EYELESS IN CAZA June 09 – The Month the Moon Walk Died
To mark President Obama’s now famous speech in Cairo, I thought I might sing an old Egyptian love song. Fortunately for the readers, they won’t be able to hear my raucous voice—
Igity-itity, waa-sinie
Waa-sinie. Ee-sa,
Habib wo mistani.
I’d better quit before I drive my spellchecker mad. I learned that song while stationed in the Middle East during World War II. Contrary to any rumors, I did not take any lessons in Belly Dancing, but I continued to practice the high art of yodeling, a way of gargling that caused hysterics among friends in Casablanca and now in Cazenovia, New York.
ANOTHER STOP
Onward to the Badger State for a Town Hall meeting. There the most published event was awarding an excuse slip to a young student for playing hooky, a nice way to highlight the importance of education.
I may have missed it, but how can you visit Green Bay and not mention the Packers? Having been born and raised in Wisconsin I still wallow in my adulation of Coach Vince Lombardi, the famous pass duo of Herber to Hutson— and learning from Vince Lombardi that “winning is what the game is all about.” If I may boast a bit, I made good friends with Coach Lombardi’s relatives in Waukesha, where they ran a tavern for factory workers and college students.
Of course Obama’s home state is next-door with the City of the Big Shoulders on the edge of Lake Michigan and Little Egypt with its gangsters and Belly Dancers at the other end. Unlike Wisconsin it doesn’t have as many cheese factories and breweries, and the ghost of Senator Joe McCarthy and methane gas and other malodorous eruptions. That is not to say that Illinois is free of strange political odors. A goofy governor is now featured in the Second City comedy group, and his selection to replace Obama is on wobbly grounds. In a recent interview conducted by Chris Matthews of Hardball, I thought Senator Burris was saying “Skid Row pro,” but he was trying to show off his mastery of legalese by saying “quid pro quo,” meaning “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.”
Other states are having a harvest of nutty governors: cheating on wives, double-crossing his wife on Father’s Day in Argentina, seceding from the Union, terminating his state in an ocean of economic woes, killing wolves in Alaska from airplanes and leaving them behind to die an agonizing death. “I didn’t bribe Blago.”
BACK TO BARRACK
Let’s not overlook Obama’s visit in Germany to the Nazi extermination camp. So you’re guessing I have no connection to Buchenwald. Don’t count me out, Skippy Skinner.
The slender, white haired gentleman acting as Obama’s guide was once a 12-year-old boy incarcerated in the camp that killed thousands of Jews. Both his mother and father were gassed and burned, but Elie Wiesel lived to write about his terrible experiences. I combined two of his books into a play called Deadlock, which was produced twice at the Culver Academies in Culver, IN.
It was in 1963 that I wrote my adaptation—Deadlock—of Wiesel’s two books, Night, the horrendous account of his experiences in the death camps, and Dawn, the birth of Israel after WW II.
To save this blogger from going totally eyeless, please scroll down to March 2006, that was the time Oprah had selected to feature Wiesel’s Night.
I hope you’re not confused by these sudden jumps in time. Hang in there. To return to this June, after Obama and Wiesel return from their visit to the death camp in Germany, the white-racist nut forces his way into the Holocaust Museum in Washington and kills a guard, halting the rehearsal of a new play entitled Anne and Emmett, a dialogue between two victims of hatred: Anne Frank and Emmett Till, a Chicago boy who whistled at a white woman in Mississippi and was murdered.
Are you still with me? If not, I suggest you take another look at the blog dated March 2006 and then read Wiesel’s books.
A FEW SCENES
As a boy in Hitler’s killing camps and later as a Jewish freedom fighters in the Promised Land, Elisha is the main character in both books. In the struggle to end the British Mandate, he is given the task of executing an English captain. While working up his courage to carry out the assignment, he is asked this question by a fellow fighter: “There’s just one thing I don’t know. What saved you? Six million Jews were gassed and burned to death. Why were you at age 12, saved?
ELISHA:
I OWE MY LIFE TO A LAUGH. You didn’t expect a funny story, did you? It was during one winter at Buchenwald. We wore rags, and hundreds of people died of cold every day. In the morning we had to leave our barracks and wait outside in the snow for as long as two hours until the barracks had been cleaned. One day I felt so sick that I was sure the exposure would kill me, and so I stayed behind, in hiding. I was discovered and dragged before the barracks leader. He caught hold of my throat and said dispassionately: “I’m going to choke you.” His powerful hands closed in on my throat and in my enfeebled condition I did not even try to put up a fight.
The blood gathered in my head. It was several times its normal size; I must have looked like a caricature, a miserable clown. I was sure from one minute to the next that it would burst into a thousand shreds like a child’s toy balloon. At this moment the barracks leader took a good look at me and found the sight so comical that he released his grip and burst out laughing.
He laughed so long that he forgot his intentions to kill. It’s funny, isn’t it, that I should owe my life to a killer’s sense of humor. The funny story… always the funny story.
THE BEGGAR
Drifting in and out of the play is the Beggar, a manifestation of an Old Testament prophet. While talking about looking into dark windows and men’s eyes, he sounds a bit like Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror.”
BEGGAR:
You mustn’t be afraid of the dark. Night is purer than day. It is better for thinking and making love and dreaming. At night everything is more intense, more true. The echo of the words spoken during the day take on a new and deeper meaning. The tragedy of man is that he doesn’t know how to distinguish between day and night. He says things by night that should be said only in the light of day.
(TAKING THE BOY ELISHA BY THE ARM)
I’m going to teach you how to distinguish between night and day. Always look at a window, and failing that, look into the eyes of a man. If you see a face, any face, then you can be sure night has succeeded day. For, believe me, night has a face.
ELISHA SPEAKS AS A MAN:
I never forgot his words. Every evening I stand near a window to witness the arrival of night. And every evening I see a face outside. In the beginning, I saw only the face of the beggar. Later, after my father died in the camp, I saw his face with his eyes grown big with death and memory. And now I see in the blackness only the face of my sins.
The Beggar:
You think the God of your childhood died in the death camps. You believe that all hope for you is dead. When you rediscover your faith, you will want to live again. Do you see what I mean?











A terrible tragedy: a single-engine aircraft carrying New York Yankees pitcher Cory lidle and his flight instructor slammed into a 40-story apartment building on Wednesday (Oct. 11, 2006). Both men were killed in the crash that rained flaming debris onto the sidewalks.








