Imagination as Territory: Palestinian, Levantine, Arab Writers Chart the Future Beyond Genocide

Reflections from a gathering of voices refusing to cede the space of dreams

Today, I sat in a zoom room organised by PalArt with four Palestinian writers - Ahmed Masoud, Mai Serhan, Nur Turkmani, and Nadim Bawalsi - gathered around anthropologist Sami Hermez for what felt less like a meeting and more like an act of collective resistance. Their task, as Hermez had playfully framed it in his invitation, was to imagine themselves as time travelers, stepping through a portal into a future beyond genocide, beyond Zionism: imperfect perhaps, but free.

What emerged was a masterclass in imagination as the most radical form of resistance.

The Portal Invitation

Hermez's invitation itself was an act of creative rebellion. Rather than asking these writers to analyze the present or dissect the past, he asked them to dream forward. "Racists and imperialists are imagining the future all the time," he reminded us, "and we cede that space to them if we don't do it ourselves."

This struck me with the force of recognition. In my work with The Freedom Theatre, I've witnessed how occupation operates not just on land and bodies, but on imagination itself. The colonizer's greatest weapon is the ability to make the colonized believe that no other future is possible.

But here were four writers refusing that limitation, stepping boldly into the realm of what could be.

The Day After: Ahmed Massoud's Temporal Resistance

"We can also imagine the next day (after the genocide). We need to imagine that this will end. Palestine IS free and will be liberated."

When Ahmed Massoud spoke these words, there was something different in his voice: not hope, exactly, but certainty. As a playwright whose work like Application 39 has graced stages of London's Shubbak Festival, Ahmed understands that imagination isn't wishful thinking. It's temporal resistance. His approach cuts through the colonizer's most insidious weapon: the manipulation of time itself. The Zionist Occupation steals land but also steals the future, trapping the colonized in an eternal present of survival. But Ahmed's "next day" is tomorrow, not a distant dream and certainly not a “real estate” one. It's the day after this ends, because this will end.

His unwavering belief that Palestine "is free and will be liberated" cracked open a collective permission. The question wasn't whether to imagine liberation, but how to imagine it inclusively. His "next day" became the shared starting point from which each writer could explore their personal entry into collective freedom. Liberation isn't a question of if, but when.

From Personal to Collective Liberation

What fascinated me most was how each writer approached this impossible task: imagining collective liberation - through deeply personal entry points. Nur imagined a wedding, a “deeply human ritual” that would exist in this new world. Mai, tried drawing from reparation projects across histories without success in instigating her imagination, until she found herself gravitating toward the same human moments: "a wedding, a funeral, and a birth."

Nadim wrestled with the ethics of imagination itself: "Am I being selfish to imagine a form of liberation that cannot include everyone?" His solution was beautifully theatrical - keep it personal, trust that individual liberation stories, when woven together, create the fabric of collective freedom.

This mirrors everything I've learned about transformation through theatre. You cannot direct someone into collective change; you can only create the conditions where individual truth-telling becomes contagious, where personal liberation ripples outward into something larger than any one story.

The Duty of Care

"I feel in many ways we are facing an unimaginable loss," Hermez reflected, "at the same time we don't have words. It's a powerful tool to be able to write back in times of genocide."

This resonates deeply with something Dr. Refaat Alareer once warned about: that if we don't care for our stories, others will occupy that space, shaping our memory and our past. The Palestinian artist's duty, then, is not just to create, but to tend to imagination itself like a sacred garden.

In my academic work on willpower and theatre, I've been exploring how imagination fights occupation from the inside out. What these writers demonstrated is that this creative work is actually tactical.  When Ahmed Massoud spoke of ensuring "we can still smell our land" so "it will continue to be ours," he was describing imagination as literal territory.

Beyond the Identity of Destruction

Perhaps the most powerful moment came when the conversation turned to overcoming "the identity defined by its point of destruction." This is the trap that occupation sets: defining a people only by their suffering, their resistance, their relationship to oppression.

But these writers were doing something else entirely. They were imagining Palestinian, Levantine, Arab identity beyond survival, beyond resistance, beyond the framework that the oppressor provides. They were dreaming Palestinian joy, Levantine mundanity, Arab futures that don't require the colonizer as reference point.

The Collective Imagination

As I listened to these four voices weave their individual dreams into something larger, I thought of all the Palestinian artists I've worked with over the years. From the actors at The Freedom Theatre who transform their resistance into performance, to the storytellers who carry their grandmothers' memories across borders, to the playwrights who write love stories in the shadow of genocide.

Each is engaged in the same essential work: caring for imagination, refusing to let it be colonized, insisting that Palestinians have the right not just to survive, but to dream.

When Hermez noted that "when you ask Palestinians, Levantine, Arabs to imagine the future, there are many intersections that offer tools to actually build something," he was describing the power of collective imagination as blueprint. These are architectural plans for liberation.

The Theatre of Tomorrow

Sitting in that room, I was reminded why theatre, art and Palestinian liberation have always been inseparable in my work. Theatre is the art form of collective dreaming, the space where we practice being different people in different worlds. It's where imagination becomes embodied, where the future gets rehearsed.

These Palestinian , Levantine, Arab writers were casting a future, blocking out scenes of liberation, writing dialogue for a world that doesn't exist yet but could. And will.

And in doing so, they were doing what Palestinian artists have always done: taking care of imagination, refusing to let it be occupied, insisting that the future belongs to those brave enough to dream it into being.

How are you taking care of the collective imagination in this time of genocide? What stories are you refusing to let be colonized, and what futures are you daring to dream into being?