Title

FROM DAMASCUS

From Damascus is a play about a mute immigrant taken in by an upper-middle-class Western family. Though he never speaks, each family member projects their own desires, fears, and judgments onto him. They talk at him constantly, convinced they can mold him into someone more “civilized,” more like themselves. But as their attempts at assimilation grow more insistent, their own behavior begins to unravel. What starts as charity curdles into obsession, and their fixation on changing him exposes their descent into something far more toxic, grotesque, and barbaric than anything they sought to erase.

Biography

Benjamin Bajramović is a Bosnian writer and actor, born in Zenica in 1989. He graduated from the Academy of Performing Arts in Sarajevo in 2011. As an actor, he has performed in numerous Bosnian and international productions and co-productions across a range of theaters, including the National Theater Sarajevo, SARTR Sarajevo, the MESS Festival Sarajevo, the Bosnian National Theater Zenica, HAU Berlin, Nottingham Playhouse, ITD Theater Zagreb, and ODA Theater Prishtina.

He is the author of two novels (Ithakas, 2020, and Children of the God Imana, forthcoming in autumn 2025), three plays (Ithakas, 2017; Bordel Eden, 2020; The Snakebite, 2022), as well as short stories. His play Bordel Eden received the Regional Play of the Year Award from the Heartefact Foundation in Belgrade, Serbia. His short story Grieving won the Short Story of the Year Award from the Sarajevo magazine Oslobođenje. His novel Ithakas was a runner-up for the Bosnian annual literary award Meša Selimović.