Anā ummak yā Shākir

…playwrights was Yūsuf al-ʿĀnī, whose Anā ummak yā Shākir (1955; “Shākir, I’m Your Mother”) graphically portrays the misery of the Iraqi people in the period before the downfall of the monarchy in the revolution of 1958. Elsewhere in the Arabian Gulf, theatre remained, where it existed at all, a very…