Nazrullah (Owais Ahmed) and Harold (Mark Cuddy) share a cup of chai and talk about life in Gabriel Jason Dean’s play Heartland.
Hope blooms even in the darkest and cruelest of times in Heartland, by Gabriel Jason Dean. The story pairs two unlikely geographical places: Omaha, Nebraska, and Afghanistan. Geetee (Mari Vial-Golden), is an Afghani orphan who was displaced by war and adopted by Harold (Mark Cuddy), an Afghani scholar who teaches at the University of Nebraska. She returns to her homeland as an adult to teach at Blue Sky, a school for girls. There she meets Nazrullah (Naz, for short), a math teacher at the school.
Geetee (Mari Vial-Golden), an Afghani orphan, grows up in an all-American household with her father, Harold (Cuddy), an Afghani scholar and university professor. Photographs by Carol Rosegg.
Naz (Owais Ahmed) is an eternal optimist who quotes poetry and forges a friendship with Geetee despite many language and cultural differences. “Here, I made some chai,” she offers. “Your chai is terrible,” he responds, and it’s all he can do to spit it out. When her headscarf slips off, Naz stares at her. “Oh,” she says, “I never liked wearing anything on my head. I even hate hats.” She nervously talks nonstop and very fast. He takes it in stride with fascination and amusement. She is more conflicted: how she can look like everyone around her but feel so different. For every problem Geetee has, Naz has a parable. And for every new discovery about Afghani culture, Geetee has an American idiom. As the two get to know each other, they quietly fall in love.
Trouble begins when Geetee discovers some early childhood math books; in one, to teach velocity, a problem asks to solve the speed of an AK-47 bullet. “This is so fucked-up!” she exclaims to Naz. “Fucked-up?” he replies, confused by her idiom as well as her reaction. “It’s not the books that make men violent, it’s the Taliban,” he tells her. Even though he’s living in a world full of violence, Naz is still moved by the violence committed against others. After reading The Diary of Anne Frank at Geetee’s urging and learning that Anne died from typhus during the war, he is appalled. “How can she die?! Anne is like my friend …. I can’t believe it.”
But as Geetee digs deeper into the problematic math books, she realizes that Harold was in Pakistan when he adopted her because he was consulting for the CIA; the undercurrent of violence in the textbooks is because Harold helped write them. When she confronts him, he defends himself, saying that he grew up during the Cold War: “We did the best we could. It was a war.” "War is what made us family," Geetee says, horrified, the world of her father collapsing in on her.
The dark moments cast a quick shadow over the play, like a cloud moving over the sun. Under the direction of Pirronne Yousefzadeh, however, the play is primarily playful and snappy, and most scenes are infused with tremendous humor. Meredith Ries’s set design makes excellent use of the small space to move the play from one continent to another and back and forth in time. One side of the stage serves as Harold’s home in Nebraska and the other as the Afghani schoolhouse where Geetee teaches. A wide bookcase acts as a divider.
Geetee (Vial-Golden) and Nazrullah (Ahmed) laugh at their cultural differences.
In one scene, Naz, now living with Harold in Nebraska, walks into the sitting room wearing an NPR T-shirt and tells Harold that he’s been making money by shoveling snow. “How much are you charging?” Harold asks. “Five dollars,” Naz says. “No wonder everyone’s hiring you,” Harold answers. “The others charge $15.” Naz is discovering the American free market at its best, and the freedom of speech all in one.
Owais Ahmed gives Naz a ready cheerfulness as well as great sadness. After leaving Afghanistan, and bearing witness to much violence, Naz has forsaken God and faith. But Harold, now physically and mentally deteriorating with guilt, shame, and cancer, sees that as a mistake. He urges him to pray again, and Naz fitfully collapses to his knees. In the end, prayer becomes a sort of freedom.
Gabriel Joseph Dean’s Heartland runs through April 10 at 59 E59th Theaters (59 East 59th St.). Evening performances are at 7:15 p.m. Tuesday through Friday; matinees are at 2 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. For tickets and information, visit 59e59.org.
