Talking about how the theatrical piece, And Here I Am, came about, Ahmed Tobasi said, “The idea started as a joke. We had the production, and we had seven actors. I was always joking – ‘guys, why do we need seven actors? I’m enough!’ I repeated the joke all the time until Zoe said we can think about it. Then, we started looking for a story. And Zoe pointed out, ‘Ahmed, why are we looking? You have the story. You have all the elements we need to talk about Palestine – cultural resistance, refugees, and immigrants.’ So, I agreed.”

He added, “Theatre is much more than therapy. It is life. I am lucky to tell my story. This is not just my story but the story of the children in Palestine, and the young people in India, too. It’s not about politics, religion, or where you come from. It’s about classism and economic power. It’s a message to unite and fight for the Earth and humanity.”

Summary

The third day of Literature Live! The Mumbai LitFest began with And Here I Am – a bittersweet, dark political comedy about struggle, survival, and self-discovery. The performance was a powerful and poignant Palestinian coming-of-age story based on the life of Ahmed Tobasi, written by award-winning playwright Hassan Abdulrazzak and performed by Tobasi himself.

The play was a universal story of lived realities of millions finding themselves amidst a conflict. It took the attendees on a journey through the bustling Jenin Refugee Camp to Israeli prison. A transformational, cathartic narration, converting pain into poetry; from life as a refugee in Palestine to Norway and back again, providing a deeply personal perspective on the impact of war, displacement, and the search for identity.

Spanning the first and second Intifada, Tobasi’s story also revealed that somehow amidst political tensions and raging war, the daily mundanity of playing football with your friends, the thrill of riding the motorbike for the very first time, first crushes and first love, and big dreams continue to bloom.

However, seeing loved ones die, normalcy becomes a distant dream. Tobasi realised at a young age that personal not just clashes with the political but is, in fact, political. Him becoming a part of the resistance movement was his response to this reality. It was, however, his time in prison and a friend at the Jenin Refugee Camp who changed the idea of what resistance really means: “You cannot free Palestine with a gun because Israelis have better guns. Theatre can be as effective as the gun.”

The performance was followed by a discussion chaired by Arts Administrator & Cultural Strategist, Ketaki Varma, along with a Q&A session with the attendees, where themes of resilience, storytelling, and political truth were explored in greater depth.

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