Betrayed
A Play
ISBN10: 0865479917
ISBN13: 9780865479913
Trade Paperback
128 Pages
$16.00
CA$22.00
Winner of the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play
In January 2007, George Packer met two Iraqis in the lobby of the Palestine Hotel to hear their stories and those of other Iraqis, who embraced America's presence in the nation so enthusiastically that they risked their lives to work as translators and additional key personnel. Such Iraqi citizens, mostly young men and women, have been killed by insurgents and militias, ignored by U.S. officials, fired from their jobs without reason or recourse, and prevented from fleeing to the States for safety. They assumed that their perspective would be valuable to foreigners who knew little or nothing of the country, but those who have tried to help bridge the gap between the occupiers and the occupied have received little respect or gratitude. Based on Packer's account in The New Yorker, Betrayed is a drama that explores, in the Iraqis' own words, the ways in which America has abandoned them.
Reviews
Praise for Betrayed
"A Sunni who has worked for years as a translator for the Americans in Iraq, [Adnan] has been denied a visa to immigrate to the United States . . . His plight is one of three heart-rending tales woven together in Betrayed, a new play by George Packer about the suffering of Iraqis who have risked everything to help the American government and military in Iraq—and have, all too often, received insufficient protection in return. The play . . . explores its subject with a clean focus that draws out the emotional power of the material with clinical precision . . . Mr. Packer's approach to the material is eloquent in its lack of adornment . . . the clarity of the writing, the urgency of the story being told . . . give the play a sharp dramatic impact and a plain-spoken beauty. Painful human experience is presented here as just that. Nothing else is necessary to awaken sympathy, despair and awareness of a grave moral failure on the part of the American government . . . The play gives us insight into the reasons, both personal and philosophical, behind these characters' decisions to risk so much in order to help usher a new Iraq into being. It also depicts the vise of danger gradually tightening around them, as Iraqi resentment and hatred of the Americans grows."—Charles Isherwood, The New York Times