As an artist, when did you decide to start writing?
I had a deep desire to express myself, but expression is difficult when you are caught in the flow of events. When the Egyptian revolution broke out in 2011, it took me three years to write The Last Supper. Of course, I believe that an artist must step away from immediate emotions in order to look a little further ahead. But that’s not all there is to it. I did not believe for a second that a work could match the fervour experienced at the fall of Hosni Mubarak: it was something far greater than life itself. So, I think I have a duty to reflect, to step away, and to add something to the event rather than simply commenting on it by repeating what politicians or journalists say. In the case of 7 October, it took me two years to put into words what was troubling me. Was I sad? Shocked? Devastated? Shaken to my core? Through writing and rewriting, crossing out sentences and throwing them away, a question eventually emerged: what are we waiting for? What are we waiting for from a population that has been decimated after living for decades in an open-air prison? What do we think will become of these children who have mourned their families lost in the rubble? When this war ends—because all wars eventually do—what will we do? And the things we will have to do, will we be ready to do them? What will its impact be, not only on Palestine but on the Arab world, beyond ethnic, social, and religious differences? I am thinking in particular of Egypt, where these devastating images have affected everyone, but where the population has no possibility of expressing itself. That is the question Salma asks: what are we waiting for from the future?
You say that you did not write a play about 7 October itself, but about its consequences as seen through the everyday life of an affluent Egyptian family. Even if Salma, Mon Amour is haunted by the shockwave that followed those events. Did fiction seem to you the most appropriate way to approach horror?
Yes 7 October was a major event, not only in the contemporary reality of Palestinians and the Arab world, but in world history. These are moments that generate changes beyond our current perception: just as, fifteen years later, we are still unable to fully measure the impact of the Egyptian revolution or the Arab Spring, the repercussions of 7 October will be felt over the long term, perhaps within a generation. Faced with the horror, with what I consider a genocide—based on my convictions but also on the decisions of the International Criminal Court, and on the work of researchers and associations—I experienced a form of shock and paralysis. I stopped watching images, I did not turn my television back on for three months. I found myself confronted with questions I had never previously asked myself about my own values: where have humanity, justice, and democracy gone? Where have free press and freedom of expression gone, when I can see the facts with my own eyes while also witnessing the relentless effort of certain Western media outlets to bury those same facts?
Because reality is right before our eyes, and I wanted to go beyond it. In a way, I project my fears into this play. How does violence generate violence? How does a pattern reproduce itself on the scale of a society? Salma is like the heroine of a Greek tragedy, confronted with an impossible choice. Whatever decision she makes, she is heading toward catastrophe.
When you talk about the beginning of the play—the wedding being prepared between Salma’s brother and a wealthy American woman—it almost feels like a comedic situation. The mixing of genres is part of your work. Do you think violence is more shocking when it appears in a setting where it is not expected?
I like the audience to be engaged in the performance, to let themselves be surprised by an ending that disrupts their expectations and shakes their convictions. In real life, there is this constant mix of the comic and the tragic. I myself am surprised by what happens on stage. I write my plays, but I do not consider myself an author. I write for the stage, for the characters, I write late at night after rehearsals, during which the actors have the freedom to change the text. At this point, Salma, Mon Amour has not yet been written. For two years now, I have been jotting down ideas; I have a story, characters, a few scenes. I work with the actors, but without a fixed text. Only with their roles. I provoke pure improvisations. I try to build something collective on stage, as if we were forming a team. I like to compare the writing of my work to the long, handwoven process of a tapestry that I will only discover at the end.
You compare Salma to a tragic heroine while also addressing a declaration of love to her in the title of the play.
In general, the titles of my plays are borrowed from others. In the case of Salma, I took it from Marguerite Duras, from Hiroshima, mon amour. But Salma, Mon Amour is also a declaration to this younger generation, to these twenty-year-olds who are too often considered out of the game, even though they have to grow up carrying on their shoulders the burden left to them by their elders. This youth is something I want to love and to believe in.
Interview conducted by Simon Hatab in March 2026