Behind the scenes of this year's Ramadan dramas with Amina Elbendary Click to view caption The first days of Ramadan are slow. Family iftars settle into a lull after the sacred first day: cultural venues, as is their wont, take a while to get their shows on the road. All of which means television has a captive, if somewhat bloated, audience. Ramadan is the high season: the month eats up a vast chunk of the Egyptian Radio and Television Union's (ERTU) production budget. It is television's extended showcase, a time when the brightest and the best are supposed to pop up on our screens. Even people who profess not to like television watch Ramadan soap operas which have a strange ability to embed themselves in the nation's psyche. For many the 1990s were about nothing so much as Osama Anwar Okasha's Layali Al-Hilmiya (Hilmiya Nights). A new millennium dawned with Awan Al-Ward (The Time of Roses), which dared approach the issue of inter-faith marriage and caused a predictable uproar. Predictable enough, certainly, to encourage a quick purview of this year's offerings, essential for any one who wants to know what they are going to be talking about for the next few weeks. Last year it was the turn of 'Ailat Al-Hagg Metwalli (Hagg Metwalli's Family) to attempt a distillation of the zeitgeist. Its implicit condoning of polygamy prompted the National Council for Women to convene a seminar to discuss the series which, with its negative stereotyping of women, had put the noses of the progressive and liberal severely out of joint. Actor Nur El-Sherif (who played Metwalli) is this year again espousing polygamy in Al-'Attar wal-Saba' Banat (The Herbalist and the Seven Girls). Search as much as you like to find a positive example of womanhood here, it will be to no avail. They are either conniving or downtrodden. Hagg Saleh's first wife, Sayeda (Sumaya El-Alfi), becomes a witch when Saleh succumbs to her ploys and takes a second wife to bear him the desired child. The second wife, Haneya (Magda Zaki, who also played the obedient first wife in Hagg Metwalli), suffers injustices silently, first at the hands of her wicked step-mother, Fathiya, then at the hands of Sayeda. Several women characters in other dramas, though, are surprisingly independent. There is, of course, a price for such empowerment. They are all without a man. At least one archetype of progression in the sphere of women's rights should be In'am Mohamed Ali's Qasim Amin, a chronicle of the life of the late reformer and author of Tahrir Al-Mar'a (The Emancipation of Women). Set in the 19th century the series attempts a reconstruction of the historical, cultural and social context within which the young Qasim (Kamal Abu Rayya) was brought up. Qasim's father was a Turkish army officer, his mother an Egyptian fellaha, her co-wife a Turk. Growing up in this Turco-Egyptian household, Qasim witnessed the injustices and the struggles faced by the women of his family in their dealings with an autocratic patriarch. His maternal uncle denied Qasim's mother, Saneya Hanem (Nadia Rashad), her rightful share of the family's inheritance -- women didn't inherit in the countryside so as not to divide up the land, he argued. The family's Circassian slave, Gulnar (Azza Bahaa), was eager to learn to read and write -- like men. She dares to cross from the women's quarters to the men's to beg Qasim to teach her, but alas, this would be a further transgression of sacred boundaries. The young Qasim is opposed to such norms, which he deems unfair, unjust and against the Shari'a, but his views are an oddity. Interestingly it is the Turkish women, Tafida Hanem (Magda El-Khatib) and Gulnar, who are more rebellious and dare to transgress gender boundaries. When she marries, Gulnar insists that her husband teach her. Tafida Hanem backs Qasim's decision to travel to France to study and vows to sell some of her land to pay his expenses should the father fail to provide. Saneya Hanem, on the other hand, is the one who most conforms with norms and traditions, the one least likely to rebel. Even though an only son Qasim too suffers at the hands of his autocratic father. He rebels by refusing to marry Gulnar, by refusing a job at the Foreign Ministry and by travelling to France to study. The fight for equality is not just about gender, then, as the uprighteous lyrics of the series tell: "Right and freedom are the essence of being". Qasim is influenced by the nationalist reformists he befriends, Sheikh Mohamed Abduh and the young Saad Zaghlul. Starting in the 1880s with the Orabi revolution and British occupation the series sews together the quest for the emancipation of women with the nationalist struggle. Once more issues of freedom are not separated. Yet characters such as Mohamed Abduh and Abdallah El-Nadim are allowed reservations on the role of the army in politics. Abduh preaches that political change need not be quick or violent, but could be gradual and peaceful. The quest for national independence comes with an overwhelming admiration of all things Western. Rising families want to send their sons to Europe to learn. A royal princess who has lived in Europe for some time introduces the notion of a cultural salon and engages in sophisticated discussions with her all-male guests. And in Europe Qasim will be introduced to other gender models. The women in Qasim's life, living in the 19th century, do not seem that far removed from Faten and Wisal, the protagonists of Magdi Abu Emera's Ayna Qalbi (Where is My Heart?). Modern, independent, single Egyptian women, Faten and Wisal have to contend with the same demeaning social norms that confined Tafida Hanem and Saneya Hanem -- almost. Both are successful architects, Faten (played by Youssra) a widow raising two children, Wisal (Abla Kamel) a single woman. While both friends work at the Cairo municipality Faten has to rely solely on her salary while Wisal comes from a relatively well-off landowning family, though there are few hints of such differences in the wardrobe department. Had this been a film Wisal might have made her mark alongside Amina in Al-Bab Al-Maftuh (The Open Door) and Nadia in Ana Hurra (I Am Free). She dares to stand up to her painfully domineering mother by refusing the convention of marriage and insisting on her independence even though her mother persistently attacks her self-esteem. It is interesting that scriptwriter Magdi Saber chose a mother (instead of the traditional father figure) as the autocrat here, once more making the point that power and its abuse, the evils of patriarchy, are not about gender per se. Wisal is outgoing and confident, but she suffers from general discrimination against single women, as indeed does Faten who, as a widow, is considered fair prey by many and viewed with suspicion by most. Yet it is Faten who is more eager to toe the conventional moral line and behave as a "respectable" widow should; she wants to save her children problems and so does not dare challenge her prescribed role. Manless, she and her children feel vulnerable in a harsh, male-dominated society. It is perhaps too soon to tell, but probably by the end of Ramadan both Faten and Wisal will have been shuffled into a conventional family structure -- a happy ending necessitates that the best-friends get happily married. One can only hope that they will do so on their own terms, as self-assured women of substance. Amira fi Abdin (Amira in Abdin), starring Samira Ahmed and Youssef Shaaban, tackles business corruption and fraud. It juxtaposes the post-infitah world of bank loans and villas (bad) with the old world of Abdin and October war martyrs , the wilad al-balad of unchanging traditional values (good). The men flee under threat of imprisonment and abandon businesses and families; it is the women, Amira and her daughter, who assume responsibility. Contemporary Egypt is in distress, and it is such women who represent its moral consciousness during difficult times. They are the ones who adopt the moral line. The nation, it is suggested, and not very subtly, needs to revert to its pre-infitah values and morals just as Amira moved out of her fancy villa and back into her old flat in traditional Abdin. The series causing the greatest furore is Mohamed Sobhi's Fares Bila Gawad (Horseman Without a Horse). Ironically, despite the public support the makers of the series initially enjoyed (there were demonstrations in support at Al-Azhar Mosque last Friday) in reaction to scathing attacks by US and Israeli officials who have branded it anti-Semitic, most of those among my acquaintance who make it through the episodes agree they are boring. I have yet to meet a fan. What is aggravating, however, to the television viewer and political sympathiser alike, is that the Arab side of the Arab-Israeli conflict offers many good stories. It is a pity that when Egyptian producers do tackle the conflict they do so in a politically naïve and artistically moribund way. The absence of Coptic characters in any of the series so far comes as something of a surprise given their prominence in recent years: is national unity slipping down the agenda? Another deviation from recent years is the absence of nostalgic takes on the pre-Revolution 1940s. This might, however, change when Zaman Emadeddin (The Time of Emadeddin) is aired on terrestrial channels. Three weeks left, then, in which to draw this year's morals. Three weeks left to chew the cud. Related story: Protocols, politics and Palestine 7 - 13 Nobember 2002
