The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been portrayed in many pieces of art from both perspectives of the conflict. In 2015, the Palestinian playwright Dalia Taha wrote a play from the Palestinian perspective called “Fireworks”. It follows the harsh lives of two Palestinian families in an apartment block who deal with the gravity of their situation by retreating inward. One of the main characters is Lubna. Lubna uses her imagination and hope to escape her situation. But from the beginning she starts to realize the truth of the Palestinian situation, and in time the veneer of innocence is torn apart and she completely realizes her horrible reality.

Lubna creates and uses her imagination, but the seed of doubt has been planted in her from the beginning. She tells her father Khalid about a song where someone is shot then martyred. Her father asks her the difference, and she replies that those who get shot merely die and are eaten by worms. However, those who get martyred are flown to the sky by the angels who give them wings, angel copies of their family and a house in heaven (Taha 3-4). Being killed is among the violent realities that Palestinians must deal with, so Lubna is using this idea of martyrdom, this idea of paradise to have something to look forward to. She is also soothed because there is a version of her who doesn’t live her harsh life. Lubna also believes that even people who die are still with her and her family and are seen in dreams. However, as she admits to her father, she “hasn’t dreamt about Ali for ages” (Taha 4). That is why she has come up with the poem/song in her head, although she hasn’t written it down: she is trying to replenish her imagination. Khalid tells Lubna that he hears her talking to Ali in her sleep, telling him about Eid and how happy she is for it. But Lubna has begun to have doubts, spurred by the departure of her neighbours. Her doubts are not strong yet and are satisfied by the explanations of her father (Taha 5-8). This shows that she is very much in her imagination, and her father is trying to keep her there.

Later Lubna is running up the steps and counting but is greeted by Khalil (Taha 12). Lubna at first is unreceptive to Khalil because she is introverted, feeling more comfortable in her imagination. At one point Khalil mentions that he “saw a girl with her leg cut off” (Taha 15). Khalil is searching for a friend because other than his family he has no one but a dead pigeon, which he pretends is his cat. Khalil hits it and Lubna calls him out for that, saying that “we have cameras and we can see everything” (Taha 16). They pretend that Khalil’s leg was cut off. Khalil says that he runs to school, but Lubna counters that “the school’s been bombed” (Taha 17). They are playing games with their imagination here, but ideas of violence and death are inevitably entering their heads. As the author Dalia Taha says, Ramallah is “challenging and beautiful at the same time {…] When you’re growing up, you don’t think it is strange. You don’t respond to it as, ‘Oh, I wish I was living somewhere else.’ This is your reality, what you think the whole world is like” (Moss). The children can’t help it, because it is the daily life that they live as Palestinians in the Israeli occupation: they suffer injuries, their buildings are bombed, and they are constantly watched. Both Lubna and Khalil live in a lonely situation where they are the only families in the apartment building, since all the other families have escaped somewhere safer. Khalil’s imaginations with the pigeon reflects how Palestinians desperately try to salvage any possible freedom and entertainment. Khalil and Lubna seal the friendship when Lubna tells him about her alter ego (Moss 18-19). The scene once again ends in an imaginative, positive note, but Lubna’s illusion cannot endure forever.

The illusion is first cracked when Khalil and Lubna are playing again. Khalil, holding a stick and pretending it is a gun, orders Lubna to get back and provide an ID. He is aggressive, first ordering her to dance, then laugh. He then asks her why she is laughing and if she has anything to laugh about and calls her a liar continually (Taha 40-41). Khalil is acting like an Israeli soldier might toward a Palestinian in the occupation, barking immediate orders at her, some of which are difficult and even impossible. Even if she does what he ordered, he is still shaming and bullying her. Israeli soldiers are armed and the Palestinians are totally at their mercy. Khalil even asks for an identification. Lubna eventually gets annoyed, pushes him and takes the gun. She complains about the game, but Khalil says he still has to search her (Taha 32). Unlike his previous playthrough with Lubna, Khalil has explicitly modelled this game after the Israeli-Palestinian situation, and through it he is giving Lubna a taste of their life as Palestinians. They restart the game, but instead of going back like Khalil says, she moves towards him, and he pretends to shoot her. She falls to the ground and has a period (Taha 44).. Lubna’s period symbolizes the beginning of her maturity and loss of innocence, as she has started to really feel what her fellow Palestinians feel. This could also symbolize how futile it is for Palestinians to resist Israel, since Israel has weapons and they do not. Lubna has now reached the point of no return.

Her mom finds out about the period, and wonders: “why has it happened so early?” (Taha 44). Lubna fears that she will die, but Nahla tells her that if she paid attention at school, she would “know why this was happening” (Taha 45). Nahla adds that she will have to live with it “all your life” (Taha 46). Lubna is innocent and doesn’t pay enough attention to what is going on, which is why she is so shocked when she sees her blood. Although Nahla is talking about the period and its onset of maturity, her words also refer to their harsh life. Nahla is upset at Lubna’s failures at school, and says that if she continues, she’ll “be out of school in a couple of years” (Taha 48). Lubna replies “that’d be a good thing… I hate you” (Taha 48). Lubna cannot process the realities of both the period and the occupation, and that is why she is lashing out. That is also why she demands that her trousers be burned. Later, Later Lubna proposes that she and Khalil play a “running game”. Despite Khalil’s objections that “it’s not allowed”, she justifies it by telling him that “no one will see us. The streets are empty. I’ll run this way and you run that way, and whoever gets to the front door first and doesn’t get shot wins” (Taha 52).This shows how brave Lubna is in trying to defy the danger of being shot, and leaving the apartment is part of her journey.

Lubna soon fully wakes up to the terrible truth of her situation in Palestine. Nahla leaves, and Lubna asks Khalid some questions then says “I told you she’d leave” (Taha 66). She knows that Khalid has been hiding things from her, and when she tells Khalid about her period, he replies that she really has grown up (Taha 67-68). She accuses him of hiding the fact “that Mum’s going crazy”. Lubna admits that she has been hiding things too, revealing that the planes in the sky “bomb people”, that the sounds are not fireworks but “bombs” and that “lots of people are dying and having their legs cut off” (Taha 68). Lubna also admits that “the magic tape isn’t really magic” and that the neighbors are leaving, shocking Khalil (Taha 69). Lubna is starting to figure out the truth, and her illusion has been nearly broken, even as Khalid tries to keep her in it. The author Taha mentions that “the tension that comes from desperately trying to hold on to normalcy and ordinariness […] creates a situation where children and parents are constantly switching roles, with children being the parents and parents being children. It’s about modes of existence generated by impossibilities: the impossibility of childhood, the impossibility of parenthood” (Moss). Lubna cannot delude herself forever, and likewise Khalid cannot affirm her illusions. The world they are surrounded by is closing in on them, and this has created the situation where ironically, Lubna is now telling the truth while Khalid is playing pretend and is in disbelief. Even then they both hold on to the hope of the day of Eid solving all their problems.

At Eid, Lubna and Khalil play in a playground. They are happy and wearing special clothes. But suddenly Khalil dies in an explosion. Lubna twenty years later then tells a story about a little boy and a little girl (Taha 77). The is clearly Khalil and the girl Lubna. When the boy dies, the girl closes her eyes and tries to think of heaven, but instead “she saw the little boy not moving again”. She then notices that the boy’s little hand is missing and that there are other dead children. No matter how much she closes her eyes she sees his dead body. Despite everyone hugging the boy’s mother and imploring her “not to worry, that he’s happy now, in the sky, happy with god”, the girl doesn’t believe that. She tries to tell someone, but everyone is focusing on the boy’s mother. She keeps it secret and starts sleeping with her eyes open so she won’t see the little boy. As a result, “she started to get black bags under her eyes”. She “knows that one day there will be lots and lots of people who sleep with their eyes open and they will know each other from the black bags under their eyes” (Taha 78). Khalil’s death has broken Lubna. Now she has no dreams of heaven, the sky or martyrdom. She can find no solace in them because she witnessed the death of Khalil. Now she is fully awake to the haunting reality of her life in Palestine, like her mother Nahla. The black bags under her eyes represent the trauma that she carries with her. She is always watched and never safe, not even in her mind. The play’s last line emphasizes that her experience is far from unique. Saleh Bakri, Khalid’s actor, says that “There is politics in everything today, even the water we drink” (Moss). Palestinians cannot escape the political situation that they are in. That is also one reason why the play is set in a purposefully ambiguous place in Palestine, because it could be happening anywhere in the country. Lubna’s journey has come to a haunting end.

Lubna plays with her imagination to entertain herself, but from the beginning she slightly understands the reality. Her understanding grows as her illusion is destroyed and she wakes up to this horrible reality. Lubna experiences what most children do growing up in Palestine. Since the 2000s Palestinian children have experienced significant violence, with the result that they have grown normalized and resynthesized to it. But although they cannot escape their situation, “there is beauty and tenderness in the failure. The beauty matters as much as the bleakness” (Moss). At least they are experiencing some happiness through their imagination and are making do with what little they have. That can be another thing to take away from the play.

Works Cited

Moss, Stephen. “Palestinian playwright Dalia Taha: ‘You want stories of suffering’.” The Guardian. 22 February 2015. Online.

Taha, Dalia. “Fireworks.” London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 22 April 2015. PDF.