Sowar: A Play of Iraqi Refugees' Trials and Triumphs
By Christina Walker, Medill School of Journalism
By Christina Walker, Medill School of Journalism
ZARQA – One bomb after another. The explosions came fast and violently in Baghdad, so many and so deadly that the wheelchair-bound character on stage in this Jordanian suburb could only respond with hysterical laughter.
The peals were dark, cold and haunting as the actor – an Iraqi refugee in character and in real life – brooded on the war that tore his country apart and drove his family into exile across the desert border to Jordan.
“This happens in Iraq every hour and everyday,” said the character, part of a group of Iraqi refugees in Zarqa who drew on their own experience to write and present Sowar, the Arabic word for pictures.
Performed before an audience of more than 200 people at the King Abdullah II Cultural Center in Zarqa, about 45 minutes from Amman, the play was designed to give young refugees a voice and ignite a multicultural conversation in the host country.
Reen Al Tameme, 16, an actor in the play, said she felt Sowar was meaningful since it reflected her story during her final two years in Iraq.
A striking scene in the play, which Tameme said she most connected with, is the abduction of a father and husband. A family must sell their belongings to pay the ransom, but the money isn’t enough. Grief stricken,the son cries upon hearing of his father’s death, “Why kill a soul that God has given life? Stand up father, I can’t live this life without you.”
“It was the most beautiful play I’ve been in,” said Tameme. “We felt so comfortable with the teacher and director.”
Organized by C:NTACT and ActionAid Denmark, international groups working to bridge Jordanian and Iraqi youth and the wider communities, Sowar brings an intimate perspective to the audience. A recurring scene of shuffling suitcases ties together the theme of displacement, as the characters wander the stage, solemn and weary, with all they have left from home packed into a single bag. The only illumination of a path to new refuge is the flashlights atop their luggage, beaming across a darkened stage.
By playing out the tension between love of one’s country and persecution in that very country, the inner struggles within each scene showcase a refugee’s emotions from war zone through exodus to resettlement. Though updates of casualties and explosions are constant reminders of death’s frequent visits in a seven-year war, the suggestion of fleeing one’s home is no less daunting. “I would rather die in my own land,” one character laments.
Actor Heba Labraheme, 22, had a different take. “Jordan saved us,” Labraheme said. In Iraq, she was prevented from attending school because her mother thought that being Shi’a made her a target of Sunni violence. “If we were [still] in Iraq we would have been dead along with 99 percent of other people,” said Labraheme.
Sowar paints the picture of Jordan as a new, secure home. Yet the audience cheered when one character declared from stage that the refugees will always be Iraqis.
Even in uncertain exile, however, their stories of a troubled past are not forgotten. To emphasize the point, the young actors added a final line to the play during the last rehearsal.
“We have told you our stories but the thing that made us stay alive – in spite of everything we’ve been through – is the fact that we are breathing from this country, Jordan, so that a life will go on,” one actor said in the play’s final words. “Jordan breathed life into us.”