Eight Steps of Emptiness: Biography of a Dancing Scorpion
Reading for adults: Twenty-five actors take the stage to present the Norwegian premiere of the Palestinian Akram Musallam's novel — a work where story, rhythm, and silence unfold in eight steps of emptiness.
Tickets: Pay what you can – all proceeds go directly to Doctors Without Borders’ work in Palestine.
A writer’s work is sometimes like an ambush: You must hide the bomb, camouflage it well, then wait while the target approaches. Just as the target reaches the spot where the bomb is placed — or a few seconds before — you detonate.
I returned to Al‑Manara square. There I examined the four lions, looked at them in a new light. The lions had changed, changed a lot. I drew closer, enjoying the sight as only a lover of beauty can … I love them. The marble lions were placed in the Al‑Manara roundabout in the mid‑1950s; a few years later they were taken down and hidden in storage because of war and instability. But then, during the “Oslo Spring,” when hope and change were in the air, the old sculptures were replaced – a new lion monument was unveiled. Shortly after came war.
The author attempts to complete a novel. He insists that it should be an aesthetic project — he is an artist and will not allow himself to be defined by geopolitical conditions — but all too often, external reality forces itself in and takes over the direction of spaces, characters, and narrative development.
What is art worth when the world is burning?
On Tuesday, August 26, 2025, the Israeli army carried out a major raid in the center of Ramallah, in the West Bank. The city’s landmark, the lion monument on Al‑Manara square, was drenched in tear gas while sharp bullets hammered into the marble bodies. 58 Palestinians were badly injured, an additional 30 poisoned by tear gas.
In the shadow of genocide in Gaza, weekly invasions in the West Bank have continued without global attention. Since October 2023, over 900 Palestinians have been killed, including 181 children. Everyday life is paralyzed by increasing military checkpoints, escalating attacks by Israeli settlers, evictions, arrests without charges, destruction of homes …
Ramallah is the seat of the Palestinian Authority and had been the only city in the West Bank to avoid regular invasions since the Second Intifada (2002‑2005). Until this autumn.
The large‑scale assault at the end of August was a clear signal from the occupying power: Full annexation of the West Bank is their next goal.
So; what is art when the world is burning?
Art and culture hold the essence of who we are, who we have been, and who we will be. They remind us that we are human, more than numbers and statistics, testimonies and news.
Translated into Norwegian by Vibeke Harper
About the Novel & the Author
Akram Musallam is from the village of Talfit in Nablus governorate in the northern West Bank. He holds an MA in International Studies from Birzeit University in Ramallah, and works among other things as a journalist for the newspaper Al Ayyam. Musallam has a prominent position in the Palestinian literary field and has published three novels. The award‑winning novel Eight Steps of Emptiness. Biography of a Dancing Scorpion (2008) has been translated into French, Italian, and English – and now finally also into Norwegian. The book is expected to be published in Norway in 2026.
Akram Musallam visited Norway and the festival Motforestillinger III in 2016, where he contributed with the commissioned work Da Shimon Peres ga meg godteri, performed at the Oslo Literature House.
About the Translator & Director
Vibeke Harper is a conceptual artist whose work spans performance, interventions, theater, text, and translation. She has had annual residencies in Palestine since 2008, experiences which have deeply shaped her life and work. Harper’s artistic practice explores aesthetic and political communities and how we as individuals in a collective carry conditioned memory.
Since autumn 2023, she has, among other projects, in collaboration with Vega Scene, organized an annual Vigil for Gaza.