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A Play for Aranib
Haya Husseini


RED: Don't you just love?

BLUE: Introduce yourself, dear.

RED: Don't you just love?

PINK: The smell of salt in the air, the smell of grass after the rain?

RED: No, just love.

BLUE: Define ``just", dear.

RED: Absolute love, utter and passionate love, love that goes on forever, like the football season.

PINK: Well, I've got to admit I'm a bit of a realist. I have a piece of paper which states my conjugal rights to all things lovable.

RED: No, you don't understand.

PINK: You don't explain.

RED: What's there to explain about the moment of truth. That moment of inspiration as he walks across the road and your eyes are locked in a virtual embrace and the moment magnifies into what seems an hour, and your palms are sweaty and your heart has slowed down and fluttered!

BLUE: I have a prescription for heart problems. Here it is.

PINK: Take my experience.

RED: Define experience.

PINK: You didn't define love.

RED: That's because I don't need to. No-one needs to.

PINK: If you'll let me finish. In my experience, my happiness and love is continfent, that's contingent (because my spellcheck doesn't always work) upon the minutiae of the details of life lived as fully as possible under the auspices of a sacred contrarc (that's contract, damn my spellcheck!) witnessed by the highest provincial authority esteemed and deemed and categorised reputable by other contingent authorities of the aforementioned responsible-in-charge, so to speak, and without using the thesaurus.

RED: Okay, I understand your love is about a contract.

BLUE: Oh dear, this is becoming too sexy for me.

RED: What about your pounding, throbbing heart?

BLUE: Oh, stop the technical jargon, Red, and listen to the beautiful words.

PINK: You seem to forget that life is all about trail and horror.

BLUE: Of course. You trail after your man. Then life becomes full of horror. Now I understand.

PINK: Sorry. Spellcheck problems again. That's trial and error.

RED: Well, I choose to believe that love is about a spark. People plug into their lives through these chemical sparks and that's what makes life ultimately bearable.

(Long pregnant pause)

GREY: I know quite a bit about spark plugs.

BLUE: Introduce yourself, stranger.

GREY: Oh, yes. Well, I was mechanic for quite a long time until I switched careers and became associate professor of lurkiology at the University of Masatile across the English Channel in Mastuline (France).

RED: Ooh, how do you lurk? May I ask? Or is that too personal a question?

GREY: Quite the contrary. I never take things personally. I lurk in people's virtual heads by cloning myself into multiple varieties as a discursive e-user. I'm writing my doctoral thesis on the art of e-mail discussions and the semantical semiotics of internet netting. We carry our tests out only on rabbits.

PINK: Isn't that interesting!

BLUE: Define thesis.

GREY: Well, we're technically excited by the possibilities of relative love-mongering on cyberspace avenues and the multiple facets of brainwave to keyboard commands, and how that translates into, and ultimately manifests itself as, intellectual debate.

RED: Did you say love?

BLUE: Did you say technical?

PINK: Define debate. I demand it.

(Another pregnant pause)

RED: You scared him off, Pink.

BLUE: We need definitions to fend off chaos. Its in our charter. Otherwise, how are we to define ourselves, our identities, who we are, who we see ourselves, how others see us, how we make decisions

PINK: I don't care. I have a contract to adhere to.

RED: He must have been a sex-member.

PINK: Spellcheck problems, dear?

RED: No, not me. I don't mate mistakes.

PINK: Isn't that a form of discrimination?

RED: What? Me not mating a mistake? I shouldn't think so.

BLUE: Come on, people. Get back on track. Red, define what you mean by "think".