The Vagrant Trilogy

Synopsis

THE VAGRANT TRILOGY consists of three plays: The Hour of Feeling, The Vagrant, and Urge for Going. In part one, The Hour of Feeling, (1967) we meet Adham, a hot young scholar back from university in Cairo, readying himself to go to London to give a talk. He marries a girl from the village and takes her with him, and when war breaks out at home, the two near-strangers must decide what to do. The second play in the trilogy, The Vagrant, finds Adham and Abir nearly 20 years later (1982), divorced, him teaching at a humble college in London. Adham’s hopes for professorship are tested when both “homes”—England and Palestine—flare up with political violence, and the compartmentalization he’s built around himself in order to survive starts to crumble. The third play, Urge for Going, finds a completely different Adham and Abir, representing a different fork in the road taken back in 1967. We see them in a modern-day refugee camp in Lebanon, with a daughter (Jamila) determined to break out of the endless stasis of her family’s life.