Eleven-year-old Renad dreams of becoming a famous storyteller. She brims with tales of the grandmother who inspired her love of stories, and of the rest of her family, and also of myriad other children who, like her, are living through war, hunger, displacement and terror in Gaza.
This is a beguiling yet deeply disturbing solo show performed by co-deviser Sarah Agha, which builds its drama through multiple young voices, based on verbatim accounts from a booklet compiled by Leila Boukarim and Asaf Luzon called A Million Kites: Testimonies and Poems from the Children of Gaza.
Produced by Good Chance and written by Elias Matar, A Grain of Sand recounts memories of Israel’s bombing of 2023 and 2024. “I used to live in a big building,” says Renad. Now she is wandering through a razed landscape, alone, looking for her family. So many other children are in the same state of desolation and fear. Maryam remembers seeing her parents scared for the first time as the bombs fell; an eight-year-old is confused to see doctors crying in a hospital; Layan Eid talks of hair-braiding and labneh sandwiches but also describes gunshots that rain down like “heavy rain”.
Some witness the raid on al-Shifa hospital, others describe Israel’s attacks on schools, refugee camps and churches. It is clear there is no safe space. One dreams of dead children growing back their limbs in heaven, another remembers the words of her father which hang horribly in the air: “Inshallah, one day life will be normal for us. We will travel from one place to another, like humans.”
These devastating stories are leavened by a magical realist element that transports us into Palestinian folklore, with the figure of Anqa, an ancient phoenix, at its centre. It is myth but also a metaphor of rebirth for the Palestinian people.
Originally commissioned by the London Palestine film festival in 2024 as a live performance, A Grain of Sand has lost none of its power. In fact, the tragedy of it all is compounded: that this state of acute crisis continues for Palestinians in Gaza, that there has been no accountability for the death of so many children. As Renad tells her stories, their terrible realities accrete. It is horror upon horror.
• At Arcola theatre, London, until 31 January. Then touring
