Of all the places to be inspired to write a play, an interrogation room at Tel Aviv airport might seem one of the less obvious possibilities. But that was how British actor Tariq Jordan, 34, came to write his first play, Ali and Dahlia, which opened at North London’s Pleasance theatre this week.
Supported by the British Council, he travelled to Israel for the first time in 2014. He was on his way to Ramallah in the West Bank to work with children at the Palestinian theatre company Ashtar — an extension of his work as teacher at home.
“I arrived at 3pm and I didn’t get out until 3am the next morning,” says Jordan during a gap in rehearsals for his play. The work is a love story between an Israeli and Palestinian, a relationship forged in the shadow of Israel’s infamous security wall.
“I’ve used my experience of living under occupation and what that means,” says Jordan. “Just going to one part of the West Bank to another, through check points, I wanted to explore how these two lovers can see each other with all the paper work, IDs and permits they need. What do they have to go through to make that work?”
Yet, while the play’s trigger was his experience in Tel Aviv, what informs his play as much as anything is the fact that Jordan is the child of a Jewish British mother and an Iraqi Muslim father.
“I am in love with the cultures that make me up,” he says. “And those are Jewish and Arab Muslim.”
But back to Tel Aviv airport: after collecting his luggage, someone came up to him. “He asked my name, checked a list and said ‘okay you can go’. I thought maybe they were going to give me a special welcome. Perhaps they saw my name, saw that my dad’s a Muslim my mum’s Jewish and maybe they thought ‘this guy’s special’. It appears that’s exactly what they thought, but not how he hoped.
Now, whatever the rights or wrongs regarding Jordan’s detention, for those used to travelling to Israel it may not come as a complete surprise that visitors are often grilled by security.
But, according to Jordan, it wasn’t so much his destination that was of interest, but his parentage. “Your mother married an Arab,” said the security officer. “Do you not find that wrong?” Jordan responded: “Well, I associate with being Jewish, but I’m very proud of my Iraqi Muslim roots.”
Then, he recalls, the man said: “‘You’re not Jewish.’ I said ‘I am Jewish. I’m just not the Jew you want me to be.’ “He didn’t like that. And I knew he wouldn’t. But my mother has worked her hardest to raise me and I’m not going to have an individual at Tel Aviv airport insult her.
“I was more than happy to be sent home.” In the event, he was allowed to continue his journey after his mother contacted the British consulate. The marriage between Jordan’s parents broke up “early on” in his childhood. But his upbringing was a mixture of Arab and Jewish culture. In Manchester, where he was raised, he was sent to the local synagogue for Hebrew lessons and the local mosque for Arabic lessons.
“There was never a sense I had to choose. The culture in the Arab and Jewish houses I go to is identical.”
If this duality ever led to an identity crisis, it came from the “outside” and the way people viewed him, though he has many friends who are both Arab and Jewish. Being “raised in a Jewish household,” he doesn’t like to see religion used to describe the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
“It’s got nothing to do with religion, faith or culture. It’s geography, walls, borders.”
“For me, when I was questioned by this individual at the airport, I didn’t see him as the same type of Jew as I was, because I could never treat anyone like that. And when said I wasn’t the kind of Jew he wanted me to be, all I could think was “I’m glad I’m not.”
Ali and Dahlia is at the Pleasance Theatre until April 14.
