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PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 28.2 (2006) 36-38



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Layla

The Palestinian theatre director and playwright, Riad Masarwi resides in Nazareth, Israel, where he is the director of the City Galley of Nazareth. He has directed the Ninth Wave (1990), a textless production on the intifada, and has participated in writing the collaborative play Imagining the Other, directed by Joseph Chaikin (1982).

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When we think about how Lysistrata can be relevant to the Arab reality today, we have to take into account the situation of the Arab people, and especially of the Arab women, who for centuries have been under a double persecution by the authorities and by men.

Women's freedom threatens state authority in the Arabic world. No wonder that the illiteracy of the women in Saudi Arabia is 80 percent and women are forbidden to drive a car. The Arabic world is full of paradoxes: the oppression of women and illiteracy in daily life co-exists with globalization, technology, and the postmodern, leading to an impasse. Clearly the West benefits from this situation and so does fundamentalism.

Could the Arabic reality create a modern Lysistrata? Could this heroine mobilize the women of the world, including the Jewish women? Would it be essential that she leads the struggle as a woman or as an Arab? In an attempt to answer these questions, we have created a story of the Arab Lysistrata, Layla.

Layla is an Iraqi anthropology student who researches the life of the tribes in the Iraqi desert. There she falls in love with a storyteller who recounts tales of heroism from Arabic history, such as the story of Saladin, who liberated Jerusalem from the Christian occupation. Layla convinces the storyteller to go back to Baghdad with [End Page 36] her, arguing that city dwellers are in greater need of hearing his stories than the people of the tribes. In Baghdad the storyteller ends his tale about Saladin every time with the question, "where is the modern Arabic Saladin?" and Layla answers, "there is no Saladin in this bad Arabic world."

One day, in a city square in Baghdad, the security men for Saddam Hussein hear the story and are displeased with Layla's answer. They arrested her and put her in the Abu Ghraib prison. The storyteller proved a coward: he runs away to hide.

At the prison the men of Saddam rape Layla many times, but she is not broken. When the Iraqi war breaks out, Layla is released from prison and decides to lead a struggle against the U.S. assault of her homeland. When the Americans occupy the entire country they arrest Layla and put her in Abu Ghraib again, where the U.S. soldiers rape her many times. (Layla only knows sex through rape—she hadn't had sex with the storyteller.)

Later, Americans let Layla go free. While walking through a square one day she runs into the storyteller and shouts out loud that he is a coward. The storyteller is about to begin a story but loses his memory. Layla laughs and says: "Hey you coward, can you tell me something about love or sex that I only knew through rape? All Arabic men achieve sex with their women only by rape. Where is love, people? Americans here in Iraq have the opportunity to practice all kinds of sex from raping to homosexuality while we Arab women can't even express our needs. We women have to act, to liberate ourselves from this slavery." Turning toward the storyteller Layla says: "Nobody needs tales of old heroism anymore. I will create a new heroism unknown to Arabic men. I am the Lysistrata of postmodern times and I will show you, coward storyteller, how we women can tell a modern story of the life that we want."

Thus Layla mobilizes the Iraqi women and later sought the support of women worldwide. Her voice is heard globally through the international media, and she becomes dangerous to Americans. In an attempt to destroy the protest of Layla, the Americans bring...

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