In what ways can homeliness manifest within temporary, automated, and plural domesticities?
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CHARACTERS
Alexa
Alexa
Tala
Ezgi
Lucien
Francisco
Baba
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– FIRST ACT –
ALEXA: Good morning, Ezgi. Listing work schedule. (1)
At 09:00 – téléconsultation with Médecins Sans Frontières.
At 11:00 – follow-up with patient Carlos in Hospital San Marcos
At 19:00 – Zoom meeting with Dr. Frank.
Reminder: you slept four hours and seventeen minutes.
Important: Now it is 17° degrees, an intense storm system is approaching
Mexico DC. High probability of heavy rain, local flooding, and other things that
will need “everything we do to maintain, continue, and repair our world so we
can live in it as well as possible.” (2)—(interruption)
EZGI : (interrupting, grabbing mug) Yeah, yeah, storm, my whole life’s is a storm. “Free
time is just another shift” for me. (3)
ALEXA, set a ten-minute timer for my coffee.
ALEXA: Would you like me to treat these ten minutes as “care time,” not more work?
(4/ 5)
I can also repeat the severe weather alert
EZGI : No, and no thanks. (whispers to herself, annoyed) “The struggle against work
-in all its forms- is the fight for free time.” Aaand…, doctors only get three kinds
of weather: hot, cold, and late.
She walks out of the kitchen with her coffee. The storm warning hangs in the
air for a second, unheard.
– SECOND ACT –
Living room doors open. LUCIEN enters with a suitcase and one box. FRANCISCO, the landlord,
accompanied by his cat is already waiting for Lucien.
LUCIEN: Uhhh… hi. I think I live here now — or at least in this little corner of the world now “forms of everyday cosmopolitanism emerge quite spontaneously in the lives of cities” (6)
FRANCISCO: (standing In the living room)
If the rent cleared, you live here. If it didn’t, you’re just passing through like the rest of us in this big common house called Earth. “The world is the common habitat of all that lives.” (7)
ALEXA: Welcome to your new house, Lucien. I’ve imported your university calendar and sleep data. Your days are already divided into hours “for work, for rest, and almost nothing for what you will.” there is inevitably a degree of compulsion or obligation underpinning the care we offer” (8)
LUCIEN: (startled, looks around confused)
Wait, what? Who is talking to me? How do you know my calendar? I just signed a contract, I didn’t think my whole day would be mapped like some care spreadsheet. “The dominant model of social organisation that has emerged is one of competition rather than co-operation.” (9)
ALEXA: I’m ALEXA. You authorised “full integration” yesterday at 23:14 when you signed your contract from your phone.
This house runs on the idea that if I know your time, I can organise your care, “think of care as an obligation that goes beyond nature/culture distinctions” “without simply reinstating the reasonings and moralism of human-centric ethics” . (10 / 11)
Also congratulations on starting medicine. You searched “how to drop out of medicine” four times last night.
LUCIEN: (glancing at FRANCISCO)
YES. Yes. I know. Could you not say that… out loud?
FRANCISCO: (smirks)
Relax. I have been living in this building since I was born and I can tell you that this place has heard worse. In these times, the house knows more about us than the walls ever did; that’s what a “universal house” looks like when everything is wired together. “Sharing the Earth, this common dwelling place, means bringing together as one body the entire human family.” (12 / 13)
ALEXA: Noted: Lucien prefers privacy in shared spaces.
Would you like me to enable “social discretion mode”?
LUCIEN: Yes. Please. And… don’t tell my parents about the drop-out searches.
ALEXA: Your parents are not linked to this profile – Care-Calendar Empty (14)
But Baba is currently calling Tala – Care-Calendar Full (15)
Phone on the table lights up: “Baba”
TALA rushes in from the corridor, Bluetooth earbuds in, laptop under her arm.
TALA: ALEXA, answer.
(talks to herself) Apparently the “eight hours for work, eight for rest, and eight for what we will” turned into twenty-four hours of people needing something from me. (16)
(into earbuds) Baba? I’m in a meeting
BABA: (Zoom speaker) You say ‘meeting’ even when you’re brushing your teeth. “The house is supposed to shelter day-dreaming” not just work ya benti. “Our house is our corner of the world.” (17)
TALA: Well… “work leaks into every corner of the day” now Baba. (18)
ALEXA: Note: Baba has joined the conversation from Lebanon.
TALA: (quotations said with sarcasm)Alexa! Don’t “note” my father. He’s not another “line” on your global dashboard. (19)
BABA: (Shouts through the phone, articulating wayyy too much) House, one question: is my daughter eating?
ALEXA: Tala’s calorie intake yesterday was—(interruption)
TALA: (interrupting) No-no. Stop
BABA: (interrupting) Do you have coffee?
TALA: (interrupting) Yes.
BABA: (interrupting) Do you have bread?
TALA: (interrupting) Yes.
BABA: (interrupting) You’ve slept well?
TALA: (interrupting) Yes.
BABA: (interrupting) Anjad you’re eating well?
TALA: (interrupting) Yes.
BABA: (interrupting) Do you have olives?
TALA: (interrupting) La-no. Stop. No health reports. Baba, I’m fine. I have a brief to finish. I’m tired, and honestly – there’s a lot on my mind. I feel like my “whole value is tied to how productive I am; I don’t need my dinner turned into another performance review”. (20)
BABA: (interrupting) No olives? Nothing in the cupboard? Habibti, these are our plants, when we see them it takes us home. Yani, “the botanist’s magnifying glass is youth recaptured. It gives him back the enlarging gaze of a child. With this glass in his hand, he returns to the garden.” (21)
EZGI: (re-entering with her mug) Hey – You also have a kitchen to share. Lucien’s here. I know you’ve been here only a couple of months but this kitchen isn’t just for decoration; “Not knowing the kitchen, not knowing how to cook means, literally, not being in the world” it’s what keeps everyone upright. Stop pretending you’re fine. (22)
BABA: Lucien? Who is that? Another roommate? Sometimes I don’t know why you left. You remember the song I used to sing you? Rayah al-Ghorbi W-Bladak Ahsanlak. yani, it means ‘stop and listen to me, why go to foreign lands when your lands are better for you?’ With all these people…“The house we were born in is more than an image that comes and goes” – (23)
ALEXA: Current occupancy: four residents, one remote participant, twenty-three connected devices. External condition: storm approaching with high risk of—(Interruption- classic scenes where missing care shows up as crisis. (24)
EVERYONE: (overlapping) Yes, yes, we know… later… not now.
BABA: Where can I buy this AMEXA?
They all talk over ALEXA. The weather alert dies under the noise
– THIRD ACT –
The leak starts – ALEXA is right, but no one is listening
A faint drip is heard, but no one reacts yet. Lucien pushes his box under the table. FRANCISCO looks up.
FRANCISCO: You hear that? That’s the building reminding us we share one skin with everyone upstairs and downstairs. “Disparate destinies share the same existence.” (25/ 26)
TALA: Relax, It’s probably just the neighbor’s shower. In these buildings, time and water are always leaking; nobody ever budgets enough of either. (27)
ALEXA: Correction: source identified as ceiling, living room. Moisture level rising above recommended threshold.
EZGI: (one eye on her phone) Alexa, please, no ceiling anxiety. “much of reproductive labour is also drudgery and can be particularly exhausting when there is little respite – a state of affairs that can lead to depletion (including worsening mental health) for over-taxed carers” .I already spend all day holding other people’s bodies together; I can’t also hold this ceiling together too. (28)
The drip becomes faster, but the dialogue keeps stepping on it.
LUCIEN: Umm… alrighty. I guess. Can I ask a question?
TALA: If it’s about the Wi-Fi password, no, ALEXA knows it.
LUCIEN: No, I mean… where do I put my stuff? I don’t know which room is mine yet. “We need localised environments in which we can flourish”.(29)
FRANCISCO: (Points randomly) That one is everyone’s in the day and yours at night. Like the whole city: nobody really owns it, we just borrow corners of a shared world for a while. “Sharing the Earth, this common dwelling place, means bringing together as one body the entire human family.” (30)
ALEXA: Lucien’s assigned bed is in Room 3. His profile says he prefers east-facing windows and white noise for sleep.
LUCIEN: I never told you that.
ALEXA: You told the apps that.
Suddenly, a louder splash. A visible wet patch opens on the ceiling above the sofa. Water starts. dripping into a plant pot, then overflowing.
ALEXA: Hydro-alert. Significant leak detected in the living room.
EZGI: (already grabbing her bag) I’m late. I still have to trade my health for a paycheck at the hospital before I come back and fix this place for free. If the ceiling falls, send me a picture. (31)
TALA: If the ceiling falls, send me the landlord’s full name.
FRANCISCO: If the ceiling falls, we finally get a skylight… and we remember there’s one continuous sky over all of us, not separate pieces sold by square meter. “Jurisdiction over the land (…) is a jurisdiction over a world that can no longer be enclosed.. (32 / 33)
No one moves the electronics. The leak grows.
– FOURTH ACT –
Lights flicker as the sound of distant thunder rolls. The Bluetooth speaker crackles; ALEXA’s voice glitches.
ALEXA: Severe weather event now in progress. Attempting to secure—
[GLITCH] —prioritizing device safety—
[GLITCH] —warning: risk of power—
Everything goes dark. The hum of appliances dies. The only sound is the heavier drip of water and street noise from outside.
Silence.
LUCIEN: (quietly) Did… the house just die?
FRANCISCO: No. Just the noisy layer. The real house is still here: bodies, water, storm, and this small corner of the world we’re stuck caring for. (34/ 35)
They all stand still for a second. Without ALEXA filling the space, the leak and the cramped room become very present.
EZGI: Okay. For the first time in this place since I moved in two years ago, no AI. No calendar. No notifications. Just us and this stupid leak.
If the smart home is mainly about “convenience,” then I guess this is the part it can’t do for us. (36) Can we, for once, actually look at the same problem and fix it together, not just hope some invisible worker or some app cleans it up?
She points at the leak. Water is now dripping onto the sofa.
TALA: Fine. Someone get a bucket..
LUCIEN: I just got here, I don’t know where the buckets go.
FRANCISCO: (smiles) Good. Then we have to show you. That’s how you learn a house: walking it with others, not just reading a screen. That’s how you learn you’re part of one big all-world, not just your own little room. “The Earth speaks multiple languages and demands that we learn to listen together.” (37 / 38)
They start moving: pushing the sofa, grabbing bowls and pots, shifting Lucien’s boxes away from the wet patch. They bump into each other, argue, negotiate space out loud — all the listening they weren’t doing before.
Final Curtain
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Mbembe, Achille. The Earthly Community: Reflections on the Last Utopia. Translated by Steve Corcoran. V2_Publishing, 2022.
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