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  The Weight of Where One Stands

A Play in Two Acts  

Style: Magical Realism

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ACT ONE – The Choice  of the Squaref  

Scene:
The living room of an Iranian diaspora family in Los Angeles. A Persian rug. Books in Farsi, English, French. A large window that occasionally becomes something else. Time behaves badly here.

The Narrator enters, holding a remote control that doesn’t belong to anything.

NARRATOR

Welcome.
This is Los Angeles—where revolutions are streamed, paused, and debated over tea.
This family has escaped borders, but borders have not escaped them.
Watch closely. Everyone here believes they are right.
That is what makes them dangerous.

(He clicks the remote. The family comes alive.)

FATTANEH

You’re telling me Minnesota and Iran are morally equivalent?
That’s obscene.

PEJMAN

No. I’m saying distance isn’t a moral exemption.
Two people were killed here—by a system that also wants me gone.

DR. HAGHIGHATJOO

Systems do not kill.
People misuse them.
And crowds rarely correct misuse—they amplify it.

FATTANEH

That’s easy to say when your papers are in order and your life is archived.

KAVEH

Careful, Fattaneh. Moral purity collapses under interrogation.
Sartre warned us: once you choose, you become responsible for everything that follows.

MASOUMEH (without looking up from her canvas)

Responsibility is a heavy word for such light creatures.

(The wall flickers: women cutting their hair in Tehran, police sirens in Minnesota. The images overlap.)

PEJMAN

You talk about responsibility as if it’s optional.
For me, the state is not an abstraction—it’s a knock on the door at dawn.

DR. HAGHIGHATJOO

Fear distorts judgment. Kant would insist—

PEJMAN

Kant never crossed a border illegally.

(A beat.)

KAVEH

Habermas would ask whether your protest creates communicative action—or just moral noise.

FATTANEH

Noise is better than silence.
Silence is collaboration.

MASOUMEH

Silence is sometimes survival.

NARRATOR (to audience)
Notice how survival never appears on banners.

DR. HAGHIGHATJOO

Revolutions promise dignity and deliver funerals.
I’ve studied the brain long enough to know: trauma outlives ideology.

FATTANEH

Then what do you propose?
Meditation? Seminars on democratic etiquette while women are beaten in the streets?

DR. HAGHIGHATJOO

I propose patience. Institutions. Education.
Democracy is a culture, not an eruption.

PEJMAN

And while culture matures, people disappear.

(The clock stops ticking. The room tightens.)

KAVEH

Power loves false binaries: reform or revolution, here or there, now or later.
The trick is to keep us arguing while it consolidates.

FATTANEH

That sounds clever—and useless.

MASOUMEH

Cleverness is overrated. So is usefulness.

(Sirens grow louder—then softer.)

PEJMAN

I’m going to Minnesota.
If injustice is staged, resistance must be embodied.

DR. HAGHIGHATJOO

And if embodiment costs you everything?

PEJMAN

Then at least it will have cost something real.

(He exits.)

NARRATOR

And just like that, theory loses to motion.
Act One ends where arguments always do—
with departure disguised as courage.

Blackout.

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ACT TWO

(Projected Title)

ACT TWO: IN WHICH CONSEQUENCES ARE REDISTRIBUTED UNEVENLY

(Lights up harshly. No transition.)

The living room is unchanged—except all the chairs now face the audience.

A new placard descends:

“TIME HAS PASSED. NOTHING HAS HEALED.”

The Narrator enters holding an envelope that seems heavier than paper should be. 

NARRATOR

News does not arrive politely.
It breaks in.
Especially in immigrant homes, where language itself is provisional.

You may expect grief.
We will offer information instead.

KAVEH (reading from his phone, voice hollow)

Pejman was detained.
Transferred to Texas.
No lawyer yet.

(A chain-link fence flashes across the window, then vanishes.)

(He looks up.)

Distance is a strategy.

Projected text:

TEXAS – TEMPORARY
(Temporary is doing a lot of work here.)

MASOUMEH

Texas is where stories are unfinished,

where time goes to be forgotten.

(She turns the canvas. Painted now: a pair of shoes. No bodies.)

FATTANEH

This wasn’t the plan.
We were supposed to—

DR. HAGHIGHATJOO

—what?
Win?

(Silence.)

KAVEH (after a long pause)

Delara is gone.

(The painting’s shoes fade, leaving only dust.)

MASOUMEH

Some exits don’t require doors.

NARRATOR

We will not dramatize Delara's absence. 

Absence does not require embellishment. 

We will not describe how, why, when, or where. 

Describing gives the illusion of control.

FATTANEH (voice cracking, then hardening)

We marched.
We shouted.
We posted slogans like spells.
And the world—

DR. HAGHIGHATJOO

—remained indifferent.

FATTANEH

Then what is all of this for?

(The LA wall  appears: fractured  diaspora  protests, competing flags, rival chants.)

FATTANEH 

I believed in unity.
I believed slogans could discipline chaos.

(She gestures toward the projection, now showing fractured crowds.)

Monarchists selling yesterday.
Mujahideen selling sacrifice.
Republicans selling virtue.
All demanding loyalty.
None offering accountability.

KAVEH

Certainty is power’s favorite disguise.

MASOUMEH

Khayyam understood.
The cup passes. The hand trembles.
Meaning is brief—and borrowed.

DR. HAGHIGHATJOO

I once believed reason legislated the world.
Now I suspect the world only tolerates reason when convenient.

(He looks at the audience, briefly—then away.)

I taught myself that reason governs the world.
Now I suspect the world merely tolerates it—
briefly.

(He removes his watch and places it on the table.)

Time, too, is ideological.

KAVEH

Power does not fear protest.
It fears coordination.

NARRATOR (steps between actors and audience)
At this point, many plays offer resolution.
This one offers inventory.

Who protested?
Who paid?
Who observed?
Who explained?

(He looks directly at the audience.)

And who applauded?

FATTANEH

So what do we do now?

NARRATOR

Ah.
The final question.
Unanswered since the first exile.

Some will march again.
Some will retreat into art.
Some will call caution wisdom.
Others will call it betrayal.

But none will escape the weight
of where they stood
when standing mattered.

We end.

Not because the question is answered—
but because answering it has been deferred
long enough to feel natural.

Final projection:

“THE PLAY IS OVER.
THE CONDITIONS REMAIN.”

Lights out. No curtain.

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