ACT 3, Scene 3. ZEID is alone on stage, firing his rifle, with heavy gunfire offstage all around him.

ZEID Ceasefire! thats it boys, hold your fire. They have the white flag of truce. Surrender? Throw your weapons out on the ground, hands behind your head.

Gunfire ceases. He points his rifle offstage. Rifles and pistols are thrown on stage from off, on to the ground. Enter SAMINA holding a white handkerchief over her as a surrender flag, DRIBRAHIM, and the 2 Libyan GUARDS, with hands behind their heads. SAMINA Dont shoot. ZEID Slowly, all of you. kneel on the ground. Careful, theres a lot of real pissed off young Libyans all around you. They dont really listen to me. DRIBRAHIM (kneeling) Were unarmed. We defect from the tyrant. ZEID Kneel. Slowly, carefully. Im afraid these are trigger-happy little vigilantes everywhere. 1st GUARD (kneeling) Dont kill us. 2nd GUARD (kneeling too) We defect. SAMINA (kneeling) Zeid, you know us. Were with you. ZEID You didnt use to be Captain. What happened? You are much better armed than us, and funded.

DRIBRAHIM We were always with you. SAMINA We are Libyans. ZEID Then what happened? Dont move. Dont move a muscle or these boys will kill you, and maybe torture you anyway. Youve killed a lot of their families. Theyre not disciplined soldiers. Wheres Qathafi? SAMINA I dont know. Thats the truth. ZEID (shouting behind him, to his men) Stand back, boys! Lower those weapons, please. We must make for a new Libya, we cant just take revenge on our own people. 1st GUARD (crying) We are your brothers! 2nd GUARD Shut up. Be a man. ZEID Talk, Dribrahim Azouya. We must know where Qathafi is. DRIBRAHIM Hes gone crazy, Im not sure. Please. ZEID Where?! DRIBRAHIM The last I saw, after Tripoli fell to your forces, he was underground at the Tarhouna complex of tunnels. He can hide down there for years. Youll never get him there. ZEID Tarhouna? Mount Nysa. DRIBRAHIM

He was crazy. Reciting old poems and talking as if to . . . to . . . ZEID To what? DRIBRAHIM I dont know. Im not sure what.

QATHAFI enters off, dressed in ceremonial desert robes, reading from a book. The others all fade in the background into half-light, observing him.

QATHAFI Now the story of Isis and Osiris, its most significant and superfluous parts omitted, is thus briefly related -Enter JIBRAIL, as before.

JIBRAIL Why omit Plutarchs most significant parts? QATHAFI You, again? JIBRAIL Always. SAMINA Whos he talking to? DRIBRAHIM Whos he always talking to? QATHAFI (reading again) The birthdays of the gods. For upon the first of them, say they, was Osiris born, just at whose entrance into the world a voice was heard, saying - - JIBRAIL The lord of all the earth is born.

SAMINA The prince of peace. QATHAFI Upon the second of these days was Aroueris born, whom some call Apollo. JIBRAIL The elder Horus. Michael. QATHAFI Upon the third, Typho, that is, Set, or Seth of the Bible, came into the world, being born neither at the proper time, nor by the right place, but forcing his way through a wound which he had made in his mothers side. JIBRAIL You. QATHAFI Really? Im flattered. Isis was born on the fourth of them, in the marshes of Egypt. You. JIBRAIL There was no Egypt then, so called much later by the lying Greeks. All was Libya. QATHAFI Still is. JIBRAIL Goddess Libya, Liber. Libertas. Liberty. QATHAFI Seduced as she is, always, by the lion of the desert. JIBRAIL Who has become an anteater. A jackal, who only cares for petroleum wealth. QATHAFI (reading) As Nephthys was upon the last . . . and Typho Set married Nephthys, also called Aphrodite, or Venus, and that Isis and Osiris, having a mutual affection, enjoyed each other in their mothers womb before they were born - -

JIBRAIL That is a despicable Greek lie! QATHAFI You love it. - - and that from this commerce sprang Aroueris, Eros, whom the Egyptians called the elder Horus, and the Greeks Apollo. Osiris, whom the Greeks called Dionysos, and the Romans Bacchus, being now become king of Egypt - I mean Libya - applied himself towards civilizing his countrymen, by turning them from their former indigent and barbarous course of life . . . and instructed them in that reverence and worship, which they were to pay to the gods. He taught them to love women, especially the angel Jibrail, most beautiful and intelligent of all. He kisses her. She only half-heartedly resists. JIBRAIL What are you doing? QATHAFI The holy Suras are making love to you. But Osiris abandoned her, traveling all over the world preaching his message of love and peace. So she went to bed with Typho, back home, a lonely and selfish girl, with the faithful and true Libyan prince, handsome as Set, and conspired to overthrow the faithless, intemperate Osiris. JIBRAIl No . . . QATHAFI Yes. You know its true. And they persuaded seventy-two fellow conspirators to return Libyan Africa back to its true people and finest deities, and got Osiris drunk one night at a party, when he finally came back home. He loved his wine and Dionysian revels, after all. A happy-go-lucky, irresponsible prodigal son. And sealed him alive in a coffin! JIBRAIL (fighting to get out of his arms) No! Let me go! QATHAFI No, you did it with me, and all the others! Threw him in the Nile River like so much garbage. Tried to kill yourself later, I heard, in guilt, but couldnt pull that off either in your incompetency! Lying, deceiving jackal yourself! ZEID (running up to them)

This is madness. Stop it! QATHAFI Who the fuck are you? ZEID Emir Zeid al-Psylli, father of - - -

QATHAFI pulls out his pistol, and shoots Zeid once. Zeid falls over instantly, dead. Qathafi drags the screaming, helpless, Jibrail off stage, as all the others on stage freeze, and lights fade down. End of ACT THREE.