Ihsan Mohammed Turkieh
Posted on | March 3, 2009 | No Comments
Comedy writer and actress
A checkpoint is a horrible scene, but as a comedian, I like to play the simple Palestinian lady. She says to the soldier, “Please, my daughter, she is in the hospital, let me go to see my daughter.” He barks, “Do you have a permit? If you don’t have a permit, you will not pass.” She pleads, “Let me go, let me go.” He yells, “Yallah, get away from here!” She curses the Wall and yells back, “I wish a tsunami takes the Wall, takes you. Then both of us will be at rest at the end!” The Israelis laugh, but it is very black comedy.
What is your approach to comedy?
My whole life is a standup comedy. Everyplace I go gives me something exciting to talk about, so I give a show in front of the people. Even when I go to a demonstration, from the situation I get the inspiration and invent funny slogans on the spot and everybody starts to shout out those slogans. Of course, I’m a serious person too, but it’s nice to show the seriousness through comedy.
Are you ever sad?
A long time ago . . . Okay, many things make me sad, but I learned to be strong and not to cry in front of people. When you face horrible things in your childhood, losing people you love, going from place to place because there is no place to live, after that the rest is nothing.
When I applied to act with Israelis, they asked me to write down terrorist countries I’d been to. I said, ”I’ve lived my life in terrorist countries, my husband was a hero of the PLO killed in the war of Lebanon.” And I told myself, “Israelis are my archenemy, how can I work with them?” But you can’t change someone from right to left. First you have to take them over a bridge.
Tell us about your childhood and background.
I grew up in Lebanon with my brothers and sisters. We were the only Palestinians in the school. At that time, it was very hard to be a Palestinian. You start to recognize yourself when you humiliated by other kids and called a refugee.
Even though father didn’t have the money to send me to good schools. I ended up going to a famous school in the mountains attended by the children of high society. Of my own initiative, I went to the Director of the school and asked, “As a Palestinian girl, don’t I deserve to learn and to be in a good school?” He said, it’s the first time someone asked me this question and I am embarrassed by it.” He sponsored me to attend the school without paying a penny.
When I moved to Ramallah and joined Palestinian television, I started going around with a group of friends doing candid camera. I wanted to give humor to Palestinians on television, to help them forget about blood and death. I said to myself, “3et’s let them live another life. I was an actor, and knew how to make the change.” I wrote a comedy series criticizing the Palestinian family. People couldn’t believe that Palestinians were doing a comedy show.
You were a survivor of the Lebanese civil war. What was that like?
When I was 14 years old, the civil war in Lebanon started. We started to move around to avoid getting caught in the fighting. It was very difficult. I met my husband during the war. I volunteered, joining the Fatah movement. I took a course in communication using military equipment. During battles, I helped transmit orders. It was exciting but dangerous.
After that, I was one of the people surrounded in Beirut without water and electricity. It was horrible, shooting every day, bombing every day. I was in Beirut with my one-year-old daughter until an agreement was made to get the civilians out of Beirut. I went to Syria. My husband was still in the mountains of Syria when he was killed in a bomb attack. Iwas a widow at the age of 24.
Are you afraid of anything?
I am only afraid of God, not anybody else. If you are scared, you will not take a risk. Nothing is impossible. If you want to do something, just do it. But think carefully.
When I started peace work with the Israelis, my salary in Palestine was cut for seven months as a punishment for participating in a show with Israelis. I didn’t apologize for it. The other day, the man who cut my salary was killed in Gaza. I survived. God does miracles.
The problem with many Palestinians is they become accustomed to any situation. They say to themselves, “Okay, the Israelis make checkpoints, but we will find a way and go. Okay, they built the Wall, but we will find a way and go.” Always they create alternatives. Sometimes this is not good because you make the enemy smarter to create next steps to close the holes. He needs to realize he is the occupier, he built the Wall, and he needs to fix the problem.
You perform with Israeli actors. What is the process of working together like?
It began when I signed up to do a show with a playwright from New York who was hiring Israeli, Palestinian, and Jordanian actors. I lived with two other Israeli actors and we had honest talks about how we looked at each other in our hearts. Sometimes, we’d cry and ask each other, “Why did you do that to us?”
Eventually, we became really good friends. Nomi, she was the strongest Zionist woman in the group, she is my best friend. The two strong women in the group—the stubborn Palestinian woman and the stubborn Zionist woman—have been good friends for 10 years.
Now, with my current team, I perform in many Israeli schools. It’s great. They see things they don’t normally see on television: real stories, human stories. That’s what the television doesn’t show.
Once, we performed in a Palestinian municipality near Bethlehem and the Israeli actors were so excited to see the children. After showing us the demolished houses, the children asked an Israeli actor who was an ex-soldier, “Do you have regret?” He said, “It’s not enough to regret, but I am doing something. I am doing shows with Ihsan. I can do the shows and try to make things better.”
Are there Israelis willing to fix the problem?
I’ve been interacting with Israelis for ten years. I’ve met many gorgeous people, very nice, talented, and human. Even in the States, I met Jewish Americans who don’t agree with many of Israel’s policies. I discovered something amazing about Jewish Americans. I asked them, “If you don’t agree with many Israeli policies and feel that it is tough on the Palestinians, why do you support them?” One gave me a good answer. He said, “Israel should stay.” I respect this. I wish for a day when we just say, “Palestine should stay, Palestine first.”
Turkieh is a Palestinian Lebanese refugee who learned early to use her gift of comedy to fight for her rights. Living in Ramallah since 1994, Turkieh is the first woman to establish a television comedy show at Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation. She works with Israelis in peace theater through the Peres Center for Peace. Turkieh was widowed with children at age 24 when her husband was killed in the Lebanese civil war.
