Adam Page 4

  It’s time for another injection.

  EGYPTIAN ADAM. I’m hungry.

  GLASGOW ADAM. The testosterone will be our meal.

  EGYPTIAN ADAM. My leg still hurts. The fever has only just calmed.

  GLASGOW ADAM. It’s time.

  EGYPTIAN ADAM. It’s like being bitten by a snake.

  They expose their legs, heavy and bruised, agony to touch.

  My hand won’t move.

  GLASGOW ADAM. The brain will send a signal.

  EGYPTIAN ADAM. My body and brain aren’t friends.

  GLASGOW ADAM. Exactly.

  They stab the needle again. Agony. Pacing becomes crawling. Fever. Madness.

  What is the word – same word for two opposites? What is that word?

  EGYPTIAN ADAM. We need to let the bird out of the cage?

  The green bird keeps bumping against the walls. GLASGOW ADAM. What bird?

  EGYPTIAN ADAM. It is Ba. It’s my soul.

  GLASGOW ADAM (remembering). Ba and Ka. The two parts of the soul.

  EGYPTIAN ADAM. Separated from their body, their name, their shadow, they can be lost for ever.

  GLASGOW ADAM. BAKA. KABA. Which is which?

  EGYPTIAN ADAM. B is for bird. Ba is a human-headed bird.

  GLASGOW ADAM. And K is for crazy? So Ka is what? A bird-headed human?

  EGYPTIAN ADAM. The life force.

  MENTAL-HEALTH NURSE (EGYPTIAN ADAM). Why did the GP give you our number, Adam?

  GLASGOW ADAM. She thinks I want to commit suicide.

  MENTAL-HEALTH NURSE. Do you?

  GLASGOW ADAM. Can any person not think of suicide in this Glasgow weather?

  There’s a word I can’t remember. It is an English word for two things that are opposites – do you know it?

  MENTAL-HEALTH NURSE. I don’t think so.

  GLASGOW ADAM. Bound. I am bound somewhere, like Frodo heading for Mordor. But also I am bound. Tied up. Trapped.

  MENTAL-HEALTH NURSE. How old are you, Adam?

  GLASGOW ADAM. I am nineteen. But I feel ninety. Who are you? Did I let you in? Why are you here in my brain?

  EGYPTIAN ADAM. Can you see the bird? I’ve lost it.

  GLASGOW ADAM. It’s time for the next injection.

  EGYPTIAN ADAM. It’s killing me.

  GLASGOW ADAM. I know.

  EGYPTIAN ADAM. There’s a better way. To prove to them.

  GLASGOW ADAM (holding the needle). This is the way.

  EGYPTIAN ADAM. I’ll cut them off. These – (Gestures to their breasts.) tumours. I’ll take the blade to them. My primary motor cortex will send its signal and the blade will cut into the flesh.

  GLASGOW ADAM. No need for blood.

  EGYPTIAN ADAM. The revolution is not dead. Morsi is deposed. Because my brothers and sisters dare to pick up the knife.

  EGYPTIAN ADAM picks up the knife and slices through the chest binding, giving ribs space to breathe at last. Then folds a towel and places it nearby on the floor.

  Nothing changes without spilling blood.

  EGYPTIAN ADAM dials 999 on phone.

  Ambulance please. Adam. Yes. It’s for me. I am about to take a knife to my chest. I’m going to cut them off. Come quickly please.

  EGYPTIAN ADAM puts down the phone and puts blade to breast.

  An Arabic lament overlaid with the sound of the emergency services.

  ‘Miss, miss, are you still on the line. Miss…’

  The knife is pressed into the breast, the lament surges and then silence.

  Suspended in a dark void, out of time and space, GLASGOW ADAM speaks.

  GLASGOW ADAM. The last American film I saw in Egypt was called Sunshine. Space in this film feels very real. When the astronauts throw themselves from one spaceship to another, it’s fast and physical and within seconds they are back in gravity, the weight of the spacesuit, the pain of the body.

  One of them doesn’t make the jump. With no cord to anchor him, he floats away into the endless blackness. I envy that guy. The others have to keep their eyes on the sun, keep fighting for life but he is free.

  I am a human-headed bird watching from a dark corner of the room.

  My green-feathered wings are beating against the grey walls, against the painted-shut window. I watch my woman’s body try to cut away flesh. Is that me? With testosterone coursing through it, the body I was born with has… died. The name I was born with has died. I am half a soul. I have no anchor. Without Ka – the spark, the life force, Ba is lost.

  My ancestors feared this above all else. To be adrift. But a lost bird is better than a caged one. I have no need of that body and

  I can feel myself turning away from the sun, towards endless blackness…

  We are back in the room. EGYPTIAN ADAM is gone. GLASGOW ADAM, lifeless, is where EGYPTIAN ADAM held the knife moments before. Suddenly, movement –GLASGOW ADAM stabs the needle of testosterone into thigh. It’s like a shot of adrenaline and GLASGOW ADAM gasps. Alive. A door is opened. Light floods into the room.

  Let There Be Light

  GLASGOW ADAM. I wish I remembered what those words were called that are two opposite things. Saleem. The snake bite… cured me! I never have another period.

  Puberty hits for the second time. Where the oestrogen softened and rounded me, the testosterone thickens and strengthens me. My body fat redistributes away from my hips and legs to my internal organs and abdomen. My body mass increases. My feet grow.

  GLASGOW ADAM kicks off both shoes and steps into another pair and even another. Each time, growing in stature.

  This is the opposite of the princess in the fairytale with the glass slipper that fits. For my happy ending, all the shoes need to stop fitting.

  Looking at both feet and laughing, GLASGOW ADAM lifts them up to show the audience.

  I have hobbit feet!

  My voice deepens. Hair is growing all over my body and I love it. Thick black hairs claiming my flesh.

  I wonder if Sauron has been in my brain with me. His big eye watching me.

  Because it’s only now, now that I have ripped myself into manhood, that I receive notification that I have been granted asylum. I have proved myself a man. Now nurses will administer the testosterone without the pain and fever.

  A surgeon will sculpt my chest without need for blood-soaked towel or ambulance. A team of doctors will take blood vessels from my arm, grafts from my legs and buttocks and shape me a fine manly cock.

  I can exist in the world at last. Leave this room behind. This room in which I have lived for six hundred desperate days. I turn my back on it and step out into the watery Glasgow sun.

  GLASGOW ADAM steps out of the flat and into the world. He is bathed in beautiful coloured light.

  I am in Maryhill Burgh Hall looking up at stained-glass windows. A little plaque tells me they are called Adam’s Stained-Glass Panels. Of course! I own the whole world now.

  The windows show men in their working clothes. It says that these pictures are unique because usually the workers would be depicted as angels but here they are allowed to be themselves. The light shines through these men onto my face with its black stubble. Their light casting my shadow. The same shadow I was born with in Egypt in 1992, though my body and name are different. It is an angel’s blessing from these working men for me – allowed to be my whole self at last.

  A wall of leaflets behind me is also bathed in their light. One in particular from the Scottish Refugee Council inviting refugees and Scots to participate in an event called Here We Stay. A month ago, I wouldn’t have even seen it but today, I am newborn and I think. Why not?

  I am backstage in the Citizen’s Theatre. There are splats of paint on the black floor and it smells musty and full of promise. In an hour I am supposed to stand up in front of an audience and tell them my story. But I can’t do it. Instead, I’m here, hiding in a room full of costumes, racks bending under the weight of so many clothes. It reminds me of the shop I worked in back home. But there are more choices here, more fabrics and colour
s. Here are clothes from different times and places. I imagine what it would be like to dress as an Edwardian gentleman or a Highland chief. And I can’t shake the feeling that either would feel less like a ‘costume’ than the girls’ clothes Mama dressed me in all those years ago.

  Mama.

  My phone is out of my bag, FaceTime opened and dialled, before I am conscious of what I am doing.

  GLASGOW ADAM holds out his phone to FaceTime MARYAM.

  Before I Formed You in the Womb I Knew You

  On the screen behind we see the ‘real’ MARYAM (an Arabic woman in her fifties).

  MARYAM. Hello.

  GLASGOW ADAM. Mama.

  MARYAM. Princess?

  GLASGOW ADAM doesn’t know how to answer.

  The image is a little… is it you?

  GLASGOW ADAM. It’s me.

  MARYAM. You have a beard.

  GLASGOW ADAM. I do.

  This is impossible for MARYAM to process. She covers with nervous babble.

  MARYAM. I’m glad you called because it gave me an excuse to hang up on your auntie. Forty minutes she has been bragging about her grandson, how well he reads now, how good he is at counting, she would invite me to admire the smell of his shit if she thought she could get away with it. And I can’t see –

  GLASGOW ADAM. Mama…

  MARYAM. – what all the fuss is about because, to me, he seems very stupid and he is always picking his nose.

  GLASGOW ADAM. No! I don’t want these words.

  An echo of MARYAM’s earlier words to ADAM, MARYAM is silenced.

  I am supposed to go on stage, Mama. I am supposed to tell an audience of this crazy journey I’ve been on from Egypt to Glasgow, from girl to man.

  A moment for her to receive this.

  And I don’t think I can do it until I have told it to you.

  I am a man now, Mama. And my name is Adam.

  MARYAM. What… what have you done to your body? What can you have…? I gave birth to that body, I bathed it, massaged it with oils, I kissed it, I loved it. It’s my body as much as yours.

  GLASGOW ADAM. I am sorry, Mama. I’m sorry I found it so hard to be happy. I’m sorry I alienated Baba and my cousin, I’m sorry I had to leave Egypt with no word. But I am not sorry about what I have done to my body. It is mine and not yours.

  MARYAM. You are scarred.

  GLASGOW ADAM. You used to say, a beautiful thing is not perfect.

  MARYAM. My mother said it. I can hear her voice still. She would weep to know what you are.

  GLASGOW ADAM. Do you remember our contract? Say it for me please.

  MARYAM. I promise to be kind.

  I promise not to hurt others.

  I promise always to tell the truth.

  GLASGOW ADAM. I never broke that contract, Mama. Can you say the same?

  A moment. This lands for MARYAM.

  I need to go. I’m on soon. I need something from you.

  I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t… I need you to tell me you love me.

  MARYAM. I do.

  GLASGOW ADAM. I need you to tell it to me, your son. Not your princess, not ana bahibbik.

  Can you do that? We have so much ahead of us if you can.

  MARYAM. And if I can’t?

  GLASGOW ADAM doesn’t answer. There is no future for them if she can’t. This causes them both pain. GLASGOW ADAM realises she can’t.

  GLASGOW ADAM. Okay.

  I must go.

  MARYAM. I won’t wish you luck for the performance.

  GLASGOW ADAM. No?

  MARYAM. Because you won’t need it. Just tell the truth.

  Adam. Ana bahibbak.

  The screens flicker off.

  GLASGOW ADAM is overjoyed. He walks to the front of the stage.

  GLASGOW ADAM. I am here. I can see all these faces looking up at me. Sweat is forming on my top lip. I feel my heart beating hard here. Boom. Boom. Boom. I am alive.

  Eyes are meeting mine and these eyes tell me they don’t hate me, they understand. They remind me of the people who helped me when I first typed my question into the computer. Is it possible for the soul of a man to be trapped in the body of a woman? The answer is yes. When I finish people come up to me, shake my hand, hi-fives and hugs. It’s a fucking buzz. This is better than getting home to the Shire.

  Adam was Made a Living Soul

  TONI steps out from the audience. We have not met her before.

  TONI. Hi. That was fantastic.

  GLASGOW ADAM. Oh, thank you. I’m glad you liked it.

  TONI. I’m Toni…

  Have you done anything like this before?

  GLASGOW ADAM. No, I. This is new.

  TONI. You were really relaxed.

  GLASGOW ADAM. I was shitting myself.

  TONI. You looked like you were enjoying it.

  GLASGOW ADAM. I was! It was both at once. There’s a term for words that are two things at once, opposites. Finished is one of them. I have finished, completed something which is good. Or I’m finished. Destroyed. Which is bad.

  TONI. Contranym.

  GLASGOW ADAM. What?

  TONI. A word that is two opposite things. Contranym.

  GLASGOW ADAM. That’s it. That’s the word. Contranym!

  What follows is a seduction.

  TONI. To seed. To remove seeds but also to plant them.

  GLASGOW ADAM. To wind up – to finish something or to start it.

  TONI. Temper – to strengthen or to soften.

  An awkward pause.

  GLASGOW ADAM. Are you going to stay behind for a drink? I mean I think there’s going to be a group of us so… but if you’ve got somewhere you need to be –

  TONI (a bit too keen). No! I don’t need to be anywhere. That’s cool I can. Yeah.

  TONI is embarrassed.

  I just thought of another one. Transparent –

  GLASGOW ADAM. Like invisible or –

  TONI (said almost like a confession of her crush). Or obvious.

  GLASGOW ADAM smiles, then takes TONI’s hand, very awkward and very shy. This turns into something of a dance. TONI touches ADAM’s body. In an echo of the scene with AMIRA, she touches ADAM’s chest. GLASGOW ADAM tenses up and looks as if he will stop her, then he relaxes and lets her. They continue their sort of dance, intimate and tender.

  The global choir begins. The voices that helped ADAM on his journey. They are more harmonious now. MARYAM joins their number, her Arabic melody ‘Ana bahibbak’ complementing the rich and soaring harmonies until… blackout.

  FRANCES POET

  Frances Poet is a Glasgow-based writer. Her work includes Faith Fall (Òran Mór and Bristol’s Tobacco Factory, 2012) and What Put the Blood (Abbey Theatre, 2017). She has also written a number of free adaptations including Strindberg’s Dance of Death (Citizens Theatre, 2016) and Molière’s The Misanthrope (Òran Mór, 2014).

  Frances’s TV and radio work includes River City and The Disappointed, aired on BBC Radio Scotland in 2015. Her short film, Spores, screened at the Edinburgh Film Festival and Bogoshorts Festival, Bogotá, in 2016.

  A Nick Hern Book

  Adam first published as a paperback original in Great Britain in 2017 by Nick Hern Books Limited, The Glasshouse, 49a Goldhawk Road, London W12 8QP, in association with the National Theatre of Scotland

  This ebook first published in 2017

  Adam copyright © 2017 Frances Poet

  Frances Poet has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work

  Cover photograph by Andy Bell

  Designed and typeset by Nick Hern Books, London

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 84842 697 9 (print edition)

  ISBN 978 1 78001 936 9 (ebook edition)

  CAUTION This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed unde
r the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  Amateur Performing Rights Applications for performance, including readings and excerpts, by amateurs in the English language throughout the world (including amateurs in the United States and Canada) should be addressed to the Performing Rights Manager, Nick Hern Books, The Glasshouse, 49a Goldhawk Road, London W12 8QP, tel +44 (0)20 8749 4953, email rights@nickhernbooks.co.uk, except as follows:

  Australia: Dominie Drama, 8 Cross Street, Brookvale 2100,

  tel (2) 9938 8686, fax (2) 9938 8695, email drama@dominie.com.au

  New Zealand: Play Bureau, PO Box 9013, St Clair, Dunedin 9047,

  tel (3) 455 9959, email info@playbureau.com

  South Africa: DALRO (pty) Ltd, PO Box 31627, 2017 Braamfontein,

  tel (11) 712 8000, fax (11) 403 9094, email theatricals@dalro.co.za

  Professional Performing Rights Applications for performance by professionals in any medium and in any language throughout the world, including stock companies in the United States and Canada, should be addressed to Davina Shah, Macnaughton Lord Representation, 2nd Floor, 16 Crucifix Lane, London SE1 3JW, email davina@mlrep.com

  No performance of any kind may be given unless a licence has been obtained. Applications should be made before rehearsals begin. Publication of this play does not necessarily indicate its availability for amateur performance.