Borders

Henry Naylor

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781848427235
• eBook ISBN: 9781788500524
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

A celebrated war photographer, whose audience with Osama bin Laden prior to 9/11 shaped his career. A young Syrian, six months pregnant, on an ageing fishing boat in the Mediterranean, sinking fast under the weight of refugees.

Through two alternating monologues, Borders provides an urgent, moving and occasionally hilarious commentary on one of the great crises of our time.

Henry Naylor's play premiered at the 2017 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where it won the Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh Fringe Award and a coveted Fringe First, before North American performances at the Spoleto Festival, Charleston, and New York Theatre Workshop in 2018.

SEBASTIAN. Balochistan, March the 5th 1998.

The valley beneath, a religious experience. A landscape for arks. Trembling with menace and liquid fury.

Those aren’t rafts beneath, they’re roofs. Those people aren’t waving, they’re pleading.

The noise of the rotors, violent; their shiver demanding fast film.

But I have long put down the camera.

Instead, on my stomach, looking down the length of a fishing wire, hauling on board our latest catch: a farmer. His eyes hollow. Dripping mud and fear.

I try to pull him on board, but he won’t let go of the wire or his terror.

Paramedics prise his fingers off the cable, his family chittering, relieved, excited.

But the farmer has no emotion.

His spirit, gone, carried away on the torrent.

I have saved six lives today. But this one, won’t join the living.

Only looks down at the hopeless floodwaters.

Must busy myself with my lens choice. Must capture his hollow look. The human face of disaster.

Suddenly, the family’s cries distant beneath the violence of the rotors.

I look up: the farmer’s gone.

Has thrown himself spinning to his death in the waters beneath.

Not even a ripple in the flow.

Lights up on NAMELESS.

NAMELESS. Homs, Syria. March the 5th, 1998.

The playground in our street.

Fierce sun, turning the sandpit, into an instrument of torture.

But even aged six, my compulsion to draw is too great.

I’m drawing Simba, the orphaned lion cub in the crust.

My father admiring. ‘You should be an artist when you grow up. You’ve a good eye.’

I’m glowing in pride.

Suddenly he stiffens.

There’s men in the playground. Big men with unkind faces. Blocking every exit.

‘Shabeeha’ – the secret police.

Turns to me – (Urgently.) ‘Remember: Just stay true to your vision. Never follow anyone else’s lines.’

A bald-head thug approaching; bumps the swing.

Which writhes and twists on rusting chains.

‘Run,’ whispers Dad.

Heavy bootprints in the sandpit.

RUN!!!!

Running, running.

Behind: my father’s final shouts of defiance.

The lonely swing. Contorting. Creaking with pain.

Me, Six, crossing the border from childhood to adulthood.

SEBASTIAN. I’m twenty-one. Fresh out of uni.

Determined to change the world.

I have the talent, the vision to be one of the world’s leading photojournalists.

To raise awareness of the Poor and the Suffering…

As soon as someone buys my pictures.

No one buys my pictures.

Balochistan barely features in any of the papers.

Where it DOES, it’s buried so deep, it’s among the chairlift adverts.

Now, back at the hotel in Islamabad, I’m Broke. And too proud to phone my father for more funds.

Am guiltily loading the complementary fruit platter into every pocket. Knowing it would be my evening meal.

Someone sees my bulging pockets, says: ‘You only need five-a-day, not thirty-five.’

It’s John Messenger. THE print journalist of his age. ‘Bloody hell,’ I say.

An apple drops out of my pocket.

‘Helloyou’refamousI’vebeenphotographingthefloodsvictimsi nBalochistan.’

‘Have you now?’ Messenger moves off with a plate of eggs. But I follow.

‘And how are the Balochistanis?’

‘They could probably do with their own Live Aid concert.’

‘What and inflict Bono on these people? Haven’t they suffered enough?’

I laugh too hard.

‘How old are you?’

‘Twenty-one.’

‘Why you here?

‘Didn’t want to go into the city like my mates; wanted to do something constructive.’

‘Enjoying yourself so far?’

‘I saw a man kill himself.’

‘Ouch. My advice: Always keep the lens between yourself and the action; got to protect yourself… Sold any pictures yet?’

‘No.’

‘So how’s this financed?’

‘My parents. Till I get established. Which I will; I take good pictures.’

He tosses his fork noisily onto his plate. ‘Being a good newsman has nothing to do with Art. It’s about being in the right place at the right time. I’m not the best writer. But I was there at Tiananmen; at the Wall…’

He pushes egg yolk round his plate. ‘Want a paid gig? Need a stills-man for an interview with a local warlord.’

Warlords are two-a-penny out here. It’s almost harder to find someone who ISN’T a warlord.

‘What’s special about this guy?’

‘He’s a billionaire. Launches missions from a cave.’

‘Who is he? Batman?’

‘They call him the Sheikh. His name: Osama Bin Laden.’

Lights and mood change.

NAMELESS. Don’t ask for my name.

Only the powerful have names.

Call me nameless.

Call me fatherless.

Call me what you will. But not my name. It’s mine; it’s all I have left.

They took everything, when they took him. They took my trust, my love:

They took my mother; was never the same again. Spent her days praying.

And I lost my home.

We moved to an apartment in the Christian district, just so mother could be closer to the Church.

I still had my Art. But they took the pleasure from it.

I drew, and drew obsessively – seeking to please a father who wasn’t there.

April 2011.

The clock has stopped. I’m winding it up, when my mother enters from evensong.

‘What do you want for your birthd...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• How Borders Came To Be
• Original Production
• Acknowledgements
• Dedication
• Characters
• Borders
• About the Author
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information