Tawalute Mubarak

Well… it was very cold out. Maybe during Ramadan, I remember the neighbors had brought over some rice that day to break our fast.

This seemed as a sufficient response to my grandmother, when my father asked her what his birthday was. During the war, I guess she was more concerned with making it to the next day that she forgot what day it was.

“I have 37 friends with the birthday of January first” proclaimed Ali, the Afghan restaurant owner. My father’s birthday is April 4^th. One dash one, four dash four, These are easy dates to remember and countless immigration forms do a good job of imprinting these dates into your memory and identity. The tragedies of the Jungle were familiar to me. All of the Afghans I know have their own horror stories they overcame, in arriving to America. Their struggles may not have been as intense as though who ended up in the Jungle, however a refugee is still a refugee.

Neurula’s delivered his monologue in a setting that enhanced and dramatized the performance. The room was black with a single light source on Neurula, this singular focus gave more weight to his words. He spoke to the English woman about his journey, I believe directing this speech at this 1^st world women allowed the crowd to better relate. Us in the audience can not fully grasp the emotional distress and pain these refugees face, no matter how many accounts we hear. Neurula and the women both affirming how unrelatable this story is, is an important part in understanding it.  Neurula’s monologue of his journey to France from Sudan reminds me of the stories of my aunts and uncles. Paying smugglers to bring them from one country to another, the uncertainty of having your life in someone else hands, and how fast the tables can turn in these situations. Neurula considers himself dead, drowned like hundreds of people who died trying to arrive to the same spot as him. It must have been fate or luck that he made it to France, I wondered what luck it was that I wasn’t in the same spot as him.

The Jungle was not an overnight creation. The entirety of first act demonstrated the evolution of the camp. Beginning as huts, ethnic groups moved in one by one, proclaiming each region of the Jungle for them and their countryman. Soon one saw how a barren field transformed into the homes, restaurants, barber shops. Emotions ran high during each new crisis the camp had faced, settling ethnic tensions, learning to build homes, recovering from the fire. Each crisis brought the camp closer and closer together, until they were no longer just refugees they were the United People of the Jungle. Watching the creation of this home from the inside of the afghan restaurant made it all the more striking when it was destroyed. The Bulldozing by the French government returned the Jungle back into the barren waste land that it originated from.

Tawalute Mubarak, Tawalute Mubarak. (Happy birthday, Happy birthday).

We had sung this song on my birthday, just as those in the Jungle had sung to Omar on his. For the first time in my life, I’ve never been so happy to have a birthday.