A recent performance below the streets of Damascus seemed to tease the boundaries of acceptable art in Syria. But was it really the audience that was being teased? Meris Lutz descends into the darkness.
When a large crowd pressed toward the entrance of a public bomb shelter in downtown Damascus one recent evening, the palpable urgency of the scene did not bring to mind an impending air attack but rather, as one giddy member of the scrum joked, a popular New York nightclub. Desperate would-be patrons elbowed, wheedled and pleaded with the usher to make room for "just two more."
They had come in hopes of seeing Al Muhajiran, Samer Omran's adaptation of Slawomir Mrozek's Polish play, The Emigrants. A drama about the dark intimacy of two exiled compatriots, the play debuted at the Al Qazzazine air-raid shelter in the early autumn to an overwhelming response. Even with the run extended into winter - the production makes a brief travelling appearance in Cairo this month - the crowds in Damascus showed little sign of abating well into December.
As curtain time drew near, the sense of camaraderie and competition intensified among those assembled outside. A famous actress talked politics with a bespectacled, well-dressed older gentleman as the throng pushed forward, everyone clutching tickets close to their chests. "This is the fifth night in a row I've come," said one young woman who had failed to secure a seat on each of those nights. "I'm even on the facebook group."
Facebook is ostensibly banned in Syria. And in fact, the entire evening seemed designed to create the illusion of rule-breaking, a fantasy the crowd happily indulged knowing full well that the officially sanctioned production was itself evidence that no lines had truly been crossed. The game began with the tickets, which could only be obtained from an obscure location in the steep hillside neighborhood of Muhajireen that no one seemed to have heard of, and led to a bomb shelter off a dark side street next to the Dah-Dah cemetery. Even then, the possession of a ticket did not seem to have any direct bearing on one's chances of gaining entrance, and it was only by luck and/or pushing that one found oneself practically sitting on the lap of a stranger in the concrete bowels of a Soviet-era bunker.
The mystery, the exotic location, the buildup - what would have been called "hype" in Beirut was far too earnest in Damascus, where the creative sphere is tightly controlled and the very act of staging a performance outside one of several approved theaters is not ironic, but genuinely remarkable. Once inside, members of the crowd lucky enough to gain entry picked their way past a few old metal drums that had been carefully arranged to look carelessly discarded. Then they made their way down a set of peeling, whitewashed stairs as the mournful strains of a violin swelled and echoed through the bunker. The landing opened onto a rectangular chamber where a shabbily-dressed actor with a salt and pepper beard reclined on one of two cots separated by a round table and illuminated by a single bare bulb. Exposed pipes clung to the reinforced concrete ceiling. The audience squeezed onto benches against the walls or else found places on the floor around the barely implied stage.
The production was, both literally and figuratively, a descent into darkness. The intimate (one might say cramped) seating of the shelter was an obvious but effective metaphor for the urban immigrant experience, one of impossibly packed spaces - crowded housing, factories and mass transportation - and the loneliness of being absorbed into the anonymous masses. Originally written in the late 1970's as a critique of Soviet totalitarianism, The Emigrants was translated into Syrian dialect by the director, Samer Omran, who also stars alongside Muhammad al Rashee. Both give seamless performances as two emigrants, the Intellectual (Omran) and the Buffoon (al Rashee), who share the basement of an apartment building "here," in the country of exile. Bound together by isolation and, sometimes, nostalgia, they grapple with their need for companionship and their hatred for their own humiliation as reflected in the other.
In their class origins and their motives for living abroad, the two emigrants represent opposite ends of the diaspora spectrum: the uneducated worker dreams of returning to his village and building a mansion to tower over his neighbours, while the academic strives to reclaim his independence as a writer and thinker. What they share, besides a common language, is the personal shame brought on by desperation. Their dialogue throughout the play is occasionally interrupted by the sounds of New Year's celebrations upstairs, a reminder of their mutual exclusion from the world of "here". One hilariously tragic scene has our protagonists fighting over whether a can of dog food can, in fact, be eaten by people.
"We eat cheese with a laughing cow on the package, does this mean it's meant for cows?!" the fool asks, poised with a hammer ready to smash open the can. After that, a pipe bursts and the lights go out. There is a certain comedy of dilapidation that plays well in Syria, where days are divided by power cuts and cups of tea. With Al Muhajiran, it helped that the venue itself was probably built with Russian aid around the same time the play was written. But the audience and the characters onstage had more in common than failing infrastructure. There were also the familiar vocabularies of state, class and implied coercion that resonate deeply with anyone living in the lingering shadow of the Soviet Union and its patronage. (Schoolbooks for children in Syria still include chapters such as The Syrian Peasant and The Importance of Industry and Manufacturing.)
"I didn't know the words to songs everyone else was singing," says the disaffected intellectual, alluding to the brassy nationalist anthems of his homeland, probably similar to the ones heard in Syria around the time of the 2007 presidential referendum. The reference was not lost on the audience, which shared a conspiratorial snicker and a knowing "hmmm." That Syrians at home can identify so strongly with emigrants abroad also speaks to one of Mrozek's more devastating themes. In his world, exile has little to do with location: "There, you are a slave to the state, and here, you are a slave to money," says the Intellectual, his face hauntingly illuminated by a single candle.
"In the eyes of the state, you and I are the same," the Buffoon fires back. When the lights suddenly snapped back on, the audience appeared to share a fleeting moment of embarrassment that they had been sitting on top of each other in a dark basement for three hours. But as they began re-emerging together onto the street, that awkwardness gave way to what seemed like a collective air of exhilaration.
When Tunisian playwrights and actors Jalila Baccar and Fadhel Jaaibi brought their controversial play Khamsoun (known in English as Captive Bodies) to Damascus in April, a similar phenomenon occurred: a communal catching of breath, a realisation that one was hearing state fears not only uttered aloud, but dramatised and followed to their horrifying conclusion. Khamsoun tells the story of the young daughter of Tunisian leftists who becomes an Islamic radical in France, then returns home, where she is arrested and brutally tortured after her friend blows herself up in an al Qa' eda-inspired act of martyrdom. (Both plays were produced as part of the Damascus Arab Capital of Culture initiative, a year-long festival of art, theatre and literature.)
Such translated or foreign works often allow Syrian directors the liberties of criticism by proxy. Al Muhajiran raised the issues of emigration and the citizen's relationship to the state, while Khamsoun tackled those same issues plus the even more sensitive matter of Islamic radicalisation. The popular explanation at the time was that any imported subject matter was fine, "as long as it's not Syria."
This is not to suggest that a new spirit of glasnost is sweeping the Syrian Ministry of Culture. For all the suggestive gimmickry of Al Muhajiran, the fantasy of a burgeoning underground theatre scene in Damascus is just that. After all, the play was not only approved but advertised by the state authorities. Still, for a few hours, the audience was allowed to imagine their city as one with a vibrant and challenging art scene, while the play itself indulged their dreams of escape - of longing for the homeland they never had a chance to leave.
Meris Lutz is a translator and freelance journalist based in Beirut.