Speaking of Desire

Imagine this: Our vision of westerners culling Saddam Hussein’s unkempt facial hair for lice is a Baghdad woman’s worst nightmare. Not because she feels sorry for Hussein, but because Hussein has raped, murdered, and marauded her family and friends, and to see such a villain reduced to a homely, helpless picture is to ridicule her suffering.

Such is one of many moments of poignant pain and personal awakening in Heather Raffo’s 9 Parts of Desire. The play spans from 1993 to the present. It has been performed at the Bush Theatre in London’s Off-West End, the Manhattan Ensemble Theatre, the Geffen Theatre in Los Angeles, and many other storied venues around the world.

I went to see the play at an off-the-beaten path theater (Horizon Theatre) in Little Five Points, Atlanta—an area known for its funk, affinity for the homeless, tattoos, and beer. I did not expect to be breathless for the hour and a half duration of the play. The depth of suffering and redemption, despair and hope revealed in the lives of nine Iraqi women (including one Iraqi-American) rendered me incapable of shuttering the Iraqi experience from my mind’s eye. How much suffering can women take?

In the original rendition of the play, Raffo, the author, played all nine women. In the play I saw in Atlanta, three actresses—Carolyn Cook, Suehyla El-Attar, and Marianne Fraulo—went back and forth between the nine characters. The play, directed by Lisa Adler, was seamless and utterly believable. The rhythm, tone, accents, and personality of each monologue transformed three faces into nine distinct souls.

Layal, a painter who is the curator of Hussein’s art center, struggles with her complicity in the evil regime. She seems to ease—at least on the surface—her guilt by bringing to life the suffering wrought upon women by Hussein. She describes one painting that represents her friend who had been raped by Hussein’s son, Uday. Her friend made the grave error of telling somebody about the rape. When Uday found out, he had her stripped, covered with honey, and eaten by Dobermans.