“Where Can I Find Someone Like You, Ali?” is written, produced and performed by Raeda Taha, directed by Lina Abyad.

Duration: 75 minutes

All proceeds of the play go to support the Ghassan Kanafani Cultural Foundation (GKFC)

Ali Taha hijacked Sabena Flight 571 in 1972.

Ali is a father, a husband and a brother. He departed and his womenfolk were left to continue his life for him and to continue theirs through him.

The Martyr’s Wife. The Martyr’s Daughter. The Martyr’s Sister... Heroic roles that were assigned to these women without them requesting it. A beautiful woman widowed at the age of twenty-seven, four young daughters, the eldest only 7 years old...
Suheila, Ali Taha’s sister, who went looking for Kissinger with a single request: to retrieve the body of her brother the Fidā’ī so she could bury him after two long years in the morgue.

Raeda Taha, the author of the play, and Ali’s eldest daughter, opens the family’s intimate archives to shatter the halo of The Martyr and its stereotype, stripping it of the myths of heroism.

In the process, and in painful candor, she faces the reality of being an orphan, of loss, and of the absence of a father who can never be replaced, not even by Yasser Arafat himself.

Thus does Raeda go on stage to hold Ali accountable? She strips him and herself bare, speaking in her own voice, that of her mother, and of her aunt. She turns the women into real-life heroines, albeit unknowns, and turns Ali Taha the Martyr-Hero into a father, a mere father.

Partners: Ghassan Kanafani Cultural Foundation