We view momentous events as distant observers. In an uprising, we see the flags, the occupations and the street battles and get a general sense of cause and effect. What is harder to gauge is how it feels to live through such turbulence, not just on the days of insurrection, but in the months and years on either side.
One of the strengths of You Bury Me, by the dramatist known only as Ahlam, is in its portrayal of everyday life during extraordinary times. A recipient of the 2020 Women’s Prize for Playwriting, it is set in the Cairo of 2015, but repeatedly harks back to the Arab spring of 2011. Crucially, it focuses on a group of teenagers, including the boisterous Maya (Yasemin Özdemir) who was 13 at the time of the demonstrations in Tahrir Square and is now turning 18. She and her peers have been shaped, in their formative years, by a volatile combination of hope, fear and despair.
