Office: BA-405
Phone: (619) 594-6210
Email: [email protected]

(NAOMI, alone inside the Ford Falcon. NARRATORS gather
slowly On-stage.)
NARRATORS: Of course this ritual takes place in the temple of
a Ford Falcon.
Of course.
A Falcon without plates.
Of course.
Accelerating down the street and through the red lights
without the bystanders batting an eye.
Business as usual.
Same old same old.
Stories we have heard more times than we care to
remember.
Of course.
NAOMI: But it's not every day that the laws of gravity are broken. ) NARRATORS: Heard it before.
NAOMI: It's not every day you open the door to a tornado.
NARRATORS: Old hat.
NAOMI: It's not every day you try to escape and the lock has
moved, the door unhinged, the window stuck. That's not
just any day!
NARRATORS: Of course it is.
Where do you think you are?
This is Argentina, remember?
Land of the disappeared.
The unannounced knock on the door.
Boot in the face.
Cattle prod to the privates.
What did you think, you could escape?
Run away to Israel or Canada?
The junta will always find you, you know.
Always.
And you will be "invited" to rejoin your friends, your
comrades, the thousands-
No, tens of thousands
Numberless others lost
Who knows where.
You think yours is a new story?
A different story?
It's an everyday occurrence.
Every day.
And it inevitably begins ...
(In unison:) In a Ford Falcon.
A green Ford Falcon.
Sometimes new...
Sometimes old...
But always a Ford.
(NARRATORS assemble on edge of stage to tell stories to the
audience, ignoring NAOMI.)
NARRATORS: My cousin Olga leaves the university - she's
studying psychology - and is about to get onto the bus she
takes to go home when this Ford Falcon without license
plates pulls up to the curb facing the wrong way and two
huge goons pull her down off the bottom step of the bus
and shove her into the car - at 6 p.m. - right in the center
of town!
Were there witnesses?
(In unison:) Of course not!
The car disappears without any trace of the young woman and everything continues at its normal pace, until they get on their radios to confirm the suspect, who's supposed to be a blond, but the one they've picked up is brunette, so they start pulling her hair to see if it was really blond or if she'd dyed it!
They spent two hours driving around the city not
knowing what to do with her.
Either the dye was excellent or she really did have dark hair.
In which case they had the wrong person.
In the end they got an order to let her go and they drove her to the front door of her house.
How gallant!
She could never decipher the mystery of that day, there was nowhere in her mind to put it, so she left the university, dropped her friends, lost all interest in the carefree life of a student, and shut herself away from the world.
She had never taken part in political activities, she didn't have the slightest idea why they had chosen her,
nor whether the incident would happen again.
(In unison:) Business as usual.
I remember they came at about five in the morning,
jumped over the garden wall and stared through the window - their knocking woke me up - they weren't the slightest bit concerned about waking the neighbors - they were gesturing me to open up, but I couldn't find the keys anywhere, not that they need anyone to open the door for them, but they waited, and I realized I'd left them in the lock, the keys, remember? I hesitated before opening the door because my brother wasn't going to have time to escape, but I realized it was already too late, so I let them in, and they threw me to the floor, made me close my eyes, held
my hands against the wall while they swore at me and beat me up. They took us away, but some of them stayed behind to trash the house. The neighbors say there were three cars in the operation and that they had cleared the area.
Ford Falcons?
(In unison:) Of course.
The police didn't intervene.
Probably had orders not to intervene.
(In unison:) Business as usual.
They spun the Ford Falcon around to make us dizzy,
then they accelerated towards the center of town, and it must have taken about twenty minutes to cover the distance from my place to the detention center, where we were separated. That's the last I heard ... you know.
Always the same story.
How many times have we heard it?
How many stories can we forget?
Each time gets a little more difficult.
Each telling another reminder.
You don't want to know.
You want to forget it all. (Beat)
Remember Gerardo's girlfriend?
Isabel?
Yes, I saw her, in a green Falcon, alone with three
uniformed men, coming home from studying with my brother and some friends. They welcomed her with an impressive display of force: the house wired with explosives, her parents and sister taken hostage, the whole block patrolled by Fords without license plates. "They arrived at about 10 at night," her father told me later. He's a retired military man, said he thought at first they were guerillas and was getting ready to resist, but then he realized they were his own men, fellow servicemen - and they were waiting for his daughter! They said they'd let her go afterwards, that it wasn't her they wanted.
Right!
She didn't have time to say anything when they took her, just screamed when they put her in the Ford and she was never heard from again. Her father thought it would be easier for him than for other people to find out where she was, but ...
Nothing?
Nada.
Same old same old.
I remember when they came we opened the door ¬First mistake.
Never open the door.
They just kick it down.
But we asked them to identify themselves ¬
Lotta good that'll do!
We had no choice but to come out with our hands up: I saw that the windows in the back were smashed, and they had planted explosives along the front of the house and threatened to set them off if the family did not comply, so what choice do you have?
The men were all in civilian clothes, eight of them, armed with automatic weapons, carrying hand grenades, and handcuffs. We. were blindfolded, my youngest daughter and I, put in different rooms and interrogated about the habits of our family. They thought our house was
a hideout for terrorists. Why? Why did they think that?
That's what they want to think.
They believe we're all terrorists armed to the teeth. Maybe we should be.
Get a grip.
Why not?
Because they'd kill us all.
They're doing that now.
(Silence. NAOMI raises herself up into the window of the Ford Falcon to make herself heard.)
NAOMI: I didn't think it was real, at first. The noise and
confusion, the blindfold. Then the engine starts and I
hear the sound of the car rolling over the gravel in front
of our house, and I realize where I am. The Ford Falcon!
I've seen them everywhere, on my way to school, at the
store, downtown, kicking dust up on dirt roads,
everywhere you go there's a green Ford Falcon.
NARRATORS: Following you.
Or waiting for you.
NAOMI: And now I'm inside one. The trip from my house to
the place of detention can't last more than fifteen
minutes. (MILICOS enter unobtrusively, lift NAOMI gently
from the Ford Falcon and assist her moving Downstage
where she stands with guards at her elbows, propping her
up during the interrogation. None of the action she
describes is mimed. Two MILICOS stand almost at attention.
NAOMI stands between them, occasionally requiring their
assistance to remain standing. The remaining MILICOS try
to disperse the crowd of NARRATORS, slowly pushing them
away from NAOMI until they leave the stage.)
NARRATORS: It's right in town?
Where'd you think it was?
This hellhole is right in our town?
We walk past it every day.
No way!
Where?
Hidden.
Underground.
You're making it up.
In an empty warehouse.
Behind metal doors and security cameras.
Oh, come on!
NAOMI: It isn't like that. The room is... normal, old, almost
empty. They drag me down some stairs and leave me. They
tell me I'm supposed to undress before a group of men

who will proceed according to their usual routine. Which
means they are going to torture me. One of them asks
what words I was yelling in Jewish. I tell him: my name.
MILICOS: Lie down and we'll see how much you feel like
making jokes.
NAOMI: I lie on a table where they bind my feet and hands. I turn
into a chronometer, each stroke to my feet another moment
passed, another moment I've survived. No more weakness,
no more pleading. I just keep time. Take it as it comes.
NARRATORS: How could you bear it?
I couldn't.
NAOMI: "Even if you don't know anything," he tells me,
"you'll pay for being Jewish."
NARRATORS: She's Jewish?
I thought she was one of us, you know, Argentine.
She is.
She's both.
NAOMI: We hardly knew what it was to be Jewish. My
grandparents knew, they came to America, to Argentina,
because religion didn't matter. What mattered was a good
education. How naive they were - how they would cry if
they knew what happened to me and my brother.
(MILICOS have herded the crowd of NARRATORS Off-stage
- except for one MAN who lingers to hear what NAOMI has
to say.)
The man who beat my feet with a metal rod, he assured
me their only concern was finding subversives, not Jews.
But the other one, the one who made me lie naked on the
table, he wanted to know the names of my Jewish friends.
He said they'd punish me for speaking Jewish in public.
When I told him it was only my name, he spit in my face.
It all happened so fast, I hardly remember it. One minute
they're talking, the next ... I try to ignore their presence.
Except when they talk to me. When they bark their orders.
I tried to think of dogs, packs of barking dogs.
MILICOS: Take off your clothes!
Lie on your back!
Turn over.
Now! (No one moves. A long beat. Sweetly:)
The kid misbehaves, does she? Looks like we'll have to
give her a little spanking. Pat, pat on the fanny. Would you
like that? (Pause) Bitch! (MILICOS laugh.)
NAOMI: There was this girl in prison, she told me they asked
her which torture she wanted: cattle prod or rape. At first
she chose the prod, but soon, very soon, she asked to be
raped. The very next day a guard asked her what they did
to her the night before. "They raped me, sir," she said. He
slapped her. "Liar," he said, "no one did anything to you.
Understand?" "Yessir," she said. "What happened to you
last night?" he asked again. "Nothing, sir. They did
nothing to me."
MAN: I remember they were interrogating me, fully clothed.
Since I wouldn't talk, they made me undress for the cattle
prod. At the first charge of voltage I swore like an idiot and
then, realizing that would get me nowhere, I bit my tongue.
I assured them I didn't know anything about politics or
about my friends' politics: a complete moron, just a regular
guy who works during the day and studies at night, too busy
supporting my family to get mixed up in politics. They used
the cattle prod on me twice. When they finished they took a
declaration from me in a place that looked like a police
station, full of typewriters. That's where I saw your brother.
NAOMI: You saw Gerardo?
MAN: They bound my feet and put me in a big room divided by
partitions into smaller cells. They brought your brother in
and left us alone together for a while. I don't know if it was
a mistake on their part or whether they wanted to
eavesdrop on us.
NAOMI: How was he?
MAN: We only exchanged a few words, that he hadn't said
anything about me, that I hadn't said anything about him.
NAOMI: How did he look?
MAN: What do you expect? He'd been beaten just like me.
Some guards realized that we knew each other and took
him out. I never saw him again. Maybe they transferred
him to another camp, maybe they put him in solitary
confinement. They left me there in that room, a kind of
lobby to the main prison, where I could overhear all kinds
of conversations. The guards would talk in front of us as if
we didn't exist. I heard about a girl they'd trained to
undress as soon as a guard called out her code number. If
she didn't have her clothes off and get down on all fours in
a couple of seconds, they started hitting her with sticks
and the rubber truncheon. She was raped. In that way it
was lucky being a man. (MAN is led off by MILICOS.)
NAOMI: But Gerardo, did you... was he... You saw him.
Perhaps that's enough. Wait! What was his number, his
prisoner number?
MAN: (Shouting back to her) I don't know.
NAOMI: But without his number ...
MILICOS: (Calling out) K-48. K-48.
NAOMI: Perhaps he whispered it to you or wrote it on
something or ¬
MILICOS: K-48. K-48.
NAOMI: He'd have to remember that, it was the code number
for the combination of the lock around your ankles and
the lock on the door to your cell and ...
MILICOS: (To NAOMI) Heh! You're K-48, right? When you hear
your number, you answer up, got it? (Pause) Got it?!
NAOMI: K-48.
MILICOS: Sir!
NAOMI: Sir.
MILICOS: If you forget your number, you can forget about ever
getting out of here. Understand, K-48? Understand?!
NAOMI: Yes. Sir. K-48, Sir. I understand. Sir. K-48. Did you forget
your number, Gerardo, is that why? Too much to remember.
Forgetting ... Forgetting ... Where are you, Mama? (MILICOS
exit. Beat. NAOMI screams, then sobs. Enter GUARDS. As
they approach her, she attacks them. They quickly subdue
her, take the pen away, gag her and tie her to the chair.
GUARDS exit.)

SCENE 4: INTERROGATION, MILITARY STYLE