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.

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.

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.

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.

What do you say?

Why don’t you come with me?

What do you say?

I promise I’ll keep you as safe as I can.

What do you say?

PAUL, GHOST (Baritone, Bass) Come with me.

Though of course nobody knows what might happen

out here.