In Sylvia Khoury's new suspenseful drama, the character sometimes feels too much like a wheel in a machine, but watching it work is a kind of intense excitement.

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Sylvia Khoury's "Sell Kabul" is a 95-minute thriller that was screened on the playwright's Horizon on Monday. It is a drama that is produced like a military bed. You can bounce a quarter from it-or considering its provenance, a 5 afghani coin-and let yourself fall to restore your nerves. This play will definitely destroy your nerves.

The time is 2013, which is 12 years after the United States launched the "eternal war" in Afghanistan, eight years before its unceremonious end, and it is also the time when the United States will radically reduce its military presence. The setting designed by Arnulfo Maldonado is a place where Marjan Neshat lives with her husband Javid (Mattico David as a tailor and shopkeeper) Kabul apartments. For months, they have been with their third roommate Taren (Dario Radani Sanchez), Affia’s brother, who spent a lot of awake time in the closet in the living room.

At some point in the past, Taroon worked as an interpreter for the US military, which made him a target of the Taliban. Separated from his pregnant wife, he secretly watches TV and checks the status of his special immigration visa to spend his days-anyway, when Wi-Fi is working. At the beginning of the drama, Taren's wife was giving birth, and he had to weigh the risks of seeing her.

"Sell Kabul" directed by Tyne Rafaeli has elements of Greek tragedy and spy thrillers. As a suspenseful story that unfolds in real time, it also hints at stage coolers like "ropes". Khoury designed her game like a puzzle box. Every detail of the silent opening moment, even the noise from the audience-the baby's crying, the engine speed-will reverberate in the future. (This is a rare play where Lee Kinney's sound design is absolutely crucial to the story.) Pay special attention to the opening dialogue between Affia and Taron, where each word is important truth and lies Tangled.

The structural miracle "Selling Kabul" sometimes sounds a bit hollow. Khoury quickly and deftly sketched the characters for these characters-Francis Benhamou played Leyla, a chattering neighbor. We immediately understood Taron's impetuosity, Javid's ambiguity, Layla's bright pain, and Affia's anxious reason. (Afiya is the moral center of the play; Neshat is one of the best.) But these people are mainly used as tools to push the play to crisis. Their words seem to be very blunt. When Taroon reacted to the birth of his son: "He would think I was a coward. Too scared to show my face during the day."

If in another drama in an environment more familiar to American audiences, or if we have more dramas, especially dramas by writers of Middle Eastern descent, this is not so important in this region. But we don't have many. When it comes to performances in New York, only "Homebody/Kabul", "Blood and Gifts" and "The Great Game: Afghanistan" can be thought of, all of which are works by white British and American writers. In the best case, the theater can bring distant things closer and personalize the abstraction.

Acknowledging that few people in the United States understand the civilian casualties caused by conflicts like Afghanistan, I hope Khoury, a playwright of French and Lebanese descent, and Rafaeli will do more to make these characters feel completely human. Not just wheels on wheels. Beautiful machine. Or it may just be my own regret-I remember seeing the chaotic images of Kabul Airport during the terrible August exit in the United States and realizing that I should pay more attention. But this is the matter of a war that is forever waged outside the world: I don't have to. It is unfair to hope that "Sell Kabul" will make me.

Therefore, please treat this play as a kind of flexible entertainment and a first-rate exercise for the sympathetic nervous system-if I still bite my nails, I don't have nails now. I would also like to thank the fact that although the "sale of Kabul" could have ended tragically, it did provide some hope for all characters, even if it distorted the reasons for maintaining such hope. (To be honest, there are some other logical differences, such as a picky character suddenly leaving the door open. But when you want to yell "For all divine love, lock the door!" on the stage, it's obviously the one who played with you .)

When the light comes back on, you will find an insert in your plan that contains information about the International Refugee Assistance Program, a charity that provides legal aid to people in Taroon, making this hope even more real. Perhaps this is a test of drama, not how well it works within the narrow walls of the theater, but how much it makes you want to surpass them.

Sales in Kabul at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater in Manhattan on December 23; playwrightshorizons.org. Running time: 1 hour and 35 minutes.