... is we must watch.

"Khaleena enshouf,” Faisal calls. 

The crowd settles. Let’s watch!

I’m sitting in Jenin refugee camp, surrounded by Palestinians—men, women, children and adults. We are crowded together on blue mats, carried over from The Freedom Theatre down the street. It’s three in the afternoon. I bat a fly from my face and lean forward to watch the enactment.

To my left, Sarah snaps photos. Mustafa lies in the rubble, stretched out across the uneven ground and squinting down the barrel of a large video camera. He aims it at the actors, who stand in silence before us.

And suddenly the enactment begins. Faisal steps forward and begins to run, frantic, from one edge of the performance space to the other. Behind him, perched on a pile of crumbled architecture, three musicians rumble their drums ominously.

The crowd bursts into applause when the actors relax. To my left, Kais hides a smile behind his hand. He sits on a wooden stool, the Teller’s chair, at a slight remove from the rest of the audience.

Faisal clasps his hands together. “Kais,” he speaks in Arabic. “Did you see your story?”

Kais nods. “Yes, yes, amazing.” The crowd applauds again.

We have gathered today to listen to the stories of recent arrests in the refugee camp. We are honoring them with theatre. Playback Theatre is an interactive theatre approach used in over 50 countries as a tool for community building, conflict transformation, education and trauma recovery. In a Playback Theatre performance, audience members share personal stories and watch as a team of actors and musicians transform these experiences into improvised theatre using movement, ritual and spoken word.

“So who has a story?” Faisal conducts the performance. He stands tall and broad-shouldered, speaking to the audience from the stage. “A true story, that happened to you in the last few nights when the soldiers came into the camp.”

When Kais took the stage, moving into the teller’s chair to share his story, I didn’t need translation. I remembered it’s telling from last night.

The army came for him in the night. It was around 2 AM, and when Kais heard them approach he snapped to attention and ran.

Palestinians can face years of interment with no charges when arrested by Israeli officials—not to mention routine beatings and torture—so Kais took to his heels as fast as they could carry him. The army fired after him, but he didn’t look back. He ran through the spray of bullets in the night.

It took him three full-on sprints to escape their pursuit. I remember the sound of his footsteps pounding down the alleyway outside my bedroom window as he tore for the safety of Adnan’s house. I remember the banging on the door. Adnan is the location manager of the Freedom Theatre, and lives one floor below me. Kais shouted, frantic, until Adnan was roused and opened the door to him.

Kais had reason for his flight. His friend and fellow actor, 23-year-old Kamal, didn’t run. He was arrested, cuffed with thin plastic zip ties that burned into his wrists, and blindfolded. Sightless, the soldiers threw Kamal into the back of an army vehicle and beat him mercilessly with the butts of their guns.

“I wanted to cry,” he said, readjusting himself on the stool, his rear still tender from the beating. “But I didn’t. I didn’t make a sound—no shouting, nothing. This made them angry, I think. This was my resistance.”

There were others in the truck with Kamal. He couldn’t see them but he heard their cries as they were struck again and again. He recognized one.

“Mai,” he said. “I could tell it was Mai, by his voice.” Mai is one of two technicians here at the Theatre. He’s about my age, thin and shy, always carrying a wrench or a hand drill. He has a wife and a young child. The army plucked him from them in the night.

The truck carried its stolen goods to Jalame, the nearest Israeli checkpoint. “They gave us coffee,” said Kamal; a twisted pleasantry after the beatings.

They questioned Kamal about Juliano Mer-Khamis, the late Artistic Director of the Freedom Theatre. Juliano was murdered in April, and although the army makes excessive arrests and interrogations of the theatre staff, they’ve found no killer. His death remains a convenient reason for arresting them.

“And then they released us.” Kamal and Mai, in that respect, are exceptions to the rule for their short interment.

By the end of the performance, joy was palpable. The magic of watching personal experiences translated into the public language of theatre opened something in the community. They may take our eyes in the night, but we’ve still got our voices today.

Unfortunately, the story is always unfolding. As I write, Faisal is in custody. Israelian soldiers arrested him last night at 3 AM, along with Adnan and Bilal, a board member at the Theatre. If their treatment is anything like Kamal or Mai’s, it is likely that they will be beaten and abused.

The UN defines torture as “Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person…. for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity."

The Israeli government is regularly torturing Palestinians. In the past 48 hours, there have been half a dozen arrests from The Freedom Theatre staff alone. They are almost exclusively conducted during post-midnight raids.

The news of Faisal’s arrest shocked me awake this morning. I ate dinner with him last night, browsing through the photos of the day’s performance, complimenting him on his acting. I wonder if he will be released this morning. I wonder if he will be hurt. I wonder how we will conduct future Playback exercises without him. I feel maddeningly helpless.

“Kaleena enshouf,” Faisal said yesterday. This is our charge as we look to Israel and it’s actions against Palestinians. Join The Freedom Theatre’s Facebook group for updates; if the staff is not released, we will post information on ways that you can help. Let’s remove our blindfolds; let’s open our eyes. Let’s watch.

...is it's scary.

“Do you believe in God?”

I stop drumming for a moment and look at Ala’. The guys watch me intently.

I buy some time. “Do I believe in God?”

“Yes! What, do you believe?”

I reach into my chest for warmth and breathe it out onto the boys. I smile.

“Of course. I’d have to believe in God to come into this classroom everyday—someone needs to protect me from you guys.”

Rabea translates and they laugh.

“Christine you is scared of us?” Motaz asks.

“No,” I shake my head. “Not at all, not even when Aadel is screaming. You guys don’t scare me.”

I wait for the translation.

“Do you want to be scared?” Motaz says. He levels his eyes at me and something in it heats the room—or maybe just me. No. I don’t.

And that’s the problem.

The workshop had been going swimmingly. I began after lunch at 1 PM, and as is often the case, the guys were electric with wild energy. Aadel burst into the rehearsal space and made straight for the pile of red foam balls in the corner. Two of the other guys were in hot pursuit, jumping over his back to get to them.

“Warm up!” yelled Aadel, right before whipping the ball into his classmate’s head. It ricocheted at an absurd angle. They laughed and chased it. Chaos ensued.

My time with the boys in Belfast bubbled up in my brain. Football.

“Does anyone have a soccer ball?”

“Me! Me!” Aadel said. “Me—at the home. I get?”

“Yes go, quick! Ya le, ya le, ya le!” He streaks out of the room.

I quickly assemble two goals at each end of the room, marking the posts with wooden stools.

“Motaz, Ala’: you are captains. Pick your teams.”

A heated game of three-on-three ensues. I am vaguely aware of the camera crew in the background, adjusting the large floodlight and floating in and out of the game. The foam ball bounces off the lens twice. We laugh.

It feels incredible—we are really competing, celebrating in loud raucous dances for each goal. At one point, Aadel sneaks behind me and slides one of the wooden stools out, over-enlarging the goal I’m tending.

“Hey!” I splutter and laugh, pulling the goal back to its normal size.

After about five minutes, we break a good sweat and my team wins. There is much shouting.

“Shabab! You guys! In in in!” I motion them all in to a small circle on the floor. We breathe heavily.

“Gooooooooooal!” screams Saber. Everyone joins in: Goooooooooal!!

I love the energy now: swirling, chaotic but connected. The room is a bit dim, lit only by the camera crew’s solitary light on its boom. It adds a bit of drama.

“Let’s use our voices,” I say. “Everyone, everyone: together, let’s make the sound of the girl character in the play.”

For the past two weeks, we’ve been crafting a forum play about honor killings inspired by a true story from Motaz’s village. Today I’d like to get us through a full run of the play for the first time.

But first, some sound, to connect the wild energy of the game to the play.

Predictably, the first sound the guys make is very loud: some choking sobs, some high-pitched whinnying and keening. Hm. My mind whirs. They’re not really connecting to the heart of it.

We make the sound of two other characters in the play: the eldest brother (the primary antagonist) and the younger brother (an ally). Saber begins making fart noises with his mouth. It’s time to move on.

“Okay shabab, let’s do the whole play—the whole thing. I’ll play the girl.” Yesterday we had been experimenting with an aesthetic choice—excluding the woman from the action of the play entirely—but today, I liked the way we were gelling together. I wanted to stay in it with them.

Without leaving time for questions or hesitation, we begin.

~ ~ ~

It’s a wonderful run—everyone stays connected throughout. There are holes in the story, things that we’ll need to fill in later about character and motivation, but the heart of the play is thumping and there’s a solid collection of scenes ripe for intervention.

We finish the show on a haunting note: the brothers circle the girl in a wild tight dance as she sits, slowly, alone in the center. She begins to sing, and from outside of the circle, Motaz hums along with her. The play ends.

The guys immediately melt back to the edge of the room.

“Wow, great, nice work guys.” The cameramen begin packing up their equipment. The normal light is switched back on, and something shifts in the room.

“What did you guys notice about this run? What was there?”

“It was shit,” said Saber. “Boring.”

This is their language of the theatre, unfortunately. They repeat it to me in almost every single assessment of their own work.

I invite them to share what they did see, instead of what was missing. They don’t bite. I model.

“Okay, so for example, the way the taxi to the checkpoint became the people in line, the way that transition melted together—this was new. We should keep this.”

“Yeah but they was speaking Hebrew at the checkpoint, and it’s an Arabic checkpoint—to Jordan! ‘S fucking stupid.”

My heart breaks a little. These guys can’t see their own beauty.

“That’s okay, that’s a small thing. That’s the reason we did this run together—to figure out what we need to fix, to make sure we’re all on the same page about the story.”

“We can take a break now?” Anas asks.

I don’t want to take a break and kill the creativity we just drummed up. We should keep working.

But something tugs my chest. What would Hector do?

In a flash, I remember last night’s conversation with my colleague, Uri. “Sometimes after a really heavy or intense thing, it’s nice to process it, shake it off somehow. I’ve seen Hector do it with stories, or singing.”

I think of the boys’ startling inability to see their own gifts. Without thinking, I grab the drum from the corner of the room.

This should chill everyone out. I whip it into my lap and begin to tell a story about gifts.

But now, looking at Motaz, I feel uneasy. Who had I been chilling out? The boys, or myself?

~ ~ ~

After the story we take a break.

Do you want to be scared by us?

Their story scared me. When Aadel seared his eyes into mine onstage and told me, in a low voice, to go to my room and clean myself, that they would kill me to cleanse the family’s honor, my heart froze. I finished the play but something in me was disturbed. Despite all the beautiful work I had done to create heat in the room, I didn’t want to hold it. I let it cool. I “chilled everyone out” when I could have cooked with the embers.

The rest of the workshop is difficult. We return from the break, and I attempt to process the story with them.

“So, do you guys have gifts?” Rabea translates. The guys are lounging in languid poses in a messy circle around me. I hold the drum in my lap.

Rabea translates, and Aadel is the first to respond.

“Hreeay,” he says, gesturing to his chest. Freedom. “I have freedom.”

I think of the half-dozen times Aadel has stormed out of my classroom in a huff, or refused to participate in an activity. “The gift of freedom, the spirit of freedom, this is a wonderful gift. Do you guys see it in him?” No one responds. “I do. Aadel, he does what he wants—leaves, returns, doesn’t take shit. He is free. Wow. It’s nice. What else?”

We cycle through the guys and their gifts.

“My girlfriend, she is in Jordan, and I travel to see her,” says Ala’ of his gift. I clarify.

“So she is a gift, definitely, but what about your gifts, things you have inside?”

He repeats the story about his girlfriend, so I smile and accept it.

“So, Ala’—he is willing to travel a long way to get what he loves, to be patient. Do you guys see this?” They nod and Ala’ glows a little. “Absolutely. I see him at lunch, being very calm, always working and quiet. This is an amazing gift, to live patiently for something you love.”

We continue. Anas is forgiving. Motaz is spiritual. Saber finds joy in cruddy situations.

I slap the drum one last time, to close the story. Motaz is lying facedown on a mat, completely prone and disengaged. Ala’ almost sleeps. The enactment of the afternoon really sucked something out of them. How to re-engage?

And then Ala’ asks the question: do you believe in God?

I am happy to be speaking so candidly with them; I am happy we are connected, but I feel guilty for steering us out of the play. I don’t know how to get back in. I ask them which scene they’d like to work on.

“Every scene. Every scene is shit.”

Ala’ approaches me. “Maybe we can have homework, rehearse together for the play, and show it to you, and then you can adjust it however you want.”

I hesitate. I don’t want to waste the time that we have together; I want to give them rehearsal techniques.

But I’m exhausted. We attempt to work on a few scenes together, but they are flat as cardboard, stiff and bankrupt in aesthetics. I’m too tired to doctor them. We take another break, have a short meeting before we disperse, and the day is over.

Before they go, however, I give them a final gift.

~ ~ ~

“One last thing, shabab,” I say. “I want you to think of the perfect performance—imagine that you just gave a successful show.”

We are gathered in a loose clump on the stairs outside of the rehearsal space. Motaz is disconnected, clicking away on his computer, but I don’t push him. He’s participating in his own way, I think. The day was probably most hard on him—the story is from his life, he plays the protagonist. I am glad to see him taking care of himself.

“What do you feel?” I ask them. Rabea translates, and they roll their eyes.

“I feel,” says Ala’. “Like, okay, the work was good, and I have to do more soon.”

“Yes, but this is not specific. How do you feel? Happy? Excited? Tired? What?”

Yes, yes, we feel happy, yes.

“Anything else?”

“Like to fly,” says Aadel. He spreads his arms.

“Ah, you feel like you can fly,” I say. He nods. “Great. So, guys, find these feelings in your body. Where are they in your body?” I put my hand to my chest to demonstrate, and several of them copy me.

“No, well, it doesn’t have to be here—this is where mine is,” I clarify. Ah. A few of them move their hands.

“Great.” I say. “Now, really connect to this feeling, make a physical memory of it, how do you feel.” We breathe together.

“So shabab, this feeling is your secret weapon, this happiness, this feeling of flight. Keep it in your body. Maybe lock it up, if you want to, to keep it safe—but don’t forget where you put the key.”

Rabea translates and they understand.

“So when you need it, you can touch this feeling. Maybe you use it before going onstage, or maybe when something goes wrong—I don’t know. But use it wisely.”

They smile. Recognition. Appreciation.

“Shukran, shabab, for your work. Thank you.”

“Shukran Christine, thank you,” says Ala’.

“When I say ‘in boco lupo—‘ “

“Crepi lupo!” yells Aadel, enthusiastic for our goodbye ritual.

I smile. “All together!” All eyes on me. “In boco lupo.”

“Crepi lupo.” The sound echoes in the hall.

“Thanks guys.”

And they’re gone, wheeling their bikes into the street, packing their bags, changing from warm-ups back into jeans or trousers.

It’s twilight now, dimming. I grab Ala’ before he leaves by the sleeve.

“I know you were frustrated today,” I said. I remembered his face in his hands as the improvisations dragged on this afternoon. “But I want to thank you for staying with me—and for voicing it when you were frustrated and bored. Sometimes I don’t always know the right way to go, and when you voice your thoughts, it’s a gift to me, so I can move us in another way. Thank you for that.”

He beams but tucks it to the ground, modest, nodding, pulling his backpack straps close. “It’s no problem Christine. Thank you.”

And he’s gone, out into the tunnel of the gathering night, to catch the last transport service to his village before dark.

I thank Rabea for his work, and excuse myself for tea. It’s hot and red in my cup—hibiscus and rose. Steam curls up from it onto my face.

Do you want to be scared by us?

I take a sip. Maybe. Maybe next time I will wield the fear—reflect it, direct it—instead of letting it wield me.

...is you meet many heroes.

Mohammad outside the door of his home.

“Wn Mai? Wn Mai?” 

Arabic floats to my ears from the street. Where’s Mohammad?

Last night Mohammad Saadi was arrested in the camp at around 1 AM. Israeli soldiers broke into his home without warrant or warning, beat his legs and knees with the butt of their gun, and took him away from his wife and child into custody. He was released this morning, unlike many of the others arrested last night. There are red burns on his wrist from plastic zip-tie handcuffs.

The noise of it kept me awake. I was up later than usual, waiting for my nail polish to dry, when I heard gunshots from the nearby refugee camp. Maybe a wedding, I thought. I finished readying for bed, tucked myself in and turned out the light.

I lay there for a long time, unable to sleep. Small explosions issue from the camp. Some are very close. Volleys of gunfire crackle and pop. I roll onto my side.

This summer, the soldiers arrived in droves to throw rocks at the Freedom Theatre’s guesthouse (you can read about it here). There’s still a hole in my window screen, and a shard or two of glass on the sill. A bullet hole neatly perforates the molding in the kitchen.

Someone sprints down the alley just outside my window. Someone else is right behind. They bark to each other in terse, quick Arabic. More gunshots—this time close. I perk my ears and listen for stirring from Ben’s room behind me, but he seems to be sound asleep.

The footsteps recede, running back down the alley past me how they came, towards the camp.

It’s too hot in here. I switch my space heater off, pausing to peer out of my curtains on the way back to bed. I can’t see anything. I sleep.

Now Sarah's pouring herself tea. “It’s just crazy,” she says. We sit in my kitchen. I’m still in nightclothes.

“Mai was telling me about it.” She shakes her head to clear it. “He says it’s normal, it’s okay, but it’s not okay. Who gives them the right to just break into someone’s house?”

I think of Hector’s story—how authorities in Colombia descended on his home at night, pointing guns; how they searched his home; how they arrested him.

“It’s pretty common,” I say. “It happens all over the world.”

“Yeah, but.” She exhales and deflates, dissolving sugar in her cup. “I think about how I sleep at night, having these dreams, having good dreams and people are being arrested below me in the camp—“

“Sarah.” I stop her. “Shut the fuck up.” She laughs. “You’re living here, okay? Think of all the things you do—photos, artwork, organizing. That stuff is important.”

“But if you hear them, seriously Christine, you have to call me. I’ll come down.”

“And what? Walk through the camp? Take pictures?”

She bocks. “I don’t know, yeah. Take photos or something, and post them.”

“Don’t.” I say. “It’s too dangerous. Heroes do what you do, everyday stuff. Don't forget it! You deserve to be happy, stupid.” It’s nice to see her smile. “Don’t be guilty. You’re doing a lot.”

Her face flushes, freckled cheeks spreading into a grin. “Alright. Okay.”

We finish our tea and she goes downstairs. “I’ve got a photo shoot tomorrow, for the Freedom Bus project. I need to talk to Adnan. Maybe after lunch we can go into town?”

“Sure, sounds good.” We hug at the door and she leaves, laptop bag slung under her shoulder, just another hero off to organize.

Now the breeze is floating gently through my room, and I wonder if I’ll see Mai today. I wonder if he’ll have bruises on his face, scrapes or burns on his body. Mai always smiles at me; he's the light and sound technician here at the theatre. He’s about my age, thin and shy, always carrying a crescent wrench or a hand drill.

I hope that he’s okay.

He says it’s normal. The mosque sings, and I remember my fear from the night. Just normal, everyday raids into your home. Normal, everyday beatings. A normal arrest, an okay intrusion.

I close my laptop and open my eyes, keeping them wide to take in all the heroes around me today: heroes with hand drills, boom mics and Bolivian drums. We’ve never needed guns. We defend our identities with the everyday magic of art.

...is it feeds you well.

Ben and I enjoyed a fabulous dinner last weekend.

The waiter at our favorite restaurant in town invited us to his home for kabob; Ben snapped some photos. Enjoy!

The spread.

Playing :)

... is folks are talking about it.

Click on this:

WOW!

The Freedom Theatre wrote a blog about me and the work I'm doing! It got almost 50 views in the first two hours it was posted! I'm famous, y'all.

...is you get to know the goats next door.

Some photos I've taken in the refugee camp and the city of Jenin since I've been here:

The goats next door!

...is it teaches you.

“Christine.”

I turn on the spot and Ben is right behind me.

“Yeah?” We’re taking the last break of the day. It’s been about six hours of Playback so far, and most of the workshop participants are already lighting cigarettes in the courtyard.

“Is everything alright?”

Ben searches my face, his voice low and confidential. I’m caught off-guard.

“Yeah,” I answer, automatic. I scan the fruit trees overhanging the drive beyond Ben’s shoulders, and something inside me deflates. “I don’t know.”

“You’ve seemed so unhappy today, through the whole workshop.”

He’s right. Something about the day’s processes--the games, the forms, the enactments--had left me numb and miserable.

“Yeah, yeah.” Suddenly it’s the only word I know. I look at Ben and he’s waiting, open, for my thoughts.

“Something about the work today,” I run a hand through my hair. “I don’t know, something bothered me.” I wade through the noise in my mind and shovel out some answers.

“It’s just, there’s so many rules in Playback,” I say. “‘Stand in neutral,’ ‘physically connect.’ I feel like there’s a standard, some kind of standard we’re going for, for ‘good’ Playback--”

“Well that’s true, we are,” says Ben.

“Sure, but...” More noise. I purse my lips and search for the words. “Maybe it’s just the form, Playback Theatre, maybe I just don’t enjoy Playback, and I know you’re a great facilitator, I don’t want to be...” Reaching, reaching, reaching. “...impertinent.”

Ben looks puzzled. “Impertinent how?”

Why am I feeling so emotional? “Like, I don’t know what I’d do differently in your situation, as a facilitator, but...” I trail off.

“Would you do something more playful, or energetic?”

“Maybe.” But that’s not it. “Maybe it’s because it’s like school, and I have all these mechanisms built in, to hold me back.” Ben’s nodding. “Maybe those are being triggered.”

“That would make sense,” he says. “This is a training, so it does have a school kind of flavor to it.”

“Yeah.” The iceberg begins to melt inside my chest. “I think I learned, in school, to shut up and suppress, even when I’m seeing things I disagree with. It’s like--something happens, and instead of saying anything about it I hold it in and paralyze.”

I’m remembering Hector’s words from five weeks ago. We were seated around the table and I was similarly stuck.

“Wow.” He looked at me over blue framed glasses. “School really fucked you up.”

My eyes water.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Ben asks. “If I notice you’re stuck?”

I take a deep breath to calm the squirrel in my throat. “Yeah.”

In Belfast, whenever I’d begin slouching in my seat or staring off at the floor in a workshop, Hector drew my attention to it.

“Hey,” he’d call from across the circle, and I’d snap up. “What happened?”

Later we decided on a signal. Whenever I seemed disconnected, Hector would signal me with his eyes and I would leave the workshop, as unobtrusively as possible, for a walk around the block or some fresh air.

I share this strategy with Ben. “It might be disruptive,” says Ben. “To leave that way, and it might model the behavior for the other students. Could you stretch, maybe? Or move your body some other way?”

I decide, yes, to stretch; that this would probably help.

“I get so far away from my body,” I say. “It’s like...”

You abandon yourself. Hector’s voice, again, is in my mind. I see you leave your body, and that’s an amazing skill, but it’s not serving you.

“What I always ask myself,” Ben says. “Is, ‘by sharing this experience or feeling I’m having, am I serving the group?’ Because if you’re feeling something and you think other’s might be feeling it too, it could be really beneficial to share it.”

I remember my boredom from today, and the languid, inattentive bodies of the students draped around me.

“Okay.” I understand.

“And, if it makes you feel too vulnerable, then we can always discuss it later, one-on-one.”

I look at Ben and he’s smiling. There’s a thin layer of stubble above his kuffia .

“Thanks for talking with me.” The squirrel has become a dragon, piping fire through my nose. I blink and sniff.

“Thanks for sharing.” He puts a hand on my shoulder and squeezes a little.

Some of the guys from the workshop have finished their cigarettes, and peer at us through the grating around the courtyard. I feel vulnerable.

We complete the workshop in stride, and I walk away from the theatre, up the steps to my room, still thinking of our conversation.

At night, I dream that I’m enrolled in an Acting for Film class, with Ben as my teacher. I wake in the night, roll over to my side, and scribble the dream (still half-conscious) into my journal. Upon waking, I read:

Dreamed Ben teach an acting for Film class. I think I don’t want to be in it. He gives me the instruction: “Perform it with the objective that you want to ‘know’ the other. You want to ‘know.’” And we’re rushing, rushing, ... in a small room, moving, running out of time

For the past three weeks, my dreams have been absolutely full of teachers--from university and abroad. They tell me different things: to know, to choose the small sword, to work on my Arabic. My sleep is dizzy with them.

In a few minutes, I’ll close my laptop and climb into the disheveled bed waiting for me--under the blankets and into a gaping maw of Educators Past, scribbling their whispers in the dark between sleep.