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JIHAD: a contemporary stage adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Under Western Eyes
Fatality enters your room one day while your landlady’s away. You come in and find it clothed in flesh and bearing a man’s name. Wearing a brown cloth coat and long boots, it asks you whether the outer door is closed. And you don’t know enough yet to take it by the throat and fling it downstairs. You simply just don’t realize what this crazy twist of fate means. Instead, you welcome it! You ask it to have a seat … and then … then it’s all over. You can’t shake it off anymore, and there’s nothing, nothing you can do about it! Nothing will ever give you back the freedom of your life or the sanity of your thought! Yes, one wintry afternoon in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, a university student, Khalid Baktir Razumov, returns to his room after classes, only to find an unannounced visitor waiting for him – the well-known, radical Islamist student, Saifuddin Hussein. To Razumov’s utter dismay, Saifuddin takes him into his confidence and shares a deadly, astonishing just that morning, through an act of jihadist terror, Saifuddin had assassinated a prominent Uzbek government official and is now on the run. Furthermore, Saifuddin, whom Razumov only knows as an acquaintance, requests aid from Razumov, to make arrangements with a shady taxi driver to meet up with Saifuddin later that night for the getaway. Though seething inside that Saifuddin should presume so much from him, Razumov agrees, hoping that somehow, by granting this small favor, he will be able to loosen himself from this terrorist association. Little does he realize that through this fatal choice, this crazy twist of fate, Razumov’s life will be changed forever.
169 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 10, 2020
About the author
Raymond Moore
46 books2 followersRaymond Moore is a retired professor who currently lives in the Philippines with his family. Aside from his academic career, Moore is also a playwright, poet, and song writer. He has adapted Joseph Conrad’s novel, Under Western Eyes, into the full-length stage play JIHAD (currently available on Kindle), and he has written a short play (unpublished), Grandman and Baby Boo. Moreover, Moore is a singer-songwriter (under the pseudonym Ray Houston), and he has written a book of poetry titled My Window, which (along with Grandman and Baby Boo) he plans to publish on Amazon in the near future. Finally, Raymond Moore plans to publish audio books of all his creative works (as well as classic short books in the public domain that have yet to be published as an audio book).
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 6, 2021
A food for thought type play
'Jihad' is a play written by Raymond Moore, and adapted from Joseph Conrad's novel 'Under Western Eyes'. I would really like to see it preformed in public, and discussed. While the play stands on its own, I think familiarity with Conrad's story adds additional layers to the play and as the play isn't a straight adoption of the novel, the reverse is also true.
While following the general story line of 'Under Western Eyes' the setting for the play has been changed. Instead of taking place in pre revolutionary St Petersburg Russia at the time of Czar Nicholas the play takes place in modern day Tashkent, capital of Uzbekistan. Instead of Russian anarchists the play is about the aftermath of a terrorist act done by a radical Islamist.
In both the play and novel the protagonist is Razumov a college student whose life is upended and spirals downward when an insurrectionist shows up on his doorstep seeking help. While he's by no means the hero he's relatable and his situation to me has a Kafka-like quality.
Even though the time period for the play is a century after Conrad's and the goals of the radical Islamists reestablishing a holy Caliphate differ greatly from the philosophy that powered Russia's anarchists in Conrad's story, the themes carry over almost unchanged, which I found fascinating.
The challenge which made the play personally enjoyable was seeing Conrad's Russian characters transformed into their Islamist counterparts and retaining that which made them multidimensional in Conrad's novel.
The intellectual hypocrite Peter Ivanovitch and leader of a terrorist cell in Conrad's story becomes Muhammad Saad, a radical Islamist, writter, and intellectual and an important leader within the Islamist Freedom Party. Different philosophical views are expressed but both see and justify violence and taking innocent lives as necessary, and both are ineffectual, vain, uncaring, as well as charismatic leaders who inspire a following.
Neither the book nor the play take sides in the the conflict but show the suffering inflicted on innocents, the careless disregard, and pettiness of people toward others in pursuit of 'noble' ideal. Something true in Conrad's time and in our own.
'Jihad' is a play written by Raymond Moore, and adapted from Joseph Conrad's novel 'Under Western Eyes'. I would really like to see it preformed in public, and discussed. While the play stands on its own, I think familiarity with Conrad's story adds additional layers to the play and as the play isn't a straight adoption of the novel, the reverse is also true.
While following the general story line of 'Under Western Eyes' the setting for the play has been changed. Instead of taking place in pre revolutionary St Petersburg Russia at the time of Czar Nicholas the play takes place in modern day Tashkent, capital of Uzbekistan. Instead of Russian anarchists the play is about the aftermath of a terrorist act done by a radical Islamist.
In both the play and novel the protagonist is Razumov a college student whose life is upended and spirals downward when an insurrectionist shows up on his doorstep seeking help. While he's by no means the hero he's relatable and his situation to me has a Kafka-like quality.
Even though the time period for the play is a century after Conrad's and the goals of the radical Islamists reestablishing a holy Caliphate differ greatly from the philosophy that powered Russia's anarchists in Conrad's story, the themes carry over almost unchanged, which I found fascinating.
The challenge which made the play personally enjoyable was seeing Conrad's Russian characters transformed into their Islamist counterparts and retaining that which made them multidimensional in Conrad's novel.
The intellectual hypocrite Peter Ivanovitch and leader of a terrorist cell in Conrad's story becomes Muhammad Saad, a radical Islamist, writter, and intellectual and an important leader within the Islamist Freedom Party. Different philosophical views are expressed but both see and justify violence and taking innocent lives as necessary, and both are ineffectual, vain, uncaring, as well as charismatic leaders who inspire a following.
Neither the book nor the play take sides in the the conflict but show the suffering inflicted on innocents, the careless disregard, and pettiness of people toward others in pursuit of 'noble' ideal. Something true in Conrad's time and in our own.
Displaying 1 of 1 review