The American Century: Literature since 1945 811at “the ‘ground zero’ of our lives, the gaping hole in ourselves that we try to cover up
with clothes from Gap, with cologne from Ralph Lauren.” Like The Guys, The Mercy
Seat concentrates on the consequences of terror rather than causes. It does so,
however, for a radically different purpose. “Don’t make this thing that’s happened,
this whole ... unbelievable thing ... just about you,” Abby tells Ben. Unfortunately,
he does. That, LaBute suggests, is “the American way.”
With Back of the Throat (2005) by Yussef El Guindi (1970–) and The God of Hell
(2004) by Sam Shepard, the focus shifts from the immediate crisis of September 11,
2001 to the longer-term trauma engendered by the “war on terror.” Yussef El Guindi
is one of a small group of Arab-American playwrights who have gained a higher
profile since the terrorist attacks. Others are associated with the Silk Road Theatre
Project in Chicago, founded after 9/11 to concentrate on plays about countries along
that historical route from China to Europe, and with Nibras, an Arab-American
theater collective, similarly set up after 9/11 in New York. El Guindi has explained
that, after the attack on the World Trade Center, he “started to imagine what could
happen” if FBI agents were to visit his apartment. Several of his Arab-American
friends had become subject to suspicion and targets for investigation because of
their ethnicity. And he became interested, in both a political and a personal sense, in
the processes of investigation, interrogation, and even torture unleashed by the “war
on terror.” The result was this play, in which an Arab-American writer called Khaled
is suddenly visited in his apartment by two FBI agents, a smooth talker named
Bartlett and a tougher specimen who goes by the name of Carl. Khaled begins by
being eager to please but also slightly anxious. “This isn’t as casual as you make it
out to be,” he suggests. The agents, in turn, begin by being polite and reassuring.
“If you’re innocent, you’re innocent,” Bartlett tells Khaled. “You don’t have to work
at it.” But gradually the mood darkens. “Facts aren’t the only game in town,” Bartlett
declares; and Khaled finds himself suffering guilt by rumor and association – and, in
particular, association with someone named Asfoor, a supposed terrorist (although,
like so much in the play, this is never definitely established) with whom Khaled has
been linked by some less than reliable evidence. But guilty of what? It is never really
clear. “What are you accusing me of?” Khaled asks plaintively. “This is like some
fifties B movie. I Married a Communist.”
As Back of the Throat charts a downward spiral from polite conversation to
intimidation and torture, it also seesaws wildly between dark seriousness and equally
dark comedy. One of the more blackly comic moments, for instance, comes during
an argument over how to pronounce Khaled’s name. Bartlett starts with Haled and
finally gets it right, commenting that “it’s that back of the throat thing.” As that
moment illustrates, this is a play about the power and problems of language. The
agents create their own reality through their dialogue with one another and with
Khaled. Khaled struggles to find the right language with which to confirm his sense
of his own innocence. And, throughout the play, Yussef El Guindi slips between
different forms of language, constructing and deconstructing the relationships
between these three characters, inventing and then uninventing possible scenarios
of what is going on here. Khaled is never proven innocent to the audience, let aloneGGray_c05.indd 811ray_c 05 .indd 811 8 8/1/2011 7:31:47 PM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 31 : 47 PM