Palestinian performers boost Amos appeal for Gaza

Oud player Saied Silbak

Amos Trust hosted a deeply moving final staging of Alrowwad Theatre Company's latest production Anfaas (Breaths) at a packed Union Chapel, Islington, on Sunday night.

The young performers from Aida refugee camp near Bethlehem played the violin, acted, danced and mimed, responding to projected scenes from the genocide in Gaza with profoundly moving ritual power and defiant joy - their signature 'beautiful resistance'.

Scenes of famine, slaughter, unbearable grief and the Massacre of the Innocents (such as the young child Hind Rajab) were balanced by joyful dabka dancing and song - the triumph of sumud (resilience) and the human spirit.

Alrowwad's founder Abdelfattah Abusroar urged the audience to carry on the fight for political justice in Palestine while Chris Rose, director of Amos, insisted on the need to carry on '"doing hope".

The Gazan poet Haia Mohammed, 23, delivered devastating testimony of the human suffering in her homeland: "My voice is louder than any bomb / my spirit deeper than any womb." Now a scholarship student at Goldsmiths College, London, Mohammed's debut poetry pamphlet, The Age of Olive Trees, published by Out-Spoken Press, was named by The Guardian as one of its Best Recent Poetry titles. Until she was able to leave Gaza a few months ago, she documented life that that was threatened by death every day, her family providing 'the warmth / that shields from life's coldness'.

Visibly emotional, she confided with the audience that she had enjoyed Sunday lunch with welcoming hosts but that she missed her own dreadfully. She spoke of her special bond with a three year-old boy her family had adopted after all his family had been slaughtered in an Israeli strike on their home. Grasping her hand tightly in his, the boy led her through desolation and rubble to where his uncle had once sat - until he, too, had been killed.

The virtuoso musician and composer Saied Silbak opened the evening on his oud, ranging from sweet lullaby to haunting lament.

Any donations made to Amos's Christmas Appeal for Gaza before 2pm today, Tuesday 9th December, will be doubled by its partner in the Reed Foundation.

All donations will go directly to rebuild lives in Gaza and the West Bank.

Support the Amos Trust Christmas Appeal here: www.amostrust.org/give/christmas-appeal/