All She Wanted Was To Come Home

Saturday @ work! What more can be fun? Well I'm not a fan of it; but a victim! I was hoping a different scene on Sunday and the e-newsletter from Ranga Shankara that was lying in my mail box did the trick. I was at Ranga Shankara to watch "To the Death of My Own Family” at 3.30 PM. The name of the play and its theme had already made an impression and I was hoping for a good performance and playwright. Awaken Theatre, New York & Q Theatre Productions had put up this 60 minutes play for the first time outside the US; with a couple of earlier shows in Chennai.

It is a single woman act and starts with a beautiful lady named Nadeema, being pushed into the interrogation cell. She is a “suspect”, deported at an US airport. Why? Could she be a potential threat, travelling in from Afghanistan? No, she is indeed a naturalized American citizen.


Nadeema starts answering and crying out to the voices coming in from all directions in the cell. What the hell was she doing in Afghanistan? Except for her father, the entire family had moved to America and settled away from the war-prone country. Her father is with the Mujahideen; fighting the Soviet initially and later the Taliban. There comes a time when her mother insists on getting her husband back, and the entire family goes along. There in Afghanistan, Nadeema witnesses a sequence of tragic events where the entire family, i.e., her father, mother, brother and her beautiful sister get slaughtered at the hands of Taliban. She is left behind alive and raped. After this entire trauma, “all she wanted was to come home”.

Farah Bala portrays the role of Nadeema with near perfection. The writer, David L Meth was smart in answering some of the questions from the audience in the post-play Q&A session. When I spoke to the director Peter Ratray, he said Farah is “special”. He was also polite in answering couple of my questions and he stressed the fact that he was profound and moved by the lovely audience. On the other side, the audience were mesmerized by Farah’s performance; at least I surely was. I love you, Farah!