Geography: Africa > Northern Africa > Egypt
Year: 2026
Produced by: Orient Productions through Premières II x 2B Continued, with the French Embassy and FEF-Création
Creative Team: Written, directed and performed by Nanda Mohammad; performed with Mohammad’s mother
Synopsis: Gathering Memories With My Eyelashes places Syrian performer Nanda Mohammad in dialogue with her mother as they reconstruct a family history dispersed by exile. Through the use of official documents and photos, recollections span details that do not always align. The production begins with the Kurdish history of Mohammad’s grandparents before tracing the bureaucratic uncertainty created by her Iraqi father and Syrian mother. Nationality is therefore experienced through family law as much as through national territory. The mother and daughter remember departure differently. This exposes how exile can divide people who have lived through the same events. Mohammad’s attempt to recover Syria eventually confronts the impossibility of restoring the place preserved in memory. The performance presents diasporic identity as an ongoing act of interpretation.
Source: Ahram Online, performance and production information: https://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/5/35/565674/Arts–Culture/Stage–Street/Syrian-playwright-Na nda-Mohammad-confronts-exile-a.aspx Algeria: