Tarabeza

Tarabeza means “table” in Egyptian Arabic and is, as the artist describes it herself, “the story of how I ended up sitting alone at the dinner table”. We see a family dinner in the Frega household with the background noise of old black and white Egyptian movies. We see flashbacks and documentary images alternating with ones that seem like a reverie to the audience. Frega tells the audience about a house that the parents bought to maintain the closeness within the family. This house, a piece of land in the middle of nowhere, a family building where parents, siblings, future husbands, and future children would be living all together on day. But then, in 2011, the revolution happened. There was uncertainty and instability all around. Everything stood still at that time, and so did the building. Later, stability and some normality came back to daily life, but somehow the magic of that building was gone. We see the artist at a table in this building, still a construction site, trying to raise her voice, and fall silent. The family fell apart, ended up living in three different countries on three different continents. So this work also shows the difficulties that political influences have on a family’s life and their dream of a common future and the struggles of a young singer finding a voice.