It starts with a request to take off your shoes, a custom that is common in many cultures in the Asian subcontinent, especially before entering someone’s home. The Lennox Studio at Parramatta’s Riverside Theatres has been transformed into Melbourne-based Palestinian artist Aseel Tayah’s home – two elongated digital screens frame a kitchen benchtop, on which sits the ingredients to make the aromatic dish known as Maqluba (in Arabic it translates to “upside-down”).
In front of the bench are four rows of long, set tables with cushioned floor seating. As we enter, the smells from the olives, zaatar, Jerusalem bread and rummaniyeh (a brown lentil stew) are overwhelming our senses. It is from this place of home, accompanied by two talented friends – Meena Shamaly on the guitar and Camille El Feghali on the Qanun (an Arabic string instrument) and the Arabian flute – that Tayah begins her story.
She sings of the olive trees that used to flank her home in Gaza, her mum’s bread, the zaatar and soft cheese that kept them warm in the winter. She tells stories of the friendships formed over bread and salt. There is a trepidation in her storytelling, a quivering lip that enters every planned story, a consequence of the news she must reckon with daily. She doesn’t ignore it, she says her inner thoughts out loud: “Do I tell you of the beauty of my culture like I planned? How can I do that when every day it is being destroyed?”
There is no preaching here, no sides, just the reality and the truth of the grief that none of us know how this will end.
A’amar is the word they say after they share a meal, it means “may it keep growing” or “may it get stronger”. After the cooks at Sunday Kitchen fill us to the brim with delicious vegan Palestinian fare, we say it together: "A’amar." This is one of those Sydney Festival shows that simply must be experienced.
A’amar performed a sold-out run from Jan 25-28 at Sydney Festival 2024. Find out more here.
