You know this creature.
Anyone out there tonight who knows what it's like to cross from one world to another, or to be stuck, between two worlds.
Anyone who has immigrated or lost their mother tongue or whose language has been wounded somehow through trauma.
Anyone who lives in a divided city.
You know what I'm talking about.
Read MoreOne night a year ago, I let a four-foot long snake into my house myself, it was my own damn fault. The thing must have been lying on my step, but my dogs never saw it. They ran right over it, somehow kicking it up on my bare legs and in my horror, I slammed the door with the snake still inside. I screamed and ran, stood on top of my bed with my remaining idiot dog and called a 911 operator who put me on speaker phone because I was screaming so loudly; I could hear their echoing laughter between my panicked breaths. And it is funny now, but it was not funny then. Not in the least.
Read MoreI walk to the Eloy Detention Facility’s visitation room where the guard, a tall angular man, sits yelling loudly in a thick German accent directing detainees in and out of the area.
“I’m here to see my client,” I say sliding him a copy of the “Visitation Request” I dutifully emailed to CoreCivic personnel twenty-four hours in advance as required.
The guard looks down at a clipboard in front of him and shakes his head, muttering that he can’t find my name on his list. I squeak mouse-like, “but I’m sure I sent it, I’m her attorney, I’d like to see her today, please.” The guard is distracted by a voice crackling over his walkie-talkie and motions for me to sit down and wait.
I walk over to the folding chairs, set up in rows, trying not to make eye contact with the heavily-tattooed male detainees who occupy at least a dozen of them. Each time the guard looks away, I catch catcalls and snickers whispered in my direction. This is how the guards keep an eye on the toughest detainees. I wonder if it’s also a calculated attempt at intimidating attorneys.
Dear Jerusalem Arts Committee,
Re: Grant Proposal for Theater Performance entitled "Miflezet/Monster"
I.
Jerusalem was still a small village when the dead bodies began turning up. One, two. Then seven and eight. It was late 1966 and all the bodies were male. The authorities did their best to contain the spread of panic and of rumors, gory and false, but they could not control the need of city residents to make sense of what was happening. Whispers, from East to West, from alley to synagogue, from market to mosque, centered around two main themes: that all the corpses were castrated. And that the culprit, hiding here, somewhere in the city, might not be human at all. They called her MIFLEZET.
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