A History of Water in the Middle East

Can you hear it,
the hiss of water wiggling
its way out into the world
uncaptured, wasted, wanton?

British-Egyptian Sabrina Mahfouz grew up with ambitions of being a spy. She has two passports, speaks two languages and has a cultural understanding of two very different countries. But when it came to applying for MI6, it turned out she wasn't quite British enough.

So now she's on her own intelligence mission - to explore who really holds the power in and over the Middle East. In a world long obsessed with access to oil, will water soon become the natural resource that dictates control, or has it been all along?

A History of Water in the Middle East journeys across twelve different countries using theatre, poetry and music to share stories of women across the region. From the British Imperialist ownership of natural resources, to the environmental urgency of the present, water has shaped lives, policies and fortunes - and it will shape all of our futures.

This edition published to coincide with the premiere at the Royal Court in October 2019.


About the Author

Sabrina Mahfouz has recently been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and is the recipient of the 2018 King's Alumni Arts & Culture Award. She has won a Sky Arts Academy Award for Poetry, a Westminster Prize for New Playwrights and a Fringe First Award for her play Chef. Her play With a Little Bit of Luck won the 2019 Best Drama Production at the BBC Radio & Music Awards. She also writes for children and her play Zeraffa Giraffa won a 2018 Off West End Award.

Sabrina is the editor of The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women Write, a 2017 Guardian Book of the Year and the forthcoming Smashing It: Working Class Artists on Life, Art and Making It Happen. She's an essay contributor to the multi-award-winning The Good Immigrant and is currently writing a biopic of the rapper and producer Wiley, for Pulse Films.