This Is Worldtown contributor Sara Mojtehedzadeh reviews Amir Nizar Zuabi ’s play “I am Yusuf and This Is My Brother,” a play set in the West Bank during The Nakba and told  distinctly from Palestinian eyes.

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I am Yusuf and this is my brother.

Yusuf conjures up vivid (dare I say technicolour?) imagery for those familiar with his Koranic/Biblical persona.

Beyond his fashion accessories immortalized in a certain musical theatre, Yusuf - or Joseph, as he is known in Judeo-Christian traditions - is a name associated with survival and redemption. He is the boy sabotaged, left for dead, by jealous brothers. He is the man who became one of the most powerful figures in Pharonic Egypt.

For the characters inhabiting Amir Nizar Zuabi’s ‘I am Yusuf and This Is My Brother’, survival is paramount; but there is no redemption to be found in this haunting play.

‘I am Yusuf’ chronicles the partition of Palestine and the birth of Israel through the eyes of Yusuf, the ‘village idiot’. His mental disability renders his narration of a brutally complex conflict childlike yet canny, enchanting but tragic. But it also renders him burden to his brother Ali, set on marrying a girl whose father disapproves of Ali’s lowly connections to a simpleton.

The theme of betrayal in ‘I am Yusuf’ thus unfolds on several levels: brotherly love twisted by desire and the displacement of war, British ‘protection’ of the Palestinian mandate crumbling under international pressure and internal chaos.

The play skips and reverses through time, space, illusion, and reality to portray a kind of national descent into madness born of forced migration and exile. As rivalries - political and otherwise - intensify, it often seems that Yusuf is the sanest and most lucid character. Neither he or those around him find redemption or justice by the close of the play but Yusuf’s humour and humanity are consistently delightful, even as tragedy erupts.

Though ‘I am Yusuf’ is committed to telling a Palestinian story from a Palestinian perspective, it is never clumsy or insensitive. There are no accused or defendants, only humans struggling to untangle trauma. Determination to return and desire for revenge mingle with a philosophic resignation to hardship that seems almost inherent to a region seeped in bloodshed.

It is this perspective - commitment to a people, to a story, softened by a deep humanity - that is so often missing in either side of the Israel-Palestine debate. ‘I am Yusuf’ is an important contribution to the canon of work that demolishes the conflict’s tired black - and- white narrative; it is a small step toward redemption in a time when that narrative threatens to become entrenched.

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I AM YUSUF AND THIS IS MY BROTHER by Amir Nizar Zuabi is on until February 6th at London’s Young Vic Theatre. Tickets are available through their website.