In Language Is a Mattress, two performers — one Arabic-speaking,

the other Persian-speaking — unravel Hafez’s iconic opening poem

Alā yā ayyoha-s-sāqī, اﻻ ﯾﺎ اﯾﮭﺎ اﻟﺳﺎﻗﯽ) across two thermal paper rolls.

Written in Arabic on one side and Persian on the other, the poem is

recited word by word. The performers mimic a call-and-response

dynamic: one speaks, the other repeats, “saving” the word onto their

side of the roll — an embodied metaphor for how foreign words

settle into memory.

The performance reflects on the artists' shared experience of living

in Germany, where translation becomes a daily act of survival.

Longing to speak each other’s language with ease, they explore the

emotional terrain of communication, misunderstanding, and

adaptation. Misheard phonetics across Arabic, Persian, and German

generate humorous misfires — not as failures, but as sparks of

curiosity and connection.

Here, language is both burden and bridge, intimacy and alienation

—a mattress to rest on or to destroy in search of something more.