Ahmed the Philosopher: Thirty-Four Short Plays for Children and Everyone Else

MADAME POMPESTAN. What a nightmare! Keep your eye on your purse, my girl! And keep in mind that the salvation of the Party for the Unification and Rehabilitation of France demands that you plunge your delicate hands into the slime of the housing projects. (Noting the presence of Ahmed.) Could this be the famous Ahmed, the one they call (bursting out laughing) the philosopher? How can you tell? (Staring intently at Ahmed, close up.) He has a weird mug, this Muslim. He looks like he’s made of wood! (She touches the mask, Ahmed remaining perfectly still.) Ah! He is made of wood! Could this whole place be full of wooden Arabs?

AHMED (taking out his stick as if it were an enormous phallus). And this, madame deputay, it doesn’t give you a woody?

MADAME POMPESTAN. Well really! For a philosopher, you’ve got a filthy mouth. Up, stud! I mean, up, steed!

AHMED (bounding up, suddenly light and elegant). And to what do I owe this special visit on the part of a deputay of the PURF?⁵ What a surprise! What a burst of benevolence! I’m overwhelmed, ecstatic, I’m floating on a political flying carpet!

AHMED (examining her closely). That’s a little bit true, unfortunately!⁶

MADAME POMPESTAN. Excuse me?! (With a little giggle.) I don’t have a stick to wave at you!

AHMED. But, I gather, you do have fleecing, I mean flying carpets.

MADAME POMPESTAN. More like flying nuns! My dear Ahmed, I’m the president of the National Organization of Women of Action. Let me get right to the point, even if I have to use crooked means. They’re accusing me of having laundered the profits from my charitable work for the restoration of the Trappist convent of Sarges-les-Corneilles by depositing them in my party’s coffers, and even my own coffers. Money laundering: you can just imagine how I’m being hung out to dry! With a flying carpet like that, or with all those Trappist traps yapping at my behind, I’m trapped, the woman of action is going to be called on the carpet.

AHMED. On the flying carpet. Or the lying carpet. Madame deputay, two questions are flitting around in my brain like hummingbirds in a cage. First, is it true? Second, what does all this stuff about traps and covers have to do with me, Ahmed, the secular Muslim and subtle philosopher?

MADAME POMPESTAN. Covers! He said it! He pronounced the magic word! Covers! I need a cover! When facing the doddering old judges and the cannibalistic media, the female politician must be covered! From head to toe!

AHMED (looking at Madame Pompestan’s legs). You do actually have certain female charms … You want me to get you an Islamic headscarf, a veil, a chador?

AHMED. So, what kind of covering can cover up your Trappist transgressions and conventual cons?

MADAME POMPESTAN. It’s Moustache. Moustache told me: “Madame deputay, go see Ahmed the philosopher. He’s an Arab and less than nothing, but he’s king of the housing project. With all the Trappists and the traps and the convents and the covers, he’s the only one who can set things straight.” He said it reluctantly, but those were his exact words: you’re the only one who can set things straight.

AHMED. Get down on all fours.

MADAME POMPESTAN. On all fours? What are you, crazy?

AHMED. I’m the one who’s going to set things straight, right? I’m the one who’s doing the thinking here, right? I’m the one who’s covering you up and covering for you, right? The idea that’ll cover you isn’t going to come to me unless the politics to be covered is on all fours. If it’s standing up, I can’t see a thing, I’m thin as a rail, I can’t cover anything …

MADAME POMPESTAN. For a philosopher, you’re bizarre, very bizarre, extremely bizarre.

AHMED. Philosophy transforms human animals into humans, right? It transforms politicians on all fours into politicians who are standing, right? On all fours you ate up the whole Trappist convent. That’s what we have to cover up! Later we’ll see if your career can stand up on its own two legs! So get down!

MADAME POMPESTAN (getting down on all fours). The things you’ve got to do these days to cover yourself! Lousy judges!

AHMED (in a very pedantic tone, and with the appropriate improvisations). Your politics leads you to steal left and right. Perfect. You’re caught red-handed with your hand in the cookie jar. Excellent. Here’s Doctor Ahmed’s prescription: no politics can be covered up. People, even children, discover cover-ups. You can’t even cover the table with a tablecloth without being discovered. So change politics, Madame Pompestan! There isn’t one politics, dammit, there are lots of different politics. Yours is boring. All you do is manage some wretched business deals, persecute the weakest: me, Ahmed, for starters, and God knows I stand up for myself. You end up with the Trappists and the traps and the convents and the covers. And then you’re discovered down on all fours in front of your friendly neighborhood Arab so you can get out of the stinking hole you’ve dug yourself into. Just think a little! Look at the world! There’s more than just the state and government and elections and prevarications in this little world of ours! There’s more than just the police and the lawyers! There are people who are actually thinking, and truths that are getting around, there are will and the freedom of unpredictable itineraries! Go where you’ve never been, Madame Pompestan, go learn what you as a free woman can demand of the state, instead of trying to set yourself up in it like a rat in a piece of cheese. And stop going on about all your necessities, be they economic, social, international, or monetary! Only to end up stealing three sous and voting for three horrible laws in the church of parliament! Travel, Madame Pompestan, swing your skirts around the legible surface of the earth! Make a politics out of the real and not out of the stillborn! Then you’ll be covered—covered by the exercise of your living thought as much as if by simple integrity and white linen. I have spoken.