The People of the Cave

Description

“Marnoush (shouting): Enough nonsense! Enough nonsense! My son is dead, and nothing binds me to this world now! This terrifying world. Yes, Yemlikha was right… This new life has no place for us, and these creatures neither understand us nor do we understand them. These people are strangers to us, and these clothes we wear to imitate them cannot make us one of them.”

With this play, Tawfiq al-Hakim inaugurated his grand theatrical project, drawing its theme from religious tradition about the story of the People of the Cave who fled to it to escape religious persecution. They fell asleep, and when they awoke, they thought they had only been there a day or part of a day, but they were surprised to find that they had remained in that cave for three hundred years. Al-Hakim approached this story with a profound philosophical and social vision, centered on the power of time and what it can do to a person, through the play’s three characters; Yemlikha, the shepherd, takes his dog, Qitmir, through the city streets, bewildered by the changes that have swept through life. Marnoush goes to his wife and son only to be devastated by their deaths. Mishlina sees his beloved Prisca and finds solace, but is shocked to discover that the woman he sees is her granddaughter and doppelganger. How will they cope with what has happened? What will become of them? This is what we will discover in this exquisite play.