In Michel Azama’s extraordinary play, the characters are caught in the crossfire, tumbling through the checkpoint between life and death. First performed in English at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh.
I’m trying to knit the bits of my face together again. I give it a good rub. It looks like it’s all in one piece. In fact there’s a crack in it. It’s not there any more. It’s not my face any more I’ve lost it. I’m dead. No more petrol no more electricity no more post no more planes no more trains. Life was going back five centuries but for nine months I was going forward against the tide. I measured time by the size of my belly poor madwoman that I was. Poor lunatic. You were in my belly you were ready your head all lined up where it was supposed to be and in my head it was Summer. I’d always been less of a woman than other women and here I was finally getting round finally feeling the most womanly of women. Poor fool. I made you. You’re here. Everyone take cover! And my belly the best cover of all. And every evening those naked men turned on by the war pressed up against me. And you were ready and finished at last. My cunt hurts. My cunt was about to open. I already felt it, it was time for us to part. There’s a complete blank in my head. An iron curtain is cutting my head in two. My brain feels like the propeller of a plane chopping through fog