Hajja Souad is 84 years old and in no mood to be moving out of Gaza. She sits at her machine making shrouds as the phone rings. “You again! No, I'm not going to leave Gaza.”
She admits that the constant drone of bullets and bombs is getting on her nerves, but says the latest Israeli attack is just to destroy a few tunnels “they forgot to bomb four years ago.”
The play is set sometime before the latest Israeli war on Gaza. As Hajja recalls her life, she takes us back to the time of the British control of Palestine and through key moments in her life that followed.
Aged ten years old, she is taught to sew by Lady Cunningham at the house where her father works as a gardener. The English lady is so taken with the child that she proposes taking her back to England with her.
That never happens, but as she grows older, her sewing skill proves useful as deaths from Israel mount up. Like many others, she becomes a refugee, and amongst the corpses from one attack, she rescues a small baby that she raises.
It's an intense, bleak if at times passionate monologue, given a fine performance by Julia Tarnoky. There is a terrible symbolism about the way a bright young girl’s contact with Britain and Israel has turned her into the successful shroud maker of the Gaza dead.