Zarina Khan

Overview

Zarina Khan born Tunis, Tunisia February 19, 1954. “Citizen of the World.” Actress, philosopher, poet, filmmaker, and peacemaker. Set up “Theater & Liberty in War” in war-torn Sarajevo 1993, producing “Dictionary of Life”; UNESCO expert in culture of peace 1995; nominee for Nobel Peace Prize 2005.

Quotations

“[V]iolence and its opposite, the respect of the others, are the backgrounds of the history of humanity. Denying the violence, seeking to erase is an illusion, it is like trying to win over the night. . . So, we have to look at violence's face, in order to understand its functioning, how it begins, which are its deep roots that help its growth. In the same way, the functioning of the human being has to be understood . . . by each of us. It is the first step in the transformation process of our society. . . 'Who is he, the one I am hitting?' asks immediately the next question: 'What is this something in me that is hitting him?' . . . To explore the mystery, one has to express it. Who am I? Who are you? You are a mystery for me if I am a mystery for myself. Discovering you, I will discover myself, and if I discover in you, who is so different from me, parts of myself, I will discover that in the same time I am unique and strangely like you, that we are sharing the same story, the story of 'human beings,' and that we have to write it, together.” (“Culture as space of encounter, resistance and reconstruction”; photo rfi.fr)