I arrived in Germany in 2015. Behind me lay a revolution, the disappearance of friends, life under constant surveillance, and saying goodbye to my mother. Ahead of me was a country that had just heard—and was debating—the phrase “Wir schaffen das” (“We can do this”). At the time, I had no idea how profoundly these words would accompany and challenge my life.

Migration is not a transitional phase that one simply completes. It is a permanent state of in-betweenness: between here and there, between loss and hope, between the language in which one dreams and the language in which one explains oneself. It forces people to reinvent themselves without ever fully letting go of what came before.

Today, ten years later, much has changed. Angela Merkel’s phrase has become history, and in December 2024 the Assad regime fell. A moment I could not have imagined for many years. Two political turning points inseparably intertwined with my biography: the beginning of a new life in exile and the end of a dictatorship that shaped and destroyed my homeland.

Yet Syria’s story is far from over. The country stands at a political crossroads, suspended between the possibility of renewal and the danger of further escalation.

My Personal Ten Years: Wir schaffen das! is my attempt to tell the story of this decade as a mosaic of personal memories, documentary fragments, and political analysis. It is a journey through language, body, and sound, performed in Arabic, German, and English.

The performance asks: How does exile transform one’s identity, and how does a new society shape one’s sense of self? What traces does arrival leave in a country that simultaneously welcomes newcomers and erects new boundaries?

I am not telling only my own story. The personal is political. My ten years are part of a collective memory made up of countless individual biographies. Compared to many other Syrians, my own experience has been relatively fortunate—almost privileged—and yet it has come at a high cost. This reality reveals that even the “successful” refugee stories are stories of loss, embedded within political systems that determine questions of life, safety, and participation.

Stories like mine are not footnotes; they are part of contemporary Germany. Especially now, as right-wing voices grow louder and political debates increasingly revolve around deportation, exclusion, and border fortification, these voices must continue to be heard.

This performance seeks to create spaces in which we can listen to one another. Spaces in which remembering becomes a shared political act. It is a plea for visibility, for recognizing the complexity of migration, and for the courage to continue telling history across linguistic, cultural, and geographical borders.

My Personal Ten Years: Wir schaffen das! is both poetic and political. A personal document interwoven with history. It tells of leaving and staying, of rupture and new beginnings, of memory, and of how one does not merely survive in exile, but builds a new life.

Team

Text, Direction, Performance: Rania Mleihi
Music: Daniela La Luz
Video: Ruben Müller
Producer: Mara Martínez
Outside Eyes: Anne Kapsner, Anne Habermehl, Ruben Müller

A production by Rania Mleihi, co-produced with the State Theater Nuremberg Foundation, Munich Kammerspiele, and Theater Koblenz. Kindly supported by the Department of Arts and Culture of the City of Munich.