the dark island
(8,782 words)

An exotic music of love, death and betrayal between Gael and Pakistani, set in a wild, Outer Hebridean landscape.

In slightly modified form, this play was broadcast on BBC Radio Four in the afternoon play slot, in January 2004 and was named in The Radio Times as the 'Choice of the Day'.

The Dark Island

by

Suhayl Saadi
(8,782 words)

SETTING: Dubh Creag Isle (‘Island of the Dark Crag’), a fictitious Outer
Hebridean Island. The theme is betrayal and redemption.

CHARACTERS:
Rustum: A 35 year old Pakistani doctor from Islamabad. Speaks in an educated Pakistani accent. He did his medical education in Edinburgh and then returned to Pakistan with the love of his life, Ghizala, who was a teacher. They were idealists and went to work in a poor village. The feudal landowner (‘jagirdaar’) threatened them. He didn’t want them there because education and better health were threats to his feudal hegemony over the peasant serfs. Ghiazala begged that they leave, but Rustum refused. One night, he went to fetch water, but he drifted off in search of quietude. Meanwhile, Ghizala is kidnapped, raped, tortured and killed by the henchmen of the landlord. Rustum cannot live with the guilt and so he runs away to a remote Hebridean island, where he gets a job as a single-handed GP.

Fenella: A woman in her late ‘30’s who lives in a cave, high up among the dark cliffs of the island, a sparsely-populated Outer Hebridean island. She is the daughter of MacLeod the Recluse, who once owned the 300 year-old house which Dr Rustum is renting. Her mother was drowned at sea, 20 years earlier (following which event, MacLeod became a recluse; he died 10 years after his wife).

Rustum has been tortured by dreams of what happened to his wife (though we don’t know what happened to her till near the climax of the play). Every night, he is woken from these dreams by the sound of a woman singing in Gaelic. He ventures to the cliffs, where he meets Fenella. She lives in a cave by the cliff-edge. She has also betrayed someone – her mother, Mhairead. On the night Mhairead sang to the sea and helped save MacLeod and Auld Ewan from drowning, Fenella turned away at the last moment and Mhairead was swept into the ocean.

Ultimately, Fenella and Rustum both have to face up to their guilt. They help each other attain redemption.

Auld Ewan: Retired fisherman; auto-didact bibliophile.

Shona: Surgery Receptionist. In her fifties. Polite, but staid.

SCENE 1 INT. NIGHT.

SOUND OF WIND AND SEA. FADE UP POWERFUL, FEMALE VOICE SINGING SONG, ‘KABI, KABI, MERI DIL ME’ IN URDU WITH A GAELIC NOTE UNDERNEATH. MELDS INTO GAELIC UNACCOMPANIED SONG, MHAIREAD OG. FADES SLOWLY AWAY INTO SOUND OF WAVES. FADE AWAY SLOWLY.

1. RUSTUM (WHISPERING LOUDLY) There it is again. Singing. What time is it? God, I can’t see. Night after night, dreams of the village, the dust, our hopes, the end. And now here in this cold, northern place, the singing. No sleep. Am I going mad?

2. RUSTUM Where’s the light?

BEDSIDE LIGHT BEING SWITCHED ON. RUSTUM GULPS DOWN SOME WATER. GLASS REPLACED ON BEDSIDE TABLE.

3. RUSTUM Four-thirty. Again. (SIGHS) Surgery at nine, exhausted by two.

FAINT SOUND OF WOMAN SINGING IN GAELIC.

4. RUSTUM: There it is again!

SINGING COMES AND GOES WITH WIND. FADE OUT.

SCENE 2 INT. DAY. SURGERY.

SOUNDS OF NOISY GP’S SURGERY: ‘PHONES RINGING, BABIES CRYING, SHONA’S VOICE ANSWERING ‘PHONES IN A SCOTTISH ISLAND ACCENT.

1. RUSTUM Any housecalls, Shona?

2. SHONA Just one, Doctor Khan: Auld Ewan at Airgid Street. That’s left at the sea-shore and then half-a-mile and then…

3. RUSTUM I know where it is, Shona. What is it, this time?

4. SHONA Sore head. Oh, and Mrs MacPherson will be ‘phoning about her
blood results.

5. RUSTUM Tell her to ‘phone back tomorrow. I’m going home after this visit.

6. SHONA See you later then, Doctor Khan.

7. RUSTUM Bye, Shona.

SOUND OF MEDICAL BAG BEING SNAPPED SHUT

8. RUSTUM Shona?

9. SHONA Yes, Doctor Khan?

10. RUSTUM Can I ask you something?

PAUSE

11. SHONA Of course you can.

12. RUSTUM Is there someone who sings on the island at night? A woman?

13. SHONA Why do you ask?


1. RUSTUM Oh, it’s probably nothing. It’s just some nights, I think I hear
singing.

2. SHONA I wouldn’t pay too much attention to what you hear in the night.

PAUSE

3. RUSTUM Yes, of course. I’m sorry. You must think I’m mad.

4. SHONA (QUIETLY, TO HERSELF)
No. Just lonely.

SOUNDS OF SURGERY FADE OUT

SCENE 3 INT. DAY. AULD EWAN’S HOUSE.

DOOR OPENS. FADE IN SOUND OF GRANDFATHER CLOCK

5. AULD EWAN Doctor Khan, I’m sorry I can’t offer you a cup of tea.

DOOR CLOSES. CREAKING FLOORBAORDS

(GROANS) I can’t move about as I used to when I was your age. I worked on the big boats. Fishing.

6. RUSTUM You told me.

7. AULD EWAN We sailed those ships right up to the coast of Greenland. Waves, big as houses. Black sky, rocks, coming up like hands beneath the skin of the sea. A sudden jolt, a jagged line, then freezing water everywhere.

1. RUSTUM You had a headache

2. AULD EWAN Aye. It’s gone now.

RUSTUM SIGHS EXASPERATEDLY

3. AULD EWAN Why don’t you sit yourself down, doctor.

4. RUSTUM Ewan, I’m really rather busy. I’ve got other things to do.

PAUSE

5. RUSTUM Let me check your blood pressure.

SOUND OF BLOOD PRESSURE CUFF BEING PUMPED

6. AULD EWAN You look tired, doctor.

7. RUSTUM Pardon?

8. AULD EWAN Worn out.

SOUND OF AIR BEING RELEASED FROM BLOOD PRESSURE CUFF

9. RUSTUM One-sixty over ninety-five. It’s a bit high.

10. RUSTUM I’ll have to come back to check it again, Ewan.

11. AULD EWAN Won’t you have a seat, Doctor?

12. RUSTUM I… I might get a call.

1. AULD EWAN Only the dying or the mad call the doctor.

2. RUSTUM Well, perhaps just for a minute.

3. AULD EWAN Aye. Things are slow here. Life, death… all except the wind.

4. RUSTUM Like the winters.

5. AULD EWAN Wet, windy, dark, miserable. Lonely.

6. RUSTUM But that’s just what I need. (THEN, WISTFULLY) I’ve had enough of sunshine, crowds, dust.

7. AULD EWAN All the way from Pakistan, land of the pure, the great port city of Karachi. You’re not married?

8. RUSTUM (BLUNTLY) It’s a long story.

9. AULD EWAN It’s a long evening.

10. RUSTUM I studied in Edinburgh, you know, some years back. I wanted to be a surgeon. To re-shape human beings in the image of perfection. It was a long time ago. I was very young. Very stupid.

11. AULD EWAN Aye. Plato. Ach, come on, man, I’ve smelled the Arabian Sea. I’ve held its dark pearls in the palm of my hand. Ye didn’t come all the way up here, just for the sea air.

RUSTUM HANDLES BOOKS

12. RUSTUM You have a real collection of books. A leather-bound library.

1. AULD EWAN I’ve got some first editions of D.H. Lawrence and Neil Gunn.

RUSTUM LIFTS BOOK OFF SHELF AND FLICKS
THROUGH PAGES

2. RUSTUM Forgive my ignorance. Who is Neil Gunn?

3. AULD EWAN A great writer of the North-East.

4. RUSTUM ‘He had the foreknowledge of being with her for a long time and its ease was rare and delectable, like the beauty beyond what was seen of the mortal eye in her face.’

PAUSE

It’s beautiful. In Pakistan, the old is discarded, built over with concrete and blindness.

5. AULD EWAN When you get to my age, the past looms over your shoulder like a Sister of Kintail, like a great, black mountain. You avoid it, you run away, but you know that one day, you’ll have to turn and face it.

6. RUSTUM The past can be terrible. Sometimes it’s better to burn all that went before.

7. AULD EWAN You wouldn’t burn an old book.

8. RUSTUM Why not? What’s so sacrosanct about the written word. Most of it’s a lie, anyway.

9. AULD EWAN You’re very despondent for a young man.

10. RUSTUM I’m not so young.

1. AULD EWAN Hereabouts, the truth gets washed away by the ocean and scoured by the wind and burned by the whisky. There’s not much to do on winter nights, except drink, dream and sing.

2. RUSTUM Sing?

3. AULD EWAN ‘The living and the dead sing to each other across the vast gulfs of the frozen night. I am weary and desolate, alone in a strange land’ A school poem, a lifetime ago.

PAUSE.

4. RUSTUM Tell me, the house I’ve rented…

5. AULD EWAN Mhairead Og. Aye?

6. RUSTUM It’s very old, like the books.

7. AULD EWAN Some years ago, it belonged to a man named MacLeod, a crofter-turned-seaman. Hacked life from the dead ground. He wasn’t like the other sailors. Kept himself to himself. ‘The Recluse’. Even the minister couldn’t get in of an evening. MacLeod told him the only truth was in the grave. He had no use for the churches, whether they be the Free or the Edinburgh Kirk. Eventually, the minister gave up.

8. AULD EWAN He was a bitter man, yon MacLeod. Most likely, it was on account of him losing his wife to the ocean.

9. RUSTUM She drowned?

10. AULD EWAN Aye. Twenty years ago.

SOUND OF STANDING UP

1. RUSTUM I’ll probably meet him, sooner or later.

2. AULD EWAN Oh no, MacLeod the Recluse died nearly ten years ago.

FADE OUT.

SCENE 4 INT. NIGHT. RUSTUM’S BEDROOM.

3. RUSTUM 15th August. My dearest Ghizala.

4. RUSTUM I’m here in the north of Scotland, on this dark island and it’s very, very cold and wet. You remember Edinburgh? Fish ‘n’ chips in the wind? Well, it’s far more extreme here. I’m sorry it’s been so long since I wrote. It’s taken me six months to settle in; these people keep to themselves. Cold church faces. Except Auld Ewan. We talk about books. Or at least, he talks about books. I cannot bear to.

5. RUSTUM (TO HIMSELF) No. That’s a lie. Strike that.

6. RUSTUM (TO LETTER) You remember that book I gave you, when we went together to the hill-station, that first November? I gave you the book with the blue cover and proposed to you, there and then, in the café at the end of the Jumma bazaar at the foot of the white mountain where the light is clear as ice. [SIGHS] Seven years. A lifetime. Where is the book now, where is our love? Frozen in the marble well of Jahangir’s Tomb. What happens to all the words?

PAUSE

1. RUSTUM I miss home. I miss…

‘PHONE RINGING
RECEIVER PICKED UP

2. RUSTUM Hello, Dr Khan here.

PAUSE

3. RUSTUM OK. Sit him up in bed and give him steam to inhale. I’ll be over in ten minutes.

FADE OUT.

SCENE 5 EXT. SHORE. DAY.

FADE IN SOUND OF SEA. SOUND OF WALKING ON SAND. SOUND OF GULLS.

4. SHONA This is where the old fishermen used to unload their catches. This beach is bare now, of course.

5. RUSTUM It must’ve been very busy back when you were a child, Shona.

6. SHONA Now it’s all driftwood.

7. RUSTUM I really appreciate you showing me around this side of the island. I’d never have found this beach on my own. And the cliffs are so majestic.

PAUSE

Wait! What’s that?

1. SHONA What?

2. RUSTUM That figure, up there on the cliff-edge. It looks like a woman. It’s so far away, I can’t see properly. Is she gazing out to sea?

3. RUSTUM (cont.) Can you see her, Shona…? I think she’s seen us. Look, she’s running away, into the rock-face! How on earth did she get up there?

4. SHONA You leave it.

5. RUSTUM There must be a path from the scrubland.

6. SHONA Leave well alone.

7. RUSTUM But…

8. SHONA The mad should be left to their madness.

9. RUSTUM Who is she?

10. SHONA They have no redemption. They will suck you into their lunacy. The Lord God protect us!

SCENE 6 INT. NIGHT. RUSTUM’S BEDROOM.

FADE IN SOUND OF WIND.

WOMAN’S SINGING (GAELIC) EDDIES THROUGH WIND.

1. FENELLA (INTONING, OVER THE SINGING)
Young Margaret, you are the cause of my wound, beautiful, lovely girl. Your eye is bluer in the calm morning than the blueberry behind its leaves. You are more radiant, my love, than the white snow that falls

2. FENELLA (cont.) on the heights of the moor.

It was my mother that wrought the deed when she sent me to hunt the wild duck; When I got to the narrow pool it was my love who was bathing there.

3. RUSTUM The singing again!

COUGHS, CLEARS THROAT

4. RUSTUM (AUTHORITATIVELY)
Pull yourself together, Rustum. You are a man of science. A physician. You think, therefore you are. In the village, you had no fear.

[FADE OUT SONG]

SCENE 7 INT. DAY. RUSTUM’S BEDROOM.

SCRATCHING OF PEN ON PAPER

5. RUSTUM 5th September. My Dear Ghizala. Another gap in my writing. I’m sorry. The winter will sweep soon like a dark hand across the land, the sea. I have learned a little more since last I wrote. I have been poring over the old books in the library, and in Auld Ewan’s house. He is very kind. This place in which I am living,

1. RUSTUM (CONT.)
Maireadh Og, is three hundreD years old. Some time ago, it belonged to MacLeod the Recluse. This place is a mystery. Yet the land is open to the sky, the elements. It is the opposite of the village, the night, the blood moon.

(TO HIMSELF)
No, no, strike that.

SOUND OF PEN, SCORING ON PAPER.

2. RUSTUM It is the opposite of Karachi. No traffic, no pollution, no wood-smoke. And no sun. But I can live with that. I can live here, in this land where everything is washed by the sea and burned by the whisky of purity. I can sing and dance in its blistering wind and I can seek shelter beneath its glowering cliffs. Ha! See, Ghizala, my love, I am becoming a poet. Soon, I will be singing my own songs. I have even learned a little Gaelic. It has been sung for thousands of years. In comparison, Urdu is a tender maiden. My Ghizala, I do miss you terribly, like a howling wolf misses the moon. Meri chandnii! Oh, my moonlight, I must share something with you: I have changed, here. Night after night, the clarity of the magnetic north has seeped into my bones, so that I feel as though always I have been drawn to alight upon this shore. I wish I could share this with you. I do my job, I see the usual things: birth, disease, happiness, terror, mundanity, death and yet, on another level, it is as though this island is outside of mortality and time. Beyond words. It is in the music of the wind and the gulls and in the silence of the stars.

SCENE 8 EXT. SHORE. DAY.

1. SHONA What brings you back to this beach, Doctor Khan? On your half-day, too.

2. RUSTUM I was admiring the view! If you gaze for long enough, the swell seems to rise above the level of the shore.

3. SHONA Aye. The view.

4. RUSTUM Just watching the sea, the gulls.

5. SHONA Yes, well, I’ll be seeing you then, Doctor.

6. RUSTUM Alright. Bye, Shona. See you tomorrow.

[FADE OUT]

SCENE 9 INT. RUSTUM’S BEDROOM. NIGHT.

7. RUSTUM SOUND OF PEN SCRATCHING ON PAPER

My dearest Ghizala. It has been a while since I last wrote to you; that is because I have been walking, I have been discovering the beaches and cliffs and promontories of this island. I have been breathing in the seaweed-and-brine tang of the air. From the scrublands near the cliffs, I have gazed up at the flashes of sunshine through the clouds and have sat with my lunch upon the shale and ebb of the tide. I search, and in the night, I listen for the sound of my loneliness. I listen…

SOUND OF GAELIC SONG

8. RUSTUM (WHISPERING) I hear.

SCENE 10 INT. CAVE. NIGHT.

SOUND OF ROARING FIRE IN CAVE WITH ROLL OF WAVES IN BACKGROUND.

1. FENELLA (INTONING IN ENGLISH OVER GAELIC SONG). Girl, who made for me a shirt of fine cloth –

2. FENELLA You will never, my love, make another for me.

3. FENELLA (CONVERSATIONAL VOICE) You lie there, and drink some of this.

SOUND OF RUSTUM SIPPING AND SWALLOWING LIQUID HEAVILY.

4. RUSTUM Ah, that’s better. Wait a minute. Where am I? Who are you?

5. FENELLA I’m Fenella. Fenella MacLeod.

6. RUSTUM (SPEAKS SLOWLY, ROLLS LETTERS ON HIS TONGUE) Fenella.

(THEN MORE QUICKLY)
I remember now. I heard singing. I crossed the scrubland and climbed down to the cliff-face. I fell. It was Gaelic, wasn’t it? Fenella. I’ve heard that name before.

7. FENELLA You heard my name in the song.

8. RUSTUM I wouldn’t know if I had. I don’t know any Gaelic. It’s so warm in this cave and yet outside it is so cold.

PAUSE

1. RUSTUM I should go. SOUND OF RUSTUM TRYING TO RISE

2. RUSTUM Argh! My foot.

3. FENELLA Sit down. You’ve sprained your ankle. I thought you came to hear me sing.

4. RUSTUM So it is you whom I have been hearing, all these months? So I wasn’t hallucinating? Am I going mad?

5. FENELLA We are driven mad by the love which possesses us.

6. RUSTUM We are driven to the farthest ends of the earth… what am I saying? It’s time to go.

PAUSE

7. RUSTUM Did you light that fire? What’s a young woman doing here at the dead of night, singing in a cave among the cliffs?

6. FENELLA Time is a mask and looks tell not of age.

7. RUSTUM Your eyes are blue like the sea. At their centres, a black mirror. Wait a minute.

PAUSE

You can’t see me, can you?

PAUSE

You’re blind! How the hell did you get down to a cave in the side of a cliff?

1. FENELLA Is there a law against living in a cave? Against singing to the night wind. To the gulls and the emptiness?

2. RUSTUM No, but I mean, you’re… you’re…

3. FENELLA No, I’m not blind. I see light and dark. I feel and hear my way around this world and the next.

4. RUSTUM Was I out long?

5. FENELLA All night.

6. RUSTUM What?!

7. FENELLA I tended to you. With my songs, I healed you, Rustum. Yet when I touched your skin, I felt a great sorrow. She has dark eyes and long, black hair.

8. RUSTUM I need water! Water!

9. FENELLA Here. Drink.

SWALLOWS, HEAVILY

10. RUSTUM O God, what is this? How do you know my name? I must get out of here. Wait, let me get up.

SOUNDS OF PAINFUL RISING AND HEAVY FOOTSTEPS

11. FENELLA You can’t, it’s too early.

1. RUSTUM I’m getting out.

2. FENELLA Wait!

SCENE 11 INT. DAY.

FADE IN SOUND OF NOISY SURGERY

3. SHONA Good morning, Doctor Khan.

4. RUSTUM Morning, Shona.

5. SHONA Cup of coffee?

6. RUSTUM Coffee would be wonderful. Thanks.

PAUSE

7. SHONA Doctor Khan. Are you alright?

8. RUSTUM What? Of course I’m alright. What d’you mean?

9. SHONA Well… you’re limping.

10. RUSTUM What? Oh, yes. I just twisted my ankle climbing down some
rocks.

PAUSE

11. RUSTUM To get a better view.

12. SHONA We like to look after our doctors here. We have enough difficulty getting them, and we can’t have them going and

1. SHONA (CONT.)
falling sick, can we? If you need anything; wood for the fire, or whatever…

2. RUSTUM That’s very kind of you. I’m fine.

3. SHONA You look… a wee bit rough, that’s all.

(LAUGHTER IN HER VOICE)
As though you’ve walked the long road to Rome with no boots and with a witch at your back.

PAUSE

4. SHONA I’ll get your coffee then.

SOUND OF RECEDING FOOTSTEPS ON WOODEN FLOORBOARDS.

SCENE 10 INT. NIGHT. RUSTUM’S BEDROOM

SITAR PLAYS AND THEN MELDS INTO
GULLS AND SEA. WOMAN SINGING IN GAELIC.

5. FENELLA (INTONING)
On a lowly bed I get no rest; on a lofty bed they will not set me. Today and yesterday alone on a hillside shedding tears and rocking myself in grief.

6. RUSTUM The singing again! Like whisky, intoxicating purity. Fenella.

PUTTING ON BOOTS; THE DOOR OPENS; THE WIND; FOOTSTEPS CRUNCH INTO THE DISTANCE.

1. FENELLA (INTONING)
O King of the Elements, preserve my reason – I have never been in such peril as this! Young Margaret, you are the cause of my wound, It is you who have left me striken and desolate.

SCENE 11 INT. NIGHT. CAVE.

FOOTSTEPS ON STONE AND THE SOUND OF THE FIRE

2. RUSTUM It is more beautiful than any book. Who were you singing to?

3. FENELLA To the wind and the sea, to the lost souls whose breath I feel upon my cheek.

4. RUSTUM I stood there, at the cave entrance, for ages, just watching your face in the firelight. Your eyes are so blue when you sing. But how can you live in a cave?

5. FENELLA Once, we all drew life from the stone. Come to the fire, Rustum and sit close to me.

SOUND OF CRACKLING FIRE, CLOSE BY

6. RUSTUM What are those marks on the walls, behind the fire? I can hardly make them out. They look like carvings of some sort.

7. FENELLA It is the song of the culaist, it is the song of all that has passed and of all that will come to pass.

8. RUSTUM It is like the calligraphy around the dome of a mosque.

1. FENELLA The culaist cuts deep into the belly of the mountain; like the frith, the back-cave runs beneath the swirling waters of the Great Minch. The Unseen has no end.

2. RUSTUM It is the Name of God.
PAUSE

3. RUSTUM It’s strange, but I feel I have known you for a long time.

4. FENELLA I am the daughter of MacLeod the Recluse.

5. RUSTUM So it is your house in which I am living?

6. FENELLA I own only this whisky, and my songs.

7. RUSTUM I don’t understand.

8. FENELLA I dance outwith the lines of the metrical psalms. I am blind, yet I see everything. The line of a plough through the earth, the arc of a gull’s cry, the passage of days into nothing. My mother had the gift of healing, my mother was of the sea. Sometimes, I think she sings to me from the depths. Let me touch your hand.

9. RUSTUM Your touch is so soft, your fingers, the fine strings of a sitar.

10. FENELLA ‘The cold hand without, and the Devil’s fire within’.

PAUSE

11. FENELLA Your ankle is healed. This time, you needed no torch.

12. RUSTUM I followed the moon and the stars, and your voice.

13. FENELLA Wait! I see a woman.

1. FENELLA A black-eyed woman in the darkness of your bones, in the heat of your blood.

2. RUSTUM Stop.

3. FENELLA Beneath a dog moon, she is singing… no, she is screaming.

4. RUSTUM Please, Fenella, stop now. I am thirsty.

5. FENELLA I cannot stop. Once the song has begun, it must be ended.

6. RUSTUM No! It cannot end. Not now.

7. FENELLA You took your hand away.

8. RUSTUM I… I’m sorry. I can’t do this. For months, I could not sleep, and then I heard your voice. You are a brilliant blue river, flowing through my brain. Your skin is so white, like snow. Your voice is fire in my blood.

9. FENELLA You are lonely.

10. RUSTUM Yes.

11. FENELLA That is all.

12. RUSTUM Perhaps. This is most bizarre.

13. FENELLA Have some whisky.

SOUND OF CLINKING AND POURING, WITH FIRE IN BACKGROUND.

14. RUSTUM (SIPPING)
Wow, this is strong! Good and warm, though.

MORE SIPS.

1. RUSTUM Let’s raise a toast!

2. FENELLA To whom?

3. RUSTUM To those who are lost at sea.

PAUSE

4. RUSTUM But we cannot raise a toast. There is only one cup.

5. FENELLA Then we shall sip from the silver quaich.

SOUND OF SILVER QUAICH BEING LIFTED OFF STONE

6. FENELLA To the lost ones!

7. RUSTUM The lost ones? We, in this world, or those we have left behind?

THEY DRINK

8. RUSTUM Sing to me.

9. FENELLA (ACTOR SINGS IN GAELIC BEGINNING OF CUM’ URN’ NAIRE)

10. RUSTUM Your eyes are so deep.

11. FENELLA They are blind.

12. RUSTUM Fenella, what was your mother’s name?

1. FENELLA Mhairead. Mhairead was her name. Here – drink some more.

2. RUSTUM Oh, this is strong. I… feel dizzy. I need air.

3. FENELLA The wind over the ocean is boundless.

4. RUSTUM (INHALING SLOWLY, DEEPLY)
Sing to me.

5. FENELLA If you dwell within my song, I will lead you into the emptiness, to that which is beyond the edge.

6. FENELLA Close your eyes and take my hand.

7. RUSTUM Where are we going?

8. FENELLA To the edge.

WIND AND SEA RISE.

9. RUSTUM Wait…

10. FENELLA Don’t be afraid. Rest your fingers in my palm and I will lead you into darkness, into the ocean’s balm.

11. RUSTUM I am scared.

12. FENELLA Can you hear it? Can you hear the sound of my mother, singing from the black rocks of the old island?

13. RUSTUM I hear the wind, the birds, the dancing of your voice.

1. FENELLA She is singing of loss, of time’s flow, of the great, invisible undertow.

FENELLA BEGINS TO SING PLAINTIVE LAMENT AGAIN

2. FENELLA Take my hand and let us dance on the dark crag! Let us spin on the rock, on the cliff-edge! Let us become one with the breeze!

SCENE 12 EXT. DAY. MOUNTAINTOP.

DISTANT WIND. NO GULLS OR SEA.

3. RUSTUM What is this? I can see nothing! There is too much light.

THROUGH WIND COMES SOUND OF SINGLE-STRINGED INSTRUMENT OF TYPE PLAYED BY PAGAN KALASH TRIBES OF NORTHERN PAKISTAN.

4. RUSTUM The mountain! I am on the mountain above the hill-station. Above me, the arc of the sky, and through the mist, the valley, spread like a green carpet far below.

LABOURED BREATHING AND TRUDGING THROUGH SNOW.

5. RUSTUM Murree, town of traders, soldiers and schools. Mud. Fire. Ghizala. Here, we loved. Here, we were one. Even in the snow, the sun is warm.

LABOURED BREATHING AND TRUDGING THROUGH SNOW.

1. RUSTUM I must make it to the top; only there, will I attain that point of light from whence the music arises.

MUSIC GETS LOUDER

2. RUSTUM (WHISPERING)
There she is! Gowned in black, her back towards me, I cannot make out her face.

RUSTUM’S HEAVY BREATHING

3. RUSTUM Oh, how can I climb this mountain?

4. RUSTUM She is turning towards me!

5. RUSTUM My God! Her face is filled with light! I cannot see! My eyes are burning mirrors.

SCENE 13 INT. DAY. AULD EWAN’S HOUSE.

FADE IN GRANDFATHER CLOCK

6. AULD EWAN Ah, Doctor, how pleasant of you to pop round.

7. RUSTUM Ewan, I need to know something. It’s quite awkward. Can we talk in confidence?

8. AULD EWAN Ach. I’m no gossip. Don’t you worry.

PAUSE

9. RUSTUM Who is Fenella?

Continued ... read on ...

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