The world I’m working on in words
is a fairy tale
over and over
I write the end
anew

The leitmotif of my story ‘Revolution,’ which appeared in the anthology ‘Die Welt, an der ich schreibe‘ (The World I’m Working on in Words), ed. Kurt Neumann, published by Sonderzahl, 2005.

Translation Geoffrey C. Howes

MONDAY 21 SEPTEMBER 7 p.m.
PRESENTATION OF THE FILM AND READING KLAUS DEMUS

ALTE SCHMIEDE
Schönlaterngasse 9
1010 Wien

You can watch via Livestream. Link dor Online-Screening:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX8RTZAWfQA

45 Min. Original German Version.
By Susanne Ayoub (Director+Screenplay+Camera).
with Klaus Demus (narrator)
and Katharina Knap (spoken word).

Translations exist in English, French, Ukrainian, and Romanian

Paul Celan was from the Bukovina, “the former Habsburg province that has now fallen victim to the loss of history,” as he put it. He was born in 1920 in Czernowitz (Chernivtsi) to a German-speaking Jewish family. The locales of his childhood no longer existed after the Nazi terror. His family was murdered, and he himself was persecuted and imprisoned in a work camp. He escaped death only by good fortune.

“There was this one thing amidst the losses that remained attainable, nearby, not lost: language.”

“Antschel” deals with a homeland in language, the language that was Paul Celan’s only place of refuge.

The film is a “landscape film.” City views—pictures from the past—turn up again in present-day Czernowitz. A trip to Sadagora, where Celan’s mother was from, leads to the synagogue and the Jewish cemetery.
Celan’s path through postwar Vienna. His identity card as a Jewish refugee.

“I didn’t stay long. I didn’t find what I had hoped to find.”

It is a landscape film in another sense as well: it visually interprets linguistic images from Celan’s poems.

The narrator of the film is Klaus Demus, now 93 years old. He met Celan through Ingeborg Bachmann in Vienna and stayed connected to him for a lifetime.

 

“The only way you can understand poetry is poetically. If you ask what it really means, you haven’t understood what poetry is. Because what it really means is probably ineffable.”

In 1970, after years of serious mental crises, Paul Celan drowned himself in the Seine.

Translation Geoffrey Howes

  They drink dry the eyes of the seeing

and the eyes

of the blind

from Paul Celan, DIE KRÜGE (THE JUGS)

a poem he dedicated to Klaus Demus

Translation Geoffrey Howes

The film’s narrator is Paul Celan’s friend from youth, Klaus Demus. The two young poets met in Vienna in 1948.

Klaus Demus in an interview:

I was an art historian by profession, at the Kunsthistorisches Museum. I identified pictures that were in storage without titles, collected over centuries, and I named over fifty artists. And I found out everything about the paintings that was needed for the catalogs I published.

That was my second passion. I am not an artist. I was interested in visual arts, especially the art of my own era, and for a time I looked at and pursued poetry merely as an amateur. Only later did I recognize it as a calling. In that phase of awareness of my actual existence, I met Paul Celan.

Translation Geoffrey Howes

SUNDAY MAY 10, 2020 starting at 9:20 a.m.
The Mauthausen Concentration Camp
A documentation in four parts on the history of the largest concentration camp in Austria

with excerpts from my film
ONCE UPON A TIME IN MAUTHAUSEN

https://tv.orf.at/orf3/stories/2911375/

Translation Geoffrey Howes

“IT IS TIME FOR IT TO BE TIME” Susanne Ayoub on Paul Celan

on the 50^th anniversary of his death
Der Standard/ ALBUM. April 18-19, 2020

ORF Radio – Ö1 in the series “HÖRBILDER” (Audio Images), Saturday April 18, 2020, 9:05 a.m. (available for 7 additional days at https://oe1.orf.at)

with Gerti Drassl, Silvia Meisterle, Johanna Tomek, Karl Menrad, Wolfgang Rupert Muhr, Klaus Uhlich, Aimie Rehburg, and guest appearances by Markus Hering and Floran Teichtmeister. Directed by Susanne Ayoub. Sound by Robert Pavlecka. Edited by Elisabeth Stratka.

https://oe1.orf.at/programm/20200418/595317/Pionierinnen-Adelheid-Popp-und-Rosa-Mayreder

1919: One hundred and one years ago, Austrian women could vote for the first time. The path leading there had been long and rough. Susanne Ayoub presents portraits of two of the steadfast champions of a woman’s right to vote in her audio piece “Bread and Roses”: the middle-class writer Rosa Mayreder fought for the education and social recognition of women; the Social Democratic politician Adelheid Popp represented the interests of working women, especially the demand that to this day has not been met: equal pay for equal work.

Translation Geoffrey Howes

ONCE UPON A TIME IN MAUTHAUSEN. 60‘. A Trio Art Team Production 2010
in Coop with United Alien TV 2010/2012. Premiere Jewish Film Festival Vienna 2012

How does one live in Mauthausen nowadays?
Writer and Director Susanne Ayoub has talked to the people in Mauthausen? How do the handle the past of this place.
Mauthausen, a contemplative little town in Upper Austria with an baroque riverside that gives a quite idyllic impression. But in our collective memory this place is mainly connected with the NS-regime and the terror oft he concentration camp.

(quotation from the newspaper The Standard, Vienna, 11/18/2011

MAY IN MAUTHAUSEN. Short Film, 14 Minutes. A Trio Art Team Production 2008.

The scene of the film is in the former concentration camp Mauthausen. Inside the memorial museum at Mauthausen an opening of a new exhibition is taking place. There are speeches, a buffet and wine. Outside the museum lies the abandoned camp. The spirit of the ‘angel of noon’ wanders through this darkness.

The poem The Angel of Noon, which was written by Jean Cayrol while he was imprisoned in Mauthausen, accompanies the film.May in Mauthausen poses the question of how to remember, how commemoration is possible.

The images, which accompany the angel of noon on his meanderings through the camp, convey, more than his words can, the horror, which does not go away.

Translation Geoffrey Howes

My angel if you watch
My angel if you watch over me
I’ll listen in the dark
no breath
just
fear
I
that heavy hour
before twilight
ghostly yesterdays
revenge retribution
black thoughts in a round dance
My angel you help me get beyond
if you sleep
I am lost
if your wing protects me
I will find morning
find my way to the light

IN WAR. A Poetic Cycle by Susanne Ayoub.
In progress.

Translation Geoffrey Howes

Down by the river
freshness greens
all that grows
the fish swim
close to the bank
evenings the deer
stand at forest’s edge
those down there
how well they live

with water and meadow
sun and woods
all that’s left for us
is drought
and cold and stone
Yet from injustice
a sharp weapon
can be forged

the valley begins at the mountain
we will join
those down there
and take the light and warmth
the full stomachs
the contentment
we’ll take the peace
they didn’t share with us
no one will possess it

IN WAR. A poetic cycle by Susanne Ayoub.
In progress.

*5500 years ago, during the first known war of humankind, the city of Hamoukar, near the present-day border of Iraq and Syria, was obliterated.

Translation Geoffrey Howes

Broadcast premiere
Saturday October 12, 2019, Radio Ö1
“Hörbilder” (Audio Images) 9:05-10:00 a.m.
https://oe1.orf.at/programm/20191012/573983/Michelangelo-Caravaggio-Der-beruehmteste-Kunstraub-der-Welt
available for streaming 7 additional days

and
Saturday October 19, WDR 3 (West German Broadcasting 3)
“Kulturfeature“  (Cultural Feature) 3:04 – 4:00 p.m.
https://www1.wdr.de/radio/wdr3/programm/sendungen/wdr3-kulturfeature/caravaggio-102.html
The production will be available for streaming and downloading on WDR 3 until October 18, 2020

with Michael Dangl, Markus Hering, Sarah Jung, Katharina Knap, Karl Menrad and Raphael Sas. Thanks go out to Maria Teresa Galluzzo and Giuseppe Ricciardo. Directed by Susanne Ayoub – Engineered by Robert Pavlecka und Anna Kuncio – Edited by Elisabeth Stratka

An ORF production in cooperation with WDR (West German Broadcasting) 2019

An angel falls from heaven. The baby is lying on the bare floor. His mother sits before him. She seems weak, weary, resigned to her fate. The men stand around her. All of them are looking at the child, and even the ox pushes forward. Only the man at her side does not look at the baby, he turns away, questioning? The woman is young. The man at her side seems much older. His hair is nearly white. Or is this an effect of the light falling on him from above? Caravaggio’s famous light. He introduced this radiance to the art of painting. La Luce del Vero, the light of truth. Mann an ihrer Seite sieht es nicht an, er wendet sich um, fragend?

 

“The Caravaggio Mystery” begins on a stormy night in Palermo in October 1969. The altarpiece of the Oratorio di San Lorenzo depicting Christ’s birth, painted by Caravaggio, has disappeared. Like the famous chiaroscuro technique in his painting, Carravaggio’s life was marked by light and shadow, and so this brazen art theft fits the artist’s dramatic biography.

Ayoub’s drama combines the story of the theft and the subsequent intensive and often dramatic investigation in the crime with scenes from Caravaggio’s life, his years on the run as a murderer fleeing from the papal ban, until shortly before his death in Sicily, when he paints one of his most moving pictures: the Natività.

Is it hanging in the living room of a secret art lover? Was it buried with a Mafia boss? According to the Sicilian Mafia expert Maria Teresa Galluzzo, who guides us through the play, only one thing is certain: the Mafia organized the theft. No one else could have carried it out so boldly and flawlessly.

[Photos of cast and production]

Websites zum Caravggio-Krimi

ORF:
Michelangelo Caravaggio – Der berühmteste Kunstraub der Welt
WDR:
Kulturfeature – Caravaggio

Was it harder for him
than for us?
I don’t know
the answer
He took it hard
Ben was a man

But
there was no man to show
what manhood is
his uncle
the landlord the butcher
was no guide
he didn’t even notice
the little guy

Iraqi Saga, Part three
IN WAR. Poetry by Susanne Ayoub.
In progress

IRAQI SAGA Begin + IRAQI SAGA Part two: see Archive

Translation Geoffrey C. Howes

At the inn she served
wine and beer
and roast pork
there was pork every day
roasted andbreaded and boiled
pork pork
pork

Ben can’t remember
he was too small
but even he knew this
since she repeated it every day
pork pork
pork

There was nothing else
be glad you have something to eat
her cousin said
be grateful
pork
pork
pork

Next lines  of Iraqi Saga
AT WAR. Poetry by Susanne Ayoub.
In progress

Translation Geoffrey Howes

IRAQI SAGA – We came from Mosul

My mother so young
alone with two children
my brother Ben still a baby
came to her cousin
who ran an inn
with her husband
in a small town

My mother and her mother
her father and her siblings
they were musicians
back then in Mosul
out of all of them only
we were

Still alive
My mother the singer
her daughter the drummer
and Benny, the little boy

First verses out of Iraqi Saga
IN WAR. Poetry by Susanne Ayoub.
In progress

Translation Geoffrey Howes

Thursday July 4, 2019
8:00 p.m.
CAFÉ PRÜCKEL
Stubenring 4
1010 Vienna

The house before her had a single story and three tall chimneys with smoke rising from them. She came closer until she could read the sign on the façade: Josef Lang Bakery. Entrance just around the corner. The finger pictured below this pointed the direction. Founded 1830.

The bakery door opened. A tall man came out, glanced quickly at her, and turned away again. She tried to speak to him, but she couldn’t get a word out. Another gust of wind caught her from behind, driving patches of fog ahead of it. The man disappeared in the billowing whiteness. She ran across the road and continued until she could make out his black coat up ahead of her. With his head bowed down, he hurried away. There were only a few steps between her and her house when her eyes lit on a bright red spot, right by the curb. She bent down and found the lost playing card. The queen of hearts was in the company of the jack of spades. She called out after him. This time her voice was clear, but it was drowned out by a passing car. Steel-spoked wheels jolted over the old cobblestones. She drew the key from her coat pocket and was going to unlock the front door when she bumped into rough stone. There was no door there. There was no house.  

As part of the Podium Summer Reading Series “Distant Mirrors—Literature and History,” Susanne Ayoub will read from her novella “Die Fassade” (The Façade). The text is a further stage of her contribution to the artistic dictionary of architecture Sprache der Straße (Language of the Street), edited by Mark Gilbert, Hans Hinterholzer and Wolfgang Niederwieser, and published by Sonderzahl in 2005.

War is

an iconoclast
a bookworm
a movie star in
Cinemascope

a carnivore
a bone stripper
liver kidney spleen and
lung
He snubs nothing

Iron Curtain of memory
ink stamped on hands
on desert floors in ocean sands
aboard ships with no harbor

IN WAR. Poetry by Susanne Ayoub.
In progress

Translation Geoffrey Howes

Susanne Ayoub’s new audio play marking 100 years of women’s suffrage

Premiere broadcast ORF Radio – in the series “HÖRBILDER” (Audio Images) Saturday, February 15, 2019 9:05 a.m.
(+ available for 7 days on https://oe1.orf.at)

with Gerti Drassl, Silvia Meisterle, Johanna Tomek, Karl Menrad, Wolfgang Rupert Muhr, Klaus Uhlich, and Aimie Rehburg, with guest appearances by Markus Hering und Floran Teichtmeister 
Directed by Susanne Ayoub; Sound by Robert Pavlecka; Edited by Elisabeth Stratka

One hundred and one years ago, Austrian women could vote for the first time. The path leading to this had been long and rough. Susanne Ayoub presents portraits of two of the steadfast champions of a woman’s right to vote in her audio piece “Bread and Roses”: the middle-class writer Rosa Mayreder fought for the education and social recognition of women; the Social Democratic politician Adelheid Popp represented the interests of working women, especially the demand that to this day has not been met: equal pay for equal work.

https://oe1.orf.at/artikel/654800

Translation Geoffrey Howes

Still gripping.
And unfortunately just as timely as when it first came out:

February 8, 2019, 8:15 p.m.
Repeated

HANNAH (1996)

with Elfi Eschke and August Zirner

Book by Susanne Ayoub

Directed by Reinhard Schwabenitzky

Hannah, an advertising executive, falls in love with her boss without knowing that she is putting her life in danger. It turns out his toy company produces more than just dolls.

DECEMBER 17, 2018 6:00 p.m.
Arbeiterkammer Wien -Bibliothek
Prinz Eugen-Straße 20-22
1040 Wien

On December 18 it will be exactly one hundred years since the constitutive National Assembly adopted electoral rules including the general right to vote for women. A milestone for equal rights for women that was achieved only by the resolute demands and struggles of many women that lasted many decades. In her play “Bread and Roses,” Susanne Ayoub portrays two important activists in the Austrian women’s movement who are representative of many others: the middle-class writer Rosa Mayreder, who fought for the education and social recognition of women, and the Social Democratic politician Adelheid Popp represented the interests of working women, especially the demand that to this day has not been met: equal pay for equal work. The play describes the very different fates of the two women as well as their social and political milieus. After the play, the significance of the right to vote will be examined in a panel discussion with the historian Johanna Gehmacher and the migration researcher Bernhard Perchinig. Johanna Gehmacher will illuminate the historical importance of the introduction of women’s right to vote. Bernhard Perchinig will take a look at those who have no right to vote in our times. Who is affected, and what does it mean for immigrants, particularly for women? Participants: Susanne Ayoub, born in 1956 in Baghdad, is an author and director. Johanna ​Gehmacher​, historian. Bernhard Perchinig, political scientist. Maren Rahmann, singer, performance artist, musician. Johanna Tomek, actor, longtime principal cast member and radio voice, lives in Burgenland and Vienna. SHE WILL STAND IN FOR DORIS MAYER, WHO PASSED AWAY ON DECEMBER 6.

WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 12, 7:30 PM

THEATER DELPHIN
Blumauergasse 24
1020 Wien

As part of Litera-Tour 2018, Susanne Ayoub will read excerpts from “Views,” dialogues created in association with Dieter Kleinpeter’s picture cycle “strand:identitäten” (beach:identities).

LITERA-TOUR 2018

by and with

Peter Ahorner, Susanne Ayoub, Manfred Chobot, Christine Huber, 

Katharina Köller, Erwin Leder, Christina Vivenz

Music: Cool Jazz

Organization: Erwin Leder

Translation Geoffrey C. Howes

Through Baghdad on a bus

above the people

the things

visitors

filming the misery

a delegation

well fed and well dressed

with a banner

with convictions

a little

courage

found out a lot

achieved nothing

and what they had to report

wasn’t believed

in the place they returned to

it didn’t fit in

people were in the mood

for war

for injustice

later everyone knew about it

* Millions of Barrels of Oil: Protest sign at a demonstration in the oil-rich, bitterly poor south of Iraq: “2,500,000 barrels per day; $70 per barrel; 2,500,000 × 70 = 0. Sorry, Pythagoras: we’re in Basra”

IN WAR. A poetic cycle by Susanne Ayoub. In progress.
Translation Geoffrey C. Howes

“Woman: Superhuman? Subhuman? Half divine or half diabolical? Prophetess? Witch and sorceress? Oppression to the point of slavery and glorification to the point of worship.” (Rosa Mayreder)

MONDAY NOVEMBER 12, 7 PM

THEATER L.E.O.
Ungargasse 18
1030 Wien

BREAD AND ROSES
The long march to women’s suffrage
and its unswerving advocates Rosa Mayreder and Adelheid Popp

Assembled from original quotations and staged by Susanne Ayoub

Readers Theater
with
Doris Mayer as Rosa Mayreder
Susanne Ayoub as Adelheid Popp
Music by Maren Rahmann

“The Holocaust in Film and New Media”
17–18 September 2018

17 September 4:15-5:15 p.m. 

Susanne Ayoub’s films “May in Mauthausen“ (2008) and “Once Upon a Time in Mauthausen” (2010/2012) will be shown and discussed.

Saturday March 3, 2018, 10 a.m.

THEATER LEO  Ungargasse 18 1030 Wien

On the occasion of International Women’s Day and 100 years of women’s right to vote, the Landstrasse Women’s Caucus of the Social Democratic Party is showing the feature film “Divine Order” (CH 2017), about the introduction of the right to vote for women in Switzerland in 1971.

Introductory Talk by

Susanne Ayoub + Barbara  Marx

Moderation Saya Ahmad

Women decide. Women get involved. Women organize. We women bring power to culture, economics, work, politics, and volunteer work. We want to make this more visible, and network powerful women from different spheres with each other.

Registration is required:
patricia.anderle@spoe.at or 01 713 41 58

Sparse grass

and an animal’s skeleton

My feet sunburnt

my skin chapped

sand on the road

wind blows it away

I rapidly walk

the downward path

always downhill

IN WAR. A poetic cycle by Susanne Ayoub. In progress.
Translation Geoffrey C. Howes

Susanne Ayoub was invited to the international Gerard Manley Hopkins Poetry Festival in Kildare, Ireland

21 – 28 July,  2017

Susanne Ayoub reads from the books of poetry SPRICHST DU MIT MIR / You talking to Me and LIEBE / Love. On Fulfilled, Unrequited, and Faded Love.

Nedra Bickham reads the translations into American English by Geoffrey Howes (in collaboration with Nedra Bickham)

YOUR ELEMENTS
Your eyes’ nightvelvet
moonskin mild
firetongue
breathless storm
resting
in the shade of your lashes

aus dem Amerikanischen Geoffrey Howes

Your Elements
The velvet of your eyes
As tender as the moon
tongue of fire
breathless storm
suspension
in the shadow of your lashes

aus dem Amerikanischen Nedra Bickham

 

A short poem from the book SPRICHST DU MIT MIR / You Talking to Me, but Geoffrey Howes’s and Nedra Bickham’s translations, both created in collaboration with the author, differ significantly.

The pictures by Rima Al-Juburi are reproduced in the book.

Link to the Festival >>

Link to Facebook >>

Thursday June 1, 2017
7 p.m.

Film screening 1 hr. 10 min.
with a discussion about the genesis of the radio feature about the film.

The author and filmmaker Susanne Ayoub presents her film Alma’s Little Photographer about the last contemporary witness who knew Alma Mahler-Werfel and her family personally.

Seven of Erich Rietenauer’s 90 years were so extraordinary that they determined the course of the rest of his life. As a small boy from impoverished circumstances at a Christmas party given by the politician Julius Tandler, he was suddenly face-to-face with a lady from high society. He never forgot her eyes of “steel blue,” her fragrance, or her embrace. Her name was Alma Mahler-Werfel.

ALMAS KLEINER FOTOGRAF / Alma’s Little Photographer – with Erich Rietenauer – Regina Liane Löw, camera and editing –Herbert Gnauer, sound – Susanne Ayoub, script and direction – A production of the Trio Art Team in cooperation with ORF (Austrian Broadcasting Corporation), 2016

Link to the event:
http://www.literaturhaus.at/index.php?id=205&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=2580&cHash=79075dc16484497facf33061c6035338

A Reading in the Laxenburg Public Library & Media Library
Wednesday March 22, 2017

The Laxenburg Public Library & Media Library invites you to a reading by the author Susanne Ayoub from her novel “The Jewel Garden”.
The event begins at 7:00 p.m. at Wiener Straße 2a.

A FAMILY DRAMA WITH the feel of a thriller

For Laura, Christmas Eve 1955 begins like so many others, with discord in the family home. But then an unexpected visitor shows up: Younis, a young man from Baghdad. And all at once everything changes. Before the year is out, Laura and Younis are a couple. Laura leaves Vienna, her parents, and her friends, and follows Younis to Baghdad.

In the Garden of the Gods in the epic of Gilgamesh, the trees, leaves, and fruits are made of precious stones. There are no thorns, only crystals; no darkness, only sunshine. For Laura, the path into her new life seems as fabulous as this vision. The world of the Near East with its colors, fragrances, and sounds immediately draws her under its spell. But beyond the magnificent mansions of Baghdad, where the affluent live in isolation, this idyll comes to an end. The assassination of the royal family topples the Iraqi monarchy. Alone at home with her small child, Laura experiences the outbreak of civil war. Nothing remains as it was. Younis too becomes a different person. He leads a second life that Laura is not allowed to know about. She realizes she has married a stranger.

Susanne Ayoub tells the story of a brave young woman’s attempt to gain access to a foreign culture, of differing worldviews and social norms. She describes the high and low points of a marriage and sheds light on the background of a politically dramatic time, from the assassination of the Hashemite royal family to the revolutions and civil wars that followed.

Translation Geoffrey C. Howes

At the ALTE SCHMIEDE on

Tuesday  February 7 7:00 p.m.

with poems by Susanne Ayoub

“An echo of styles and motifs, permutated, reduced, perpetuated. Addressing and expressing, each in its own form. Mirror images of assertiveness and fragility.”(Christine Huber on Sprichst du mit mir/ You Talking to Me)

“immersed in words and images in silence in the empty space amidst and between an encounter in the search for clues including the search for own’s own self in notes that report on a back then and a back there on being here and now on something that is and something that isn’t or is no longer or because that is altogether unattainable”
(Peter Paul Wiplinger Notes on a Book of Poetry by Susanne Ayoub)

http://www.alte-schmiede.at/programm

THURSDAY OKTOBER 13, 2016 7:30 P.M.
Alte Seifenfabrik Lauterach/
Old Soap Factory, Lauterach
12 EUR, register at 05574 680217

After the successful opening of the Conversation Culture Series with Dr. Hannes Androsch, Conversation Culture in Lauterbach will continue in October.

This time we will be welcoming Susanne Ayoub. She will read from her book “Der Edelsteingarten” (The Jewel Garden), show excerpts from the film, and then engage in conversation with Dr. Franz Josef Köb.

Susanne Ayoub is an Austrian-Iraqi author, journalist, and filmmaker. The story of “The Jewel Garden” is based on the life stories of Susanne Ayoub’s parents. The novel takes place in Baghdad and Vienna, and the protagonists move in the area of tension between two different cultures and religions.

Susanne Ayoub was born in Baghdad. At the age of six she fled with her mother to Vienna, went to a Catholic boarding school, and later, at her father’s wish, she converted to the Islamic faith. Today Susanne Ayoub lives in Vienna. She has been awarded many prizes for her works.

Become part of a great family story that confronts the question of how foreign, or how at home, one is in a particular country, and what it feels like to live between two cultures and religions. A topic that will probably never lose its relevance, especially in our times.

The Conversation Culture Series is a cooperation between the market town of Lauterbach and the “Ländlebuch” bookstore.

> Link to the event

MONDAY OCTOBER 3, 2016 7 P.M.

KALTENLEUTGEBEN LIBRARY
Haupstraße 72, 2391 Kaltenleutgeben        

In the Garden of the Gods in the epic of Gilgamesh, the trees, leaves, and fruits are made of precious stones. There are no thorns, only crystals; no darkness, only sunshine. For Laura, the path into her new life seems as fabulous as this vision. The world of the Near East with its colors, fragrances, and sounds immediately draws her under its spell. But beyond the magnificent mansions of Baghdad, where the affluent live in isolation, this idyll comes to an end. The assassination of the royal family topples the Iraqi monarchy. Alone at home with her small child, Laura experiences the outbreak of civil war. Nothing remains as it was. Younis too becomes a different person. He leads a second life that Laura is not allowed to know about. She realizes she has married a stranger.

A ”family drama with the feel of a thriller.”

”Killing alone is not enough.”
(Peter Pisa in “Kurier“)

www.oesterreichliest.at >

WEDNESDAY SEPT. 28., 7 P.M.

A reading from “The Jewel Garden”

and the film
“Baghdad Fragments”

BAGHDAD FRAGMENTS
Film essay (42 min.), UA Diagonale 2007

BAGHDAD FRAGMENTS
Film essay (42 min.), UA Diagonale 2007

Shortly before the war breaks out, the author Susanne Ayoub travels to Baghdad to find her family. It is her first encounter with the country of her birth since she left Iraq as a six-year-old with her mother.

Susanne Ayoub tells about five days of a delegation trip and forty years of a family; about love, separation, and death. The film project “Born in Baghdad,” which she started in 2002, goes unfinished. The film footage, taken without permission to film and amid great difficulties, remained a fragment.

The Iraq she visited in 2002 has now disappeared just like the land of her childhood. Four years later, a film emerged from the project that engages the topic of the fragmentariness, the impossibility of her endeavor.

THE JEWEL GARDEN

“Life consists of two parts. The past – a dream. The future – a wish.”

On Christmas Eve in 1955, the paths of Laura and Younis cross. From the bleak Vienna of the postwar era, Laura follows Younis to his home, Baghdad. The world of the Middle East, with its colors, fragrances and sounds, casts its spell over her. But what started out like a fairy tale soon develops into a nearly hopeless drama … Susanne Ayoub’s novel “The Jewel Garden” (Langen Müller 2016) was inspired by her parents’ moving life story and love story, which are interwoven with the political events in the Iraq of the 1960s.

veranstaltungen.niederösterreich.at >

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 17,  starting at 2 p.m.

FREITZENSCHLAG. “recreate“ – As part of this event series, which Johannes Wohlgenannt Zincke brought to life 16 years ago, you are invited this year to a very special event, a court festival in Freitzenschlag. Fenced-in, yet open, an exemplary integrative social event.

In cooperation with the Welcome Fellow Human! Association in Gross Gerungs-Langschlag, a court festival will take place on September 17. The motto “The Tigris and Euphrates meet Stallreitern” can be easily explained: “Stallreitern is the name of the field on which the estate in Freitzenschlag stands. The Tigris and Euphrates are at the center of the war zone from which most of the headlines and refugees in the past year have come,” according to the initiator Johannes Wohlgenannt Zincke.

The idea was to organize an event where, if possible, all of those seeking asylum and who are being taken care of here can get involved. “A goal toward which everyone is working, a goal that substantially unites us,” as Wohlgenannt Zincke describes it. “In equal part, however, the Austrians who live here are also active, as organizers, artists, staff, or audience. And it is also important to me to demonstrate a line along which social events in Austria can take place. Integrating, incorporating people into the proverbial whole. In view of our experience, these are details that cannot be expressed clearly enough.”

The festival begins at 2 p.m. with a reception at the specially constructed Europa Fence, which does make access a bit difficult, but is still open. The fence will be transformed into a gallery: pictures will be shown that have been created collectively by asylum seekers from the Gross Gerungs area as well as artists from the region. After that, musical entertainment until late in the evening is on the schedule: the Children’s Choir, music of the Waldviertel paired with classical music and pop music from the Middle East (DJ Omid) and Central Asia. Food and drink from all these regions will be available. Not least, a film by Susanne Ayoub, “Baghdad Fragment,” will be shown.

Johannes Wohlgenannt Zincke on the subject of refugees and asylum seekers: “What I can do is to get involved with the people who have come to Austria, no matter how they got here. Everyone should have a chance. And perhaps that is my strongest motivation. To advocate for adhering to fundamental rights, regardless of origin and situation, and for preserving the dignity of every human being.”

www.recreate.at

www.willkommenmenschgerungslangschlag.at

THURSDAY SEPT. 22, 2016 at 7:30 p.m.

Book Launch at the
KUPPITSCH BOOKSTORE
Schottengasse 4, 1010 Wien

SPRICHST DU MIT MIR / YOU TALKING TO ME
On Origins • On Love • On Death

Poems by Susanne Ayoub
with drawings by Rima Al-Juburi

“You Talking to Me” deals with origins, the idea of home and homeland, with identity, following clues, and memory.

In this book of poetry, the versatile author, who works for various media, publishes new poetry. The poems are illustrated by the painter Rima Al-Juburi, with whom a shared history connects Ayoub: both of them were born in Muslim and Christian family constellations, and both now live in Vienna.

1001 FLUGVERBOT

Der Himmel über Baghdad

gehört den Sternen

den Vögeln

dem Wind

Flugzeugen nicht

der Himmel über Baghdad

ist ein Gedicht

1001 FLIGHT BANS

The sky above Baghdad

belongs to the stars,

the birds,

the wind.

Not to airplanes.

The sky above Baghdad

is a poem.

Translated by Geoffrey C. Howes

In her pictures and painted porcelain vessels, Rima Al-Juburi captures ancient Mesopotamian motifs. Some of them are reproduced in this book.

www.kuppitsch.at