My imaginary Island
Naghmeh Manavi is a writer, performer, and theatre maker from Iran. She studied theatre at the University of Art in Tehran. Over the past five years, Manavi has explored the form of lecture-performances and documentary theatre as both writer and director. She has previously performed at Monty (Antwerp 2024), Gessnerallee (Zurich 2024), Shedhalle (Zurich 2024), Kaaitheater (Brussels 2023), BeReZe Performance House (Istanbul 2020), etc. Manavi’s research as a director, writer, essayist, and performer carefully traces the intersections between political and personal issues. She enjoys approaching her artistic research topics broadly, working within different registers, and discovering performative experiences along the way. Her current work focuses on invisible oppression, decolonialism, and the study of political issues of everyday life.
During the drastic fall of humanity in the world, we gathered to meet and imagine how we wanted things to be and how we wanted to be with each other in a Residency/Festival. Our task was to observe and imagine the future of a particular space together.
In the middle of the genocide, we gathered in a place where we were all allowed to be with our passports. We were Iranians, Palestinians, Norwegian, Turkish, Lebanese, Argentinian, Mexican and European. Because of this combination of passports, we were not allowed to be in Europe or many countries so an island in Turkey became the meeting point.
In the middle of the residency, Rafah was attacked and innocent people and children were burned alive during the night. It was one of the most horrifying nights of our lives. After that night I couldn’t write for days. That’s why this calendar is incomplete. I felt too distant from life to be working. But I have learned from a Palestinian writer that writing and sharing can be a way of survival in a world where we don’t have equal rights as humans. At this text’s publication the genocide is still going on to this day and we are the witnesses holding hands.
Day 1 / 16 May
She gets enough hugs. Maybe more…
As the ferry approached the harbour, the hands shook above the heads. There are always some people at the harbour greeting the ferry. And then many hugs. Long and quite tense.
In the next few hours, we wandered around, and locals we knew were giving us hugs and kisses. Berna was giving an uncountable amount of hugs and as we were watching them, Giuli said: “Berna definitely gets her share of eight hugs per day in here”.
I immediately felt like hugging her but I was shy, I didn’t know her for long. The moment didn’t come until the birthday moment later in the night.
We were at Aref’s place. We brought out a birthday cake with lit candles which were blown by the sea wind at the first moment. Giuli made a safe space for the candles from the wind.
She did it very carefully with her fingertips, one by one, and took her time. Later I learned this is her way of dealing with any being. Humans, cats, flowers, dust, trash…
The candles burned the rest of the night until all their bodies turned into light.
We had wine and wishes for her, and gave her hugs.
I was counting if we could reach the eight hugs.
Day 2 / 17 May
Don’t talk to anyone before you ask me, I might not like them.
As straightforward and sharp as this sentence sounds, it reveals an important reality of living in small communities of islanders.
We met a nice guy on our walk toward the beach. He seemed very sweet and helpful and we immediately felt we wanted him in our team. So we started talking to him, and that was when Berna felt pressured since she didn’t know the guy. And whispered this sentence to me.
The community on the island has a heavy history of relationships within them. They have been together through winters and aggressive winds, they have been building their lives collectively. The hugs and loves are heavy as well as the conflicts and fights. And nothing gets to fade out. People and emotions are always encountered the next day, the day after, and after.
They had to live together for years with the emotions and people just like they had to deal with limited resources.
As an outsider steps on the island, they always bring resources with them so there are also politics of relations with outsiders.
We never fully know about the context and that’s why this title could seem a totalitarian sentence even though it is actually very logical.
She needed to know who this person was connected to and whether we wanted to be on the same team. It suddenly seemed very natural to me. In a very simple way, harsh protection was part of the human’s nature. And they are humans that are very dependent on their nature. They are shaped by it, they change their life rhythm by the seasonal changes. And their vibe with the entrance of newcomers. Everything is so deeply dependent on everything.
Day 3 / 18 May
I don’t want help.
I don’t need your help, I can do this, I just want you to be in my life as my friends.
We will work in the Depo and for the Depo and its communal purpose.
But are we doing this for ourselves too? Are we thinking of possible usage we will make out of this place?
Our communal work doesn’t seem to be meaningful to the only local member of the team.
She says Depo doesn’t need us, the island community can take care of the space the moment that it feels it’s needed. We need to find a reason for ourselves. A meaning that serves us, the locals don’t need our service.
The meeting stopped and we went to think and postponed it to later.
We are still working on formulating our work in the Depo. what it means to take care of a space we will not live or work in. And the part that I like is that the Depo has no windows or doors, so all the dust and animals come back after a short while and the wind will wash our time and presence away with dust.
Day 4 / 19 May
Happy Bayram
The national day for youth and sport.
The day started with national pride. The island youth come and march and learn to be proud of their country. I was working at the café when I realised everyone stood up for the national anthem with stretched spines and all in the same direction. It seemed funny to me how much they were dedicated to this ceremony. So many people were dressed in red and white like the Turkey flag.
I was particularly watching the young ones, they were the main purpose of this show who were supposed to learn patriarchy with pride and victory. They were the audience of the narrative that said we are better and greater than others because we somehow defeated them. That we should be proud of being from inside this border not out of it.
The mayor and other authorities came, All men, very performative about their power. Very serious. Everyone was there with their spines up forward. Little kids were excited and teenagers were bored. Nima had a drink last night with one of those authorities in the bar and it seemed funny to him how the person was performing his position. There was only one woman between them which made us very curious about her position. We asked around and she was the European wife of the mayor who had some investment in the island, including the bakery that we bought the birthday cake from.
Day 5 / 20 May
I’d love to know more, But I don’t know what I want to know.
The day of arrivals.
Inge arrived last night very tired. This morning we met properly as the hosting team and we had breakfast together. Eggs, fried potatoes, olives, cheese, lots of jam and butter…
While we were having breakfast all the guests met at the airport and sent us a photo. Maurine was the one who offered help, picked everyone up at their gates, and managed to get the group together and get to the car. We already knew we had a caring and reliable person in the group while we didn’t know where she was coming from.
We made this game of not sharing small talk materials on the first days of arrival. We didn’t share our countries, our jobs, and everything that we felt was shaping our identities in general views. Only Nima and Inge had the information about everybody, the rest of us had no idea.
Guests arrived on the island. We welcomed them at the harbour with our hands shaking above our heads and took them to the hotel. We had some laughs about the mysteries and games and hung out.
We had two Anas, Maurine, Elsa, Aurelien and Ireri. We were Nima, Berna, Inge, Guili and Naghmeh.
We were trying to have conversations without revealing the identities of people and places.
I find it hard to connect with people when I don’t have my general knowledge of who this person is. It’s not only awkward silences but there were moments where I lost the point of not knowing since I felt “the unknown” is different from “not-knowing” as an active choice where we can actually have the information.
The information on identities is not reliable for the self because it’s a construction, and not knowing it creates a hollow and a silence which I don’t know if it’s as if a door opened or closed.
Because as well as this construction is not reliable for the self, it is reliable for the others.
Not only do our context and our work toward it shape us, but we are also agents in how we narrate our stories and we can tell a lot about a person not only by knowing where this person is coming from but also by seeing how this person defines him/her self in their life.
So the awkward silence and the uncomfortable feeling of interacting with people helped in a way to rethink why we need the basic information to start the conversation, and what we miss when we don’t share them.
When nobody knows where we come from and what we do about it. It feels like we are liquids without any shape. We kind of know the materials but not really the impact. It seems easier to connect on the paper but in reality, it made me think of those rivers in the oceans that don’t merge their waters because they are not at the same temperature.
Day 6 / 21 May
He made my already confused brain even more confused. And I’m thankful for that.
We had the last dinner on the second night. We made the place ready and borrowed chairs, tables, and kitchenware from the neighbours. We picked flowers from the neighborhood and bought candles. Arif gave us his house with the beach balcony. Kerem and Miray let us use their brand-new, beautiful cushions. Ozan lent us the lights for the table. Turkan, Nejat, and Gulgun cooked for us and we reached a beautiful and dreamy setting with the help of the neighbours and friends.
During the night, without knowing the country, I could still tell which people were from the same cultural roots as me. I realised what gives me the feeling of knowing the person is not the geographical information but a certain quality in laughter and the eyes. This is how I got to know Elsa and Maurine. With our first laughter.
There is a certain type of laughter that doesn’t come out of funny moments. It comes from growing in a collective lifestyle. In this quality of laughter, it doesn’t matter how funny the subject is, but that we are laughing together. We don’t just laugh because something is funny, but we laugh because we feel connected to each other. We are dependent on each other and we are together at this moment. And I didn’t have any more questions. I didn’t need to know more. We belong to the same social group that allows me to write with the pronoun “We”.
I knew my people and we don’t connect through language or region, but through eyes and laughter.
At the dinner, Nima suggested this game of thanking someone who wasn’t here tonight.
When it was Kerem’s turn, He thanked his new guru who made his already confused brain even more confused. Inge whispered this sentence to herself trying to remember it.
Day 7 / 22 May
(in the silent language, with hands) But we can make our way.
We were walking in silence in the morning and we lost our way.
Berna was not with us because she needed to sleep. When Inge found out in the morning that Berna was not coming she got worried that we would get lost. And we did.
We reached a point that was a dead end. Inge, Nima, and all the others started to head back and Aurelien kept going toward the fence. He showed us with his hand that there were bushes but we could make a way through them. In that long silence, every little moment seemed very metaphoric to me. Some of us search for the way and there are ones who make the way. And each of us became more visible and transparent in silence. Bodies are always naked, language is the cover.
We made our way through the bushes to a beach that was covered with hundreds of jellyfish corps on the shore.
– I know the rest of the story…
We were talking in small groups while having dinner in a restaurant. Elsa told a story of street harassment and how she handled it. There were four of us in this conversation. Me, Guili, Elsa and Maurine. We were telling each other stories of street harassment and the police reaction from different parts of the world and when somebody started their story, we all knew the rest. It was as if we lived on the same street.
There are many layers of being a society. Social groups can form in so many invisible ways, and we are connected with so many invisible threads. Suddenly it became obvious to me that being a woman in the streets of this world, made us very clearly connected.
– I don’t know where I’m from. Now, I’m from here. From anywhere that holds peace and humanity.
It’s the last night of Aurelien with us. He is traveling tomorrow morning. We sat at the café and had espresso martini as the goodbye ceremony for him. We talked about our relations through the games we played and we revealed our nationalities. We started to play by guessing each other’s nationalities.
It started with Aurelian from Lebanon, next to him was Ireri who no one could guess that she was from Mexico. The next one was Anas, he was born in Palestine, exiled to Syria, and a refugee in Norway.
The next one was Maurine from Palestine, living in Jerusalem. Next was Guilie from Argentina, living in Spain. Then it was Anas who was a Palestinian born and lived in Jordan. Berna from the island was next and then it was me and Nima From Iran and at the end Elsa from Lebanon.
We took a breath and the game was over.
– Our connection doesn’t have to be through pain. It can be through beauty.
We started to talk from our perspectives now. About how each of us experienced this game and how we think of our identity without our nationalities. At some point, a question was brought up by Aurelien of why we Middle Easterns are always very connected to the place we are born but a French artist would be known for his practice. I argued that we are all shaped by the context we grew up with, either by its pain or its privileges. But privilege is more invisible to the person who is shaped by it. We are more aware of our connections to our land because we are still struggling with the pain it brings to us. Then Elsa said, we don’t need to be connected because of the pain, we are also connected with beauty. She opened a door in my bitterness.
Day 10 / 25 May
The Island taught me that doing nothing is a lot. _ Anas Nahle_
This is the last day of Elsa with us. She offered to make us lunch. We were divided into groups and each group had a task. Elsa, me and Maurine went shopping and made lunch. We bought parsley, lemon, garlic, and borrowed some stuff from Gulgun’s kitchen, and went to Arif’s place.
Elsa did most of the cooking, she put music on and started singing and dancing while making a Lebanese salad and sauce for the fish. Maurine was singing with her and I was really envying the Arabic language. Elsa has an extreme capacity for love. She loves everything at quality as if love is always a happy experience, even though It’s never easy. She has a great power in making the darkness weak and bringing up the beauty out of everything, this is how she chose to live, and I was learning by watching her. I remember the bright daylight in the kitchen, the sound of the sea with Elsa’s favorite music, her dedication and precision in making details in the taste, and her laughter. We laughed a lot, it’s easy to make her laugh and I loved her laughter.
Day 11 / 26 May
Tasian of Elsa
We started the day with the absence of Elsa which was so heavy. Suddenly when we couldn’t hear her laughter, we felt a very heavy silence. Nobody felt like talking. We sat in the backyard where we were last night. And I explained the word “Tasian” in Farsi (language spoken by Persian people living mainly in Iran). It means the strong feeling of absence of somebody in particular and it also has a characteristic. Sometimes it’s very heavy, sometimes it’s funny or sad and we sit with this absence and feel it just the way we feel the presence of the person.
Day 12 / 27 May
Have you seen it?
We start each day with a silent walk. This particular morning started with a question between me and Maurine. She said have you seen the videos? I had seen them.
Last night during the night, Israel burned Palestinians who were sleeping in tents in the “safe” zone. Images and videos are beyond description. We didn’t talk. Nobody talked. We didn’t know if anybody checked the news and we didn’t want to break the silence. We confirmed with our eyes that we knew what was happening. Now. Then the whole beauty, calm, freshness, silence, the wind, smells, and tastes, all became gruesome for me.
Later we were on the bus and I came across this sentence on my phone and I kept repeating it myself for days after:
If we are not hungry for justice, It’s only because we are too full of our privileges.
Carlos A Rodriguez.