Scorched Promises: An Analysis of Scorched In any normal, healthy relationship promises hold an importance, an intrinsic value determined by the weight of the promise and the closeness of the individuals involved. Promises are the basis for ambitions, actions, and all those things people build and structure their lives on. As such, promises, big or small, are an important part of human relationships and the lives that are created within them. In Scorched, a play by Wajdi Mouawad, a promise drives a woman to live her life in face of ugly circumstances, forces her into silence as she breaks it, and finally compels her children to discover the history of their mother and their true origins. The key to Mouawad 's disturbingly beautiful work
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She becomes involved with the opposing faction due to her apparent blood lust and desire for revenge on the people who have crippled her life. She begins working undercover, tutoring the son of her desired victim until the day of assassination comes. She succeeds, is promptly captured, and taken to the bleak and desolate Kfar Ryat prison where she loses her identity as Nawal, becoming number 72 in cell seven. She later takes on yet another name for while others are tortured and spirits remain low, she sings through it all, becoming “The Singing Woman”. The head of the prison notices her. His name is Abou Tarek and Nawal 's notoriety causes him to single her out, torturing and raping her. By the assaults, Nawal becomes pregnant with twins who miraculously survive and are cared for by a woman working at the prison until Nawal has served her five year sentence. Nawal is eventually released from prison, moves to a place much like Quebec, and when the war finally ends, at sixty years old, she testifies at the trials regarding war crimes. When Abou Tarek testifies in response, she makes the ghastly discovery that this man who tortured and raped her and aligned himself with those responsible for his father 's death in an Oedipus-like twist, was in fact the child she had with Wahad so long ago. In this discovery came an even more hurtful truth, the revelation that she had broken her promise to Wahad, the promise that had driven her through all those years, for in all the pain and hate that came with the assaults, Nawal did not love her son, in fact she hated him for everything he did and, even worse, all that he
She becomes involved with the opposing faction due to her apparent blood lust and desire for revenge on the people who have crippled her life. She begins working undercover, tutoring the son of her desired victim until the day of assassination comes. She succeeds, is promptly captured, and taken to the bleak and desolate Kfar Ryat prison where she loses her identity as Nawal, becoming number 72 in cell seven. She later takes on yet another name for while others are tortured and spirits remain low, she sings through it all, becoming “The Singing Woman”. The head of the prison notices her. His name is Abou Tarek and Nawal 's notoriety causes him to single her out, torturing and raping her. By the assaults, Nawal becomes pregnant with twins who miraculously survive and are cared for by a woman working at the prison until Nawal has served her five year sentence. Nawal is eventually released from prison, moves to a place much like Quebec, and when the war finally ends, at sixty years old, she testifies at the trials regarding war crimes. When Abou Tarek testifies in response, she makes the ghastly discovery that this man who tortured and raped her and aligned himself with those responsible for his father 's death in an Oedipus-like twist, was in fact the child she had with Wahad so long ago. In this discovery came an even more hurtful truth, the revelation that she had broken her promise to Wahad, the promise that had driven her through all those years, for in all the pain and hate that came with the assaults, Nawal did not love her son, in fact she hated him for everything he did and, even worse, all that he