Baghdaddy: a father-daughter, Iraqi-British drama

* Photo of Baghdaddy writer and actor Jasmine Naziha Jones: Helen Murray

By Zahra Al-Shahristani and Daniel Nelson

Jasmine Naziha Jones grows up a second time in her debut play, Baghdaddy.

It explores her understanding of her childhood memories and of her understanding of her father’s move to Britain at the age of 17 and of her own gradually growing awareness of her Iraqi roots.

It is his story and her story, but it’s a story many refugees will recognise and, says Jones, “will speak to a lot of people about being dual heritage”.

Ali  arrives in the UK in 1980 to study and enjoy life. A Saudi boy introduces him to clubs and shows him how to have fun. 

But his dreams are cut short when war erupts in his homeland. He calls his family and his mother tells him that his brothers have been taken to the front to fight. He wants to return immediately but his mother, determined to keep him out of harm's way, says No. 

She also tells him that the family cannot support him financially any more: the teenager has to become a man.

In time, the man becomes a father. His daughter, Darlee, played by Jones, is raised with Ali’s memories of Iraq, of his family’s large house and garden, the delicious food, the comfortable lifestyle. She’s eight years old and enjoys playing a game with her dad in which they list the cool things about Iraq. She’s celebrating her birthday in a McDonald’s and she’s dimly aware that Iraq is involved in another conflict 3,320 miles away with which she is somehow connected

And though she cannot express her emotions she can feel her father’s worries and stress. She is dragged along by her father as he desperately runs from pharmacy to pharmacy in search of medicines to send back to his family in Iraq.

She overhears her father’s conversations with friends about the war, which he does not share with her. He seems  to want to shield her from that aspect of Iraq.

The scenario is repeated in 2003, in another period of conflict for Iraq. This time Ali is heading to Syria to meet his brother to deliver help for his family. But now Darlee is a teenager who has rebelled against her father’s strictness.

The play shows how her father’s stress about Iraq hit by sanctions and wars affects her, how his support for his family back home reduces how much he can provide for his daughter, how an emotional gulf opens between them, how all anyone in Britain is interested in is how she feels about Saddam Hussain and whether she knows someone who has died (which Jones has described as “trauma porn”), about the conflict between loving her Western life and her anger of what it is doing to others in the world.

To add to the trauma, Ali’s brother, Ridha, is killed in front of his son, a terrible tragedy that he cannot begin to put into words.

Darlees bubbling emotions and family tensions culminate in a blistering speech about sanctions and Ridha’s death. The suffering of the Iraqi people has a cruel ending.

The complex emotions of this migrant’s tale are delivered through a variety of theatrical forms and devices, including clowning, drama, humour and the introduction of qareens — spiritual companions from another realm, drawn from Arab mythology. They help stitch father and daughter’s stories together: “I’m drawn to an impressionistic way of working.

“It’s the feeling of it I’m trying to share, not the facts.”

Jones believes there’s a widespread ignorance and misunderstanding based on propaganda about the human cost of events in Iraq and that her play offers a glimpse into what it was like for a family to endure the horrors of what occurred.

Even her little brothers didn’t know about their father’s story, she said in a interview on the BBC’s Loose Ends programme, because they were still at an age where they didn’t see their parents as real people with real problems: “I got a lovely text message from my brother last night saying, ‘I just didn’t know about dad’s story and thank you so much for sharing that - it’s really important that other people hear it.’”

* Baghdaddy is at the Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, £10-£49, until 17 December.  Info: 7665 5000/ https://royalcourttheatre.com/