Inspired by a real-life story, The Shroud Maker by Palestinian writer-director Ahmed Masoud portrays individual lives caught by the relentless tides of time.
Hajja Souad, portrayed by Julia Tarnoky, invites us into her daily life, crafting shrouds for those who died in the bombings in Gaza, where death is both a grim reality and a source of business for her.
Written as a black comedy, The Shroud Maker isn’t just about the bodies within the shrouds. It also takes us back to Hajja’s childhood, eighty-something years ago, during the British Mandate.
Her father brought her to live with a family of British colonizers. The lady of the house was nice to her, giving her a room and teaching her to sew. But when British authority began to collapse, the family abandoned her, leaving her alone in the house with her father’s dead body. Hajja’s life unfolds as she raises an orphaned boy, watches him grow up, become a man, build a family, and have a child of his own, only to eventually confront the ghosts of her past, forcing her to make a heartbreaking choice.
Although Julia’s performance occasionally feels a bit over the top for me, it also powerfully embodies the trauma one can endure over a lifetime and how it shapes the depths of one’s inner emotions.
The uniqueness of The Shroud Maker lies in its bold portrayal of the British coloniser, a depiction rarely seen on modern UK theatre stages. While we have encountered numerous (yet still insufficient) stories about the atrocities committed during British colonisation, this play highlights the enduring harm caused by what they left behind.
Beneath the veneer of dark comedy, the act of colonising another country and travelling to a foreign land feels like the same thing to the colonisers. This not only underscores the cruelty and brutality of colonisation but also reveals the unsettling truth: when things went wrong in their colonies, the British could simply retreat to the comfort of Great Britain, pretending that what happened in Palestine stayed in Palestine. They consistently abandoned their former colonies, leaving the people to grapple with the chaos the British themselves had created.
The saddest part is when you reflect on what is happening now in Gaza and in the UK, and question how much, if at all, this country has truly changed over time. While countless ordinary lives, like Hajja’s, have been sacrificed for causes that may sound grand on the surface but conceal great evil beneath, individuals and humanity continue to be overshadowed by orientalism and political grand narratives. This ideology distances us in the West from the ordinary lives in Gaza. Tragically, the way we treat the human rights crisis in Gaza today is no different from how it was handled eight decades ago when the colonizers first left.
The Shroud Maker is running until 25 August (except 14) at Pleasance Dome – 10 Dome.
Buy tickets here.
Julia Tarnoky in The Shroud Maker by Ahmed Masoud provided to The Student for press use.