It’s 2040, and Palestine has been divided into a number of small states. Two IT department employees in the Gaza municipality manage to hack the International Olympic Committee (IOC) system and submit a prank application to host the 2048 Olympics.
To their utter surprise, they win and Gaza becomes the host of the world games.
That’s the premise of Ahmed Masoud’s satirical futuristic drama, Application 39, which imagines a world beyond the current catastrophe and genocide.
One in which the Olympics brings peace and hope to Palestine 100 years after the Nakba.
Performing at the PalArt festival later this month in London, the play is an adaptation of a short story Masoud wrote for German radio in 2018, which won rave reviews when it was first broadcast.
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Talking to Middle East Eye from his office at the University of the Arts London, Masoud, in a sharp pale blue suit, explained his reasons for reviving the story today.
“I thought the best thing to do was to adapt this short story I wrote in 2018 about Gaza in 2048, because right now what we want is to imagine the future [of Gaza], especially with all this talk from Trump about turning Gaza into the Riviera, into real estate.
“Actually I want our vision in terms of how Gaza will look, 20 years on from this genocide.”
From genocide in fiction to reality
Reflecting on his 2018 short story, Masoud was surprised to discover the prophecy it contained of what has come to pass since October 2023.
“In that short story in 2018 I mention a genocide that takes place in 2025…I was shocked.
“First of all, I was quite prophetic with it, but secondly, of course, we knew this was going to come.
‘In that short story in 2018 I mention a genocide that takes place in 2025…I was shocked. I was quite prophetic with it but, of course, we knew this was going to come’
– Ahmed Masoud
“We knew this was going to happen because Gaza has been under siege for such a long time, we knew it was going to explode at some point.”
He adds, however, that the genocide has surpassed his worst possible visions.
“I didn’t think it would be this bad, with all this brutality and inhumanity taking place, with over 62 thousand people killed, with starvation…”
In the story he imagines Gaza divided into different states, including Rafah in the south, Gaza City, and Khan Younis. Uncannily the story echoes what occurred after Israel began its war on the territory. “It’s exactly what’s happening now,” Masoud says.
Despite the play’s sci-fi dystopian elements – reflecting Gaza’s current dystopian reality – and Masoud’s signature dark comedy, it’s not all doom.
“There’s a lot of hopeful messages in the end…It’s about these two IT guys who submit an application to the IOC as a joke, and the IOC decide, actually, the best way to bring peace is to allow this to happen.”
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“Having rewritten it now and adapted it for stage, when I wrote it in 2018, the genocide I talked about in 2025 was a fantasy.”
Now, he has incorporated the actual genocide, using stories from his sister and brother in Jabalia, based on voice notes and WhatsApp messages from them, including the six-week siege of Jabalia in late 2024.
“I literally had to transcribe it, it was very difficult to relive that painful memory… when they went into Kamal Adwan hospital and they arrested Dr Hussam Abu Safiya.”
The hospital chief, memorialised in a famous photograph as he walks defiantly through rubble towards an Israeli tank, remains in detention in Israel.
“Dr Abu Safiya features a lot in the play,” says Masoud.
“The reason why he does is because I feel that he’s going to be forgotten at some point; as someone who dedicated his life, his career and everything, and [still] stuck to his honourable profession, and stayed with his patients, he should be honoured somehow.”
‘It could have all been so different’
After his last trip to Gaza in May 2023, Masoud had decided to open a theatre in Gaza with his lifelong friend, Refaat Alareer, the renowned Gaza-based poet and literature professor.
Masoud’s brother Khalid told Ahmed he had found a building for the theatre and Ahmed was set to go to Gaza in early October.
He was about to buy his ticket on the morning of 7 October, he recalls, when news of the Hamas-led breakout from Gaza broke.
‘At the moment my family in Gaza are starving, literally; there is no food to eat, or buy, and I can’t really change that’
– Ahmed Masoud
Within a few months both Alareer and his brother would be killed in Israeli attacks.
The dream of a new theatre in Gaza was gone, along with so much destroyed by the war.
“It could have all been so different,” says Masoud, almost wistfully.
“I don’t think I’ve really slept for the last year and a half properly,” he adds.
“I’m still holding on to some hope that it will all end somehow, but it doesn’t seem like it.
“At the moment my family in Gaza are starving, literally; there is no food to eat, or buy, and I can’t really change that.
“I can’t send them money, I can’t speak to them to find out how they are. It’s just constant fear.”
Both Masoud and Alareer grew up in the Jabalia refugee camp. Both studied English literature in Gaza.
Two years younger than Alareer, Masoud eventually moved to the UK to complete a PhD on Muslim perspectives in English literature.
The camp he grew up in has suffered repeated atrocities throughout Israel’s genocidal war and now lies in ruins.
At the time of writing, Israel had renewed its assault on Masoud’s former home, killing hundreds and warning its residents to flee south.
“It’s killing me slowly to be honest with you, every single day a piece of me is falling apart.”
Satire and comedy
In the face of all this, the writer’s weapons are satire and comedy to confound audiences’ expectations of what it is to be Palestinian.
“Black comedy is the best medium for trying to get to the heart of people, to break through the barriers and the stereotypes, because everybody wants to laugh, and everybody understands humour.
“It allows me as a writer to highlight our humanity as Palestinians, more than any other medium.”
He adds that humour is something Palestinians live by, especially in a time of genocide, as a way to cope with what’s happening.
Masoud is prolific. Back in 2005, to fund his PhD, he started the Al Zaytouna Dance Theatre, which became a major success, introducing the Palestinian folk dance to audiences across the UK and Europe.
One of its performances was Unto the Breach, a dance adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry V set in Palestine.
He has written award-winning novels, short stories, and numerous plays, such as the widely produced The Shroud Maker of Gaza, inspired by a real 80-year-old Palestinian shroud maker.
The play remains popular, with new productions in Italy and Slovenia, despite numerous cancellations by venues due to spurious complaints over its Palestinian themes.
Work, alongside swimming in London’s Serpentine, is how Masoud deals with the burden of loss and fear from seeing family members killed and homeland destroyed for more than 18 months.
A terrible loss
Losing his brother Khalid in January 2024 was the worst of all moments, he says, “especially the circumstances in which he was killed”.
“He was shot by a drone, left bleeding on the street for about three days. Nobody was able to pick him up.
“When they finally found him on the third day he was still alive. He lost his life as they were trying to take him to hospital, but there was no hospital.”
‘My mum was in a tent in Khan Younis [in the south of Gaza] – she didn’t know her own son was killed for about two months’
– Ahmed Masoud
“Why?” he asks. “He was just out getting bread for this family when he was shot. There was no reason. It’s been very painful for all of us.
“My mum was in a tent in Khan Younis [in the south of Gaza] – she didn’t know her own son was killed for about two months.
“She didn’t hear the news because there is no connection between the south and the north [Khalid was in Jabalia] at all.”
It left a big toll on Masoud. “We were very close – he was my older brother, two years older than me. …He was an amazing friend, brother and father to his kids.
“I have lost a lot of family members – cousins, first cousins, second cousins, in total about 23 – and friends and neighbours, people I knew directly.”
To compound this loss, after we spoke, Masoud found out that Khalid’s wife Ibtisam and son Mahmoud were killed in the latest Israeli assault on Jabalia.
The writer paid tribute to them: “My sister in law Ibtisam was volunteering with a local organisation to teach kids maths, her son was in high school too and was going to be at the lesson.”
No way out
Ahmed’s sister and mother are now in Cairo, in a kind of limbo, like many Palestinians who were able to leave before the Rafah crossing was seized by Israel, and this January’s brief truce.
His sister’s children did not accompany them and are still in Gaza.
Masoud has been part of efforts to press the UK government to open a route similar to that offered to thousands of Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion.
‘I’d never written poetry before; the first poem I wrote was for my brother when he was killed’
– Ahmed Masoud
Until now the government has refused to act on the campaign, leaving most of those in the UK unable to help family members facing starvation and deadly bombing in Gaza.
“There is no family reunion scheme or anything, so you can only apply for a visitor visa, you don’t have to do biometric verification [as previously], but most applications from Gaza get rejected for a visitor visa, because they don’t allow it.”
In response to a query to the UK Home Office from Middle East Eye, a government spokesperson said: “As of January, the UK government has helped 505 people leave Gaza since October 2023, including British nationals and their immediate family members and Palestinian nationals who qualified under our extended eligibility criteria.”
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office says it has helped just 21 people, mostly children, leave Gaza since October.
The genocide, and particularly his brother’s death, has made Masoud a poet, he explains.
“I’d never written poetry before; the first poem I wrote was for my brother when he was killed.”
Actress Maxine Peake recorded a video of the poem, which went viral. After that more poems came.
“It’s been quite therapeutic. It’s been a way of connecting and giving my message to people out there.”
Masoud recently wrote a short play called The Florist of Rafah, after seeing a man on the news in a refugee camp selling flowers in Gaza.
“I just wanted to write a story because it is so beautiful to see someone in the middle of a genocide selling flowers, which is like the insistence of the beauty of life.”
He has also republished his first novel Vanished: The Mysterious Disappearance of Mustafa Ouda through Just World Books in the US.
However, he cancelled a planned book promotion tour due to the risks of being harassed or deported on arrival under President Trump’s anti-Palestinian crackdown.
Masoud was also due to speak at the UN in New York to give a testimony on the Israeli genocide in front of the UN Committee on Palestinian Rights.
“Unfortunately I had to say I don’t want to go to the US at the moment because I’m not sure about my own safety.” He spoke via video instead.
PalArt Festival
In 2021, Masoud launched the PalArt Collective in response to the war in Gaza that May, in which hundreds were killed after the Israeli attack on al-Aqsa Mosque.
“I felt that the problem here [in the UK] is that we are sort of dehumanised as Palestinians, we need our voices – our artistic voices to be out in the public as much as possible.”
Besides a number of spoken word events, PalArt aims to bring a Palestine-based theatre company each year to the UK.
‘As artists, if you don’t speak up about the genocide, then what are you there for, what is the point of your art generally?’
– Ahmed Masoud
This year will see a production from Jenin Freedom Theatre called Return to Palestine, alongside Sami Abu Wardeh’s comedy show Peace de Resistance, as well as Masoud’s satire, Application 39.
The PalArt Festival is part of Shubbak, a major Arab arts festival taking place in London from 23 May to 15 June, featuring drama, music, spoken word, fashion shows and much more.
In the face of continued attempts to shut down or cancel Palestinian arts in the UK and the West in general, including his hit German radio production of Application 39 (he was told last year that the Paris Olympics was “not the right time” to broadcast the story), Masoud is producing more than ever.
With mainstream arts organisations staying quiet or “just ticking the box”, he says, they are part of the problem.
“As artists, if you don’t speak up about the genocide, then what are you there for, what is the point of your art generally?”
As for his new play’s speculative premise, Masoud says it’s about possible futures beyond the horrors of now and the nearly eight decades of Israeli occupation.
“That’s what I’m trying to get at [with this play] is where is this conflict and the killing and this genocide going to end?”
Improbably, perhaps, Masoud still has hope of a better future.
“It’s still a possibility that, despite what is happening right now, despite the bloodshed, and despite everything, the people on both sides can still have that power to change something, and to create a better future.
“This is the war that’s going to end all wars. We don’t want to go through this any more.”
Application 39 by Ahmed Masoud is performing at Theatro Technis, London, between 26 May and 2 June, as part of the Shubbak Festival.
