When I left the theater after seeing a matinee performance of Selling Kabul, the sunshine and fresh air were a balm, and a needed one. I made it to the front seat of my car, put my head back against the headrest, and took what seemed like my first full breath in the last two hours. Then I leaned my face in my hands and just sat. Northern Stage isn’t kidding when it says it is “changing lives, one story at a time.”
As the play opens, Taroon (Nima Rakhshanifar), a former interpreter who worked with American forces in Afghanistan, is hiding from the Taliban in his sister’s apartment in Kabul while awaiting a visa that would allow him to leave for the United States. His wife is in a hospital in the city giving birth to their first child. Taroon spills all over the place, like a hyper teenager with nothing to do and nowhere to go, marooned within four walls and cautioned not to stand by the window, answer the phone, or watch the television. To help calm him, his sister Afiya (Hana Chamoun), full of steel and common sense, tries to engage him in mending clothing that her husband Jawid (Mattico David) produces for the Taliban.
The play by Sylvia Khoury, a 2022 Pulitzer Prize finalist, has been called a “thriller,” and it’s an apt description. The set never varies; the entire play takes place in the apartment’s living room/kitchen where the tension grows and the walls close in. The characters are forced into a constant state of choosing, of deciding whether to do nothing or to do something; and if something, how to select the course of action that will guarantee Taroon’s safety and allow the others to at least tread water in the Taliban’s Afghanistan. And there’s an element of fog—not everyone is sharing everything they know; the reality of the situation keeps being revised for the audience with each new revelation.
As Taroon and family try to keep his presence a secret, of course there’s a neighbor, Leyla (Fatima Maymoon) who barges in and bats away any hints that she should leave. Leyla’s mere presence keeps ratcheting up the sense of danger (will she discover him?) and at the same time, provides the means through which the audience gets a sense of the ordinary life of before-times, when friends partied and babies were celebrated.
The set by Scenic Designer Sasha Schwartz is credible, seemingly ordinary, family-centric as it is rendered increasingly claustrophobic by the characters’ fears. Even the window offers no relief. Costume Designer Dîna El-Aziz uses clothing to portray Taroon’s relative Americanization. Director Evren Odcikin keeps the story taut.
Researching the issue of former interpreters in Afghanistan waiting for visas, still, in 2023, will yield a number of articles over the past several years that all read the same: hundreds killed while awaiting the visas, tens of thousands waiting still, endless bureaucratic backlog for various stated reasons—need for in-person interviews and no US embassy in Afghanistan, difficulty of securing paperwork, political “considerations.” (According to dramaturg Humaira Ghilzai, Trump cut resources for this visa program and “It is not clear why the Biden administration did not fast-track the evacuation of our Afghan allies . . .”) Selling Kabul raises not just tension, but outrage over the incomprehensible ignoring of the plight of so many who deserve better.
In the play, Taroon’s angst is less bearable by the minute, and made worse by the fact that the word from the United States that could free him can only be received through a router that lay broken in his hands, awaiting repair. It’s a perfect metaphor.
Selling Kabul runs through October 29, 2023 at Northern Stage in White River Junction, Vermont. You won’t want to miss this play, this cast. Tickets are available here.
(Photo, top: rehearsal of Selling Kabul, courtesy of Northern Stage. Photo credit: Alia Gonzales)
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And in case you are wondering . . . Susan B. Apel shuttered a lifelong career as a law professor to continue an interest (since kindergarten) in writing. Her freelance business, The Next Word, includes literary and feature writing; her work has appeared in a variety of lit mags and other publications including Art New England, The Woven Tale Press, The Arts Fuse, and Persimmon Tree. She connects with her neighbors through Artful, her blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley. She’s in love with the written word.