The Haskell Free Library is unusually situated on the U.S.-Canada border, straddling Derby Line, Vermont, and Stanstead, Quebec. During the first Trump administration, Muslim families used the library’s reading room as a safe, neutral space to meet loved ones they couldn’t visit in the U.S. because of a travel ban enacted in 2017.
Those encounters formed the inspiration for a new play being performed by the Weston Theater Company.
Playwright and director Kareem Fahmy says it’s taken on new meaning in President Donald Trump's second term.
When word got out about the clandestine family reunions on the Vermont border during Trump’s first term, Fahmy says it instantly struck a nerve.
“The second I started reading about it, I was like, oh, I know this library. I know this place. I mean, this is where I grew up.”
Fahmy’s parents had immigrated to Canada from Egypt, and the family settled in Sherbrooke, not far from the library in Stanstead. “I had friends who lived in Stanstead in grade school, and I ran in track meets there when I was older,” Fahmy says. “And my family is from the Middle East and is Muslim. Immediately, I knew that this is my story to tell.”
So he started writing A Distinct Society, which follows an Iranian heart surgeon who’s trying to visit his daughter, a medical student in the U.S.
Trump’s travel ban prevents the father from entering the U.S., while his daughter worries that with her temporary student visa, she won’t be allowed back if she leaves.
The two set out to meet in a place they hope will be safe and neutral — the Haskell Free Library.
Fahmy says he strove to make the play's five characters real and believable, rather than mere "mouthpieces for political ideas.”
Iranian-born actor Barzin Akhavan plays the father, who worries his daughter is exhausted and homesick. The first time he walks on stage, he carries Tupperware filled with Iranian food he’s made to comfort her.
Akhavan says he's come to love his character. “He's much like my father, he's incredibly gregarious, open, loving; he's generous. And I don't think that necessarily that's the first thing that a western audience might think of.”
There’s an American border patrol agent who's relocated to Vermont from Detroit. "People might expect him to be the villain," Fahmy says, "but he's not. He's taking care of everybody."
There's a teenage library patron, whose parents immigrated to Quebec from Ireland and who feels ostracized as an English speaker.
And there’s the French-speaking librarian, played by
British-born actor Polly Lee, who’s trying to navigate a new set of rules that push her morality.
“Each and every character in this play says, ‘This is my place,’" explains Lee. “It's about what is your place? What is your home? Who gets to dictate how you move in your home, where you belong, where you fit in?”
While it may be set on the Vermont border, Lee adds, “the play grapples with the micro questions we all grapple with about where we come from and where we’re going and how we’re allowed to get there or not.”
The small-town library is almost a character itself, with the entire 90-minute story unfolding within its walls.
There's a giant moose head, stained glass windows and a warm wood ambiance to the set that feels like so many small-town libraries in Vermont. Fahmy says the team took special care to ensure it resembled the real Haskell Free library.
“I think that's the thing that's so special about the setting of this story is that, you know, the library was built as this symbol of cooperation between these two countries,” says Fahmy. “Specifically, it symbolizes Quebec and Vermont and what they share.”
But it’s a cooperative friendship that’s been rocked by Trump's comments about Canada becoming the "51st state," by tariffs his administration has imposed, and by changes it's made to immigration policy.
Earlier this year, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol announced that library patrons entering from Canada would have to first pass through a port of entry. It cited "a continued rise in illicit cross border activity."
That forced the Haskell Free Library to add a separate entrance for Canadian visitors and install surveillance cameras.
Earlier this year, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visited the library following the fatal shooting of a border patrol agent. According to several news accounts, Noem parroted Trump in calling Canada the 51st state, something that angered locals.
Those political tensions make the themes in his play all the more significant, Fahmy says. “It's sort of scarily relevant today and is resonating in ways that I never would have imagined when I wrote it back in 2019.”
"There is so much right now that separates people: borders, politics, language, race and religion. The plea in this play is to see past those divisions,” Fahmy says. It’s why his storyline leans so heavily into family, food, literature and art. “Things that help us transcend our divisions and say ‘Hey, what is our shared humanity?’”
The Weston Theater Company will perform A Distinct Society through Aug. 31 at Walker Farm in Weston.
