Not Really Strangers
Discover just how connected the refugee experience is to our everyday lives, and to the social issues that matter to us most. Join host Suzanne Ehlers, Executive Director and CEO of USA for UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, as she and her eclectic guests share personal stories and frontline insights. We’re more connected than we may think.
Not Really Strangers
Dance or Die: Ahmad Joudeh on Statelessness, Belonging, and the Body as Home
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In this episode of Not Really Strangers, host Suzanne Ehlers sits down with internationally acclaimed ballet dancer, choreographer, author, and humanitarian Ahmad Joudeh. Born stateless in 1990 in Yarmouk, a Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus, Ahmad carries a story that is both extraordinary and deeply representative of the millions of people around the world who exist without nationality, without a passport, and without a country that claims them as its own. When Syria's civil war broke out, Ahmad faced death threats from extremists simply for dancing; he responded by performing in the ruins of Palmyra's Roman amphitheater and having "Dance or Die" tattooed on the back of his neck.
The conversation moves from the body as a home that carries East and West, grief and resistance, within a single dance to what it felt like to finally hold a Dutch passport and "see life in colors." Ahmad also reflects on his upcoming role as Young Gilgamesh in a new opera as a meditation on power, love, and the kind of legacy that outlasts any government. Lastly, when asked what he wants on the dinner table, his answer is immediate: "I don't care what is on there. I care who is in there." This is an episode about the distance — real and invented — between those we call strangers.
Topics Discussed:
- What statelessness actually means, how it differs from being a refugee, and navigating borders without a passport
- The generational cycle of Palestinian statelessness in Syria, from the Arab-Israeli war to the present day,
- The role documentary filmmaker Roozbeh Kaboly played in bringing Ahmad's story to the world and how the Dutch National Ballet changed the course of his life
- How Ahmad merges classical ballet with Sufi dervish tradition in his dance, and what it means to carry culture, ancestry, and resistance in physical movement
- What the Dutch passport represented: belonging as a privilege, not just a right, and what it feels like to "see life in colors"
- Why Ahmad continues to post on social media: reaching young people in the Middle East who deserve to see that freedom is possible
- The myth Ahmad most wants to bust about displacement, identity, and what it actually means to be a stranger
Resources:
Hi, I'm Suzanne Ahlers, and this is Not Really Strangers, the podcast where we explore just how connected the refugee experience is to our everyday lives and to the social issues that matter most to us. Thanks for joining us for another conversation with a brand new guest, here to share the story of how they came to realize that their story and the refugee story were intertwined. By the end of this episode, you'll see that in this global community, the distance between us is often much shorter than we think. Let's dive in. I am so happy to be here with you today. Thank you, Ahmed, for joining this conversation.
SPEAKER_00Of course. Thank you very much for having me.
SPEAKER_03Wonderful. I'm gonna start with where are you dialing in from? Where where are our listeners hearing you as you record this?
SPEAKER_00Uh now I am in San Diego.
SPEAKER_03What's the weather like in San Diego?
SPEAKER_00It's amazing. It's warm, the sun is shining. I can't wait to just like lay you down in the sun. I had a really crazy week. I just premiered my movie The Dancer. It's a documentary about my life in Amsterdam. So I just arrived last night after a full-hearted week. I want to call it like this. Felt happy, felt loved, felt proud, so so happy, so happy about my life now.
SPEAKER_03Well, based on those words, I I imagine I know the answer to this, but just tell us a little bit. What was it like to premiere? What was it like to watch parts of your life story unfold on the big screen? Like just tell us a little bit of that emotion.
SPEAKER_00It was a big roller coaster, and it's it was also empowering for myself, even not only for the audience. Because every time I watch my life in front of my eyes, I feel like, wow, I came long way. Or, you know, I was born as a stateless refugee in a refugee camp for stateless refugees in Damascus, Syria. And um, I grew up there in that camp until up to the point until this this the war started. And then that camp was fully destroyed, and we had to leave. Um and of course I'm a ballet dancer, so living in a camp as a male ballet dancer was a bit challenging. And when the war started in Syria, all these extremists came to the country and they started hunting artists, and my name was the dancer that they want. It's the name of the movie now, The Dancer.
SPEAKER_01The Dancer.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, I received a lot of threats, like they wanted to cut my head and things like that. And um it was I I talk about it in a very casual way nowadays, like after I did my therapy for PTSD and for all the things I worked on myself.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um and I had a tattoo on my neck called Dance or Die as a response for these threats. And of course, I danced in places like my bombed home, or like on the theater, the Roman theater in Palmira, where these people used to execute people on that theater. And my response with them was this theater is for dances, not for killing people. So I've been as I've been active in in arts rights and human rights and refugee rights since the beginning of my career. And watching all of this with all the success I've been I've been achieving, thanks to the Dutch National Ballet, thanks to Rosebekakoli, who came to Syria and filmed me and made the reportage about me, and then the Dutch National Ballet saw it, brought me to the Netherlands, gave me a new life, amazing life. And then, of course, I went through the culture shock. I went through BTSD, I went through the developing myself as an adult as well. I left my home. I was 25, 26 years old. Um, and that was the first time I leave my mother, you know? And I didn't leave her to go live by my side with a with a partner, I left her in the world, to in the war to go survive, to go pursue my dreams and to, you know, to live, which made me feel guilty to be happy all the time. But I could support her, I could help her, I could help my whole family. So I've been a stranger, and the Netherlands took me in.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. We're gonna get to that word later. What it what does it mean to be a stranger? But um, what a beautiful experience last week must have been. And I I am so happy for you that you felt so happy and so seen and loved and supported. It's what we all want all the time. And sometimes there's these periods where it's like on high alert because something so special is being shared with the world and that intersection of art and dance and human rights. So I'll go back then to a more um, you know, you've you're dialing in from beautiful San Diego. I'm dialing in from Washington, D.C. And you've just mentioned a lot of places. You've mentioned the Netherlands, you've mentioned Syria and Damascus, where I was last November. Um, tell us what you consider your home to be and what is that word of home, what does it mean to you? What does it signal?
SPEAKER_00Well, I heard a saying that says, wherever you float, it is called home. And since then, I feel my body actually my home as a dancer. So wherever I go, I learned how to adopt. I learned how to include myself. I learned how to belong. It is complex, of course. It is complex because I grew up as a stateless and they made sure to make me learn it very well. What does that mean, you know? Um so wherever I go, I have people that love me. Wherever there is a dance studio, wherever there is a theater, uh that's home. Wherever I feel loved, that's home. Wherever you feel safe, that's home. But yeah, I don't know. I do not have an answer for that. Because I learned as a as I don't know how to say, how to how to to describe for a person who feels he doesn't belong anywhere, but yet belongs everywhere.
SPEAKER_03Belongs everywhere. I mean, you did have a beautiful answer to that question. There was so much. I love the I I've never heard someone say it like that, that you learned how to belong. I think we often put belonging as someone else's responsibility to make me feel welcome or included. But there is a part of it also that's up to us that we can make a decision to learn and adapt to belong in a space, hopefully a space where we're loved and supported and we feel safe. But that was really interesting. And then this idea, I'm thinking of, I've seen you perform dance to think of that floating and what does it mean to be at home in our bodies? And your body, of course, is pushing you to do this beautiful artistic expression. Um, so there's a more physical notion to that home in your own body that I love to reflect on as well.
SPEAKER_00I can see my home when I'm dancing in my body, because you can see the merge of the Eastern and the Western dance together. You can see the ballet that I have been dancing and learning and developing since 20 years. And you can see also the Sufi Derwish dance where I could merge it with the ballet, and that I used to watch my mother's uncles in Belmira doing these rituals when I was a little kid. So if you bring these together and the resistance and the advocacy by using dance for us for a voice for stateless people, that's that's what I mean when I say my body is my home, because it brings all of these together. I bring my family with me on stage, I bring my ancestors, I bring my culture, yet I do not feel that I belong to Syria, unfortunately, because I am not a Syrian national.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00I do not have it on papers. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03This is this next question. And I and you've already you've already started to tell us a little bit of this story. So I'd love for you to, you know, talk about your your own displacement and your family's displacement. And I think many of our listeners will will know the term stateless, but I'm not sure that they'll understand. Let's break it down for them. And so I you've already said some pieces, but tell us as much as you're willing to share about your journey um through displacement and the different places where you've been that takes us to being with you here today.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um, the word stateless. Well, statelessness in Syria is not by uh choice. You know, you don't leave a country and go to another country and become a refugee. I was born there. I was born there, my father was born there, yet we are stateless. My nephew, my little nephew, now also stateless. He's three years old and he's born in Syria. He's a fourth generation and still stateless. What I mean by generation, it's since the Arab-Israeli War, all the Palestinian refugees who left uh Palestine and became refugees in Syria. Syria became since then a host country, which which led to generations of human beings that have no sense of belonging, that have no rights, that have to literally fight to survive. We don't have ID uh like national national IDs, right? We don't have passports, we only have a limited residence permit that can be stopped anytime a leader wants to. And if they stop that, where do we go?
SPEAKER_03I agree with that. And I there's so much what I mean in that powerful story that you shared, let's remind the listener, some of this is very basic. When we say stateless, remember we're no registration, no identity documents that are truly your own, no passports, you cannot travel, you cannot move freely around the world. There is no country that claims you, and so then therefore there's no country that owes you any set of rights or duties or protections. So so much of what UNHCR does when someone is on the move is providing them with this basic documentation. But statelessness is an issue that even confounds that.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. And I had one of these documents from the uh the UN uh from the United Nations, which is uh a travel document for stateless refugees in Syria. It's like a dark blue little book that only papers. And um when I needed to go to the Netherlands, right, I was offered a scholarship by Dutch National Ballet. And um, so I had to go to Beirut where I had to, you know, struggle on the border always, like every stateless person. But because I had cameras around me and uh Roj Bekapoli was there with his cameras to film me for my first documentary, which is Dance or Die. Um so they let me in because I had cameras. I had, you know, they want to look good in front of cameras. And um so I applied for the Dutch uh visa, and they literally printed the visa on an A4 paper, because what I had was not a passport. Right. So I went to Amsterdam and I showed this A4 paper with a visa on it. And they're like, what is this? And they would you please wait on the side, like always. So they went and they checked it and they let me in. So this is how I traveled because so many people ask me how, as a stateless person without a passport, could go, you could go to the Netherlands. This is how I could go. They made an exception. Yeah. Exceptions are there, opportunities are there, but they are not divided equally.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I mean, I I'm I'm I'm thinking of A4 paper, and if you have one in your printer at home, I might never look at A4 paper the same way now. Thinking of the printing of that visa and that being, you know, and also waiting in these long bureaucratic lines. I mean, there is so much time spent waiting, waiting, lack of clarity. I mean, it's you've you've lived this.
SPEAKER_00Yes, I kept that paper. I kept it and I will keep it forever. Forever. But paper changed my whole life.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. What is one message that you wish people better understood, either about statelessness or forced displacement? Like, what's one thing that if you could bust the myth, if you will, what would it be?
SPEAKER_00I would say we are not our governments. As human beings, you know, we are not our governments. So when I will go somewhere and meet someone from another country, I am not my government. So I am not your enemy. I'm just a human being, I'm your brother.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So what I want to tell people, especially nowadays, please listen, let's look at each other as human beings. We are not our governments. They make these decisions of wars, of whatever decisions they're making. It doesn't define us. We are human beings. We meet person to person, we respect each other person to person, and we love each other person to person. And if you think about it, there why why why do we need to fight for something our grandparents, great-great grandparents were fighting for? Why are we today fighting for it? We were born somewhere, we didn't have a choice to be Syrians or Palestinians or Israelis or Dutch or Americans. We didn't have this choice. We didn't have this choice. So why would I come and blame you?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I don't understand.
SPEAKER_03I know when you I'm I'm thinking of that answer, and I'm thinking of someone in the crowd last week that's watching this movie and watching the performance of your dance. How much do you think it matters to the average audience member that you are stateless? Are they watching you only as an artist and as a dancer? Or do you think that that experience is made more powerful because you have this story that interweaves human rights and dance? Where do you think your audience experience is?
SPEAKER_00I think my audience experienced both. Like I am my story. I carry my story like luggage wherever I go.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Like my lived experience, it's very exciting and it's very difficult, and life goes on. And as long as life goes on, dance goes on.
SPEAKER_03When you think of the world of dance and the melding, as you said earlier, of East and West and different traditions, what's next for you? What are you most excited that you will achieve as a dancer?
SPEAKER_00I think for now, what I'm thinking about is like my being, that I am alive today and I am dancing today by itself is a revolution. That was not the plan for so many big forces.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You know? So the fact that I'm alive today and I'm dancing today and I'm experiencing like, for example, you know, premiere of a movie about my history of dance, um, my book, which is there forever, that's my biography. And the people, when they look at me, when they see me dance, and they're having in their mind, oh, this man was supposed to be killed 10 years ago.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00If they succeeded. You know what I mean? So having this in mind and looking at me still dancing, bringing all of these cultures together and being there and being a voice for my people, this empowers me every day. I am now, I am now working on an opera. For the first time in my life, I'm gonna dance in an opera. I always danced ballet in ballet companies, all my own style, my own stuff. But in an opera, this is the first time, and I'm playing the main role, Gilgamesh Opera. I'm playing young Gilgamesh, which is which is uh gonna be performed next weekend. That's why I'm here. So I'm going to LA tomorrow to start a week of uh theater rehearsals. Yeah, yeah. It's amazing. Working in this opera, it is it is by the Assyrian um institution. It's like, you know, Syria was part of Assyria years and thousands of years ago. Because uh, you know, we are all in the Middle East, used to be part of several empires, and the oldest the oldest story in the history that was found carved on stone is the Gilgamesh story. This Dimigod who has this amazing power because his mother is a goddess and his father is a human. So he had this power that he built Uruk, the city, with high walls, and uh they found the story actually on these um uh stones. And this uh Gilgamesh was a brutal leader for his people. He was like experm experiencing all of this um uh brutality. I'm gonna use this word on his people. And then the goddess Ashtar or all the gods, they decided to make him, they want to soften him for his people. Why are you so so bad? So the goddess Ashtar wanted to, she created for him Inkido, which is a friend. She created him uh from the underworld, which is half half human and half animal. And and he meets uh Gilgamesh, and then they they wrestle and then wrestle, wrestle, uh, and then they uh they become friends, and then Gilgamesh uh loves him, loves his, you know, his friend. And um then he discovers his human side by love, by loving his friend. Long story short, his friend will be killed with the ball of heaven that Ashtar sends because she's angry. Gilgamesh doesn't want to be with her. So um then he experiences grief and loss. So for me to experience this on stage and bring this story to life, like how leaders can think they are demigods by just having the power and start um practicing this power on their people, they can do whatever they want, but then the way to discover your your human side is by love.
SPEAKER_02Is by love, yeah.
SPEAKER_00When we think of love or somebody who is loved, how can for a someone who feels loved, how can they hurt anyone? I don't think anyone who feels loved can hurt somebody. So this is a message for our leaders. Power can make you feel you are a demigod, yes. But how about bring your legacy through love?
SPEAKER_03So I I I just love this role for you. It sounds like such a like such a powerful opportunity to again like manifest so much of your your physical artistry, but also what's in your heart in terms of your beliefs and your philosophy. I wonder if this next question, um, I think it's a nice follow-on because you're you're exploring so many ways of knowing and not knowing other people. What is the we're called not really strangers, the podcast? What is what does being a stranger mean to you? What does that word mean to you in this moment in the world?
SPEAKER_00Being a str a stranger, I grew up like a stranger.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You know, a stranger means someone who's dangerous because we don't know who they are, right? That's what we were taught when we were little children. But then how can we nowadays decide this person is a danger without knowing this person?
SPEAKER_03Without knowing them, right?
SPEAKER_00Right. Like you need to know the person to decide if they are dangerous or not. Or at least see them, or like like at least a little encounter to make you understand. Um but I see nowadays like a lot of people say refugees are strangers. No, today I am the refugee. Tomorrow it might be you. So let's be nice to each other. We are looking at a world that making countries fall every single day. So that provides a lot of refugees, right? If we keep consider each other strangers, how can we help each other?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah, there's not, you know, the the idea of the title, not really strangers, is that we create we create or we invent this distance and this difference between us. And the word you used was so important for me, other, right? Like it's we've sort of convinced ourselves that those people have those concerns. They're not mine. And yet what you've talked about throughout this conversation is, you know, sort of shared emotions and shared humanity. I mean, stories from thousands of years ago that are about grief and loss and losing our mother, and it's all this interrelated sort of narrative that we share as humanity. Uh, and I think the stranger idea is like we're not, we're not really, right? We just haven't asked, or we just haven't, you know, allowed ourselves to really see the humanity in others and how close, frankly, it is to our reality, even if the circumstances look wildly different. At its core, it's it's shared.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I always like a sentence that says, I was a stranger and you took me in. I always use I always use this sentence uh for the Netherlands because the moment I got the Dutch passport, I just started seeing life in colours.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I just started having open doors. Strange. The moment I touched that red passport. Strange.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I know it's a right. But for the city.
SPEAKER_03And what it makes it and what it makes possible, this idea of seeing life in color, that's so beautiful. I'll hold on to that. You know, just this this sort of documentation. It feels for those who have it, you take it for granted. And it's not until you have it that you then really uh appreciate and understand all that it unlocks and makes possible. And that that is living life in Technicolor. That's 100% true.
SPEAKER_00Some people have two nationalities, even. Some people have none.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I'm glad that we were able to explore statelessness because it's not, it's not been a theme that's come up with as many other guests. And I do think that I want people to be our listeners to be educated about it. Um so I've asked you all sorts of more technical questions and we've explored your art. My last question is actually, I hope, a really beautiful one. And this is the idea that when we sit around a shared table and we break bread together, we're often able to really condense the distance and make community and even make a form of family. And so I want to ask if you could sort of be, you could set the table for a beautiful dinner. And don't worry, we'll have the best chefs, we'll we'll make sure your mother is there, we'll source ingredients from wherever. What is what is on that dinner table for that meal? What do you dream?
SPEAKER_00I I don't care what is on there. I care who is in there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Really? Yeah. Like that that that brings to my mind actually the dinners we have in the World Economic Forum. You know, I'm a cultural leader since 2021 and uh young global leader since 2024 with the World Economic Forum.
SPEAKER_03So I'm one too, but I'm but I'm a lot older than you. So I I joined back in maybe 2012 or something. We'll have to find each other.
SPEAKER_00And here we are. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Always have ideals. Uh, always.
SPEAKER_00Right? Isn't this the best community?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Like the young global leaders, oh my God. Oh my god. This this has been like the most beautiful three years. Because like I learned a lot. I met a lot of people, and yeah, it added a lot of me uh to me being a young global leader. Also a cultural leader. Like we have these dinners, you know, the cultural dinner they call it, and they they it's by uh Joseph and um and Davos, you know. And we bring like all of these cultural leaders together, and then we have these dinners and we talk about our work and how important that we have, you know, to support the culture and art nowadays, because that's where we get the good opportunities or the right choices for children, let's say, or for whoever uh needs to express themselves in an elegant way. Um so that dinner, that kind of dinners I love because, you know, we inspire each other.
SPEAKER_03What I heard from your dinner is that less about what's served and more about who makes up the table, and do we have a conversation of kind of shared courage and appreciation and respect for each other's kind of craft and art? And I would love to be at that dinner. It sounds like it will be amazing.
SPEAKER_00You're more than welcome.
SPEAKER_03Thank you. Anna, thank you for um this conversation and for sharing um some difficult aspects of your journey and for being so candid with us. I know that you believe that storytelling is the way to people's hearts and minds. And you have just told a story that will that will move anybody that listens to it and will help them, I think, see the world around them differently, but will also help them see even art and the expression of art through this lens of purpose and human rights. And I really um I'm grateful for that change. Um thank you so much for the time.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. Thank you for bringing my story to your platform. We really need stories nowadays. Stories can change the world. So thank you for doing this. I am very happy to be here. Thank you.
SPEAKER_03It was an honor. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00Thank you.
SPEAKER_03Thanks so much for listening. Your time is valuable, and it means a lot that you've chosen to spend it here. You can find today's show notes, including how to connect with today's guest, at unrefugees.org slash not really strangers. That's UNREFUGEE S.org slash not really strangers. While you're there, I hope you'll consider making a donation to the organization I lead, USA for UNHCR, to help us provide more support for refugees here in the U.S. and around the world. If this episode was impactful, please take a moment to review the show and share the episode with a friend or family member. This small action will help us have a much bigger impact. Thanks so much. Don't be a stranger.