Tony Kushner

Tony Kushner, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright, writes a play in which Osama bin Laden is referred to and a disgruntled character warns that Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban—which will be condemned for harboring bin Laden after 9/11—is “coming to New York.” [Village Voice, 12/4/2001; Washington Post, 12/12/2001; Los Angeles Times, 12/20/2001] The play, called Homebody/Kabul, is about a middle-aged English woman who travels to Afghanistan in 1998 and mysteriously disappears there. Her husband and daughter then go to Afghanistan to search for her. [Cleveland Jewish News, 9/19/2002]
Character Is Told the Taliban Are ‘Coming to New York’ – In one scene, Mahala, an embittered Afghan woman, complains to Priscilla, the young English woman who is searching for her mother, about the world’s indifference to the brutal rule of the Taliban. “We must suffer under the Taliban so that the US can settle a 20-year-old score with Iran!” Mahala says. Apparently mistakenly thinking Priscilla is American, she continues, “You love the Taliban so much, bring them to New York!” In conclusion, she says, “Well, don’t worry, they’re coming to New York!” [Washington Post, 12/12/2001; Los Angeles Times, 12/20/2001; Kushner, 2002, pp. 85]
Character Jokes about Bin Laden Being Killed – In another scene, bin Laden, who will be accused of ordering the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, DC, is mentioned. Two characters, Quango and Milton, are joking that the United States “has smiled down on the Taliban” up until the previous week, “when America bombed them!” Quango says the Americans killed “quite a number of people” in the attack. In response, Milton jokingly exclaims, “Osama bin Laden!” but Quango comments, “No, they missed him.” [Kushner, 2002, pp. 100-101]
Play Is Written in Response to the US Attack on Afghanistan in 1998 – Kushner reportedly writes Homebody/Kabul partly in response to America’s cruise missile attack on terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, in August 1998 (see August 20, 1998), in retaliation for the bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (see 10:35-10:39 a.m., August 7, 1998). [Los Angeles Times, 12/20/2001; Cleveland Jewish News, 9/19/2002] It is unclear, however, exactly when the play is written. Kushner writes it, or at least starts writing it, in 1999, according to some reports. [Los Angeles Times, 12/20/2001; Metro Weekly, 3/10/2004; Denver Post, 3/16/2011] But according to other reports, he started work on it as early as 1997 or 1998. [Washington Post, 12/12/2001; New Yorker, 1/28/2002; San Francisco Chronicle, 4/14/2002; Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2/18/2007]
Writer Will Say that 9/11 Was Foreseeable – Homebody/Kabul will have its world premiere in New York about three months after 9/11, in December 2001. Coverage of the play will be filled with mentions of Kushner’s supposed “prescience” and “prophesy.” [Village Voice, 12/4/2001; Los Angeles Times, 12/20/2001; Observer, 5/5/2002] But Kushner will later dismiss these suggestions. “I’m not psychic,” he will write, adding, “If lines in Homebody/Kabul seem ‘eerily prescient‘… we ought to consider that the information required to foresee, long before 9/11, at least the broad outline of serious trouble ahead was so abundant and easy of access that even a playwright could avail himself of it.” [Kushner, 2002, pp. 144] “So much of [what happened on September 11, 2001] was foreseeable—and had been foreseen by clear-thinking people,” he will explain to the Denver Post. Therefore, he will say, “It wasn’t very hard to smell that particular rat.” [Denver Post, 3/16/2011]