This is a very important and special episode of the podcast, in which Fadi Zmorrod, the recipient of the SEVN (South East Venue Network) bursary joins Jenny in studio to talk about his work with Doulab Circus and Dance. When Fadi was younger, he left the oppressive environment of occupied Palestine and went to study computing in the United States. Yet his heart was simply not in it: he was drawn back to the arts and to his home, where he met his Irish wife, Juliet, and where Doulab Circus and Dance was born. Across Palestine, Fadi and Juliet used dance and circus movement to offer children a space in which movement and intellectual curiosity could come together, and where trust and confidence could be built. The decision to leave Palestine was extremely difficult; Fadi speaks of what it was like to leave those children behind and what it is to cope with the conflicting emotions of relief and guilt that a new life of safety presents. Doulab Circus and Dance currently works with the residents of Direct Provision centres, members of the Travelling community and children with diverse and special needs.

Also in studio are Dr Kate McCarthy, who has galvanised SETU staff as part of a solidarity initiative called Gather for Palestine, and Sinead Bolger, an arts and migration facilitator who talks about meeting Fadi for the first time and offers some suggestions on readings by Palestinian authors that you can find below.

Book Recommendation List:

I saw Ramallah by Mourid Barghouti – non-fiction

Award-winning account of the human aspects of the Palestinian struggle.

Footnotes in Gaza by Joe Sacco - Graphic Novel

Joe Sacco’s visual journalism about the massacre of 111 Palestinian refugees by Israeli soldiers in 1956.

The hundred years' war on Palestine : a history of settler colonial conquest and resistance by Rashid Khalidi– Non-fiction

A landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians from the foremost US historian of the Middle East, told through pivotal events and family history.

Palestine +100 : stories from a century after the Nakba, edited by Basma Ghalayini. – short stories

What might your home city look like in the year 2048 - exactly 100 years after Nakba, the displacement of more than 700,000 people after the Israeli War of Independence?

Enter ghost by Isabella Hammad - fiction

An actress returns to her home city of Haifa after many years in London and finds herself roped into a production of Hamlet in the West Bank.

Against the loveless world by Susan Abulhawa - fiction

Nahr, a resilient but exhausted woman, tells the story of her life from an Israeli solitary confinement cell.

Mornings in Jenin / Susan Abulhawa – fiction

A multi-generational story about a Palestinian family as they live through half a century of violent history.

Qissat : short stories by Palestinian women, edited by Jo Glanville - fiction

In a cross-generational compilation, editor Jo Glanville chronicles the varied lived experiences of Palestinian women, from domestic to diaspora.

A woman is no man by Etaf Rum

The debut novel by Palestinian-American Etaf Rum takes us inside the lives of a conservative Arab family living in America.

Salt houses / Hala Alyan

Salma is forced to leave Palestine and move to Kuwait City, but when Saddam Hussein invades, she must leave again.

They called me a lioness: a Palestinian girl’s fight for freedom by Ahed Tamimi – non-fiction

A Palestinian activist jailed at sixteen after a confrontation with Israeli soldiers illuminates the daily struggles of life under occupation in this moving, deeply personal memoir.

Out of place : a memoir / Edward Said.

An extraordinary story of exile and a celebration of an irrecoverable past.

The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist by Emile Habibi.

This award-winning novel-in-translation is clever tragicomedy that demonstrates the complex life of a Palestinian living in Israel.