Chapter I, scene 1: The English exam.
Main characters:Ifee, the examiner, Yanah, the little Arabic girl.
(Camera zooms on a paper, someone is writing a text, and a feminine background voice is reading the story. As the story keeps going, the camera is following each word. And through the text, the view is fading to redefine itself inside the story.)
“ The air was suddenly hard to breath, and it took me a little while to realize that it was the sand who was keeping me from getting the oxygen properly. Also, coughing was never that irritable then this right moment when I have found myself in some inexplicable whirlwind after an unnatural experiment. For some reason, I couldn’t remember what was I doing in this place and why was I there. I just felt tired enough to not try harder to understand the circumstances.
I huddled up to keep my face from the fierce wind that was, besides, a little too loud to know what was going on beyond that. And as the noise was fading to a heavy silence, I listened my heart beats going faster and faster. A sudden anxiety gains me and I was, once again, lost in a middle of no where.
A horrible screech witch I thought for a moment was my heart drag me out of my stubbornness and forced me to lift up my eyes to what I wish would never see again.
I was in a battlefield and what I thought was sultry was not only the heat but also the decomposition of thousands of dead bodies lying all over me. And suddenly, everything became clear: I was in a middle of the war, where I wanted to be.
Everything was now happening and I was there today to save a person, someone I wanted out of that disaster and who will die if I wasted one more second to figure out how I was there.
And without thinking to one more word, I threw myself out of the corner were I was hiding so far, to run toward the other side of the road where I should from there, find my way to the base.”
Ifée ran thought the large field toward a building half destroyed. Explosions were blowing every 2 seconds, and some marines were running back and forth yelling orders and shooting toward the other side of the front. She bumped a little into every busy soldiers on her way too occupied to noticed her. And slip over the not too scarce scraggy bodies on the floor.
On the other side of the building she found some civil hiding against the wall, children and women running and screaming: the other street was also on fire and shot guns were blowing from every corner of the streets, she run as fast as she could to avoid the danger, but it was all over.
When she finally find herself far enough to take a pause to breath, She took from her pocket, a piece of paper, an address was written on with the name of the base her friend was affiliated to:
“4th Infantry Division, Striker Alfa 713.”
She noticed a little girl hiding behind a box, her face was black with dust and burn and the camera is zooming in on her wet eye. Ifée step forward offering her hand and whispered:
“-The military base?”
But the girl starts crying and stepped off protecting her face with her little arms. Ifée freazed a couple of seconds when realises that the girl was getting more terrified the more she insists to consolate her. looked down and realizes her uniform .camera is looking up to her face.
The pen is still writing:
“I was one of them now, a US marine, all I ever wished for the past 7 years of my life, and this girl was looking at me as the worst thing that could happen into her life, I was the Enemy.”
Back to the present reality, a masculine background voices telling in french;
“-Déposez vos plumes!”
Ifee put down her pen, she looks frustrated. The examiner passed by to take the paper. As he continues talking, Ifee looked at her friends all over the room. Some look tired, some look really stressed , some look satisfied so is Yanah and as she questioned her friend with the eyes, they agreed and Yanah winked.
Ps: the scene is on a classroom but it’s only obvious at the end, when she heard "déposez vos plumes!"
The scene starts with the hand, writing the story on a white paper with squares (french typical paper) with a blue fountain pen.
The dream scene is a little unrealistic with dark colors, black and white or beige to be considered. The sound is going back and forth to show her effort to focus.
But at the end it became clear and colorful. the absence of noise before was accentueted by the fact it became very noisy in the yard, it was like she was whispering the story like she was affraid of people around her would hear it.
the scene is gonna continue with a "after exams" atmosphere, all the group is going to celebrate the end of the exams. and the atmosphere is gonna abruptly change into the war scene were Samoa is filmed in the middle of a real battle. the noises are nothing compared to the dream that Ifee had in the english exam. *
*i wonder if the parallele so quickly establish would destroye the surprize effect at the end? and/or my goal of hiding the true life of Samoa.
