At rise: Saddam the Horrible is conferring in an underground bunker with Mohammed Saaed al Sahfah bin Whatsit, Tariq Aziz, Kassim and others.
Mohammed:
Absolutely not, O Caliph! The crusaders are being thrown back into the sea. Your mighty armies are smiting them with rods of iron. You will soon celebrate a great victory and be acclaimed Champion of Mesopotamians everywhere.
Saddam:
The invaders claim they are on the outskirts of Baghdad. It had better not be true, or I will cut off your ears and remove your scalp while you watch me give one of my eloquent speeches.
Kassim:
Oh, no, not that! Not the speeches!
Tariq:
Merciful one, believe me, the enemy is nowhere in sight. They are soft, over-fed, unfit and don't like getting hurt. It will take them months to get here from the Gulf.
Enter Luminous Pearle . He's wearing baggy shorts, a bright Hawaian shirt, a baseball hat and smoking a giant cigar.
Luminous Pearle:
Hi, guys! Luminous Poyl. Just thought I'd pop in. A little boyd tells me you're done, what with the allies on your doorstep. Psst! Here's a deal you CANNOT refuse: there's a little election we have to fix, back in the Far-off Land. Coming up soon. Only you know where your personal billions are stashed. And we need the cash. Bingo! A deal! Here's my address in Damascus. He hands out cards. Exits. There is an explosion above them in the bunker.
Saddam (advancing menacingly on Tariq Aziz) :
You said the invaders were nowhere near ...Enter Trash bin Ali, holding a battered bronze oil lamp.
Trash bin Ali:
New lamps for old! New lamps for old! ( A further explosion. The lights go out).
Saddam:
Get that lamp thing lit! (Trash bin Ali fumbles) Give it here!
Suddenly, there is a puff of smoke, and out of the lamp appears a genie in a baseball hat, loud shirt and flack jacket.
Genie:
What are your wishes, Oh Master? Thou havest three!
Saddam:
Who the hell are you?
Genie:
I'm Genie.
Saddam:
Not another of those Administration guys who sell us poison gas then attack us for using it?
Genie:
No, no, I'm to do with Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp. What can I do for you?
Saddam (thinks):
Hide all my camels of mass destruction.
Genie:
It shall be done, oh, master! Number two?
Saddam:
Do that deal with the idiot, Luminous Pearle, and his boss man, Dubya Baba. All it needs is a campaign contribution and I avoid a military tribunal and a crimes-against-humanity charge. And I get to go into exile in Cuba with unlimited cigars! (Saddam's supporters look alarmed) Don't worry, just a back-up plan in case I — I mean we — get caught.
Saddam sings: (As per Judge's song in Trial by Jury)
When I, dear friends, became a thug
I'd an appetite fresh and hearty,
And my only thought was the topmost slot
In the country's ruling party.
I had to get rid of those in my way
To achieve my great ambition,
And arranged their appointments day by day
With my personal mortician
Chorus:
So he sent his opponents, one by one
To his personal mortician.
Saddam:
I'm the caliph now.
Chorus:
And a good job too!
Saddam:
I'm the caliph now.
Chorus:
And a good job too!
Saddam:
And if you should desire
That your Caliph should retire
Then you shortly will expire!
Chorus:
And a good job too!
Genie:
Your deal with the self-serving hypocritical Crusaders shall be done, oh, Master! And the last wish?
Saddam:
A magic carpet to get me the hell outa here!
Flies off to a special hiding place under a restaurant, you know, just two blocks away from the Imperial Headquarters of the Far-off Land in storied Baghdad. He leaves his minions to face the music and the 2nd Armored Corps.
A graveyard outside Baghdad.
At rise: Two gravediggers are digging a grave. One reaches down and picks up a skull. (See William C. Shakespeare II, who actually came from Chicago, and his "Hamlet" for a definitive version of the utilization of this interchange)
First gravedigger sings:
Hey, hey, hey nonny-no
This is the way we all shall go,
With a couple of gaps where our eyes have been
And two ear holes with nothing in between.
Enter Haroun and Jamiel, two secret service members of the ruling Ba’ath Party (although they never wanted to be members, the Caliph tortured them until they joined. At least, that’s their story)
Haroun (to gravediggers):
How long will a man lie in the earth ere he rot?
Second Gravedigger:
Faith, if he be not rotten before he die, as we have many pocksy corpses nowadays that will scarce hold the laying in, he will last you some eight year or nine year. Mangled and minced by Ba’ath party operatives, I’d say about a week.
Haroun (taking the skull):
Whose was this?
First Gravedigger:
A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! He pour’d a flagon of liquid mustard gas on my head once. This same skull, sir, was Mahmud Badar al-Din Hasan.
Haroun:
Let me see. Alas, poor Mahmud Badar al-Din Hasan. I knew him well, Jamiel. One of twenty-five Foreign Affairs Ministers of the Caliph, all hung by their credentials. A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath bored me with his propaganda a thousand times during the War of Kuwaiti Liberation; and now, how abhorred in my imagination that is! My gorge rises at it, but then it always did. Here hung those lips that I have kiss’d I know not how oft, (although for Moslems that’s supposed to be forbidden.) Where be your gibes at Western culture now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment at the expense of the extreme right-wing Far-off government-controlled media, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? Quite chap-fallen. Pr’ythee, Jamiel, tell me one thing.
Jamiel:
What’s that, my lord?
Haroun:
Dost thou think Dubya Baba will look o’ this fashion i’ the earth?
Jamiel:
I know not My Lord, I am only a simple Mespotamian torturer.
Haroun:
Not smell so? Pah! [Throws down the skull.]
Jamiel:
I just dispose of them, I don’t exhume them.
Haroun:
To what base uses we may return, Jamiel! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Dubya Baba till he find it stopping a hole?
Jamiel:
T’were to consider too curiously to consider so.
Haroun:
No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it: as thus: Dubya Baba dies, Dubya Baba is buried, Dubya Baba returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam; and why of that loam whereto he was converted might they not stop a beer-barrel? Imperious Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay, might stop a hole to keep the wind away. O, that that earth which kept the world in awe, should patch a wall to expel the winter’s flaw!
Jamiel:
There is one problem with thine argument, my lord.
Haroun:
What be-eth the purport of your comment?
Jamiel:
Dubya Baba has been born again. He is waiting only to be transported unto Heaven in the Great Rapture, and likely will leave little to remember him.
On a servant galley at an undisclosed map location in the Straits of Hormuz, just off the coast, by the lighthouse there. Dubya Baba, Great Leader of the Far-off Land is celebrating his premature victory under a Mission Accomplished banner, cruelly erected by someone, we don't know who, but probably a Democrat. The crew have just been fed for the first time in five days.
Dubya Baba:
We celebrate today a great vickery. We have come to Mesopotamus Not to find camels of mass production, or to steal the lamp oil, or to find and punish Soddam, the EVIL Ca .. Cali …whatever.
No, we have come here to bring troof, demockery and the benefits of good-ole-boy government. (smirks) We have seen the Middle Ages in the Far-off Land, and we don’t like ‘em. No, sirree! We pre-fer the Dark Ages, ages of family values and fraternity golf course deals. (smirks again). This is our chance to do for Mesopotamuses what we are doin’ in our own great country, the greatest country ever in the history of the world etc: that is, to create here a great untaxed aristocery that can hand on their wealth and property to future generations; where they can trash the environment; where they can forget about the poor and let them rise or rot; where if God has not given you a big, fat bank account left yer by yer Daddy, you have no hope of level playing field; where the rich can seal themselves off from the great unwashed and reduce them to the serfdom, the hallmark of dark age rule, of Attila the Hun, Ghengis Khan and such-like potentaters; and, finally, a land where true Christians feel safe to convert unbelievers to the right religion and receive the Good News and wait for Armageddon, which I’m just organizing…. . (smirks again)
Yes we need to return to the values that made the Far-off land truly great. Now let us bow our heads and recite with me the Ten Co-mmandments…….
The grunts, offered trifles to risk their lives for the Great Leader, go crazy, cheering and waving in a heart-warming adulation that will survive serious war-induced illness and penury, for they are heroes and do this for the Far-off Land.
Mustapha Jellybean, a bank robber and Chosen One of the Great Strategist, Rhum Baba, is trying to get the Mesopotamians to do what they are told, while still distancing himself from Rhum Baba and trying to avoid assassination. Mustapha is attended by Co-lin bin Baba, Garner Baba, and General Flanks.
Mustapha Jellybean:
I might be able to get something done if I could get past our own guards and tell the locals about freedom and democracy and how much we are doing for them.
General Flanks:
The security situation’s too tense. We are under-manned and our heroic forces have enough to do without holding the hands of civilians.
Mustapha:
But if I could only get to see some sheiks …..
General Flanks:
We’re just setting up the PX. Absolute priority. They’ll probably have shakes there, burgers too.
Mustapha:
How am I supposed to rule Mesopotamia when I’m held under guard.
Co-lin Baba:
You should see our average embassy building. It’s an armed camp. There are fully armored knights on every corner, rock throwing catapults and siege engines covering all approaches. Don’t get me wrong – we’re very popular, being the one remaining super-power and supplier of high quality culture to the world. But we need to keep our staff inside our compounds, or they’ll be selling roast pork to the natives.
Mustapha:
I’d still like to see a mufti.
Flanks:
I could fix that. Got anything to play it on?
Co-lin:
It’s our job to keep you alive. If we let you out on the street you could be assassinated.
Mustapha:
Couldn’t I just get out to an ATM machine?
Co-lin (aside to Flanks):
Oh no, that’s what he did in Amman! Don’t let him near a bank! (aloud) Hey, where’s Garner Baba! Wakey, wakey! You’ve been asleep since you got here. You’re supposed to be organizing an interim government .
Garner Baba:
Wassa point? The A-rabs are doing it better, all those Sh.. Shies..the guys in black robes and turbans and beards and so forth, speak the language and that. Who understands what they’re talking about?
Mustapha:
Only me.
Garner Baba:
They said, “Garner Baba, thanks for liberating us, but now take a vacation down in Aqaba or somewhere. Haven’t you got some friends down there? Enjoy yourself. You deserve it.
Co-lin (aside):
(I gotta get rid of this jerk, man. Like, you can blame Rhummy for landing us with this clown. Maybe I can insert my own man here and make it up with the Mesopotamians)