“Bloomsday: Joyce, Dublin, and Pakistan” takes place at The Black Hole, Islamabad, with H.E. Mary O’Neill, Ambassador of Ireland to Pakistan, among the speakers. The evening is organised by San Patrizio ✴ Festival (SP*F, formerly San Patrizio Livorno Festival; both John Banville and Catherine Dunne serve as Lifetime Patrons of the festival), in partnership with Qissa Khwani Theatrics, and moderated by playwright and literary scholar Ahmad Umar Ayaz. At its heart is something never attempted before: a reworking of Molly Bloom’s closing monologue into the two-line oral poetic form known in the Pashto tradition as the Landay, or T appa. The Landay (or T appa) is traditionally an anonymous, often subversive form historically used by Pashtun women to voice love, longing, and defiance. Researching the form, the SP*F team identified passages within Molly Bloom’s monologue that, extracted as they stand, unaltered already take the shape of a Landay: two lines, self-contained, carrying the same emotional charge, the same refusal to ask permission.
The performance, by Nihal Farid and Uzma I. Kunwar, brings Irish modernism and Pashtun oral poetry into direct conversation for the first time, live, in English and Pashto.
The event supports The Citizens Foundation and girl’s education in Pakistan, and will be livestreamed on The Black Hole’s YouTube channel for audiences in Pakistan, Ireland, Italy, and worldwide.
18 June 2026, 6:30pm Islamabad / 3:30pm Rome / 2:30pm Dublin / 13:30 UTC
The Black Hole, 5H, Street 100, G11/3, Islamabad
Livestream: youtube.com/@TheBlackHoleOfficial/streams
Donations: fundraise.tcfglobal.org/fundraiser/785733069722
Media contact: Max Roveri, San Patrizio Festival (SP*F) +353 (0) 877101531 max@q-rob.com