On Saturday night Martin and I went to see Baghdad Wedding. Matt’s room mate who works for Belvoir got us free tickets and we loved it. Martin very nearly didn’t come, he told me he didn’t like plays, but when we were speaking to his mum she asked what we were doing for Valentine’s Day (that hadn’t registered at that point). I told her that her son was refusing to come to a play with him so she had words with him on my behalf. I don’t know what she said but it worked.

He was glad he came in the end. The play was good. It looked at the war in Iraq and Islam in a way I hadn’t seen before and it challnged some of my ideas. It didn’t buy into any of the usual cliches and wasn’t black and white. It was also funny and sad and well written and acted and the music was good.

The experience was made even richer for us as we had, had the pleasure of sharing a meal before hand with an elderly Jewish couple. We had arrived early so bought dinner and then sat down with this couple as there were no other seats. We got to chatting with them and they shared a bit of their story. He was a Polish Holocaust survivor, she was Australian. It was a play about a wedding so they told us about Jewish weddings. They had been married for 35 years and loved the theatre. It was a rare moment. We a young Christian couple of Australian and Peruvian descent chatting with an elderly Jewish couple of Australian and Polish descent before a play about Muslim Iraqi’s. I felt strongly that I, that the world needs more interactions such as these. I felt that God, the God of these three religions was there.