! When your name is uttered all people see is marble. MUMTEZ MAHAL Ho ho you think ah your actions are definitive but they exist and will never go away. For hundreds of years to come these energies will savage us all like dogs around the liver of a burned Ganges carcass. This is oh no! not a curse or prediction just—well— profound common sense All my visions come from common sense. AURANGZEB None of that will happen if every soul who follows in my footsteps stays on the true and narrow path of true faith. MUMTEZ What is that faith. AURANGZEB You don't know? MUMTEZ  MAHAL Islam means surrender. When will you stop your bellyaching. (To the Scribe/Saqi)  Get that down for posterity. She goes into a freeze.  A brief silence. DARA SHIKOOH The dead can see in all directions past and future too. AURANGZEB There is no vision in the female species. MUMTEZ MAHAL comes out of her freeze. MUMTEZ MAHAL Oh!  And one more thing. Dara Shikooh's work will never end he will die and it will take on life and his fifty mystic books will spread through Islam in Persian and Annequon Duperron a scholar of the Avestas will read them and translate them to Latin and the first Europeans will encounter the mind of the East and a Sheikh Schopenhauer will keep the fifty books in Latin by his bed to go to sleep by each night "They have been the solace of my life and they will be the solace of my death" he will say as his maid turns off his lamp and oh the light will stay on and melancholy Germans will write mystic plays and one day a famous swami  will be invited to speak the living Upanishads at a parliament of religions in a— my God— mostly khafer city called ... New York? ... And oh and then a pipe smoking Englishman will write a book on perennial philosophy citing the fifty books and Jihanara's teachers and oh and then some skinny Englishman —after the English have given up the empire that will destroy yours my dear stepson— will pick up a sitar and make strange sounds with his famous ensemble who play on rocks —am I getting this right?— suddenly all the khafer western boys will grow their hair long and wear Hindustani clothes and look for gurus and oh and ultimate things and after that the Japanese will get into it and go west with their monks and there will be dancing and long boring sitting Phillip Glass will compose arpeggios and everyone will be searching and trying to define consciousness getting over illusion and dying in harmony. (She goes in a freeze. Pause.  She revives.)  That's it.  That's all my common sense tells me today.  I am tired in my tomb I have blown out the fires of my spirit engines. She goes into a freeze. AURANGZEB Look at her.  All of us are obsessed with her. The whole country. JIHANARA I have my own beloved. AURANGZEB Yes. Your motherly concerns with the Sultan are suspect. JIHANARA That's not what I ... What do you mean?. AURANGZEB I mean they are more motherly than filial and more wifely than motherly. JIHANRA You don't think such things of me you just say them. AURANGZEB I have not only said it to you. I have said it to a great many other people. And a great many other  people have said it to me. Now there will always be people who whisper about you. I win. JIHANARA What are you trying to do? AURANGZEB (to the scribe) Stop recording. (To Jihanara) I am creating history before I  am to be judged. For I will place Dara's head streaming blood in the portals of Agra for his heresy while jackals chew his bones in the dump. DARA SHIKOOH Glory be to Truth!   Glory, glory! AURANGZEB If not for heresy, treason. Will you listen to that? DARA SHIKOOH Oh Truth.  Oh God.  Oh Truth! JIHANARA  He is content.  To be content is to live eternally. AURANGZEB Those who are content do not make history. MUMTEZ MAHAL (unfreezing) The worshipers of history dwell in ... She goes back into a freeze. JIHANARA Hell.  AURANGZEB Look around you.  Where do you think we are? DARA SHIKOOH Look up there.  What a beautiful moon. In this light you can dance.