The Prophet

Hassan Abdulrazzak

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781849434492
• eBook ISBN: 9781849435383
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

It's January 28th 2011 and Egypt stands on the brink. For Layla and Hisham, a young couple living in downtown Cairo, a dictatorial and corrupt government is only one of their problems. As the world shifts, cataclysmically, around them, some long hidden secrets threaten to emerge and tear them apart. Based on extensive interviews in Cairo with revolutionaries and soldiers, journalists and cab drivers, this new drama depicts both a revolution in progress and the society from which it sprang.

Act One

SCENE 1

Friday 28th January 2011, 8 a.m. A middle-class apartment in Cairo. HISHAM and LAYLA are a couple in their 30s.

LAYLA: I wish I could say that the first thing I thought about this morning was the revolution. But instead I woke up asking myself one simple question: should I shave off my pubic hair? You see some women here, some brides, they shave it all off, for their husbands on their wedding night. I never did it for Hisham. I always thought that stuff was beneath me. Maybe I should have done it. Maybe it’s not too late. We haven’t had sex in three months. Is that too long? The gaps between our love making keep getting longer and longer. Sometimes I fear that my vagina will one day just completely clam up, never to open again. I should shave my pubes, I really should. ‘Pubic hair’ it’s a funny phrase, funny word ‘pubic’, sounds so much like public, doesn’t it? Public hair. I mean don’t get me wrong generally I’m against privatisation…but public hair, your pubes open to the public, to be seen by the public whenever they please, even for a lefty like me that’s going too far. There’s no getting around it. We are stagnant. Hisham and me. Sexually and spiritually stagnant. Which is why I was suspicious this morning about his rendezvous.

HISHAM: She didn’t.

LAYLA: She did. She crossed the hall.

HISHAM: She was just…

LAYLA: What?

HISHAM: Strolling.

LAYLA: Strolling? At the British Council.

HISHAM: I don’t know. Pick another word…the point is –

LAYLA: The point is she crossed the hall to get to you. And she totally ignored me.

HISHAM: Not totally. Look –

LAYLA: No you look. I don’t like you seeing her. And why in a hotel?

HISHAM: This is Cairo. Everybody meets in hotels.

LAYLA: Since when? We don’t meet our friends in hotels.

HISHAM: Because they’re our friends.

LAYLA: I don’t like it Hisham.

HISHAM: It’s very sweet, all this, and very unlike you…

LAYLA: What do you mean?

HISHAM: Jealousy. After seven years of marriage, one kind of misses it.

LAYLA: I’m not jealous Hisham. This is different. She’s a foreigner.

HISHAM: What difference does that –

LAYLA: She’s a Westerner.

HISHAM: Now you’re just being racist.

LAYLA: She crossed the hall…like this…

LAYLA imitates SUZANNE’s walk.

HISHAM: What’s with the pouting?

LAYLA: She pouted.

HISHAM: She didn’t.

LAYLA: I saw her with my own eyes.

HISHAM: Your imagination is something –

LAYLA: (Imitating SUZANNE.) Are you Mr. Hisham Mourad? I loved your novel!

HISHAM sighs.

And you. I swear I could hear it plop.

HISHAM: What?

LAYLA: Your third ball, I could hear it plopping. Whenever someone praises you, it just plops, your third ball. It pushes the other two balls out of the way and folds its little ball arms in total smugness. I heard it.

HISHAM: I was flattered. So what?

LAYLA: Why do you want to see her? Just answer me that.

HISHAM: Come on. Look; it’s simple. When the AUP publish the English translation of my first novel I’m going to get a lot more exposure. God knows I need it. I mean sometimes I think only a select few critics even know of its existence.

LAYLA: Rubbish. You did well. As well as any first-time writer can hope for.

HISHAM: Oh yes. Our wonderful publishing industry really took care of me. They don’t even tell me how many copies have been sold… Getting translated is everything.

LAYLA: Ah, you’ve always had this complex.

HISHAM: What complex?

LAYLA: Everything Western is so wonderful. Everything Egyptian is shit.

HISHAM: Is there anyone that doesn’t think that?

LAYLA: I don’t believe you.

HISHAM: You could be a bestselling author in Egypt and you still can’t quit your day job because the publishing house cheats you out of your royalties. Look at Naguib Mahfouz, a Nobel Prize yet he remained a civil servant most of his life. Or Alaa Al-Aswany, he still works as a dentist.

LAYLA: That’s because he likes being a dentist –

HISHAM: O rubbish.

LAYLA: Every interview I’ve seen with him, he always goes on about how his patients provide inspiration.

HISHAM: Gingivitis is never inspiring. I’m telling you, getting translated to English is everything – it’s going to open so many doors.

LAYLA: What’s you getting translated got to do with her?

HISHAM: There will be a demand for my second novel. I need to finish it.

LAYLA: Yes. Fine. But what do you need her for?

HISHAM: You heard her, she said she could help me with it.

LAYLA: There’s nothing wrong with your new novel –

HISHAM: Layla. You haven’t even read it.

LAYLA: I skimmed. It’s great.

HISHAM: I’m blocked.

LAYLA: You keep saying that.

HISHAM: I keep saying it because I’m blocked.

LAYLA: It makes you sound like a toilet, you do know that.

HISHAM: Thanks. Look I need to get that second novel out. We’re running out of money.

LAYLA: I have my job. And you could always go back to AlAhram.

HISHAM: Are you kidding, the minute I handed in my resignation there was a feeding frenzy about who would replace me. Besides, I don’t want to go back. I have to make this writing thing work. There’s no alternative.

LAYLA: I’m fed up Hisham. I don’t see why your writing has to come before everything else. I don’t see why I just have to accept that.

HISHAM: Hey, hey, what’s going on? Why are you so upset?

LAYLA: Something about her makes me uncomfortable.

HISHAM: Suzanne?

LAYLA: Who else.

HISHAM: And what is it that makes you uncomfor...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Hassan Abdulrazzak
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Characters
• ACT I
• ACT II