KARACHI: The notion that art reflects life has lost its meaning, if it had any. Today, the line between art and life has diminished. Both cross each other’s path frequently and with noteworthy poignancy.

It would be an understatement to say that the one-person show of Palestinian artist Ahmed Tobasi titled AndHere I Am performed at the World Culture Festival on Friday evening moved the audience. It did more than that. It made them think. It made them mull over suffering. It made them contemplate how sometimes tragedy swaps places with dark comedy.

The Freedom Theatre presentation was not just a profound piece of theatre; it was storytelling at its most effective.

The stage has a mic in front and a black screen at the back on which English translation of what Tobasi is saying in Arabic runs. The interesting thing is that despite trying to understand what he means, there’s no gap between the visual and the verbal for the audience. There is other regular stuff on the ground, like boxes and sand, which Tobasi uses as his own story — a combination of fact and fantasy — unfolds.

He begins by telling the audience that he’s from Jenin Camp in Palestine. (The fact that someone is from a camp is serious enough to demand attention.) He is a minor when the first intifada happened. The relentless aggression around him caused by Israeli forces makes him grow up quicker than expected. At the same time, there’s resistance against the occupation going on.

As a teenager, he has three friends — Munir, Sami and Ashraf, all having a different disposition. He also falls in love with a girl named Sanaa and discovers Freedom Theatre run by a half-Jewish man called Juliano. While all of this is taking place with simultaneity, he gets caught between the Israeli army and the resistance. He is arrested. At 17 years of age, he goes behind bars and is 21-years-old when he is freed from prison. In jail, too, he comes across all sorts of characters, bad and not-so-bad.

There comes a time when Tobasi becomes despondent but then theatre keeps him busy. The tough-as-nails Juliano teaches him a great deal: ‘theatre can be violent than a gun… stage can be your AK-47’. That said, the violence and deaths outside of the realm of theatre, as told by the narrator, are impossible to overlook.

And Here I Am written by Hassan Abdulrazzak, directed by Zoe Lafferty and brilliantly performed by Tobasi is a well thought-out, sensitive and incisive take on the unnerving political situation in the Middle East with strong socio-racial connotations. It makes one realise, over and over again, that art can do so much to a put an important message across than politics or any other discipline.

Published in Dawn, October 27th, 2024