The Sunday Post (Inverness)

ALAA’S STORY

Refugees tell story of Greek tragedy that reflects their shattered lives

- By Paul English MAIL@SUNDAYPOST.COM

They have fled war, persecutio­n and murder, seeking refuge in strange lands far away from their homes and loved ones.

Yet this week, women and men from Syria will reveal how a play written 2,500 years ago has given them hope of a better life in Scotland.

A new production of Greek tragedy The Trojan Women, by Euripides, is being staged by an Edinburgh-based theatre company, with cast comprising amateur actors and a story adapted to incorporat­e their experience­s of fleeing lengthy civil war in Syria with millions of others.

The play, written in 415BC, tells of the women of Troy after their city has fallen to Greece, their husbands have been killed, and a life of slavery beckons.

More than two millennia later, it is being staged at an arts venue next to a fast-food drive-through and a bookies in Easterhous­e, Glasgow. For producer William Stirling, who with his wife Charlotte Eagar has mounted several previous production­s of the play around the world, the process is about much more than storytelli­ng. He said: “A lot of women we have worked with in the past say they have lost their identities, crossing borders, losing their homes.

“If you are from Syria or the Middle Eastern countries, you typically live as part of an extended family of 30 or 40 aunts, uncles, cousins, like a big support group.

“You have to have a big family in order to survive. “That’s something they lose.

“What we hope we have created is a bigger support group, a wider family for the people who have taken part. “When we first did it in Jordan, we were told that theatre wasn’t big in the Arab world, that wives, daughters and mothers would not be allowed to go on stage. “The opposite true. We’ve found helps give them back some of their identity.” was this Alaa, 27, works as a translator and interprete­r and lives in Glasgow. She secured a scholarshi­p to study literature in Edinburgh and left her home in the suburbs of Damascus in 2016. She doesn’t know when she will ever see her parents again.

“My village was under siege when I left. We had to pay a large amount of money at the checkpoint to get to Lebanon.

“My parents are still there. I feel sadness, anger but worst of all hopeless, because it feels like things are getting worse since the revolution, and now the regime is gaining control again. All the people who died, everything that has been done, nothing.

“I can’t go back to Syria, and I have not seen my parents since I left. It is very hard, especially when you know they are suffering, and they have no hope of seeing their children again.

“Taking part in the play has meant a lot to me, to see people from your country every week. Many had no purpose when we first started and this has given them something.

“Life here is different in ways I couldn’t imagine. Syria has technology, but it doesn’t have humanity. The main difference­s I see are happiness on the faces of children, how humans treat each other. People are downtrodde­n in Syria, trying just to get gas, electricit­y, money to feed their children. If you’d lived in another country which has no considerat­ion for humanity, you’d see it every day.”

is for

 ??  ?? Syrian refugees Heba, left, and Sanna during rehearsals in Glasgow, and the aftermath of a chemical attack in Douma last year, below
Syrian refugees Heba, left, and Sanna during rehearsals in Glasgow, and the aftermath of a chemical attack in Douma last year, below
 ??  ?? Translator Alaa, 27
Translator Alaa, 27

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United Kingdom