From Berlin with hope: the dream of a Middle-East Union

MATI SHEMOELOF was one of the curators of a bold arts festival to create a united Middle-East - for a weekend. His dream overcame a rough start to finish on a high

OPENING NIGHT OF the recent Middle East Union festival in Berlin almost ended in disaster. The multilingual literature event was held at the famous Babylon cinema and opened with a panel of Berlin-based Arab and Jewish intellectuals.

Following the panel, the Sistanagila, a band comprised of Iranian and Israeli musicians, took the stage. But after just one song, the bass player collapsed on stage screaming in pain. Luckily, there was a doctor in the audience.

I was one of the curators of the festival. The idea of ​​a united Middle East came to me after almost a decade of living in the European Union. If Europe could unite after centuries of colonialism, two world wars and one Holocaust, then the Middle East, North Africa, Iran and Turkey could also unite in such a union.

Three hours before the bass player’s health emergency, I had stood outside the Babylon, in the Mitte neighbourhood, filled with a wonderful feeling that my dream had come true. From a line in one of my poems, I could see it spreading in the city I love and sending its arms all over the world. I imagined peace between Palestinians and Israelis as the first step, then a union with Turkey and Iran.

On the panel, Palestinian artist Steve Sabella showed his beautiful work and talked about his dream of true equality in the Middle East. Dr Dekel Peretz, from the Fraenkelufer synagogue, talked about the Jewish history of Berlin and community’s responsibility to the Middle East.

The activist and psychoanalyst Iris Hefets talked about the need to decolonise Israel, and the curator of the city’s Arab film festival, Iskandar Ahmad Abdalla, referred to similar struggles in the region.