Engin Olmez
On September 6, a play called “Hat and Goblet” was performed by students of the Theater Department of Duhok University. The play is written by Ghassan Kanafan and directed by Adel Hassan, and its discussion is related to Kurdish society.
First, for a more comprehensive view, it is necessary to mention two symbols from which the name of the theater is derived. "Hat" here means backwardness, religion, and tradition, while "Goblet" means innovation, modernity, and free thought. The play begins with an alien coming from the sky to Earth and the scene ends. Then we see a criminal (the main actor) being tried by two idiot judges on several different charges.
The play takes us into the convict's daily life through flashbacks and lets us see the truth and falsehood of his crimes, his life, his relationships, love, and family. The criminal is a poor person and his girlfriend is pregnant. His girlfriend does not want to keep her baby and wants to abort it before its birth.
In this dilemma, her mother-in-law finds that her daughter is pregnant and complains that they are seen as retarded. They have hats; as mentioned above, hat is a symbol of backwardness and social slavery to individuals, institutions, and laws.
Our main character is shocked when he meets an alien and learns that in their world there is freedom, independence, and free thinking, and they are lucky and the only thing they need to survive is water and nothing else. He compares it to his current life and sees that there are many differences between the two worlds. Because the alien likes our main actor, he takes the alien into his home, and our main actor's life changes completely after meeting the alien. The alien has a free life, thoughts, and ideas that influence our main character, and it freely thinks against events and issues that cause conflict with its society. Since the society he lives in now is a regressed one, he is often accused in court because of his free actions and new thinking. Law is wearing a hat, and now the law is blind; they do not accept the truth because their hats do not allow them to see all kinds of truth in life.
Since the new idea of the alien does not find a basis in this society and our main actor cannot implement that vision in that society, hundreds of letters and requests come to our main actor from developed and European countries to buy the alien's idea. But our main actor does not accept money at all because he wants to build a new world and a free idea for himself and his society, and with that idea he wants to build an independent and free state, free from slavery.
As a classic result of such stories, our main character fails against society and becomes mad at it. We see the same incident in "Labîrenta Cinan" by Hassan Mate, in the character of Kevanot, a teacher appointed in a regressed village who tries to spread knowledge, reading, and modern free thought, but is not allowed. Change, knowledge, and wisdom fail against ignorance, and Kevanot becomes a person lacking understanding like that society.
Although it is difficult to implement free and independent thought in backward societies, in the example, our main actor we have seen that what matters is the intellectual struggle and resistance that motivates the continuation of life in regressed societies.
