print previewback DAN O’BRIEN | Visitations, part 2
The War Reporter
1 Mogadishu
PAUL (Soprano)
Have you seen the American
soldier?
Have you seen him?
Have you?
TRANSLATOR (Tenor)
That man saw him tied up
in a wheelbarrow
dead.
He is dead.
 |
| Screen capture from The War Reporter. Video directed by Eric Koziol. |
PAUL (Soprano)
A wheelbarrow?
A wheelbarrow?
PAUL (Countertenor)
He saw him
in a wheelbarrow.
He saw him
tied up.
PAUL (Baritone)
The mob
parts around me,
black smoke from burning tires.
The wind is blowing and the stench
is making me gag.
Mogadishu
was once so beautiful, white painted villas
like Italy.
I snap a photo of a boy bouncing
on the rotor of the smoldering
Blackhawk.
PAUL (Soprano, Countertenor, Tenor)
Have you seen the American
soldier?
Have you seen him?
Have you?
PAUL (Baritone)
The mob
parts around me.
I bend over
shoulders stiff
and focus
on the good shot, focus only
on the good shot.
Shutting all else out.
The mob
parts around me
and I see him,
Staff Sergeant William David Cleveland.
CLEVELAND (Bass)
If you do this
I will own you
forever.
PAUL (Baritone)
When you take a picture
the camera
covers your face
and shuts out the rest of the world.
Everything goes dim
and I hear a voice,
both inside my head and out:
PAUL (Soprano, Countertenor, Tenor, Baritone, Bass)
If you do this
I will own you forever,
Paul.
2 Columbia
HONDERICH (Countertenor)
Congratulations, Paul!
You’ve won!
WELL-WISHER (Soprano)
You’ve won,
Paul!
WELL-WISHER (Tenor)
You’ve won!
HONDERICH (Countertenor)
Your photograph
is all over the world!
WELL-WISHER (Tenor)
You’ve won, Paul!
WELL-WISHERS (Soprano, Countertenor, Tenor)
The Pulitzer!
WELL-WISHER (Tenor)
How does it feel, Paul,
to have won?
PAUL (Baritone)
In a room
like the Pantheon and the Parthenon combined,
with hors d’oeuvres
all along the banquet table,
wearing tight shoes
and a blazer,
wool slacks picked out this morning
at Brooks Brothers.
WELL-WISHER (Tenor)
Hey Paul,
your photograph is on the cover of Newsweek
and Time!
WELL-WISHERS (Soprano, Countertenor, Tenor)
Newsweek and Time!
Time!
WELL-WISHERS (Soprano, Countertenor, Tenor, Bass)
You’ve made it!
You’re famous!
You’re someone
to be proud of!
You’ve won!
PAUL (Baritone)
No! Please, no!
PAUL (Soprano)
A boy is wearing
aviator glasses, his face screwed up
in rapturous glee.
An old man raising his cane like a truncheon
beats it down against
the lifeless flesh.
 |
| From The War Reporter. Photo by Joel Simon. |
The ropes that bind the soldier’s wrists are stretching his arms out
like Christ.
A woman is slapping the body with a tin can
like he’s a cockroach she needs to kill.
The ghosts are getting closer.
The ghosts are getting closer.
HONDERICH (Countertenor)
You don’t look so hot, Paul.
Maybe you need some time off?
PAUL (Baritone)
I guess I feel badly
about that soldier’s family.
HONDERICH (Countertenor)
Have you thought about finding
his mother?
PAUL (Soprano, Countertenor, Tenor, Bass)
Had I?
Why hadn’t I?
HONDERICH (Countertenor)
Paul, you remember
Kevin Carter, don’t you?
He just won
the Pulitzer Prize
like you
for his picture of a vulture waiting
for a skeletal child to stop struggling
to lift her weighty skull
from Sudan’s red soil.
PAUL (Baritone)
Just like Carter waited
with his long cigarette ashing
onto the lens of his camera
for that vulture to unfurl
its wings.
CARTER (Bass)
Hear that applause,
Watson?
They love me
more than they love you!
PAUL (Baritone)
Shut up, Carter.
CARTER (Bass)
I won!
PAUL (Soprano, Countertenor, Tenor)
He’s won. He’s won.
CARTER (Bass)
I won.
PAUL (Baritone)
Carter,
shut up.
HONDERICH (Countertenor)
What are you looking at,
Paul?
PAUL (Baritone)
Nothing.
Nothing.
HONDERICH (Countertenor)
Paul,
you remember Kevin Carter, don’t you?
He killed himself
Saturday night in a parked car
in Johannesburg.
He duct-taped a hose to the exhaust.
What are you looking at, Paul?
PAUL (Baritone)
I don’t care
about him.
PAUL (Soprano, Tenor)
Why should I?
Why should I care?
PAUL (Soprano, Countertenor, Tenor)
I don’t care
about any of this!
If you can’t do your job
get out of the way
so somebody else can.
PAUL (Baritone)
Of course
I’ve wanted to kill myself
but the truth is I’ve always lacked
the courage.
PAUL (Soprano, Countertenor, Tenor)
So I tell myself,
PAUL (Soprano, Countertenor, Tenor, Baritone, Bass)
Paul,
PAUL (Baritone)
just go someplace dangerous,
let someone else
PAUL (Soprano, Countertenor, Tenor, Baritone, Bass)
kill you,
Paul.
3 Johannesburg
GRINKER (Soprano)
Tell me about
your father, Paul.
What was he like?
PAUL (Baritone)
My father
was liberating a village in France.
Twisted streets, churches, houses
made of stone.
I can see him.
He takes a bullet in the thigh and watches
one of his men trapped in the tall grass.
Every time his friend moves
a Nazi sniper shoots him
till he’s dead.
My father was dead by the time I turned two.
Sometimes my brother would take the dead man’s Luger
out of hiding—
GRINKER (Soprano)
You’re shaking, Paul.
PAUL (Baritone)
—and let me place my finger
on the trigger
the way I take my pictures now.
GRINKER (Soprano)
Why do you loathe yourself, Paul?
Why do you feel you’re worthless?
Why must you win your mother’s love risking
your life for a Pulitzer Prize?
Paul,
why don’t we stop for today.
Take a tissue.
Focus
on your breathing.
I’m going to give you
some pills.
PAUL (Baritone)
Doctor, do you believe in ghosts?
GRINKER (Soprano)
It’s a famous picture,
it’s yours?
CLEVELAND (Bass)
If you do this,
I will own you forever.
GRINKER (Soprano)
This is only your mind
speaking to itself.
PAUL (Baritone)
I feel him next to me.
I fear his presence.
GRINKER (Soprano)
Is he here with us now?
PAUL (Baritone)
He is
always with me,
Doctor.
Like my shadow in the sand
he runs after me whispering,
This can not last.
4 Mosul
PAUL (Baritone, Tenor)
A machine gun
mounted on the back of a Humvee
pounding out death
like a jackhammer.
PAUL (Countertenor)
Students rush by with a young man
bleeding from his eye.
CROWD (Soprano, Countertenor, Tenor, Bass)
Take his picture!
Take it!
PAUL (Baritone)
Wait! I have to swap my lenses. Wait!
PAUL (Tenor)
And suddenly you can see
the switch go off.
 |
| From The War Reporter. Photo by Joel Simon. |
CROWD (Soprano, Countertenor, Tenor, Bass)
He’s white!
He’s white!
PAUL (Baritone)
I’m lifted
off the ground, thrown around, stoned.
PAUL (Soprano, Countertenor, Tenor, Baritone, Bass)
I feel a knife
sliding into my back,
blood pools
on the inside of my shirt.
PAUL (Baritone)
I’m clutching my camera
while they’re pulling my arms out,
ascending
till I’m floating on top of the crowd
PAUL (Countertenor, Tenor, Baritone. Bass)
like Christ on the cross.
I am not innocent,
I do not deserve Your mercy.
I am not innocent,
I never have been.
PAUL (Baritone)
Tear me apart.
Tear me to pieces.
Leave me to blow away like my shadow
in the sand.
PAUL (Countertenor, Tenor, Baritone, Bass)
If you do this
I will love you
forever.
PAUL (Countertenor, Tenor, Baritone, Bass)
But then a miracle
occurs.
PAUL (Baritone)
A dozen people
form a circle around me
and shove me under the steel shutters
of a shop.
PAUL (Countertenor, Tenor, Baritone, Bass)
I’m inside.
I’m saved.
PAUL (Baritone)
But what will I do now
that I’m still alive?
5 Phoenix
PAUL (Soprano)
Strip malls,
PAUL (Tenor)
drive-thru drugstores,
PAUL (Countertenor)
nine-hole pitch-and-putt golf courses,
stars and stripes drifting off flagpoles,
PAUL (Tenor)
plumbing supplies, auto body parts
PAUL (Soprano)
and strip clubs,
PAUL (Tenor)
above-ground pools,
jet skis on cinder blocks,
PAUL (Soprano)
to your trailer on cement.
PAUL (Tenor)
Cherubs blowing their horns
in the wind.
PAUL (Baritone)
Hello, ma’am.
This is difficult for me to say.
I took that photo
on that terrible day
in Mogadishu
of your son.
The white sun burning up, burning the sand, bright like Arizona,
like Mogadishu.
PAUL (Tenor)
Like Mogadishu.
PAUL (Bass)
Like Mogadishu.
PAUL (Tenor)
Bright
like Mogadishu.
With the old man
beating on the soldier’s chest
like a drum.
PAUL (Bass)
Mogadishu.
PAUL (Soprano)
That boy in sunglasses
still laughing at us.
PAUL (Baritone)
I’ve wanted to meet you for so many years
to try to explain
what happened.
I hope you’ll be willing
to give me some time
so I can try to make you
understand.
I’ll be waiting here
at the hotel for your call.
PAUL (Baritone)
Hello?
Who’s this?
BROTHER (Tenor)
This is William David Cleveland’s
brother.
Can I ask you
never to call my mother again?
PAUL (Baritone)
It’s just that I’ve been living almost ten years
with this thing.
BROTHER (Tenor)
You mean that photograph of my brother
being dragged through the street?
PAUL (Baritone)
Do you hate me,
sir?
BROTHER (Tenor)
What?
PAUL (Baritone)
Do you hate me?
BROTHER (Tenor)
I hate the fact that you called my mother.
She called me up crying.
She said you called her
and stirred up these ghosts again.
PAUL (Baritone)
I apologize.
I am sorry.
BROTHER (Tenor)
Look,
we don’t care
what you’re going through.
You did nothing.
You are nothing to us.
You’re not the one
who shot my brother
out of the sky.
You’re not the one who dragged him
dead through the streets.
PAUL (Baritone)
But your mother hates me,
I know it.
BROTHER (Tenor)
We found out while watching the news.
My brother dead
while watching
the news.
We recognized his feet,
just like his father’s feet.
My mother was the one who cried first.
PAUL (Baritone)
You must blame me for that much, sir!
I could have held my camera down.
I could have taken pictures of my shadow
in the sand.
When I took his picture, sir,
I heard your brother’s ghost warn me,
If you take this picture,
BROTHER, PAUL, CLEVELAND (Tenor, Baritone, Bass)
I will own you forever
BROTHER (Tenor)
Maybe he means
you owe him something now.
PAUL (Baritone)
Like what?
BROTHER (Tenor)
That’s not for me to decide.
Look,
I’ve got to pick up my son.
PAUL (Baritone)
Wait, I forgot to ask you your name, sir.
BROTHER (Tenor)
Ray.
My name
is Ray.
PAUL (Baritone)
Ray
was my father’s name.
6 Resolute
PAUL (Baritone)
Apologies
for not writing to you sooner, Dan.
I simply lost my grip!
Watching
my camera slip out of my hand, into the wound
of the sea,
the sea,
the ice-broken sea.
My camera slipping
down in the sea,
the sea,
into the open wake of the ice-broken sea.
I’m waiting here in Resolute
for this storm
to clear.
I’d hoped that I could escape.
I’d hoped
that I could stop being
who I am,
but I’ve told The Star that I need to return
to Kandahar.
Between me and my confessor:
I’m no different
than all those Americans
driving their trucks in Iraq
to pay off their mortgages in Florida.
So this is what I’ve become: a mercenary and
a desperate one too.
But there’s something else:
I feel like Cleveland’s waiting there
for me.
I have an old Afghan friend
who runs an English school in Kandahar
where Taliban factions would meet during the darkest days
of this never-ending
war on terror.
I’m thinking his story should be told.
 |
| Screen capture from The War Reporter. Video directed by Eric Koziol. |
