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Mayyadah, architect, painter, and Iraqi refugee: Hopefully, this project is a step in that direction.” The next step, I feel, for veteran artists, is to work with Iraqi, Syrian, and Afghan refugees and hopefully help heal some of those wounds from the past 16 years of war. A lot of writers and artists in the Warrior Writers community have used art to record personal histories…healing…some use it as protest, and we encourage participants to use those tools as they wish. Getting to play with the house band, to perform some Arabized versions of American standards is going to be fun, and I look forward to it. In this performance, I perform a song that I wrote in Iraq. “I’ve changed a lot as a person and as an artist during. We plant now the small tree, and we’ll wait for it to start growing.” Maybe in the future we can do something bigger than what we have now…The front door is open in front of the people, so they can enter. It gives people a chance to have relationships, and to have ideas together, and then they can do something. I love that I have had that…You know, this is a very small idea, but it gives. My husband, we worked together, we lived a long time together, we have family here together, friends, relationships, and I thank God that we had a chance at a life. So that’s why Michael wants to complete the discussion between him and my husband. But we made this recording before he passed away-he was thinking about this program, and talking with Michael, and they started to do something. But after he passed away, I feel alone, and I can’t do anything.
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“I like to say that my program is my life, because I was with my husband when we arrived in America, and we had many dreams. Hayfaa (former Iraqi broadcaster, refugee, and wife of Bahjat Abdulwahed): In this warm, welcoming space, I press record and ask, “What does this performance mean to you?” Sarah, the rehearsal director, leads everyone in theater warm-ups, clapping hands and shaking out legs, getting ready for the last off-site rehearsal before everything comes together on Independence Mall this Sunday, July 30. for medical care, and shows me a poem of hers that appears on the Al Jazeera website. Abby, the project manager, corrects me: “The best dolmas.” A poet named Layla tells me about her grandson in Iraq, who she’d like to bring to the U.S. Hayfaa Ibrahem Abdulqader, the wife of Bahjat Abdulwahed, the late Iraqi broadcaster who has inspired Radio Silence, has made dolmas for the group. In one corner, a man is halfway into a dolphin costume, and in another, someone plays a violin. Three days before the Radio Silence performance, a public staging of a project that’s been in the making for five years, the participants meet in a rehearsal space at the Gershman Y on Broad Street. Participants at a Radio Silence dinner, May 25, 2017.