Ahmed, Fatima.
Fatima enters. On the ground a great mass of bags and packages filled with various provisions.
FATIMA. Ahmed! Ahmed! Where on earth is he, that damn philosopher! Ah! If only Allah would explain to me once and for all and for ever what I did to him in the innermost depths of time to make him make me drop into this world as my firstborn and favorite such a spinner of words that only get him condemned, he and all succeeding generations, by every male and female authority in Sarges-les-Corneilles. Ahmed! Come over here and help your mother unload the weight of food necessary to fatten up your bagful of tricks of philosophical blah blah blah! No one in the city or even in the desert could have imagined it would take so much lamb, chicken, couscous, and peppers to give you enough nourishment to run around everywhere pouring out on the heads of poor idiots of every stripe your poisonous potion of philosophical verbs and adjectives! It seems like you have to eat more to speak than to cross the oasis like a camel. This Ahmed must have a big, strong tongue muscle, since you’ve got to put so many pounds of food on that tongue just to keep it moving around in his mouth all the livelong day. Ahmed! Ahmed!
AHMED (walks onto the stage yawning and stretching, completely groggy). Yes, Mother. I’m here.
FATIMA (looking at him). You don’t look too much like you’re here. Don’t tell me you were still napping this late in the day. That, at the time when your father Malhouf, may the almighty Lord keep him with him in Paradise, was in the factory cutting up his hands with scrap metal, his son Ahmed should be curled up like a mouse in its sleep-hole? Very nice!
AHMED. Dear Mother! Sleep is a natural function. It’s factory work that was never in accord with nature.
FATIMA. Nature, nature! Blame it on nature! Is this another one of your philosophical stunts, nature? Well, in that case, philosophically according to nature, it’s OK to be off in dreamland while your poor mother, who unfortunately loves you more than anything, carries a hundred thousand packages like a beast of burden? Put this in the front closet.
Ahmed takes a small package, carries it very slowly backstage, and returns.
AHMED. What’s in accord with nature, dear Mother, is that you and I should easily be able to carry a package of, let’s say, four pounds. If it’s twenty pounds, the sweat starts to flow if you try to lift it with one hand. If it’s sixty pounds, then you have to put it on your back, and if it’s a lot more, you have to go find the next-door neighbor, and if it’s even more than that, you have to go find a truck. In all this, which is about what one can and can’t do, we have the experience of nature. You sense nature when you’ve reached its limit.
FATIMA. Well, in that case, I have the feeling you must be very natural! You must know your nature down to its tiniest detail! Because you reach your natural limit a lot more than most people. Tell you what: so we can figure out your true nature, pick up a bigger package.
Ahmed takes a package and carries it very laboriously backstage.
Must we believe that it’s in the nature of the maternal woman to carry pounds of beans and couscous and damp laundry, seeing as how the drier is on the blink and that it’s in the nature of the paternal worker to carry scrap metal in the factory and, finally, that it’s in the nature of the son to work only with his tongue muscle? Seems to me this nature of yours has a funny way of handing out parts!
AHMED (coming back, apparently exhausted). That’s exactly how nature is. She hands out parts according to everyone’s abilities, depending either on their favorite muscle or their dominant tendency. There are those, like you, Mother, call them the natural forces of nature. Then there are others, like my late beloved proletarian father, who stand out as naturally upright, decent, irreproachable men. Call them moral forces of nature. And then there are those, like your very respectful son Ahmed, whose talents are more for matching wits with nature, call them the intellectual forces of nature. So you see how the casting works?
Improvisation on the three forces of nature, natural, moral, and intellectual.
FATIMA. You bet I see! Except, I’d say that nature is, first of all, the sheer weight of all these packages and, second of all, the appetite of this Ahmed whose intellectual nature needs to gobble up quantities of meat that the moral nature of my dear departed husband would never have dreamed of! And that, if this Ahmed doesn’t think the meat is cooked exactly the way he wants it, he uses his tongue to come up with a thousand very intellectual arguments against the nature of his mother who cooked it! And just for that, you can come over here by my natural nature and keep putting these packages away for me, without making a big philosophical speech to justify taking the smallest one.
Ahmed takes a package very grudgingly, as if he were about to collapse at any moment.
Look at how sly he is, the rascal! This is how he manages to shirk the humiliations of life with all the dupes who get taken in by his silver tongue! I know just how it works. He explains to the dupes that it’s in their nature to do all the drudgery and that it’s in his nature to explain to them what’s going on and that, if he gives them a nice big barrelful of well-turned phrases, then their only choice is to give him in return a nice big chunk of work that he should have done himself. I’ll tell you, this Ahmed I gave birth to, he’s one smart philosophical cookie. He’s not a thing of nature. It’s more like he sidestepped nature.
AHMED (returning as if he were half-dead from fatigue). Exactly, Mother. I’m not natural, I’m supernatural. Because language is supernatural.
FATIMA. But of course, and the proof is that I, who am up to my ears in nature, and whose job, I guess, is to be the whole natural road crew that makes your supernaturalness possible, I don’t know how to talk? Is that what you just said to your own mother, right to her face?
AHMED. No, not at all! I’d be completely ashamed to say such a thing! You speak the language of nature in an absolutely supernatural way.
FATIMA. Well, then, why don’t you just put the physics of your supernature to work in an absolutely natural way! Bring me that bag over there and get your personal philosophy to help you. Just keep saying to yourself, “I’m carrying a supernatural bag in a very natural way,” and God, who distributes the parts of nature, will help you as long as you help yourself just a little bit.
Ahmed hoists the bag painfully onto his shoulders, takes a few steps, then collapses under the bag and lies motionless on the ground.
Dear Lord, Ahmed’s been crushed beneath the supernatural bag! Quick, quick, water, help! My precious boy, the slyest, the cleverest, the most loving son! The light of my life! My pride and joy! My great big sweetheart of a philosopher!
Fatima fusses over Ahmed, sponging him, etc. Improvisation on this situation. Then, to the bag, she says:
Lousy sack of beans heavy enough to squash the best of sons! Natural disaster more oppressive than scrap metal! Couldn’t you see that my Ahmed, whom I brought up with couscous and the back of my hand until he had the philosophical mind, couldn’t you see that he doesn’t have the same physical distribution of nature as you?
She kicks the bag, then lifts it. Great expression of surprise.
But this bag doesn’t weigh anything! These aren’t beans! What’s in here?
Fatima opens the bag and rummages through it. Down feathers fly out of it. Fatima, to Ahmed.
FATIMA. So, Mr. Philosopher! You got crushed by a bunch of feathers? Well then, let me tell you what you are. I’m going to tell you, ’cause I’m the one who made you and who knows you down to the folds between your toes, which the doctor told me were good for nothing, and I should have been leery about what you’d be good for altogether. You’re a natural born pipsqueak!
AHMED (bounding up, cheerfully). Exactly, dear Mother. The littler the nature, the bigger the mind!