Arts & International Affairs: Volume 2, Number 2 | Page 87

You Have Seen Nothing In
Syria
Jumana Al-Yasiri
Jumana Al-Yasiri was born in Damascus, Syria. She is the daughter of an Iraqi filmmaker and a
Syrian-Palestinian actress. As a child, she enjoyed accompanying her mother to rehearsals; this is
how she first learned that theater can bring understanding and answers to political and social issues,
and that what happens on stage has the power to change the lives and perceptions of both the artist
and audience. Jumana has fifteen years of experience designing and implementing residencies, music
festivals, theater productions, conferences, grants, and training programs for artists and cultural
practitioners. She is a Paris-based performing arts manager, curator, panellist, researcher and
translator, working between Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and the United States. In 2015,
Jumana was appointed as the Middle East and North Africa Manager at the Sundance Institute
Theatre Program, co-leading the development and the implementation of the program’s outreach
in the region and beyond. Jumana holds a BA in Theatre Studies from Damascus Higher Institute
for Dramatic Arts, and an MA in Comparative Literature from the University Paris VIII. In 2012,
she met Arab-American poet and visual artist Etel Adnan, and since then she’s been in conversation
with her and researching her work. Currently, she is drafting a script called Restlessness, inspired
by this encounter.
In the summer of ����, I watched in a Parisian movie theatre Hiroshima, mon
amour, a remastered copy of Alain Resnais’s ���� film. This was the first time
I had seen it since living back home in Damascus. On that sunny summer
day, as I watched the film, I clearly heard Marguerite Duras’ dialogue, “You
have seen nothing in Hiroshima”, said between a French woman and her
Japanese lover in the aftermath of the Hiroshima bomb. The man tells the
woman that she has seen nothing because she was not inside the events, and
what she observes now is only the effects of the catastrophe.
And in the dark of the movies theatre, I started
telling myself: “You have seen nothing in Syria”.
The last time I had been to Syria then, was in ����,
the same year that people started demonstrating
in the streets. I only experienced preceding events
on my computer screen; I watched hours of
footage taken by activists all around the country.
Eventually my status as an observer looking from
afar disconnected me not only from events in my
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