Internet is accused of decreasing attention spans. Yet, everyone watched Sarmad Khoosat in No Time to Sleep
The point of stories, one could argue, is to introduce an audience to a character, and make them feel like they know this character, to the extent that they surrender all their sympathies. Stories exist to yank us from our realities by making us fall in love with someone who consumes our consciousness for the duration that we are exposed to them, and occasionally for long after too.
What makes characters come alive is ultimately an enigma — but nobody seems to have captured the alchemy of the process better than the Romantic poet John Keats, in a letter penned in 1817: “when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”
I thought of that phrase while watching Sarmad Khoosat’s astounding performance as Prisoner Z, during a 24-hour play conceived by Justice Project Pakistan (JPP) and produced in collaboration with Dawn.com, and streamed live on Facebook, YouTube and on Dawn's website for the entirety of 10th October, which was World Day Against the Death Penalty.
Related: No Time to Sleep demonstrates the power of silence in performance art
Khoosat didn’t break out of his character for an excruciating length of time, staged to replicate the harrowing final hours prisoners on death row face while waiting to be led to the gallows. He waited in solitary confinement: pacing, trying to sleep on the bare floor, praying, eating, relieving himself, bathing — all before the camera, while a rotating crew of three guards kept watch outside. The only break Prisoner Z received from the monotony of his wait was the heartbreaking scene where his family came to visit to say their goodbyes, his daughters putting their hands through the bars for him to kiss one last time.
Once they left, the seconds slowed to an unbearable crawl. When Z kneels to pray, Khoosat’s back is drenched with sweat. By the time the guards arrived to handcuff Z and lead him to his end, Khoosat himself is gaunt, shivering, stricken. Those final moments were wild — the first time I saw someone acting and truly felt like I was seeing the person they were seeking to portray. The unbroken length of the performance allowed Khoosat to sink into Z’s bones. Without cuts or edits, there was no chance for him to reflect and reevaluate, leaving him isolated in the alternate reality he had been locked into. The cold disbelief of what was coming to him, stirred with the red-hot fear of being unable to stop it, doused with the paralysing thought of the almost-there afterlife: these washed in and out of Khoosat’s eyes without a single flash of betrayal.
Review: No Time To Sleep is an emotionally charged look at capital punishment
Prisoner Z was inspired by the life and death of Zulfiqar Ali Khan, a man who spent 17 years on death row, and completed 33 diploma courses and taught over 50 other prisoners during his time behind bars. His execution was scheduled 22 times.
The detail about him that most remains with me flashed across the screen once Khoosat’s performance wrapped up: Khan received a temporary stay of execution an hour before he was to be hanged. However, another execution warrant was issued a month later, and this time he was hanged three days after being brought back into solitary confinement. Before dying, he asked a guard to tell his lawyers that he felt as though he lived a whole other lifetime in that one extra month. To be so grateful for life — when yours is being taken away from you. I found that infinitely remarkable.