Mariam’s an ordinary mum. She met her now husband studying for her Masters. They fell in love. They now have a six-year-old boy, Noor. Her husband lives overseas, studying and calls her three times a day. Her mum lives across the city and thinks Mariam’s husband should come home. Noor wants to head to the beach, determined to swim in the sea. Mariam’s not so sure that’s a good idea. So far, so ordinary, right? But Mariam lives in Gaza. And the next day, the bombs begin to fall.

A Knock on the Roof is a defiantly funny monologue, charting Mariam’s attempt to act normal as the world turns to rubble around her. Hard to imagine that the end of the world could be funny but in writer and performer Khawla Ibraheem‘s capable hands, so it becomes. Ibraheem’s wry observations about family, family relationships and the idiocy of the things we cling to, invite us in to her story so the appalling detail – the small bombs sometimes dropped onto residential accommodation as a warm up act for the rockets – is all the more chilling. Oliver Butler‘s direction is pitch perfect, giving the humour free rein but delivering the final emotional sucker punch with devastating accuracy. You could hear the audience holding their breath.

For people lucky enough to be pretty sure that they’ll get home safe to their bed tonight, it’s dangerously easy for war to feel like something that’s happening over there. A sad something, for sure, but a something we can most of the time afford to ignore. The wonder of A Knock on the Roof is the storytelling that scoops you up and dumps you down into Mariam’s seventh floor flat as her blue-eyed son sleeps next to her and the dust starts to fall from the ceiling.

A Knock on the Roof is at Traverse Theatre – Traverse 2 until Sun 25 Aug 2024 (except Mon 19) at various times