Puppet theater helps young Iraqis regain lost childhood

The center’s electricity is out, which makes it difficult to set up the stage and the props, but there are several young hands eager to help.

As Iraqi refugees, these children’s lives are not much fun, but Arab Puppet Theater is trying to help change that.

The group, set up by theater producer Mahmoud al-Hourani in 1992, hosts workshops teaching shadow puppetry to refugees all around Lebanon.

The workshops are for children, who, Hourani says, have been made to grow up too quickly because of their difficult situations.

“We help by being there for them while they are living away from home and from everything they know, while they are waiting for their parents to decide their future,” Arab Puppet Theater’s founder Hourani says. “We remind the children that it not their job to worry, that this burden is for someone else.”

Hourani says his puppetry has proven to have a kind of cathartic quality; a form of self-expression for children who may be unable to find an outlet. “I have learned some interesting things from watching the children acting out their life stories behind that thin sheet,” he says.

As a Palestinian refugee himself, Hourani knows a little about what it’s like to feel displaced and dispossessed. “That’s why I feel qualified to help,” he offers.

The children come to Amel Association, a day center that offers Iraqi refugees advice and support, to be children and to play with others their age. The organization receives funding from partner UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), and has another center in the capital. But they also rely on the kindness of people like Hourani.

“I love doing it,” he says, “but it can sometimes be very difficult. For instance getting through a whole show can be hard because they don’t turn off their phones. The constant disruption makes it feel like I am making theater with people in a train station. But how can you tell them to switch them off?”

Hourani knows they are waiting for calls from the Iraqi Embassy for news on their immigration status. At any moment they could either be told they must leave the country and return to the place they fled or that they have been granted official refugee status. We are lucky, or perhaps unlucky as it goes, that we are only interrupted by one phone call.

There are an estimated 50,000 Iraqi refugees in Lebanon, of which only 8,476 are registered with UNHCR, according to the latest Arab Human Development Report. Lebanon has not signed the 1951 UN convention relating to the status of refugees, which means the country does not grant asylum. Nearly 1,800 of these refugees are Iraqi children, most of whom are unlikely to attend school, forced to work by their parents.

The children watching the puppet show have some sanctuary at least. Aged between 7 and 14, the young audience sit in enraptured silence as Hourani asks if they have ever seen a live performance. One boy puts his hand up, hazily remembering a time he had seen a production at his school back in northern Iraq.

“Shadow theater is actually an art that has been practiced in Iraq for hundreds of years,” Hourani tells those assembled, “and it was first performed

by candlelight.

“In fact, one of the most famous shadow puppeteers of all time, Ibindaniel al-Musleh, was Iraqi.”

The children are then told the three secrets to shadow puppetry: the first – to move slowly so as to make everything appear sharper for the audience, the second – that everything must be done in profile so as to see the contours of one’s face, and the third, he says, would be giving too much away on their first session.

The group is then divided into two so the children can act out their own stories. The girls perform a sort of Middle Eastern take on the Cinderella tale, drawing heavily from their understanding of the hierarchy of their own society.

Bushra, 11, who plays the part of evil step-mother, enjoys writing herself into the role of power rather than the oppressed Cinderella: “It feels good to be the boss,” she laughs. It seems an Iraqi refugee’s situation of helplessness can be felt even by a child as young as Bushra.

She has been coming to the center for several months; with her family living near the beleaguered Sabra Palestinian refugee camp five minutes away she enjoys escaping the chaos for an hour or two.