A Knock on the Roof

Khawla Ibraheem
piece by piece productions
Traverse Theatre

A Knock on the Roof

Imagine somebody was killing your neighbours, threatening to bomb your home and imposing all manner of restrictions on your life. You would understandably feel traumatised and have your mind on trying to avoid injury and death. But twenty-five days into what the character Mariam describes as a war, we get no judgements from her on those who are killing people or the causes of the war or the way it’s being waged.

Instead, we have Mariam, a university graduate, living on the seventh floor of a block of flats in Gaza with her six-year-old son Noor and a mother, practising evacuation to be prepared to leave in the event of there being a small rocket from the Israelis causing the knock on the roof five-minute warning of the building being blown up.

She has no comments on Israel beyond mentioning they are calling people up for the Israeli Defence Force. Her only hostile encounter with a human being is on one of her practice runs when she meets a gun-toting local fighter whom we might guess is Hamas. Rather than explain she is practising evacuation, she lies to him, saying she is a grieving wife going back to the scene of his death. There is no explanation for the lie. But it implies a distrust of local Palestinian fighters.

Avoiding any possible dramatic tension or politics connected to the conflict between Israel and the open-air prison of Gaza, the play is reduced to the comic tension of the practice runs and the need to dress for the shower in case you get caught out by a bomb you didn’t hear and have to be dug out of the rubble. After all, you wouldn’t want strangers to find you naked.

The play’s probable intentions to bear witness to the anxiety and suffering of an ordinary Palestinian that we can identify with is important and necessary, especially given the UK is still providing Israel with the means to hurt such ordinary people.

However, it leaves the play feeling highly improbable. Not only does Mariam (Khawla Ibraheem) spend more time bemoaning the sewage in the sea than the bombs dropped by Israel, but does anyone still believe Israel gives any such warning?

It is well performed and thoughtful, with moments of humour, but it can feel repetitive over its 80-minute running time. Crucially, it has no bite in its sideways glance at possibly the most worrying international issue of 2024.

Reviewer: Keith Mckenna

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