They say some things are pre-ordained.
Marena Riyal, Palestinian writer and actor, walked into a gallery where I was exhibiting my artwork in Edinburgh this August. She was looking for refuge – a friendly face and a quiet corner – to escape momentarily from the Fringe frenzy where she was presenting her play Majenin – A Palestinian Love Story. We talked for a while over a cup of tea, and she invited me to see her performance the following weekend.
The play is written and performed by Marena herself and directed by Maiya Pascouche.
On a sparse stage, accompanied by two other Palestinian actors, I watch her explore a relationship between two people who fall in love. That they are Palestinian is incidental. The mad exhilaration as the couple fall head over heels in love, and the ensuing trauma when it ends, could apply to anyone trying to process the pain of abandonment after – incomprehensibly – the passionate relationship with “the one” suddenly comes to a close.
Societal expectations
Reactions to the play have been unexpected. While some are deeply touched, finding resonance in their own experiences, and appreciate the universality of emotions – humanising a people who have been defined only by tragedy and violence – others are uncomfortable with the depiction of the Arab male character. Some appear to want to defend him or ask for more of his perspective, so he doesn’t appear weak. Marena finds this revealing. “There’s this desire to protect this perfect victim narrative”, she says. “If we start showing people as anything other than perfect beings, somehow that takes away our right to exist.”
Rejecting the narrative that women are simply victims and men villains, she argues that both men and women are shaped by social expectations, family histories and the environments in which they grow up. She has three brothers and wants men, too, to have the freedom to express vulnerability and to feel safe while doing it. “We are all safer when men feel safe”, she points out.
Marena’s point is that both men and women struggle with the roles they have to play, and work hand in hand bearing equal burdens. While her father toiled to support the family financially, her mother managed everything else. Men in Palestine get taken to prisons or are killed, so women today must make the decisions about the future of their society.
The male character in her play is not a monster. He, too, really falls in love. But, she says, “he is facing societal pressure, he is a prisoner of his situation”. He is shaped by the intense expectations of masculinity, financial responsibility and family life imposed on men. Traditionally, in Palestine, a man is expected to establish a home and financial security before marriage, yet contemporary economic realities make this increasingly difficult to fulfil. She feels men and women today everywhere are buckling under the weight of intolerable expectations of perfection. “It is killing our souls. People should have the right to mess up.”
Personal story
Her own life has also been shaped by forces beyond individual control. She grew up in a refugee camp in Palestine before leaving at the age of 11 for Texas, where her family were the only Muslim, Arab and Palestinian people in the community. She describes being bullied and feels that Texas never truly became home. Asked her which place she found more difficult, the refugee camp or Texas, she laughs uproariously but doesn’t answer.
Palestine has remained central in Marena’s life, through food, language, music, family and cultural references. Yet she is also conscious that there is no single Palestinian experience: those living in the West Bank, refugee camps, other countries and the wider diaspora all have profoundly different interpretations of their identity.
She recalls struggling to understand why her mother was incapable of following schedules, until she returned to Palestine as an adult and recognised the impossibility of guaranteeing that one would arrive anywhere at a particular moment. Checkpoints, restrictions and uncertainty can transform the most ordinary aspects of daily life. Trauma does not simply appear in moments of violence; it reshapes habits, expectations and the ability to imagine the future. She observes people in Scotland with the free time to sit in the park, read, birdwatch, and think about their future. “Such privilege to have the time to reflect and grow”, she sighs. Such privilege to have the time to reflect and grow; there is no room or time to evolve.
Beyond victims or villains
Yet she is determined not to allow Palestinian identity to be reduced to suffering. “We’re either seen as victims or villains”, she says. “I honestly don’t know which one is worse.”
This is one reason she chose to tell a love story. Palestinian characters, she argues, are too often expected to perform their trauma like dance monkeys for an international audience. They are seen either as victims or villains and must entertain the public only from either end of that limited spectrum.
She wants to show Palestinians also fall in love, argue, make mistakes and imagine futures. They are not defined solely by occupation.
“I’m just going to let you sit here like a fly on the wall and watch two people fall in love and get heartbroken”, she says. “I am going to take you inside the woman’s mind to show you what she thinks, expose the most intimate, unshared parts of her, until you realise you’ve had that same conversation with yourself when you fell in love. You’ve been that girl.”
Her approach to Palestinian solidarity follows the same principle. She points out that when someone returns from Italy, people ask what they ate, where they went and who they met. When the destination is Palestine, the questions are different. The ordinary details of life disappear behind an expectation of tragedy. “Sometimes, when I tell people I’m from Palestine, they get almost excited like they found a Pokémon – I’m not joking – and they seem almost disappointed by the fact that my family is still alive”, she explains. “Talk to us like we’re human beings: we have lovely stories to tell of our lives; don’t reduce us to our suffering.”
Ghosted
Marena wanted to write about the phenomenon of ghosting, where one of the people in a relationship abruptly and unilaterally stops all text messages, calls, and replies without any explanation. She feels it’s a predominantly female experience and therefore is easily dismissed as unserious. “How do you trust again when that happens, when you’ve given everything and they ghost you? They don’t understand the ruins they leave behind, and they get to just walk away from that. And you find yourself left holding all these memories and all these plans for the future, not knowing what to do with it all. But the only choice you have is to take the pieces from the wreckage that are worth keeping and move forward. You hold on to the beauty in that experience and grow with it – or you break.”
I am deeply moved as she speaks these words. I don’t know if she meant it to do so, but I feel it applies profoundly to people like those in Palestine, who are being “ghosted” by the international community. The trauma is immense and it is an additional burden on those who live through the ordeal to move forwards, holding on only to instances of joy within a life of unspeakable pain to survive.
“Let Palestinians speak for themselves. Support Palestinian artists”, she argues, “and make space for Palestinian voices rather than repeatedly discussing Palestine without Palestinians in the room. Give us the stage time.”
Authentic producing
The importance of representation also shaped the casting of her production. Marena was determined to work with Palestinian performers, Nadia Dawber and George Kreitem, who could bring lived experience to the roles. Some details of culture, humour and language could simply not be explained. For her, this is not about rejecting universality but reaching it through specificity. The more authentically she represents a particular Palestinian experience, the more likely other audiences are to recognise something of themselves within it.
She discovered this herself while watching theatre at the Fringe last year. One of the productions that affected her most had little obvious spectacle: minimal props, limited resources and a largely bare stage. Yet the vulnerability enacted stayed with her, becoming an artistic principle. “You watch some big productions and think this could have been an email.” The heart is missing from them, and it is the only thing that matters to Marena.
She sees vulnerability as essential to her work, whether she is writing, acting or performing comedy. Love fascinates her because of its apparent lack of logic. It makes people irrational, exposes them to rejection and transforms their understanding of themselves. Allowing themselves to be weak is what makes them strong. “Love is my high”, she jokes. “The crash is awful, but the high is worth it.”
Bringing to life
That mixture of comedy, vulnerability and defiance runs through both her performance and her broader ambitions. She is currently developing the next two parts of a planned trilogy of Palestinian love stories, alongside pursuing acting, comedy and producing. Through her production company, Kufiya Comedy, she wants to give other underrepresented artists not only visibility but meaningful professional opportunities that transcend the identities they are often limited to. Ultimately, Marena says, her greatest talent may be “bringing things to life”.
Imagining something and making it real has become both an artistic philosophy and a way of navigating uncertainty for Marena. She insists that Palestinians should be allowed to imagine, create, love and laugh, rather than merely survive.
“Free Palestine by allowing us to feel joy.”
Freedom is not simply the absence of oppression. It is also the right to be complicated, funny, romantic, foolish, heartbroken and irrational. Through her work, Marena wants Palestinians to exist on the same plane as anyone else, to fall in love, to hurt, to disappoint, to be disappointed. Perhaps this is the strongest form of resistance, to be just an ordinary, gloriously imperfect human?
