Cultural Briefings

Despite being so far from their homes, a group of actors and actresses come together at Germany’s Maxim Gorki Theater to present a story near and dear to their hearts. “Winterreise” (or, “Winter Journey”), performed by the “Exil Ensemble,” tells of 24-year-old Syrian actress Kenda Hmeidan’s journey with her fellow six performers as they take a bus tour through Germany during the brittle cold weeks of January. Each an exile from Syria, Palestine, or Afghanistan, these actors have left their home countries in pursuit of their art, all while struggling with the transition from departure to settlement.

I rarely passed on an Al Nakba remembrance, an event which was pivotal in forming my political and moral consciousness during my early days in Beirut and in my academic diaspora. Nowadays, I reserve my aggravation for those intellectual cowards who saw nothing in Al Nakba except a shelter to hide from their shameful silence on one of the most horrific “Nakbas” in modern Arab history.