Yusuf and the Whale

Drama of the Week

BBC

Drama, Fiction

3.9 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 5 January 2024

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Yemen. 2023. In one of the poorest countries in the world, with civil war raging, life isn’t exactly easy, and most days the fishermen return with barely enough to live off, let alone to sell.

But fisherman’s son Yusuf is an eternal optimist, and dreamer, who keeps the community’s spirits high with tales of whales and his dreams of the Gulf’s glorious past. Plus, he’s secretly in love with his best friend. But when disaster strikes, and Yusuf’s optimism is tested to the limit, he ends up at sea in the strangest of scenarios.

A heart-warming tale of faith, hope and rizq (the Islamic concept that Allah is responsible for all sustenance provided to us).

CAST Yusuf ..... Bilal Hasna Zulaikha ..... Danusia Samal Fatima ..... Sirine Saba Khaled ..... Stewart Scudamore Abdo ..... Fayez Bakhsh Nabil/Mahdi ..... Yassine Mkhichen

Written by maatin Directed by Anne Isger Sound by Pete Ringrose and Ali Craig A BBC Audio Production for BBC Radio 4.

An EcoAudio certified production

About the writer: maatin is a London-based playwright who focuses on Muslim storytelling. In 2023, maatin's play Duck was performed at the Arcola, following a run at Jermyn Street Theatre. His play Friday at the masjid was selected for the RSC 37 Plays project, and longlisted for the The Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting 2022 and the Soho Theatre’s Verity Bargate Award 2022. Previously, his work was nominated for the Edinburgh TV Festival’s New Voice Awards 2021 and longlisted for BBC Comedy Room 2020. He was selected for the Hampstead Theatre’s INSPIRE Programme 2020/21.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Does talking to strangers make you happier?
0:04.5	Could aging disgracefully help you live longer?
0:08.0	I'm Dr Michael Mosley and in my Just One Long Thing podcast series, I'll be chatting to doctors and scientists
0:15.1	we'll be covering topics like sleep exercise happiness and staying young with each of
0:20.9	our experts choosing a health hack they claim is the single most effective way you can improve your life
0:27.0	Just one long thing listen first on BBC Sounds
0:37.0	BBC Sounds BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. Welcome to Drama of the Week.
0:40.0	Yusef in the whale, by Matine.
0:47.0	I'm a teen.
0:50.0	I'm alone, strange, never out here by myself. How did I, water in all directions. No land in sight.
1:07.0	It smells familiar. Salty breeze, tinged with the sharpness of tanker oil.
1:16.0	This is definitely our boat.
1:19.0	I can feel the pattern of notches and dents I've run my fingers over a thousand times.
1:25.0	The knots on the wood where the paint's worn off around the hull,
1:28.8	the different patches of blue when we couldn't quite get the shade to match. But,
1:33.0	Baba had to sell the boat a year ago.
1:39.0	The water is shaking, like an earthquake coming from right underneath me.
1:45.0	The sea opens, gushing into a whirlpool that's ripped the surface apart.
1:52.0	I grit the side of the boat as hard as I can.
1:56.6	Something's coming out of the water. I can barely make it out. It's a dark mass rising above me endlessly. It climbs higher and higher, defying
2:10.2	gravity. It's a sperm whale 50 feet long hanging above me as if it's flying. It blots out the sun.
2:22.1	Everything turns cold. Finally the whale twists and turns like it's swimming in the air and falls towards me.
	...

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