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.
