Vromia (Filth)

“My name is Sand. I am thirty years old. Sand means sad in English. I am not sad.”

With this phrase, Sand begins to tell his story.

Sand was born and raised in Iraq. Now he is just another immigrant in Germany. He is in the place he dreamed of and loved through his readings, yet he is alone and afraid.

He wishes he could be like everyone else. He wishes he could talk to them. To be able to ride the subway. To belong somewhere.

But he is a stranger.

He lives locked in his room.

“This is my chair. I sit here. I love my chair… Even though it doesn’t belong to me, this chair is my homeland.”

In this room, which is his whole world, Sand yearns and dreams. He talks about life and the people in it, struggling to hold on to everything he loves, making self-deprecating jokes, and teetering between loneliness and hope with heartbreaking humor and disarming honesty.

Sand is the Other, the different one who is to blame for everything. The one we pass by every day without seeing him, without ever truly knowing him. Sand is among us. Or maybe within us?

“Dirty” was first performed in 1997 by the New World Theater, directed by Vangelis Theodoropoulos, and starring Konstantinos Markoulakis.

“… I once heard a phrase in Arabic, but I know that someone thought of it in German. Now I will say this phrase.

About those things you can’t talk about, it’s better to remain silent.

Now I know that this phrase is wrong.

About those things you can’t talk about, you must speak!”