Introduction
The Tabouli tale was born while I was living in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

My boyfriend had just found a job and so we decided to get married and moved there in the hope of saving some money, something, that we wouldn’t have been able to do in an expensive city like Beirut.

The Tabouli Performer Piece grew out of two intense experiences:

A long and difficult struggle that I had experienced as an un-Anglo Saxon Australian child living in a northern middle class suburb in Sydney.

And then, at the age of 22 my family decided that it was time to go back to where we ‘really’ belonged. So where was I for the last 13 years of my life?
I was at that crucial age where I had to decide if I was an Australian Arab or an Arab Australian?

Well honestly speaking, in Sydney, depending on who I was talking to ‘Who I WAS’ was slightly different.

If I was sitting with my Arab friends I was a tolerant secular Arab citizen that believed that all Arabs were equal regardless of religion, race or sex.

If I was sitting with a Zionist student arguing my heart out that Palestine was not just a deserted unlivable swamp before 1948, then I was a Palestinian.

If I was attending the ANC demonstrations then I was a progressive leftist.

If I was attending my Philosophy Class I was a feminist with homosexual tendencies.

Then we moved!
The hairy, blemished, weird accented, dark haired, funny named Roula had become the very un-lebanesey looking girl with the perfect English accent and no friends.



Part I
Finding a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Album in a record shop on Jean D’arc street in Beirut gave me hope that I could live in Beirut’ and then something amazing happened I found a public radio station that had an English music show and the DJ actually played the seeds song ‘From here to Eternity’ on the Radio!

Both Nick Cave and Tabouli gave me hope for a brighter future and I embraced it wholeheartedly.

I had 6 aunts living in Beirut and they all loved to make Tabouli any day everyday. Sunday lunch just wasn’t great unless the Tabouli bowl was sitting on the table. The best way to eat Tabouli is with a bunch of loved ones. Then it tastes REALLY yummy!

But one of my aunts, called Nada loved it so much that she is known to wake up in the middle of the night with a strong urge for Tabouli. She would make it right there and then.


I decided to become the Tabouli Performer and ventured into the UPDATE festival in Denmark.

In Copenhagen, I faced a very 'cool' Danish audience, who were sitting in beanbags and sipping on natural energy drinks.

I started to prepare my Tabouli.

I chopped all my ingredients very badly, homemade slides of me waxing in the background. What was I going to tell them? My text was not relevant anymore I was not relevant anymore because the day before the Danish papers had informed us that a massacre had taken place in a small village in Lebanon called Qana? I decided to recite the name of the village Qana and all the other tens of villages that were bombed that day.

It took my breath away.

That evening, my Tabouli tasted as bad as I felt. Hooray for the brave Danish girl on roller-skates who was daring enough to try it!


Part II

The rebirth of the Tabouli Performer took place just a few weeks before the birth of my first child, Zeynoun.

I returned to my original text and Salwa, my hysterical house wife played the starring role.

Lying on a long kitchen table looking up at the audience I told Salwa's story. With a lot of help from Irigaray, Psychoanalytic Feminism and my mum's excellent Tabouli the tale was told once again. Looking very pregnant and sounding very hungry, my mouth uttered a noise, a language, a silence.

My body is a map, one that leads to nowhere.
They map out my body and
carve it into strategic borders.
Here comes the knife.
A border divides my head from my body.
Cartesian dualism has done its share.
For security purposes, another border will form,
a
perpendicular line with the first
as it progresses all the way down to my
belly-button.
Finally,
my feet are fenced off into separate parts.
I am now
ready to be served
on a spiffy clean and silver-plated platter.
as an appetizer Tabouli is always preferred.
but for today I guess,
I will do.








Part III
The two major changes in my life since the Tabouli performer II were the birth of my two children, Zeynoun and Petra as well as the introduction of a live-in maid in our house.

These changes have had a major influence on my life, work, marriage, ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING.

In Tabouli Performer II I told the story of salwa the hysterical house wife who ends up making Tabouli out of her body parts and no-one notices. Since then I have taken on many of Salwa's traits,


So in a way I had become the Tabouli performer: Cooking, cleaning, delivering, attending hundreds of birthday parties, shopping, performing for others.


While 7 years before I was in state of an identity crisis. Who am I Australian, Lebanese, a feminist, a leftist, an Arab?

In 2,006 my problem shifted from choosing an identity, this or that, to "I have no identity!" "Where am I?" Both physically and mentally my children consumed me completely. They became the definition of me.

Having children in Beirut opened up a whole new world to me.

The world of tantet!!! The world of well dressed, middle class institutions: Birthday parties, skiing in the mountains, conversations about maids, Botox, and more of the same

Private school IC kids and their NICEY parents.
With the nice cars and nice lives. And of course the live in maid scenario.

A popular topic of discussion at any noisy birthday party. Two months ago we got a new live in maid from Philippines. 28 years old, 4 kids, completely freaked out, in shock for the first 4 weeks and guess what? She now knows how to make Tabouli!!!! She's really good at it too!!!

An accessory of the rich’s lifestyle, the live in maid is quite a phenomenon in Lebanon. Whether you are rich, poor, working class, middle class, you CAN afford to have a live in maid. You go to an office and they do it for you. It costs you less than 100 pounds a month.


I'm struggling with the mental adaptation to having someone in my house who is not my friend, nor my family. Who I see everyday all the time but have to pretend is not there. Who I can't treat as my friend or family, but who I see more that any one else.

I am afraid to be myself with her and just hang out with her. I am afraid that
I won’t have any privacy anymore. That I will won’t be able to ask her for things, that I won’t be able to be alone. That I will be too shy to say to her: “Jenecia, can I be by myself please?”

We struggle to understand each other, and to communicate. She is so far from her kids and cries. I am so close to mine. She is suffering I'm sure.

BUT if I was to say to her 'Tabouli' she will smile and know exactly what I mean.

GET ME A WEEKLY HAIRDRESSER
GET ME A DRIVER
GET ME A MAID OR EVEN TWO PREFERABLY PHILLIPINO
GET ME A MANICURIST AND A PEDICURIST
GET ME A BI-ANNUAL BOTOX TREATMENT.
GET ME A HOUSE ON THE BEACH A HOUSE IN THE MOUNTAINS
GET ME A 4WHEEL DRIVE
GET ME THREE OR FOUR CHILDREN
GET ME A LEBANESE FLAG TO HANG ON MY VERANDAH AND A STICKER FOR MY CAR.

LET ME TAKE CARE OF YOU
LET ME FEED YOU
LET ME FRET OVER YOU
LET ME LOOK BEAUTIFUL FOR YOU.
LET ME BE A SUPERSTAR FOR YOU
LET ME FEED YOU
LET ME FEED YOU LOTS OF TABOULI

AFTER
LIVING FOR 10 YEARS IN LEBANON.
I STILL DON'T KNOW HOW TO MAKE TABOULI!
I HAVE BECOME LESS ARABIC THAN EVER BEFORE.
SO PLEASE…TONIGHT…….. ARABIZE ME ARABIZE ME ARABIZE ME ARABIZE ME

"HARIRI THE EX-PRIME MINISTER OF LEBANON WAS A MODERATE MAN IN EVERYTHING EXCEPT FOOD."
COMMENTED ONE JOURNALIST AFTER HIS ASSASSINATION

SO LET ME FEED YOU.
PETRA NEVER LETS ME FEED HER.
SO LET ME FEED YOU.
JUST ONCE.
JUST FOR TONIGHT.
FORGET PETRA
IT'S MY NIGHT!

This Tabouli Performer III Performance never made it to the V&A London
as part of the Arabize me Show that took place 2 years ago.

I was busy making lists and coming up with new packing and evacuation strategies.

We were bombarded for 30 days and art simply wasn’t on my mind. Staying sane and keeping my family safe and sound was my main focus.

We moved to the mountains and stayed with my aunt. Petra and Zeynoun were safe, my parents were safe. But all around us at very close proximity people were dying everyday.

One of those packing strategies lists got to see the light of day in London. Thanks to modern mailing methods.

We spent the 30 days either glued to the TV sets, writing emails, crying, packing and unpacking and listening for sounds of planes bombing.








Part IV
The fourth and final chapter of the Tabouli performer begins in a small gulf country called Qatar.

Goodbye Sydney, goodbye, Irigaray, goodbye Nick Cave, goodbye Jeddah and the red sea,, goodbye artsy fartsy Modca Café in Hamra, goodbye to the illusion of peace, goodbye to Beirut, and most of all goodbye to Jenecia our live in maid.

Happily I said goodbye to uncertainty and fear that Beirut had created in me. I couldn’t wait to get out!

Most people come to the gulf to make cash. We did it fourteen years ago. But this time round it was for safety, pure and simple. I was lucky I found a job.

Doha was perfect! Perfectly empty, quiet, monotonous, quiet, peaceful, very safe, very quiet, no distractions, my whole existence revolved around three and half things: school, kids, house and Mike a little.

To have my time and mind divided unto those few things was a relief.

No friends, no extended family, no war, no cultural activities, no politics, no aesthetics, no visitors, no social affairs and socializing necessary.

I drowned my self in the silence, my work, my homework, and forgot about the rest of the world.
AFTER LIVING FOR 1 YEAR IN QATAR
I HAVE LOST MY ART OF PERFORMANCE.
BUT HEY I NOW KNOW HOW TO MAKE MY OWN TABOULI
SO FOR TONIGHT LET ME OFFER YOU MY HOMEMADE TABOULI.
LET ME FEED YOU.
SO LET ME FEED YOU.
JUST ONCE.
JUST FOR TONIGHT.
FORGET PETRA
IT'S MY NIGHT!

Good bye Tabouli performer, goodbye salwa, goodbye jenecia.
Good evening Liverpool!