The Corner Report

The Al Rowwad Children's Theater troup performed in Connecticut in 2005. This is a scene from their play "We Are The Children of the Camp."

By AbdelFattah Abusrour

WHEN I WAS YOUNG, 19 or 20 years old, a friend gave me a music cassette. There was a song where the singer sang:

"Something is going wrong
With the singer and the song
And the music isn't gentle anymore"

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After I returned from France, where I finished my studies, I found out that most of my cassettes were lost or thrown away. My parents were afraid that there were some patriotic songs, because of the frequent Israeli incursions and search in the houses during the first Intifada, my father still living the Nakba and deportation from his village in October 1948, and then the exile of my brother to Jordan in 1972, they were afraid… so they got rid of all my cassettes and most of my books. I don't recall the name of the singer, and I wish I find that cassette or CD.

Anyway, it is this song that comes to my mind often, with everything that is going wrong around us. All of us who are struggling hard to remain human beings, and to still have hope that the future will be better than the present we live in, that our small actions would build up together to make such dreams accumulate into a clear reality: there is still a future for human beings.

I was fortunate in having friends who are committed to my fight in the beautiful non-violent resistance against the ugliness of the Israeli occupation and its violence.

But in the same time, what is going on in Palestine, and all this pressure exercised to make an internal fight in the Palestinian community between the Hamas and Fatah mainly, and this fight on power, and the announcement of the president for an anticipated elections will not arrange anything. It will only humiliate Palestinians and force them to bend more to any future dictations from US and Israeli governments. In the same time Israel continues to take land, build walls, killing people, putting new Palestinians in jails. Our priorities are minor issues while the main problems are ignored. We are in a situation like dogs fighting for a plastic bone, it will not feed a hungry dog, but gives him the impression that he is having something.

What message could I send you, my friends, in such circumstances? What light can I offer you in the midst of this darkness forced on us, and on the future of the humans, who find hard time to find there humanity… and what hope can I propose to those who try to keep their humanity alive.

I can wish you the best of the best of everything, though I don't have a magical wand. I wish that happiness be your companion, that justice is your path, that love is the backbone of your life and peace is all what fills your hearts, and humanity is the flesh that covers your bones, and all the principles that make of the humanity what it is: equality, fraternity, liberty, respect and acceptance of the other are the members of your body that make of everyone of you a unique but still a similar human beings, builder of a better future for all of us.

I wish that my people find life as free people, that refugees find their way of return to their villages , that Palestinian political prisoners find the way to freedom, that all those families who lost members of their families find the hope that those lost beings were not lost for nothing, but their death paved the way for the better future that we all hope to come.

My you find the peace within, and may you not lose a chance to make a positive change in the life of those who need that change in this world.

Merry Christmas, Happy Eid Al-Adha and marvellous new year

Love you all

Abed and the team of Alrowwad

AbdelFattah Abu-Srour, PhD
Director of Al-Rowwad Cultural and Theatre Training Center

Al-Rowwad is an Independent Center for artistic, cultural, and theatre training for children in Aida Camp trying to provide a "safe" and healthy environment to help children creativity and discharge of stress in the war conditions they are forced to live in.

Mobile: (972) 522 401 325- Telefax: +970 2 275 0030

email: alrowwadtheatre@yahoo.com web site: http://alrowwad.virtualactivism.net