“Do you view the current situation as an occupation or a liberation?”

A loaded question, you might say, when the “current situation” is the US presence in Iraq, and the inquiry is being posed to an Iraqi by a US officer. Bill Prescott, an information officer at the US Embassy in Baghdad, is interviewing Adnan, an Iraqi, for a position as an interpreter in the Green Zone. Oddly enough, they agree on the answer.

The two are central characters in Betrayed, a play by The New Yorker’s George Packer currently showing off-Broadway, which he adapted from an article he wrote for the magazine last year. In it, he exposes the disturbing plight of many Iraqi contractors who have risked their lives to work for the US government, making them targets for rebel forces, though they are offered no protection in return. The character of Prescott is based closely on Kirk Johnson, an Illinois native who three years ago at age 24 arrived at the Embassy. What appears as brash political rhetoric when we first meet him is later revealed to be sincere, yet naïve, patriotism. Prescott is here to rebuild Iraq, to improve it.

In this respect, his enthusiasm is matched only by that of Adnan, a gregarious 35-year-old Sunni who welcomed the US intervention in Iraq, even wished for it: “I was always fascinated with the English language.” But under Saddam Hussein, Adnan hadn’t even had the opportunity to get an education, so he worked selling books spread out on a blanket on the street. Meanwhile, he voraciously devoured anything written in English, particularly philosophy, adventure and porn (it is important, he explained, for the storyline to be interesting, so that you want to understand it). With the US invasion, Adnan saw his chance at freedom — freedom of thought and opportunity and expression and religion. Finally, he said, he would live in a place where you can speak anything you wish! This was indeed liberation.

In one act, using one set, Packer magnificently transports us between the original bombing campaign of March 2003 to the present day, from the hostile gates of the Green Zone, to the sterile offices of the Embassy, and from the dark, ravaged backstreets of Baghdad, to the deserted sanctuary of the Palestine Hotel in central Baghdad.

It is here at the hotel where Packer spoke to two disillusioned Iraqis about their experiences in early 2007, and it is here that his play begins. Adnan is waiting for his friend Laith in the now vacant hotel lobby. The men began working at the Embassy three years previously, with their friend Intisar, a zealous young Iraqi woman. Leading double lives to protect themselves and their loved ones, they concocted ludicrously complicated schemes to get to work, often involving multiple vehicles, to avoid being followed. After which, they stood in line in the blistering heat for hours waiting to pass security at the Green Zone. This line is a prime target for suicide bombers. During their job orientation of Green Zone and Red Zone procedures, Intisar asks, “What is the Red Zone?”

“Well,” comes the response, “it’s everything outside the Green Zone.”

“So,” ventures Intisar, “the Red Zone is Iraq.”

And here lies the answer to Prescott’s original question: the Red Zone is a place to escape from. Or, Iraq is a prison. Despite Prescott’s support, the three were denied upgraded passes that would allow them to skip the long lines. Intisar has since been murdered for her involvement (after which the remaining two have still been denied passes that would protect their lives), and Laith was fired for contacting rebel fighters under instruction from his supervisor. He has requested the meeting with Adnan in the hope that he can help him find asylum.

Today, Prescott and Adnan have changed their views about the nature of the allied presence, and still they remain in agreement: occupation. Prescott helps first Laith and then Adnan to escape Iraq, finding them asylum in Sweden (because for America to accept asylum seekers from Iraq “would be to admit that we have failed”). Liberation in the end comes not from Prescott’s arrival in Iraq, but by finding the Iraqis a passage out.

–Julia Clarke