Little Amal, a 9-year-old Syrian refugee puppet, has been walking across Europe to raise visibility and empathy for the plight of refugees. Theater director Amir Nizar Zuabi spoke with TED Radio Hour.

Transcript

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Theater director Amir Nizar Zuabi was born in east Jerusalem to a Jewish mother and Palestinian father. After the height of the Syrian refugee crisis in 2015, he wanted to create a new model of theater, one in the streets rather than on a stage. Our friends at TED Radio Hour bring us the story. Here's NPR's Manoush Zomorodi.

MANOUSH ZOMORODI, BYLINE: Today we're going to begin with a little girl on a long journey - Amal.

AMIR NIZAR ZUABI: She's called Amal, which in Arabic means hope. She's very curious. She's a bit mischievous. She's got very vivid, expressive eyes.

ZOMORODI: This is Amir Nizar Zuabi.

ZUABI: She left Syria. She's from (non-English language spoken) from the area of Aleppo. She left her house in one of the rounds of the violence, then was in the refugee camp still around the border when she lost her family in the mayhem of war and conflicts, like many children do. I think the first thing that you see when you look at Amal is something very sad, but at the same time, very strong.

ZOMORODI: But Amal isn't just any child.

ZUABI: Yeah. This 9-year-old Syrian girl is actually a 3 1/2-meter puppet.

ZOMORODI: She's 3 1/2 meters or 11 feet tall.

ZUABI: She's very, very big, which is part of the idea. You know, she's very visible because a lot of these kids are invisible. So in a way, she's lucky. You can't ignore her.

ZOMORODI: And for the past several months, Amal's been walking the path that many Syrian refugees travel each year.

ZUABI: We walked her through Turkey, then through Greece, then through Italy.

ZOMORODI: Meeting people along the way.

ZUABI: Then into France. And now we're in Switzerland. And we'll continue to Germany, Belgium, back into France and then across the English Channel and from Dover to Manchester.

ZOMORODI: As she walks, a whole team of puppeteers manipulate her expressions and gestures - one on stilts, two at her sides, and a few all around - in order to bring Amal to life.

ZUABI: What is very, very beautiful is she's furniture. But there's a moment where she stands up and she takes a breath or our puppeteers together take a breath. And she's alive. Suddenly, she's a living creature with thoughts, with complexities, with wants, with fears. And it never ceases to amaze me that this is a moment, and suddenly life is created.

ZOMORODI: Amir Nizar and his team spent years getting Amal ready for The Walk. It's a project happening over the course of five months, all in an effort to deliver a very special message from Amal.

ZUABI: It's a continuous journey of a 9-year-old-girl. And she's on this quest to maybe find somebody she knows, but she really, really loves the sensation of sun on her skin. She doesn't really like when it becomes cold and dark. And she loves jumping in puddles, which is something we discovered a couple of days ago when it started raining. She's very, very brave. And she is a representation of many others like her.

ZOMORODI: She sounds very real to you the way you talk about her.

ZUABI: She is. And yeah, I talk about her as if she's a real child because we're walking in the name of tens of thousands of children. And for me to honor this experience, I need to think of her as a singular, complicated human being. And I need to treat her that way in order for her journey to mean anything. I don't want anybody to feel sad for refugees. I want people to see themselves when they see a refugee. And the minute you treat a refugee like this, you go, she is me. They are us.

So you need to think about, how would you like to be treated? What are your fears? They're not so different. They're the same. You know, we're very, very similar. So I hope the message is delivered. I hope our message is to the hearts. I hope the hearts are open and are willing to accept. But to see that people are moved by a small gesture she does in the middle of the street, and suddenly you look around and people are wiping their tears, and that's very, very beautiful to see.

ZOMORODI: I had this moment when I was watching you live. You were being beamed in from a Turkish town into the TED conference. And at first, I have to admit that I was a little skeptical. I'm not big on puppets. But when I saw her, you were standing on a balcony. And then suddenly, she appeared behind you. And you could hear the squeals and laughter of the children gathering around her knees just mesmerized by her. And then she stopped. And she had this long, dark hair and these big, black eyelashes. And she turned to the camera, and she blinked at us. And then she smiled. And I just felt goosebumps. It was electricity. There was a message conveyed in her eyes that she's not a piece of furniture.

ZUABI: She is a living creature. She's unbelievably effective and beautiful. And it's hard to ignore her. And that was intentional. She needs to make you feel something profound. Artistically, for me, there's something about seeing somebody you don't know and being curious about him is the first step towards empathy and caring. Because most of the time, we don't - most of the time, we don't want to see them. So actually, I welcome the fact that people go, who is she? What's her story? And the minute you give them a beginning of a thread, they start pulling at the thread and telling themselves the story, and it becomes very effective.

ZOMORODI: So Amal started her journey in July. She's finishing this week in the U.K. I assume it's going to be very hard to say goodbye to her. But what is it that you hope she delivered? Is your hope that there's policy changes? What are the things she thinks she will have left behind?

ZUABI: I don't know about policy. I'm not a politician. I hope that we change enough people, we touch enough people that they become a mass that is unignored. Will this change the world, will it better it? I don't know. I'm not that vain. Is it still our responsibility to try? Definitely. I hope that for a small child in Turin, she will be an inspiration to think big and dream even bigger. I hope for our puppet Amal that she goes and gets a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering. But maybe the word I'm using most right now is I hope and I hope and I hope. I hope she gives hope to many people.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

KELLY: That is Amir Nizar Zuabi. He is artistic director of the moving theatrical festival The Walk, which, after traveling 5,000 miles from the Syrian-Turkey border to the U.K., it comes to an end tomorrow. You can listen to the full segment and to Amir Nizar's TED Talk at ted.npr.org. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

Tags: theater  Syrian refugees