Occupational Hazards

Stephen Brown

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781786821720
• eBook ISBN: 9781786821737
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

Rory Stewart, a thirty year old former British diplomat and soldier of distinction and accomplishment, is posted to serve as governor in a province of the newly liberated Iraq. His job is to help build a new civil society at peace with itself and its neighbours - an ambitious mission, admittedly, but outperforming Saddam should surely not prove too difficult…

Act One

THE CONFIDENCE OF YOUTH

RORY speaks to us.

RORY: Welcome, people of Hampstead!

Thank you for coming today.

My name is Rory Stewart.

I’m the MP for Penrith and the Borders. I’m Minister of State at the Department for International Development.

But this story is not about now.

This is a story about my time governing in Iraq, after the invasion.

It’s the truth. Mostly.

You could say it’s about…

SPEAKER 1: The confidence of youth.

RORY: Think back to the time before the invasion of Iraq.

SPEAKER 2: When Germany reunified…

SPEAKER 3: When the Good Friday Agreement was signed…

SPEAKER 4: When the fragile democracy of Sierra Leone was restored…

RORY: For that moment, wouldn’t you say the whole of the West had the confidence of youth?

INTO:

PLANTING TREES

RORY talking to us.

Around him, on stage, all the other actors.

RORY: (Out.) It is April 2002. After twenty months walking in Asia, I return to my home in the Highlands of Scotland, a mile from the nearest town, on the edge of a wood. I begin to turn my experiences walking across Afghanistan into a book. I plant four hundred trees.

(Out.) It is March 2003. I watch the invasion of Iraq on TV. I’m not in the Foreign Office anymore. I resigned. But I send in my CV anyway.

RORY looks at the other actors. Nothing.

RORY: No one replies. In August, I fly to Jordan and take a taxi from Amman to Baghdad to ask for a job.

We are now in Baghdad, the Green Zone. A hive of activity.

RORY: (Out.) A friend from my time in the Balkans gets me into the Green Zone, where the Coalition has assembled a temporary government for Iraq – the Coalition Provisional Authority – in Saddam’s complex of palaces in the centre of the city. There are proverbs in Arabic on the walls. One reads:

SPEAKER 1: Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.

RORY: (Out.) Signed:

SPEAKER 2: Saddam Hussein.

Ambassador PAUL ‘JERRY’ BREMER steps forward.

BREMER: Our mission is to turn Iraq from a symbol of tyranny into a beacon of freedom.

RORY: (Out.) On my second day I secure a meeting with Ambassador Paul Bremer –

BREMER: – My friends call me Jerry –

RORY: (Out.) – the state department veteran appointed to run the CPA –

BREMER: Our mission is to build a multi-ethnic, decentralised, prosperous state, based on human rights, a just constitution and the rule of law.

RORY: (Out.) On his desk is a plaque with the words:

BREMER: ‘Success has a thousand fathers’.

RORY: (Out.) Omitted is the second half of the quotation: ‘But failure is an orphan’.

BREMER: I read your CV!

RORY: You did?

BREMER: You were flying high. FCO fast track – Indonesia – UK rep in Montenegro. And then you went walking for two years?

RORY: I like walking.

BREMER: As explanations go, that seems necessary but not sufficient. Still –

RORY: (Out.) It so happens that the CPA has just realised they need to do something about the provinces.

BREMER: We’d like you to be one of our ‘Governorate Coordinators’.

RORY: Governorate what, sorry?

BREMER: For Maysan province. Not a headline province of course –

RORY: I know Maysan.

BREMER: You do?

RORY: Where the Marsh Arabs are. I read about them as a boy.

BREMER: Right! We’ve got a great guy from the Marshes helping us down there. Maybe you heard of him, Karim Mahood, fought against Saddam in the resistance. A national hero. Working with us to build a modern, secular Iraq. Kind of man reminds you why we’re doing all this.

RORY: When you say ‘Governorate Co-ordinator’, do you mean ‘governor’?

BREMER: The governor has to be an Iraqi. But you’ll have all the powers of a governor. All right, you got me. Effectively, governor. Don’t tell anyone I said that! You want it?

RORY: (Out.) I am thirty years old.

Beat.

RORY: (Out.) Within days I’m in Basra at what used to be the civilian airport and now serves as Coalition headquarters in the south. There are flies everywhere. I’m issued with a helmet, body armour, and –

A soldier hands RORY these items –

(Out.) A skimpy green towel –

RORY holds it up to show how tiny it is –

SOLDIER: (Cough.)

RORY: (Out.) And I’m given advice on the challenges of life in Iraq –

SOLDIER: Now you will notice as you pass your days in the beautiful country of Iraq that it is fucking full of flies. You will put out blue bowls of poison paste. You will spray military grade insecticide delivered through highly technical fogging machines. These will make you sick. You will sweep away the little bastards’ dead bodies. And half an hour later the fuckers will have retu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Characters
• Notes on characters
• A Note on the Truth
• Act One
• Act Two
• Acknowledgements