Two actresses–one a Jew from Skokie, the other the daughter of Palestinian refugees–team up to write and perform a show about the Arab-Israeli blood feud. Talk about foolhardy. What do they think they’re going to do that dozens of other earnest artists haven’t done already? Make peace?
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The 80-minute result of nearly four years of struggle, . . . For You Were a Stranger. . . offers an episodic view of the Arab-Jewish relationship as embodied by women from three historical periods. The first section introduces the primal mothers of the two groups, Sarai and Hagar, each of whom can claim a son by Abraham. In part two, Jewish Hannah and Muslim Zahra try to survive the medieval Christian conquest of Granada, Spain. Episode three, set in Israel just after the 1967 war, depicts the confrontation between a Palestinian refugee named Ibrahima and the Holocaust survivor, Michal, who has taken up residence in Ibrahima’s old house.
Lachman and Gardenier suggest that the real conflict isn’t between the descendants of Ishmael and Isaac. Mythologically and theologically they’re the closest of kin. The real conflict is between matriarchy and patriarchy, polytheism and monotheism, the tribal “eyes of the desert” and the colonizing, cunning God of Abraham.
Ultimately they found a way, if not to agree, then at least to accommodate both viewpoints in dramatic form. The show has an ending, arrived at after a seven-hour session of writing, grieving, and negotiating. It’ll open as planned, and neither the Jew nor the Palestinian walked out. In fact, Gardenier and Lachman seem to be in the throes of a tired sort of exaltation. “I am so happy and I’m loving doing this,” says Lachman. “I’m really loving doing this. And I have been in hell.”
