80 Rickard Rd
Monologue written and performed by Rania Omar
Browse the tour
Route A
1) Pho Minh Temple | 2) Marion Street | 3) Bankstown Gospel Hall | 4) Bankstown Library | 5) Bankstown Library | 6) Paul Keating Park |
Route B
7) Bankstown Arts Centre – RS1 | 8) Amitabha Buddhist Association | 9) Bankstown Train Station | 10) My Dads Work | 11) Bankstown Centro | | 12) Bankstown Arts Centre – Gallery
| Hear from our partners
Transcript
Welcome to Bankstown Library
Before you enter, please take off your shoes.
Badkoun ahwa aw Shai?
Ahla wa Sahla
[music: drums start]
Inhale the smell of freshly ground coffee and desperate hopes for success.
[SFX: background chatter]
Pass the chattering voices, clinking glasses and wobbling tables and you will find the esteemed hallway.
Despite the graying carpets and torn leather couches, excited kids mill about wondering what story they will hear today.
The adults wonder what escape route will we be offered?
Speaking of escape, spot those emergency doors?
Behind them lies identity unformed and futures unborn.
Citizenship ceremonies and concerts of wishes – will I finally belong?
Dance to the beat of music and suppressed feelings
The doors shake but they remain shut.
My tayta shouts.. Don’t sit there, that room is for special occasions only.
Enter the library instead, its more quiet in there.
[silence]
A glass cupboard filled with special china and treasured trinkets.
Stories stacked on the high shelves, ripped bindings sewn back together with shaking hands and the brightest red.
She wasn’t ashamed of patching clothes back together with a visible thread.
[SFX: kids giggling]
You will hear giggles in a secret corner of the room, quick hide before she see the mess we made!
Hope is the back room on the first floor. Cluttered with the stories she used to tell us growing up.
A family is comforted by a happy ending that she tells them with a smile.
[SFX: drums return]
But behind that smile and a few stories above, generational burdens threaten to disturb the peace. There are books strewn across tables, opened to pages of grief, loss, longing and hope.
Hope.
Tayta takes a deep breath and the light returns to her eyes.
Ya albi ana maaki
Before I leave, she gifts me with her favorite book.
Jibiyah Kitab, roohi bil baat. Aboukra haki maa ana wa akhbirni ma taalamtahu.
Take this book to your home, tomorrow return to me and tell me what you learnt.
Bankstown Library brings comfort like tiger blankets and turkish rugs.
It is the knowledge behind crinkled eyes and wrinkly skin that have weathered the terrors of the world and remain hopeful.
It is the faint smell of musk and mammoul baking in the oven.
Bankstown library is my home away from lost homes and missing histories.
