From Greek tragedy to modern war ... the Syrian women recreating the Fall of Troy

SPECIAL REPORT

BY KARIN GOODWIN

THE BRUTAL civil war had been raging in Syria for almost two years when Rasha finally fled Damascus. As she looked out the window of the car that would carry her and her family across the border to safety in Jordan she saw smoke rising from the burning city as the shells reigned down.

“I just held my hand to my heart,” she said. “It was so painful to see.”

The image of a woman looking back as she flees a ruined city is an ancient one – and it is the image which opens the Queens of Syria, an adaptation of Euripides’ Greek tragedy The Trojan Women, which comes to Edinburgh next week. It tells the harrowing real-life stories of Rasha and 12 other Syrian refugee women – most of whom are identified by their first names only due to continuing fears of persecution of loved ones remaining behind amid the horror of the Assad regime and Islamic State, and their fight to overcome the horrors of war.

The torment of the women of Troy, who saw their city destroyed and grieved in exile for their murdered loved ones, dates back to the period around 400BC. But for these Syrian women, heartsick for home and devastated by loss, these stories are no myth.

The play was first conceived in Jordan in 2013 by British and Syrian theatre producers, and involved six weeks of drama therapy workshops leading to a performance that incorporated the women’s own stories into Euripides’ tragic drama.

Charlotte Eagar, founding director and producer, was inspired after hearing Trojan Woman on the radio – a play she has studied at university – after returning from a summer in Bosnia interviewing refugees for a journalism project. “I was listening again to stories of exile, loss and murder,” she said. “That is what the play is about.”

Part of the project was therapeutic, she acknowledges. But she didn’t anticipate the strength of the performances which have emerged. A documentary was made, and a UK tour organised this summer.

The project also created a community of women. “They call themselves the Queens,” said Eagar.

Wa’ed Alsayaah, one of the actors, explained: “Trojan women is our story because it is about a war imposed on women, outwith their control. But in the end they overcame. They stayed strong and they fought back. That’s what we are doing with this play – fighting back.”

Here are the stories of three of the women reprising one of the classics of world drama in the shadow of the Syrian civil war. All the woman still live as refugees in Jordan, but are now in the UK to tour the play.

WA’ED ALSAYAAH

IN the Damascus suburb in which Wa’ed, 28, and her family lived the shelling started during the crowded funeral procession of a man who had been shot. “A shell fell right in the middle of the crowd, where the people carrying the coffin were walking,” she remembered. “Over 300 people died. There was a power cut across the whole of A scene from Queens of Syria, which will be performed at the Assembly Roxy in Edinburgh on Tuesday and Wednesday the neighbourhood and we took the injured to the mosque – we couldn’t go to hospital because the regime would kill anyone who takes them there in this situation.

“When we returned home we couldn’t even turn the lights on because there were helicopters overhead which were shooting anyone who moved.”

The family stayed in the city for four more months but finally the shelling – and the terror – became too much to take. “I wanted to bottle the air of Damascus so I could take that smell with me,” she said.

“There was in front of a the tree that grew house with a branch trailing along the ground. When we tried to close the door of the house the branch got caught in it. It felt like even the tree was telling us ‘don’t leave’. But we had had to go.”

DAYANA

WHAT Dayana, a mother of three, remembers most was not the fear of the bombs falling around them in Homs. “What forced us to leave was the fear of regime forces coming to the house, or any of the gangs that emerged at that time,” she said. “There was always the fear that my husband would be arrested or that my children would be kidnapped – a fear of rape.”

In April 2013, they paid smugglers to take them across the border and stayed in Zaatari, an overcrowded refugee camp in Jordan before finding their way to the capital of Amman.

Life in Jordan has been hard. She and her husband are not allowed to work legally, they miss their families desperately and Dayana only recently managed to get a passport so she could take part in the UK tour.

“We hate being refugees,” she said. “We didn’t create this war. We were happy with our lives. Women are caring and sensitive but they are also very strong. They will defend their children, their families, fiercely. But we need people around the world to help bring Syria back to us.”

FATEN

“THE day I left Syria was the most terrible day of my life,” said Faten, who has two children and is six months pregnant. “A shell fell from the sky and hit the house. It was only once we got out and we were safe that I looked around and saw the bodies of all my neighbours lying in the street, dead.”

Although she, her children and husband managed to flee to Jordan she later discovered that militia had come to her family home where they killed her father and younger brothers. Grieving in Jordan, she fell into extreme depression.

“The play means so much to me,” she explained, adding that taking part in the play was like having “the best listener” around when she “needed someone to hear my suffering”.

Faten went on: “I think most of the people know about the suffering of Syrian people but they don’t want to think about it or talk about. Maybe the play will prick people’s consciences - make them have empathy for what is happening to us.

“All our stories have a different impact but altogether the common message is that this country really needs help.”